The Women of Suicide Squad: Considering Feminist Messages
By Valerie Estelle Frankel
WARNING — REVIEW CONTAINS MANY SPOILERS!
Suicide Squad has been heavily heavily advertised with trailers all known for their fun and sometimes jarring theme music. At last it arrived, and certainly, the soundtrack was delightful. The Joker creeped people out, Will Smith’s Deadshot was cooler than cool and pretty snarky too. But what about the women?
There were a fair number of female characters in this one — an improvement on Superman/Batman’s enigmatic Wonder Woman plus the various females Lex Luthor was happy to sacrifice (by my count, all of them). However, every single one in Suicide Squad was a) fridged, b) bikinied, c) revealed as inept or d) all of the above. For all the fans eagerly awaiting the first Wonder Woman film in theaters (there was a cartoon made-for-TV movie in 2009 and Lego Wonder Woman has cameoed on the big screen but this is splitting hairs), trusting her to the team who made dark, anti-heroic Superman/Batman and now this bikini romp is feeling problematic.
So let’s break down the cast and their concepts.
Task Force X, first appearing in DC’s The Brave and the Bold #25 in 1959, was a ragtag human team of soldiers, prisoners and the criminally insane, all considered expendable. Rick Flag, then Rick Flag Jr. leads. Legends #3, “Send for… the Suicide Squad!” from 1987 featured a lineup of Blockbuster, Bronze Tiger, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and Enchantress, with Rick Flag in command. The last four obviously relate this comic to the film. Boomerang and Deadshot are serving in exchange for prison release so they get explosive bracelets, while the others (serving in a more Katana-like role) do not. They’re all sent out to battle the monster Brimstone because they’re expendable. The New 52 version stars El Diablo, Black Spider, Voltaic, Savant, Deadshot, King Shark, and Harley Quinn — all outfitted with micro-bomb implants. (King Shark was considered for the film but would’ve had to be CGI.) And Harley’s in her stripper outfit. The team is commanded by a young, skinny, sexy Waller, which got lots of criticism at the time.
In the film, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is the ultimate boss and leader. She’s an older, stocky, African-American woman here and in the comics, who dresses powerfully and modestly. So much is all unusual for the superhero genre and very good indeed. (In fact, with Mexican-American Diablo, Japanese Katana, South American Enchantress, whatever Evil Croc is, and African-American Will Smith of course, the film gets lots of representation points). Waller has a strong start as she pressures the US military to follow her plan and create the squad. “I want to assemble a task force of the most dangerous people on the planet, who I think can do some good,” she insists, a far-fetched plan that works in the end. Called the “voice of God,” she insists, “I see everything,” and she does. She even threatens Bruce Wayne at film’s end, letting him know she figured out he’s Batman with her quip, “You should quit working nights.” Further, she rules the team itself with the literal power of life and death plus plenty of hostages. When she shoots her own men, Deadeye snarks, “Damn, that’s a mean lady. And I’m the bad guy.”
Despite this, for some reason, the film centers on rescuing her….twice. Worse than this is how deluded she is that she can handle supervillains and world-destroying magic with a cellphone. Her desperate need to overcontrol everyone leads to the Squad ditching halfway through the mission and nearly not saving the world. And why is the world in danger? Because she decided to command the Enchantress by stealing her heart and torturing her with it (to say nothing of the boyfriend leverage) and this got the Enchantress very angry indeed. Clearly failing to learn her lesson, Waller decides she wants the Enchantress’s monster army.
Surpassing her for weakness and ridiculousness in the film, the Enchantress is a mud-covered exotic woman in a bikini who corrupts her victims into monsters by kissing them. Casting a spell requires a bizarre gyrating dance that emphasizes her body even more. This is truly cringeworthy and for most viewers, the weakest part of the film. She’s covered in mud, occult symbols (from a random mix of nationalities), and actual chains as well as her black bikini and loose hair. With all this, she looks like a character from an awkward eighties sword and sorcery film, bringing in a heavy genre mismatch. Everything about her says “jungle slave” not queenly goddess. In the comic, she wears a green tunic and pants, but apparently someone thought D&D was the way to go here. Her actress, Cara Delevingne, is a model, and lacks the acting experience of her fellows in the film. Thus she plays the role painfully straight up without humor or self-awareness.
