liberate now
Do not underestimate the level of bondage the world around you is in.
Everything it brings forth toxically tainted.
If you do nothing else this year;
Set the intention to be bigger and louder in 12 months.
And more ferocious.
—
I’ve listened to way too many reviews and analysis of the amazing movie Babygirl, and although I’ve heard many takes on it, from the most misogynist to the most positive as well, I have not heard anyone else bringing a very disturbing fact of this movie to the light.
Maybe because it’s a spoiler?
Or a bit of a spoiler?
I don’t know, could be!
So spoiler alert then..
Are you still here?
Because here it comes.
Although the ending of Babygirl is open to multiple interpretations – something I will definitely be getting back to in 2025 (on my other blog, world between worlds, link to category babygirl) but I first want to give everyone a chance to go watch it-
so although there is definitely, and fortunately, a lot of interesting wiggle room with regard to Babygirl’s ending;
When interpreted at its most blunt face value?
It is an UNfinished hero’s journey!
What heresy!
Definition of hero’s journey;
“In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero’s quest or hero’s journey, also known as the monomyth,
is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.”
An unfinished hero’s journey would for example be, if after having mustered a fellowship of nine, having been stabbed half to death by a Nazgul on Weathertop, crossing the Dead Marshes with your best friend, who you first lost due to your own delusions, after which you were captured by a giant spider who sedated you and hung you up to be consumed later, and then your friend saved you;
*big breath*
And a small creature with two personalities followed you around and then push came to shove and you decided to not throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom.
As would have been required to save the world.
But instead you hid the ring really well.
Somewhere no one would find it.
Because it saved you the final kilometers up the mountain, and those were really steep and you were kind of tired from all your adventures and besides the mountain was really hot and the little creature looked like it would bite your finger off and you dreaded spending the rest of your life with only nine fingers even though that would have been super symbolic of your fellowship so you just decided to call it a day. Or a journey.
That, is an unfinished hero’s journey.
And when taken in its most simplistic way, the ending of Babygirl is just that.
It has you yelling:
“You gotta be f-ing kidding me!” at the screen.
Until, of course, I realized this was really the highest possible outcome with regard to sexual liberation of women, currently achievable to Hollywood standards.
That Hero’s Journeys can be, and should be, and will be, completed when it’s about a bunch of guys putting their lives on the line to save the world.
However, when it’s about a woman trying to save her sexual identity, we’re gonna just walk a third into the first movie and after the Prancing Pony, we’re just done.
I mean, the wizard wasn’t there as he had promised he would be;
And we’ve seen the cloaked figures on horses that are definitely up to no good and they’ll try to assassinate us tonight, stabbing the decoy figures we will lay in the beds to fool them.
We’re done!
Let this Strider fella just take us hobbits home because we’ve seen enough adventures for three generations!
That, is how Babygirl ended.
Because when it comes to sexual liberation we have got such a long way to go, society and Hollywood being so restricted, we simply cannot have female heros walk their path to the bitter, or the satisfying, or the necessary, but in any way shape or form, the FULL ending.
Again, not using the wiggle room interpretation wise.
This is just going for the most obvious interpretation of it.
And who knows, maybe it was never intended to be a hero’s journey, but simply an art house drama movie. Who is to say.
But what struck me was that when thinking about the movie I had been so ignorant of the limitations a movie like this was faced with.
That I had actually assumed this movie had had full creative freedom.
Of course not.
Babygirl was made tiptoeing Hollywood’s Dead Marshes of misogynie.
The hero’s journey? That was not the protagonist having her sexual liberation!
No, it was writer and director Halina Reijn getting this movie made in the first place.
With Babygirl, Reijn got the ring into Mordor for us.
But it’s up to us to make sure it gets thrown into the pit.
So when I say Liberate Now, I mean;
Do not underestimate your opponent.
Do not think for a minute you’ll be allowed to break the shackles with whatever or whomever, and just walk your own path.
Know where you’re going.
Stay the course.
And bring a compass to readjust along the way.
And do not lose sight of the mountain of work ahead of you, but at the same time;
Be incredibly grateful for all the digging, smoothing, and the sign posts put up by all who went before.
And unless you’re the protagonist in an erotic 2024 drama movie that was brought to light against the odds;
Walk the path all the way to the end.
And throw that ring and all the other shackles that bind you, into the damn pit.
..
..
Goodgirl /Hero
(pick one)
.
~Suzanne Beenackers
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