88 Minutes Film Review and Commentary (2008, starring Al Pacino, Rated-R)

Proof that Female SexPloitation in Films is not even NECESSARY! 

I recently watched the edge-of-your-seat mystery film 88 Minutes for the very first time, on the FX channel on television.  It is a very well-written, well acted, well-photographed film that keeps the viewer engaged and wondering, as the cat-and-mouse thriller ticks down to the final showdown.

The subject matter of the film is dark and misogynistic, but the execution of the film (photography, lighting, costumes, dialog, etc) left me very impressed as a feminist.  The gore and the sexual abuse of women was implied and hinted at, but only glimpsed from afar, or with most of the image off-screen.  There were no displays of nude breasts or other nudity, other than one scene – the worst one I saw – of a woman strung on rope and pulleys, hanging upside down in the background of the scene wearing a black thong, with one leg askew from the other one.  And that sounds worse on paper than it actually was to view. Overall, the film was very artistic and not just blatantly offensive, disrespectful and abusive to women.  Or so I thought, originally.

I was actually on the verge of writing to the director, Jon Avnet, to tell him how proud I was of his choices, and to comment that this film PROVES that you don’t need to actually SHOW naked and sexualized women graphically in order to have the impact or impression the film wants to make.

But then I realized, I was watching this on the FX network, a basic-cable station, and it was edited for television.

So I went to IMDb to further read up on the film, and stumbled across the IMDB Parents Guide to the film.  I read what they had to say and I’m glad I did!

The way the IMDb parents guide works is, they don’t editorialize the film nor tell the synopsis, they simply list out everything in the film that happens that is of an adult nature and not necessarily suitable for kids or teens.   So I read their play-by-play about 88 minutes.  Here is the link to the site, and also the play-by-play that is written there:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411061/parentalguide

A fully nude woman (her bare breasts, buttocks, abdomen, back and legs are visible) stretches while brushing her teeth and a man in the next room watches. A woman drops her robe and her bare breast is visible from the side. A young woman and a woman kiss and we are told that they had sex (we see them sleeping on a sofa together). It is implied that a man and a woman have had sex when they wake up in the morning. Two young women are shown kissing. A young woman takes off her sweater (she wears a teddy underneath) and appears to be trying to seduce a man who says that she is too young for him. A young woman is seen in her bra and jeans and then in bra and panties while getting ready for a bath. A man caresses a young woman's hand. A police officer talks about semen being present in a dead woman's vaginal canal. A man asks a woman if she went home alone the night before (she does not answer him). A woman tells a man that she is gay and he should stop asking her to marry him. A young woman tells a man that she has a girlish crush on him. Several women and young women appear to be interested in a man. A man is accused of being a womanizer.

My first thought was:  Thank Heavens I did not see this film in a theater!  I would have gotten very pissed off.  I never cease to be amazed that women audience members are just expected to sit there and see countless images of women displayed with all kinds of sexual/violent/lesbian/nudity contexts.  How often do you see men portrayed like that even once in a film, let alone repeatedly throughout an entire film?  And seldom to never are their sexual privates ever showing, whereas women’s breasts are our very sexual appendages on our bodies, every bit as personal and sexual as men’s equipment, and they are ALWAYS showing in film.

The film 88 Minutes was every bit as good, every bit as “adult” in theme and feeling, every bit an achievement in film making and artistic expression, with all of that female-exploitive crap deleted from the film.  Sure, the themes and images that I did see (even on FX) are adult and are somewhat exploitive, but the difference in the visuals in the film that I saw and what movie goers saw in the theater is drastically different. I did not feel offended at the continuous onslaught of female sexploitation that ran throughout the movie, because FX took most of it out.  And it did not impact the film’s story, interest or excitement in the least.

My point is two-fold:  ONE:  You can still make a good R-rated movie that will titillate and intrigue audiences with adult images and themes without always resorting to dehumanizing and humiliating women by showing them nude, sexualized, stripping, having sex, being abused, or the many other ways that misogynistic sexploitation of females shows up in films and television.  The FX-version of the film proved that completely.

POINT TWO:  Showing women depicted in the way it was done in the uncut version of the film (as noted above in the Parents Guide), along with countless other films that do the same thing is ABUSE TO WOMEN in the audience, and to women and girls of society.  Why do we have to watch this crap in our viewing entertainment?  There’s nothing like that of men being put into films, so what gives film makers the right to sexploit the hell out of women?  We pay for tickets too!  It’s an outrage and it’s a form of condoned misogyny and repression/control over women, taught en masse, no less!

Finally, when I went to look up the IMDb Parental Guide page to reference 88 Minutes in this article, I stumbled across the Parental Guide for another film, one I had not heard of before, and I read that and WAS SHOCKED AGAIN!  I encourage any interested feminists to go check out what they say about the film Movie43 (2013).  The link to that page is: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333125/parentalguide.

That film is rated R and I bet it will find its way onto TV uncut as TV-MA (which means 14 year olds are watching, I guarantee it!) or, TV-14, which means it’s not even on the parent’s radar to block it.

One of the biggest problems with regard to this issue is that many women don’t even know about half the films out there that are doing this stuff!  I had never heard of Movie43 before. 

We have to stay vigilant on this if we care about how boys and men are routinely taught to dehumanize and sexualize women as whores or with other misogynistic attitudes.  It affects EVERYONE’s happiness, including marriages, kids, women and even men.  It’s poison and it will never stop until women do something about it.  So far it goes completely unchecked.  Have you ever gone into the “adult” section of your TV channel guide?  There’s not one channel with naked men, and just reading the descriptions of all the “female porn” channels is insulting!  Please check it out if you haven’t done so!

Thanks for reading.

Misty O, media feminist