I know what you’re thinking, can we please stop talking about the disaster that is the latest DC movie, Suicide Squad? Well, I would love to but if your Facebook feed looks anything like mine that means that it’s flooded with the mixed opinions on this train wreck of a movie. Personally, I didn’t think it was as bad as Rotten Tomatoes made it sound, but I am a lover of terrible movies, so maybe I am not most reliable opinion. Yes, the screenplay was cringeworthy and yes, Jared Leto and Battfleck both have really disturbing roles at times in the movie, but this isn’t about the cinematography of the movie, but a response to an essay I saw floating around a couple of days ago that stuck with me.

I follow a lot of feminist pages because I still deeply consider myself a feminist in all respects of the word. However, as a feminist, there are times when I read feminist essays from other better known feminist authors and find myself cringing. As a feminist, I don’t make it my place to throw my opinion in things that I know nothing about and in this case, I found the essay to be somewhat of an uninformed opinion on what abusive relationships sometimes appear as.

The truth is we can’t expect any movie that comes out to be a feminist movie. Especially one based on such problematic characters, such as the ones found in Suicide Squad (they are literally all villains). The author described the movie as a classic romanticization of an abusive relationship and yes, I get it. Any movie where you show violence against women will seem like you are glorifying abuse towards women, however, I see more glorification of abusive relationships in Nicholas Spark’s movies, classified as Romantic Dramas. The problem that I had with this essay is that in no way do I see the parts where the author says, “The idea that the Joker’s devotion to Harley somehow lessens his emotional and physical abuse is everywhere.”

Instead I saw a fairly accurate portrayal of what it is like to be in an abusive relationship in this movie; the constant push and pull that comes with loving an abusive person; the downward spiral of getting involved with these destructive personality types. I didn’t see the glorification of it, but I did see the reality of it. There is no actual happy ending in abusive relationships because they are a never ending cycle of abuse, whether it be emotional or physical. When we ask if Harley is an active participant in her abuse, we are actively asking if any person in an abusive relationship is asking to be abused. The answer? They’re not. Suicide Squad just reminds us that even the worst of the worst can still be victims of abuse from others.

The Joker has always been written out to be the perfect abuser stereotype. He’s a class A manipulator, but as fictional as the scenes are, a lot of the mental and physical abuse we see portrayed is a real problem in our society. I think it's unfair to expect this movie or any other to be feminist in any way or to be used to teach the people watching what strong women are like. The truth is that strong women aren’t just women that kill or women that fight. They aren’t just women that take pride in their sexuality or choose to abstain from sex. There is no one way to write strong women into a script and we can’t expect them to come from box office hits that are based on story lines with 20 plus years of continuity.

I can’t find the essay that I’m responding to but a google search with the words, “Harley Quinn and the glorification of abuse” will bring up thousands of articles similar to the one I am responding to.

I think we can all acknowledge that Harley Quinn is a problematic character, but that’s exactly what she’s written to be. There are many essays going around talking about the glorification of Harley Quinn and The Joker’s relationship, but I feel that it’s our job to teach the people/kids watching these movies (It’s rated PG-13 and I definitely saw kids younger than 13 in there) that these aren’t the kind of role models to look up to. The Joker and Harley Quinn are villains for a reason, we’re not meant to root for them. We’re definitely not supposed to be looking to them as role models to healthy relationships. These movies are just presenting what the comics have been presenting for over two decades and it’s our job as the audience to decide what to make of what we’re watching.