This in itself is a bad feminist image, watching the villainess use her power of the bikini to corrupt people. Granted, the moment when Enchantress’ hand reaches up and clutches Moone’s, then transforms into the sorceress with a flip was fascinating and creepy. But after that, she turns ridiculous. Even her plan is unclear as she wants to rule the world and turns everyone into monsters to do it…but is happy to have the Squad as her sidekicks in a classic “join me or die” scene. The reviews agree as critic Kaitlin Cubria collects several choice gems:
“Here is a film in which model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne gives not only a personal worst performance, but something close to a former-profession-worst performance, as a gyrating, bikini-clad villainess called Enchantress, who kisses men full on the lips to turn them into her slaves (of course!) and talks like Vanessa Redgrave on rhinoceros tranquiliser.” — The Telegraph
“Enchantress herself is one misfire after another. A powerful, unpredictable character in the source material, she becomes a generic spellcaster proclaiming loud mystic things in the movie. She’s also one of few female characters to have a sensible costume in the comics, only for the filmmakers turn her into a bikini-wearing witch who must kiss men to put them under her thrall. Delevingne’s talents are put to poor use as her character either acts the frail love interest as Moone or the bland sorceress as Enchantress.” — IGN
“Midway City appears to be deserted, except for an army of bubbling-tar-headed foot soldiers ready to do the Enchantress’ bidding — which gives the members of Task Force X something to occupy them until Ayer is ready for the final confrontation with the Enchantress, who is, let’s face it, the lamest DC villain since Sharon Stone stalked Catwoman.” — Variety
“The stakes should feel higher. As someone who isn’t fluent in Suicide Squad lore, I can’t imagine there wasn’t a better villain in its back catalog.” — EW
Ninny June Moone isn’t much better. Like Waller, the young archaeologist started all this through hubris, believing she could handle a situation she couldn’t and getting taken over by evil incarnate. After, she sobs for her boyfriend (a Waller set-up) to save her from her Enchantress-haunting, instead of finding a way to make peace with the ancient creature. Waller calls her a “half-dressed girl” and tortures the Enchantress’s heart, as June whimpers, “Please, I can’t do that anymore.” A character who’s controlled by her heart, which her boyfriend finally crushes, has bad metaphors all around. Plus, as with Waller, a woman tries to take over the world and the men have to show her she’s wrong for doing it and take her down. As Hillary becomes Democratic candidate, that’s a disturbing bit of political commentary all on its own.
In comics, the blonde, free-spirited artist June Moone can switch to a dark-haired sorceress with powers from the mystical Dzamor. Amanda Waller drafted her for the squad in Legends 3 (1987. After, June Moone learns that her evil aura is actually a separate entity. In Suicide Squad 15 (1988), the demon Incubus comes to separate her from the Enchantress.
The film Suicide Squad is largely based on the New 52 comic from 2011, featuring Amanda Waller, Harley, Deadshot, etc. Their first adventure pits them against a town of basically zombies (a ridiculous villain, admittedly). Still, the Enchantress as villain isn’t completely random. Another New 52 comic from the same year was Justice League Dark with a different antihero team (John Constantine, Shade, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, and Zatanna). Their first world-shaking emergency features the Sorceress as world-destroying threat.
In the past, Madame Xanadu helped tear her apart from June Moone. Now Enchantress is obsessed with reclaiming her lost host and pursues the innocent blonde. The Enchantress thinks, “My mind…just isn’t my own. Voices. I just…I just want to feel whole again. I need help. Please help someone.” She knows there’s only one way she can be saved and thinks, “June’s the light side of me. I’m the night.” First she defeats the JLA’s best with a storm of magical witch’s teeth. Unbalanced as she is, she sends out creepy clones seeking June. She even tortures the team with memories of dead loved ones.
June in turn moans, “Enchantress. She wants me back. She wants to swallow me. All the terrible things that are happening, they’re my fault. If I hadn’t escaped from her, no one would have…” As June adds, the Enchantress is a force of destruction. “She’ll poison everything and everyone.” She decides, like her film version, that she would rather die than go back. However, when John Constantine forces the pair together, they heal, in something of a reversal of the film plot.
In the film, June’s alter-ego nearly destroys the world. She also holds June hostage in a total damsel-in-distress or fridging as the team leader is crippled with indecision and pain. At last, Rick makes his choice, destroying the Enchantress’s heart, and to his relief, freeing his beloved. She appears on the ground, unsurprisingly naked and covered with mud…though as the good girl, the camera shots don’t exploit her much. Now she can go off with her rescuer and keep his house and have babies with him and get over having world-destroying power.
