‘She’s bound and gagged for laughs’: is Poor Things a feminist masterpiece – or a male sex fantasy?

The feting of Poor Things a heterosexual middle-aged mans fantasy about nymphomania, with the flimsiest covering of satire and a tagged-on message about female genital mutilation being bad merely confirms that feminism still has a long way to go...

Theres a point in Poor Things where Bella wonders why people dont do this thing all the time she means sexual action, the hectic activity that has overtaken this bride of Frankenstein..

But sexuality is a major part of what makes us develop into adults, and its not exactly been a social norm for women to explore sex (whether penetrative or not) for pleasure alone.. Stone is a conventionally attractive, youthful white woman, her (sometimes nude) body lapped up by the lens..

The central men in Poor Things are very different from each other, yet their attempted control of Bella unites them whether its the father-like Godwin who attempts to imprison Bella to keep her safe from the outside world, or the perverse, misogynistic Duncan who throws Bellas books into the ocean as she gains intellectual consciousness, wishing her to be only his compliant, docile sex doll..

Ive read some comments that claim the male gaze has been subverted in Poor Things as full frontal nudity shots of men are also shown, but the scenes of Bella having sex with a series of disgusting clients seem to serve little purpose beyond gratifying the curiosity of what such encounters may look like...

You might be interested in