Actor Jason Bateman recently got a lot of grief on social media for his comment to Charli that she “may change her mind” about having kids. Childfree people, especially women, have been facing comments like these for a long time. It ties in with gender expectations; even with the progress that has been made, organizations like the Heritage Foundation still want women to fill the role of “wife and “mother.” The new film, Send Help, is a gorefest, but it also functions as a slap in the face to those expectations. Two things I love in this world are movies and advocacy for singles. I have a webpage where I write about movies that carry a message that it’s okay to be single, and, in a lot of cases, it may even rank higher than being coupled. I read the Wikipedia summary of the film, so I went in knowing that the single woman is the heroine and the married man is the villain, at least for a good chunk of the film. But while I watched it (when viewing it a solo filmgoer), I realized that this film is an emblem for women’s empowerment in our time.
We start in an office building; Rachel McAdams plays Linda Little, a socially awkward corporate strategist, the kind of person Regina George, one of McAdams’s other characters, might have had a field day with.
We see her being denied a long-promised promotion by her company’s new CEO, Bradley Preston, who’s given it to one of his “bros.” He tries to appease her by inviting her to Thailand for a huge merger. En route, a storm destroys the plane, and they end up on a deserted island.
The roles reverse when we’re on the island. The film has established that Linda is an outdoorsy type through pictures of her on nature journeys, as well as an audition tape for Survivor. Preston eventually grows to realize his life depends on Linda’s skills, and she relishes in this role, making him “interview” in order to be taught skills like raft-building and cooking over a fire. Despite several opportunities (which she keeps from Preston), she decides they need to stay on the island forever. I thought of the Kathy Bates-James Caan dynamic in Misery.
Less people are getting married now; scholars, pundits, and the general public have offered a myriad of reasons for this change. One of those changes is the fact that women no longer have to submit to the roles of “wife” or “mother,” which are patriarchal by nature. It wasn’t until 1974 that non-married women could actually apply for credit cards. Statistics show that single women are happier and healthier than married women. Note: there was a coding error involving whether women were happier when their spouse wasn’ t present in the room, but it turned out they were happier when their spouse didn’t live with them. And it makes sense. In most hetero marriages, even the progressive ones, women do most of the domestic labor. I’ve heard many complain that having a husband is akin to having another child. Single women don’t have to deal with those challenges. I’ve designed a test, not unlike the Bechdel, that measures how fairly singles are portrayed by films. In order to pass the test, the film must meet one of the following criteria:
The protagonist is not explicitly coupled or does not couple up at the end of the story, and the protagonist is portrayed in a positive light..
If the protagonist is married/coupled at the beginning of the story, they are not at the end, and said protagonist’s singlehood must be portrayed positively.
If there are multiple protagonists, most of them don’t couple up at the end.
If a supporting character is single, that character must be portrayed positivelyt
In this case, both protagonists are flawed. At the beginning, the engaged Bradley is portrayed as a complete douchenozzle; we see his fiancé, Zuri in two brief scenes, but I got “airhead trophy” vibes from her. The more time they spend on the island, and the more time Linda spends bossing Bradley around, we see her primal urges surfacing. We also get a glimpse of their backstories; Bradley’s turning point comes when he learns about Linda’s; his facial expression indicates “creeped out” vibes.
Spoiler alert: by the end, Linda, the singleton, has killed the coupled Bradley and Zuri, along with the boat captain. It’s revealed there were plenty of opportunities for rescue, but she just wanted to stay in power. End scene: she’s written a best-selling memoir about her experience (minus the murders, most likely) and taken over the company. She drives away from the interview in a flashy car with her bird in the front seat.
Note: when Linda reveals she lives with a bird, Bradley says, “You live alone with a bird?” and is about to laugh before he catches himself and says, “Sorry.” I guess he isn’t THAT bad, but I’m glad the singleton lives at the end instead of the couple. Call me morbid, but too many movies give the couple happiness. It’s nice to see the script flipped here.