UNITED STATES-FILM: ‘Girl 6’ Skewers Sexism with Postmodern Wit

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Apr 2 1996 (IPS) - U.S. director Spike Lee’s career has been filled with controversy, including repeated charges over the years that his films objectify women in a blatantly sexist manner.

As a result, viewers to his new film, ‘Girl 6’, which debuted last month on Fox Searchlight films, may be surprised to find that Lee has satirised sexism — and the sexism of movies in particular — with, of all things, a film about phone sex.

But ‘Girl 6’, written by New York writer Suzan-Lori Parks, is in fact a fresh, and very funny, look at how women become objectified in a world where careers are made by catering to male illusions.

The title character — revealingly, she is known only as ‘Girl 6’ on a sex phone line until the movie’s end — makes her money being whatever the men who call her want her to be: a mother figure, a little schoolgirl, a cheering fan at a baseball game.

Lee shoots all the scenes in a wide range of colourful styles, showing how Girl 6, played appealingly by Theresa Randle, can be transformed into just about any archetype. At one point, she is a black super-woman, with a big ‘Afro’ haircut and martial arts skills; at another, she is famed film star Dorothy Dandridge; at still another, a frightened little girl.

But Lee and Parks make clear in their bizarre, fragmentary story that Girl 6 is none of these creations, hatched in the imaginations of men who want to control women. Rather, she is a would-be actress, who, ironically, left that career because she couldn’t bear the humiliation of having to appear topless before a sleazy director.

In one of the film’s many inside jokes, that director is played by Quentin Tarantino, the epitome of movie cool since his 1994 film ‘Pulp Fiction’. And while Girl 6 is being humiliated, she is reading out dialogue from Spike Lee’s first film, ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ — which feminists disparaged for its objectification of the lead character.

Such references indicate that Lee, after years of being the focus of controversy, has learned a few lessons from his own critics. The film as a whole reveals, in fact, how acting and cinema are intimately tied in with the art of turning women into objects — mostly for male enjoyment.

Randle takes on the challenge of being all women, transforming herself effortlessly depending on her intended audience. “I’m still an actress,” Girl 6 boasts to her friend Jimmy (played by Lee) as she begins her phone sex career.

The film’s funniest moments focus on the women in the sex trade themselves — including model Naomi Campbell, who wears a T-shirt saying ‘Models Suck’, as a phone sex worker and singer Madonna, hilariously explaining which fantasies are “in” this year.