Why Not the Other Way Around?
Watched REDLINE last night. It was fucking amazing, BUT didn’t do much for gender roles.
THIS POST WILL HAVE SPOILERS
Normally, I come to this blog as an apologist. I believe that we should look to the characters themselves for consistency, but here, I think I want to note an underlying problem here.
From a characterization point of view, it makes sense that JP gets to take the checkered flag at Redline. This movie is his prodigal son parable, and it tells the tale of him taking back his love of victory, speed, and racing as a whole. But still… Why HIM?
The movie feints like it cares about Sonoshee. She joins JP in the end on the condition that he align his goals with hers (winning), she falls for him as a way of completing herself (she lived only for racing before), she proves a kickass racer in her own right. But the movie fails on a simple level from a feminist point of view. WHY NOT HER?
Why does JP’s character have to be male? This, I posit is a tricky question of pro-feminist characterization. See, had we just added a set of tits to JP, you’d get complaints that JP was just a guy with a set of tits. Not a “real” female character. However, when offered a “real” female character in the case of Sonoshee, it’s deplorable because she’s not the lead. In the case of Redline, the story is compelling because the ex-fixer with the shady past makes good and wins it all. Sonoshee as written wouldn’t generate as much pathos by herself, she did however fit her role in the story like a glove.
Are we to condemn Redline for this?
