[Pride 2020] White Saviorism and Not-So Benevolent Violence: Representation and Exploitation in The Perfection

The term exploitation connotes a number of qualities in film, informing everything from an overall aesthetic to the extremity of violence depicted onscreen to the characters’ representation. The prescriptive use of the term has evolved over the years, wherein exploitation films initially were just movies with extremely low budgets that essentially functioned as cash cows for studios. Because of the way horror has historically been devalued, the genre was deemed unworthy of serious investment, a notion exacerbated by the perception of horror audiences as somewhat perverted and otherwise undesirable.

The term takes on additional significance in the context of Blaxploitation and the rape revenge subcategory. In these cases, the films weren’t merely exploitative in their business model, but also of their audiences as well as in their subject matter. However as much as we may love them and despite the fact that Blaxploitation and rape revenge films gave us onscreen representation as well as a landscape for catharsis, representation is often only meaningful for what it reveals about relationality. The truth is these depictions are mostly horrendous, often relying on damaging tropes which continue to justify and perpetuate marginalization offscreen.

2019’s The Perfection is a quintessential modern-day exploitation film. The budget may not have been down in the exploitation-level, but the influence on co-writer and director, Richard Shepard, is obvious, if updated for the twenty first century. The film’s non-linear story structure (which takes place in four acts) is also a nod to the influence of Korean revenge-horror master, Park Chan-wook, whose 2016 film, The Handmaiden, is specifically cited in several press interviews.

Chan-wook is known for developing complex heroines (or anti-heroines, depending on your perspective) whose characterization specifically subverts many of the racist presumptions made about the subservience of Asian women overall. This movement can be reduced to a single quote from 2005’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, in which Geum-ja Lee (Yeong-ae Lee), the avenging protagonist, is asked, “What’s with the blood-red eyeshadow?” to which she replies, “I don’t want to look kind-hearted.”

For all his admiration, Shepard- and fellow writers, Nicole Snyder and Eric C. Charmelo- have a less nimble understanding of the mechanics of the subgenre. As such, where Chan-wook’s films are widely regarded as poetic cinema, Shepard’s attempt feels clumsy (at best) by comparison.

On its face, and in the tradition of most American revenge films, The Perfection does not have a particularly complicated plot. Charlotte (Allison Williams) was a cello prodigy in childhood, who was also victimized through institutionalized punitive rape measures at the Bachoff Institute, the prestigious music academy run by her “mentor,” Anton (Steven Weber) and his family for generations. Forced to cut her career short due to an ailing mother, she spends a decade roiling in guilt and shame as a result of the abuse, haunted by the knowledge that out there is another student, Lizzie (Logan Browning), who has been subject to the same violent measures. The film opens at the start of her “mission” to “save” Lizzie and take vengeance on all those at Bachoff who both enabled and partook in the abuse.

The film’s ample use of flashback, rewind (literally), and fast-forward makes the plot seem infinitely more complex with relevant information doled out in small spoonfuls. Every act features some sort of surprise twist, and while this quality certainly piques and maintains viewer interest, its handling is sloppy nevertheless, sacrificing character development at pretty much every turn as a result.

The initial scenes between Charlotte and Lizzie are charged, though the question of what undercuts their dynamic remains an unfolding mystery to the audience. Jealousy and competition seem likely, but it’s not long before this presumption gives way to sexual tension.

In her landmark book, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890’s to Present, Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman highlights the distinction between Black Horror and Blacks-in-horror as the difference between work written, produced by, and starring Black folks, as opposed to the mere appearance of Black characters in films which are generally white-produced. Laden in this differentiation is an understanding that the treatment of Blacks-in-horror is mainly exploitative; an impulse Black Horror staunchly rejects.

This distinction is significant and may be further used to additionally examine queerness, especially as it intersects with race and gender. In the case of The Perfection, Lizzie is a prime example of a Black-queer-in-horror whose treatment is completely reductive and thus, completely exploitative.

As the pair judge a contest to determine Anton’s next protégé- while watching a scandalous affair take place from a distance- Lizzie leans into Charlotte’s ear to whisper, “I know I shouldn’t spy, but that—that gets me wet.”