Worth a quick mention are Deadshot’s daughter and Diablo’s wife. Both function as the heroes’ consciences, with the former tearfully begging “Daddy” not to shoot people and the latter praying for her husband to turn good. Waller holds the former (or at least her visitation rights) as a hostage, and the latter is fridged — killed to put the hero on his path in a way that emphasizes the woman is a prop, not a character. Both actually hobble their heroes. When Diablo begins, he’s been neutered, afraid to use the most awesome superpower of the whole team. Certainly his murdering his own wife and children in a burst of temper is an unforgiveable crime, but as his frustrated teammates are pointing out, their lives are in danger and a superflame power would really help out. As for Deadshot’s little girl, she gets her father imprisoned by begging him not to kill Batman. After, she’s a constraint on his actions, as her school and then her impression of him are at stake, sending him to fight in others’ causes. Deadshot doesn’t bear a grudge for all this, but at the film’s climax, an image of the girl appears before him, begging him not to shoot. The enemy at the time is a monster, and the entire world is at stake, with Deadshot’s shot the linchpin of the plan. It’s a bad moment for Deadshot to succumb to the voice of conscience. Thus in both men’s cases, the female voice is one of restraint, however ill-advised for the situation. Clearly, according to the film, women exist to hold men hostage and block them from performing acts of heroism.
Katana is the perfect example of a Strong Female Character. She seems on a quest to say as few words as possible, and even fewer in English. With her sword, she’s awesome, but this doesn’t distract from her total lack of a personality. Her unnecessary midriff baring only accentuates that every superheroine must be underdressed. In the comics, she’s a team-up character, only given her own solo story in the New 52, which came out mysterious and rather dismal. As revealed when she’s on the eighties multicultural team Batman and the Outsiders, her comic book backstory is colorful and complex. A gifted martial artist, Tatsu Toro (meaning dragon), was in a complex love triangle with two brothers. She wed gentler Maseo Yamashiro, and the raging Takeo joined the Yakuza and one day attacked the couple. He killed Maseo with the mystical sword called Soultaker and the house burned down, killing the two children. Tatsu escaped with her life and the sword, spending the rest of her days seeking revenge. Meanwhile, her husband, still in the sword, continued advising her. The film keeps this plot, but discards her camaraderie with her team in place of distance — she’s the outsider in the film from her bodyguard role to her language and lack of approachability. Despite this, Captain Boomerang keeps hitting on her, because that’s what male teammates should do with female teammates in combat.
Her one moment of personality in the film is disturbing. She breaks down sobbing so loudly that her team members turn to see her bidding her husband-in-the-sword a touching farewell. In this moment, the tough warrior is suddenly revealed as all girl. Certainly, Deadshot wipes away a tear or two where his daughter’s concerned, but this is built up based on his slow personality reveal. With Katana having no other personality, she appears to have a soft marshmallow side within, badly hidden by stoicism. Here the film teaches all tough women are like this. It’s also puzzling that the monsters are immune to machinegun fire but all succumb to Katana’s sword, Deadshot’s pistols, and Harley’s bat. It appears only superheroes (or antiheroes) can kill them, while the trained soldiers can do nothing. Thus the Strong Female Characters always get to win their fights, even when there’s no logic behind it.
This brings us to the underdressed star, Harley Quinn. Harley only goes back to 1992, created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for an episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
Dini says, “I thought, Maybe there should be a girl there,” he said. “And I thought, Should the girl be like a tough street thug? Or like a hench-person or something? And then suddenly the idea of someone funny kind of struck me.” When he saw Sorkin in clown makeup, the pieces fell into place, and he came up with a silly little sidekick. He gave her the comic-book-y name of Harley Quinn, sketched out an idea for her look, and brought the sketch to the cartoon’s lead artist, Bruce Timm.
“He did do a rough design for her, which was, frankly, not very good,” Timm recalled. “It had a weird ’60s kind of vibe to it. It was just odd. Charming, but odd. I thought we could improve on that. So I immediately started researching traditional harlequin gear and did kind of a simplified super-villain version of that. It was always intended to be just a one-off.” Nevertheless, Timm was — and is — a perfectionist and labored to give this cameo character a distinctive look: a red-and-black full-body jumpsuit adorned with playing-card diamonds, ruffled cuffs, and a dual-pronged jester’s cap. (Riesman)
For the children’s cartoon, she’s fully covered in her classic harlequin suit. She’s the Joker’s girlfriend as well as sounding board. While she’s not afraid to use conventional guns, she prefers absurd-looking weapons like her oversized mallet, a hilariously large pistol that shoots a cork or silly sign, and her graffitied baseball bat. Portrayed as sometimes clumsy but sometimes smarter and more capable than the Joker, she’s quite likeable. She flirts sometimes, but as a very self-aware distraction.
