Promising Young Women and the Men Who Break Them
Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman is both love letter and warning. It is certainly not to be confused with the sexual revenge fantasy films of Quentin Tarantino’s wet dreams, where shots of feet perched on dashboards linger far too long. Women — and their bodies — are not the scene decoration here. Instead, brightly colored scenes are sprinkled with biblical allusions that even the most lapsed of Catholics will recognize.
Cassie Thomas, a thirty-year-old overqualified coffee shop employee, dries clean mugs as a round, Tiffany blue wall hanging halos her head. She was a promising young woman before she dropped out of Forrest University Medical School — that is, before her lifelong best friend was raped. The perfectly centered image recalls the iconography of Mary Magdalene. The oft-repeated (and thus, internalized) story of Mary Magdalene goes like this: She was a prostitute. She was ‘the bad Mary’ — not a good girl like the Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
Yet, a further examination tells you she was much more. According to the Bible and various scholars, Mary Magdalene witnessed the Crucifixion and was among the first to learn of the Resurrection — just as Cassie bore witness to Nina’s crucifixion at the hands of Al Monroe and his high-priced lawyer, only to see her crucifier casually resurrected in a coffee shop by her new boyfriend.
This theme of crucifixion is recurrent — from the opening shot of Cassie slumped over in the bar, her arms outstretched, to her final moments…entombed, then resurrected one final time via text message to strike down the men who felled her. She is Christlike. This beat is the driving pulse of the film, the soundtrack dripping in lyrics like ‘She took over heaven, rearranged the sky’ (The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men” as covered by DeathbyRomy).
It is undeniably clear that the driving creative force behind the film is female. And even further, that its intended audience is ‘promising young wom[e]n’ like Cassie in their twenties and thirties. This is underlined by the cast of antagonists, a mid-to-late-2000s primetime television highlight reel.
How strange to see so many recognizable men from my teens — Adam Brody (The OC), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad), Max Greenfield (New Girl), Chris Lowell (Veronica Mars), Bo Burnham (YouTube star-turned comedian) — as villains, but that is exactly the point. Nostalgia magnifies your horror — because you, like Cassie and Nina, trusted these men. You let them into your home. They are as familiar to the audience as they are to the heroine. And they, too, all believe themselves to be the ‘nice guys’ we assumed them to be.
Ryan, Cassie’s boyfriend, typifies this particular horror. It is, of course, clear to him that the “creep in the fedora” guiding his stumbling girlfriend away from the bar is a predator. He interrogates the man. Does he even know her name? But, when faced with video evidence of his own predatory actions, Ryan is blind. He was “just a kid,” after all. It was a party, they were having fun. What’s the harm in that? When pushed, he protects himself and his friends — even though he knows Cassie is in danger.
I know these men — many more than I’d care to, in fact — and they are utterly common. Like a good Joni Mitchell song, I have lived on both sides now. This has granted me the unique experience of seeing the Al Monroes of the world up close and personal, without a filter.
I was a junior in college when I decided to join Delta Tau Delta Fraternity on my Greek-oriented Kentucky college campus. It should be noted that my decision to join the fraternity was driven by one thought alone: it would look good on my resume as I entered the workforce. Promising young…
It didn’t take long to learn the depths of sexist vulgarity that cisgender men are capable of reaching. Women have an awareness of this in its final execution; in the United States, an average of 3 women are killed by a current or former partner every day. But women are largely shielded from the utterly casual, insidious manner in which it permeates their every interaction. It is ingrained, systemic even. An echo chamber of violence.
The fraternal feedback loop reached its breaking point when, one December day, a series of messages were sent to the group chat detailing a point system for sexual encounters. The highest point value? Filming sex with a woman.
Reader, I don’t think I need to tell you that these men — future doctors, politicians, policemen — had little plan of asking their presumably intoxicated partners for consent they wouldn’t be sober enough to legally offer in the hidden corner of a party. I also don’t think I need to tell you that, when I threatened to contact the police, I was nearly kicked out. It was just a joke! They, like Al Monroe, surrounded themselves only with those who could smile wide and spin gold out of garbage.
There is no telling how many videos from men like these are hosted on porn sites — likely thousands, if not millions, based on PornHub’s recent culling of unverified content. But, like Promising Young Woman’s Madison McPhee, many watch these videos with little thought to their vicious origins. Even videos with details as horrific as that which Nina endured. The details of Nina’s rape are — with unblinking purpose — nearly identical to that which have been ingrained in the American psyche after the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A gang rape at a party, the privilege of the men, their echoing laughter.
So, the question creator/director Emerald Fennell asks is this: who survives crucifixion? Is it men like Brett Kavanaugh who escape criminal examination unscathed? The Alexander Monroes of the world? Because they are, after all, promising young men, and what a shame it would be to see their potential snuffed out. Or is it the Cassie Thomases, the Dr. Christine Blasey-Fords? The women who stare these men down, only to be strung up for their perceived crimes.
It is still far easier to chew someone up and spit them out than to build a life out of someone else’s mastication, but maybe not in Emeral Fennell’s world. Somewhere, I hope, Brett Kavanaugh is watching Promising Young Woman and trembling in his ill-fitting robes.
For more of the good stuff, follow Fourth Wave, where we’re changing the world for the better, one story at a time. Got one of your own? Submit to the Wave!
