Hustlers strips systemic sexism down to the boner

By Katherine Monk

The original article penned by New York magazine writer Jessica Pressler called them “Robin Hoods” of a different kind. That’s because they stole from the rich. But this particular gang of merrymakers didn’t give to “the poor.” They kept the cash for themselves, because they needed it most.

Perhaps more importantly, it wasn’t just about money. It was about revenge. So in many ways, Hustlers is a standard Hollywood story of payback. Yet in the hands of director, actor and writer Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler, New Girl), the new movie finds a surprising new twist — not to mention a few twerks and jiggles.

A story of female empowerment set in, of all places, a peeler bar, Hustlers takes us back to the early aughts, when the world of Wall Street was as fat as a pork belly and brokers were known to drop up to $100K a night in pursuit of a good time.

… In many ways, Hustlers is a standard Hollywood story of payback. Yet in the hands of director, actor and writer Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler, New Girl), the new movie finds a surprising new twist — not to mention a few twerks and jiggles.

Meanwhile, nice, honest and academically ambitious women like Destiny (Constance Wu) are working double shifts just to make the rent, feed their ailing grandma, and hopefully, attend college. It’s an almost impossible task, so when Destiny sees an opportunity to make some quick cash by simply shaking her booty for strangers, she seizes the day, the night and the baby oil to climb the ladder.

She becomes a pole dancer, but even there, the club takes a huge cut, along with the bouncers and bartenders, leaving her with a fraction of her stack of ones and fives. Then she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), a veteran at the club who makes huge cash — but makes most of her money privately, entertaining men with the real power, and the big pocketbooks.

Everyone understands the transaction and Ramona and Destiny actually find personal power in their boudoir theatrics. After all, if the only thing society values is your body, then why not cash in on the genetic bonus of having an hourglass figure and kissable lips?

It’s the strange but rational equation presented by the third wave of feminist thought, and Pressler addressed it in her 2015 article as she describes the landscape in the early 2000s as a place where unbridled entrepreneurialism was admired and affirmed in the world at large. America worships wealth and power, but the system restricts access to privileged white men. Women aren’t all that welcome on the trading floor of Wall Street, but when they’re standing on an acetate pedestal working a brass pole, there’s no threat to the status quo.

Scafaria no doubt had to internalize this binary and come to peace with it before she put pen to paper on the script, because we never feel she’s judging these women. She lets them draw all the moral lines for themselves, which means Hustlers is almost more of a psychological probe of power dynamics than you might call “sexy.”

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t show these women performing all kinds of spasmodic gestures in the half light of a VIP room, or wrapping their supple limbs around a hard metal post for the pleasure of ogling onlookers. We watch Constance Wu, J-Lo and a host of other hot bodies do just that, but there’s something in the way she frames these scenes that deny creepy titillation.

You can feel a sense of respect in the way she follows the natural curve of their bodies and focuses on their faces. She doesn’t dissect them for the camera, she lets them remain whole.

In short, we see these women as fully formed people just trying to make their way in the world by moving their bodies in space. She also shows us the men, slack-jawed, drunk, looking small as they slump down in oversized chairs. They are cinematically stripped of power.

You can feel a sense of respect in the way she follows the natural curve of their bodies and focuses on their faces. She doesn’t dissect them for the camera, she lets them remain whole.

When the market tanks, however, things get tougher in the clubs. Ramona decides to take it one step further, and fleece the wolves of Wall Street for all they’re worth. She devises a plan to drug the men with MDMA and ketamine, purloin their credit cards, sexily pull out their PIN numbers, and successfully max out one Black Onyx American Express after another.

Knowing the men aren’t likely to tell the authorities about losing a few grand to a stripper, the scam works — until they start trusting the wrong girls, and it all comes raining down like so much plastic confetti on New Year’s eve.

There’s nothing all that new here. It’s a female revenge story where the women wear thongs and twerk up a cheeky storm as they try to get even. The cast, featuring cameos from Cardi B and Usher, are nothing less than electric, and thanks to the female eyes behind the camera, Hustlers never feels exploitative, even though that’s the central theme.

There’s nothing all that new here. It’s a female revenge story where the women wear thongs and twerk up a cheeky storm as they try to get even.

Scafaria’s long lens stands in awe of these women as they twist around the pole, shake their booty and manipulate the male ego like so much silly putty. The movie looks like a coke-fuelled night out, but Hustlers is more than a formula quickie. It’s a surprisingly cool-headed and almost subjective examination of how women are valued in our society, and why we shouldn’t be so quick to judge the handful of women who exploit their natural resources with the same entrepreneurial commitment and moral vacancy as the men who drill, suck and extract resources from mother nature.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, September 13, 2019

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