Harley wasn’t content to be eye candy. “Hey, sugar, you wanna read me my rights?” a cop asks her at one point. “You have the right to remain silent!” she barks, before she kicks him in the shin, hard, and mutters, “Jerk.” She’s even aware of the gender stereotypes that a viewer might saddle her with: During the episode’s climax, Harley plays on Batman’s paternalism in an attempt to distract him, making doe eyes and saying, “I know, you’re thinking, What a shame! A poor, innocent, little thing like her, led astray by bad companions!” (She then grabs a knife and tries to stab him.) She’s also straight-up delightful: an acrobatic sprite, prone to shouts, disguises, and reciting poems before her boss tries to murder police officers. (Riesman)
Paul Dini’s comic book Mad Love (1994) revealed her backstory as the Joker’s therapist at Arkham Asylum slowly converts to his henchwoman as she fell in love. At last, she falls in love with him, goes mad, dons a jester costume, and breaks him out of custody. The film version doesn’t have her choosing to break him out, but when he escapes, he tortures her into madness, thus depriving her of Mad Love’s agency. Mad Love has their relationship devolving into abuse, however. Harley soon realizes she’s “hopelessly in love with a murderous, psychopathic clown.” He throws her down stairs and out windows — especially when she shows him up by capturing Batman as a gift for him.
The film has many easter eggs to her comic characterization, as the flashback calling them “the king and queen of crime” has the pair in outfits and poses from the classic cover of Paul Dini’s Mad Love. Harley’s “Puddin’” and “Mistah J” are straight from every comic incarnation back to the cartoon.
In 2009, Rocksteady Studios released Batman: Arkham Asylum. Now she’s in a nurse outfit with corset she describes as “pretty hot, huh?”
And that visibility is where the great Harley Quinn controversies of the past few years began. Gone was the iconic red-and-black jumpsuit, replaced by thigh-high boots, a red-and-purple corset that barely covers her breasts, and — given that the whole game took place inside an asylum — some scraps of white doctor’s robes, stained with blood. Her face was still painted, but her jester’s cap was replaced by two massive, blonde pigtails. It was, to put it mildly, a very different visual approach to the character. (Riesman)
This half-dressed iconic look propelled her to pop culture icon — suddenly everyone wanted to dress like her. Thus she gained her own comic in 2011 as well as a place on the Suicide Squad. There, she’s crafty, mad, dangerous, and varyingly helpful as she giggles her way through adventures.
Suicide Squad’s Harley first appears in a giant cage, lounging in slashed underwear. Certainly, there’s a “look at me” vibe even before she starts seducing the guards with her girlish “I’m bored. Play with me…” Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” is an interesting counterpoint in the background, emphasizing how she’s still defiant on the inside, if a prisoner.
Waller has her put on the Suicide Squad, implanted with a bomb in her neck as she’s tied down protesting. Since this echoes the flashback to the Joker doing the same and torturing her until she goes mad, this bondage scene is especially disturbing. As the guards hold her down and push the bomb into her body, it’s a rape metaphor. She fights her captors and isn’t seen agreeing to this, unlike Deadshot.
In flashback, the Joker tortures her into madness as she claims she can take more and more punishment. He says, “I’m just gonna hurt ya. Really, really bad.” Harley retorts, “You think so? Well, I can take it.” He doesn’t like the perceptive, gullible psychiatrist — just his own maddened creation. Once again, her body is violated against her will, changing her to a new state of being following others’ plans for her.
This time, unlike in the New 52 Suicide Squad, she dives into the vat of chemicals at Ace Chemical plant on her own, which gives her some agency, suggesting she’s willing to transform herself for self-improvement or at least boredom. Of course, doing it for her man is a more corrupt message. The Joker walks away and it’s implied he had planned to kill her, but he changes his mind at the last minute and dives in to save Harley. They kiss in the creepy colorful water. Despite her grand gesture, the Joker fails to respect her, giving her to his business associate as a gift and calling her, disturbingly, “The fire in my loins. The itch in my crotch.”
