Mean is queen it would appear these days, as feminism finds itself, following hopeful and inspiring origins in the late last century, at the crossroads of right wing and cancel culture combo assaults, and endangered species irrelevance. Enter Cruella, and its movie screen as distorted mirror twisted tale for a cynical period.
Splitting screen time are the outrageously sassy two Emma's. With Emma Stone doing split personality double duty as bottom feeder lower depths orphaned thief Estella and dark side Cruella - while obsessively bent on ruthlessly crashing her way into the designer fashion world. Though ultimately locking horns with even more ruthless Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson), who presides over the reigning London fashion house. The baroness eventually allows her entry into the business as an apprentice. Though with a suspicious eye poised to run any necessary interference on Estella clawing her way into upstaging her.
A mix of male and female writers helmed by Craig Gillespie and that includes script by committee screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) and Kelly Marcel (Fifty Shades Of Grey), Cruella would seem to reflect their own personal ambitions. That is, as women like the female protagonists in Cruella, in fierce competition pitting themselves against both men and other women - in a race to the top of that professional food chain. While the actual males in this oddly sexless movie, range from eunuchs to clowns.
So with all erotic desire unconventionally absent and passion preserved solely for ambition and professional back biting, the typical Hollywood approach to human struggle on screen prevails. As always, personal and never mass movement inspired - even in this economic crisis moment, both in the movie and the real world.
Along with a warped notion of feminism that has evolved ideologically from Cruella's late 20th century setting to the present time, that women must be meaner than men in order to make it in the world. One look no further than female public figures Margaret Thatcher, 'We came, we saw, he died' giggling Hillary, Bolivia coup dictator Jeanine Anez, and rabid right wing Congresswomen Marjorie Tayler Greene along with QAnon linked Lauren Boebert today.
In other words, move over Meryl Streep - Emma Thompson would have made the much more deliciously malevolent Thatcher.
Prairie Miller