She has plenty of agency, as the cool kids say these days. Indeed, it’s probably a defining character. She isn’t driven to do good, to seek revenge, she just… is. It’s a glorious escapist action without consequence, getting lost in the visceral thrill of it all and can be quite the addictive fantasy.
But it is also clear that Harley Quinn is a damaged person. She only has freedom from consequence because little can matter to her. Except for the one thing that does matter. And it’s the one that any feminist reading of the character will zone in on, her addiction to a man. The Joker. The one who is the very worst for her, who both tortures her physically and then expresses his love for her, who entraps her mentally, who dominates her waking thoughts and makes her his slave.
And the film doesn’t give any escape clauses for the audience, this is who Harley is, and it repeatedly dooms her. She relies on him to rescue her. She runs through bullets to get to him. She allows herself to be used as a sexual gift. Her own wants and wishes are second to his. Indeed, we get to see her deepest, darkest inner desires, and they are for some kind of Leave It To Beaver housewife with the kids and a loving husband returning home from work, to her cooking. (Johnston)
Stuck in the yard, she jokes around defiantly, playing on the guards’ terror of her and showing she won’t just fall in line: as she quips, “What was that? I should kill everyone and escape? Sorry, it’s the voices. Ahaha, I’m kidding! That’s not what they really said.”
Rick Flagg: This is the deal: You disobey me, you die. You try to escape, you die. You irritate or vex me…
Harley Quinn: [interrupts] I’m known for being quite vexing, I’m just forewarning you…
Rick Flagg: …you die.
[Harley pouts]
Of course, she also feels the need to change clothes in public. Postfeminism, indeed!
On the team, she’s respected and adored, especially by Deadshot who treats her as a friend. He refuses to shoot her and tells her “I will knock your ass out. I don’t care that you’re a girl.” (Possibly the least sexist line in the film.) She starts directing the team, getting them all out of the bar and into the action when they slump halfway through. She demands the audience’s full attention as she goofs around and does exactly as she wishes. Nonetheless, it’s hard to get over her sparkly panties and increasingly wet t-shirt, in which she spends most of the film.
She finishes with “Bohemian Rhapsody” playing as she sits sipping cappuccino. At last she’s fully dressed, and with her hair curled in a more civilized and demure facet of herself — and one she’s chosen. As the Joker breaks her out, however, she’s clearly going straight back to the bad relationship for the next film.
So what do we have? Fridged women, walking consciences, acrobatic strippers, and powerful women who must be taken down a peg. But not as much agency as one would expect for such a spectrum of supergirls.
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Works Cited
Barr, Mike W. and Jim Aparo. Batman and the Outsiders #11–12. Showcase Presents: Batman and the Outsiders, Vol. 1. New York: DC Comics, 1984.
Cubria, Kaitlin. “How Cara Delevingne’s Enchantress is the Worst Part of Suicide Squad.” Teen.com, 3 Aug 2016. http://www.teen.com/2016/08/03/movies/suicide-squad-cara-delevingne-enchantress-bad-movie-character-villain-reviews/#ixzz4GgKQskrE
Dini, Paul and Bruce Timm. “Mad Love.” 1994. The Batman Adventures: Dangerous Dames and Demons. New York: DC Comics, 2003. 126–190.
Johnston, Rich. “Harley Quinn In Suicide Squad Is Not A Feminist Icon. You Need The Comics For That.” Bleeding Cool, 5 Aug 2016. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/08/05/harley-quinn-in-suicide-squad-is-not-a-feminist-icon-you-need-the-comics-for-that/
Kanigher, Robert and Ross Andru. DC’s The Brave and the Bold #25. New York: DC Comics, 1959.
Milligan, Peter and Mikel Janin. Justice League Dark: Volume 1, In the Dark. New York: DC Comics, 2012.
Ostrander, John, Len Wein and John Byrne. “Send For…The Suicide Squad!” Legends 3. New York: DC Comics, 1987.
Riesman, Abraham. “The Hidden Story of Harley Quinn and How She Became the Superhero World’s Most Successful Woman.” Vulture, 17 Feb 2015. http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/harley-quinn-dc-comics-suicide-squad.html
Valerie Estelle Frankel is the author of The Avengers Face Their Dark Sides: Mastering the Myth-Making behind the Marvel Superheroes, Empowered: The Symbolism, Feminism, and Superheroism of Wonder Woman, and other books on superheroism and feminism, soon to include Superheroines and the Heroine’s Journey. Discover them all on Amazon.