Juxtaposed against Allison Williams’ specific brand of demure, rigid, white femininity, Browning’s Lizzie is cast as something of a hypersexualized sidekick, reminiscent of many of the Black women depicted in the classic Blaxploitation films which in turn influenced our depictions through the ‘90’s horror renaissance. We see this tendency in films like The Craft, Scream 2, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer wherein the Black best gal pal is a pillar- some even surviving until the end- but still only characterized for their relationship to their white counterpart.

Cut between scenes of a duet performance, the two wind up having sex, after which Charlotte reveals she’d never “been with” anyone else before, hereby conjuring the old trope of the predatory lesbian. The sex itself is not unlike the infamous scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Black Swan; that is, it reads largely as catering to the White Male Gaze. While both women are nude in the scene, Browning’s body is the one most explicitly visible.

In a 2019 interview with Jordan Crucchiola for Vulture following the film’s initial release on Netflix, Shepard is paraphrased as saying he did “colorblind casting” for Lizzie’s role, “…but after Browning got the part, he knew the power dynamics of race and gender would have to be considered differently; Williams, Browning, and the director never wanted The Perfection to become some creepy white-savior story.”

An ironic statement considering that’s exactly what was produced.

Here’s a fact: nearly the entirety of the film’s most graphic violence occurs on the landscape of Lizzie’s body. The story is in no way her story, but relevant only for the ways she brushes up against Charlotte and Anton; both her mind and body the arena on which the two play out their struggle.

Her characterization, thus, is as an object. That she is drugged, manipulated, and led to dismember herself by Charlotte- her supposed love interest- is not presented as active harm in the film’s context. Rather, the violence is rendered excusable by Charlotte’s supposed good intentions: “I had to save you…and I knew you weren’t going to leave without a fight…. If you weren’t going to escape willingly then I had to come up with a true reason that he would never need to see you again.” There is excruciatingly little evidence to support this judgment, a fact the film itself seems to recognize as it uses the righteousness of Lizzie’s rage as fodder to support its second Big Twist.

Through much of the final act, the audience is led to believe Lizzie has sided with the villains, delivering Charlotte in the trunk of her car to Anton and his cronies, Theis and Geoffrey, for punishment. This misdirection is sustained for so long, it continues right up to the point of Lizzie imminently threatening to rape Charlotte when Theis and Geoffrey suddenly drop dead behind her. The two women smile at each other and kiss deeply, revealing the plot-within-the-plot. Thus, the extremity of Charlotte’s violence against Lizzie is not just excused but romanticized in the face of the extremity of Anton’s violence against them both.

The Final Showdown pairs the two women as a sort of Final Girl Duo, mirroring the duet they perform together at the start of the film. Trading J.C. Bach’s “Cello Duet #3” and Mozart’s “Requiem” for “It’s On” by Deuce Mobb, the dramatic shift from classical instrumentals to blaring hip hop reflect the women stepping out of Anton’s power and, ostensibly, into their own. But the plan doesn’t quite go accordingly: Charlotte is clearly triggered, and sustains a severe injury to her arm, necessitating that Lizzie deliver the final blows.

The film’s closing scene shows Charlotte and Lizzie situated around a single cello, each playing one-handed to an Anton whose four limbs have been amputated, eyes and mouth sewn shut, and kept alive only by a feeding tube, while the two women perform in the very spot where they were victimized.

It is from this scene that many of the film’s promotional materials derive, wherein Williams’ and Browning’s faces are split between a shared cello. The effect is to conjure the imagery of conjoined twins; the implication being the two represent dual sides of the same experience, hereby positing a type of neutral womanhood. But this movement completely flattens and disappears the specificity of Black women’s experiences, subsuming them into that of white women’s—itself a violent act of erasure.

What’s referred to as ‘The Perfection’ is described in the film as an achievement of proximity to the divine; an accomplishment which renders one “a vessel of God” or “as close to God as you can get.”

 In her highly influential 1966 article, The Cult of True Womanhood, historian, Barbara Welter examines the manner in which 19th century white womanhood was constructed upon the expectation of piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Failing to achieve such standards meant social ostracization, as ‘A “fallen woman” was a “fallen angel,” unworthy of the celestial company of her sex...to be guilty of such a crime…brought madness or death.’ 

These associations and expectations were constructed explicitly in response to the necessity of viewing Black womanhood- and particularly Black women’s sexuality- as inherently immoral, given the context of slavery, and the horrific ways through which that condition was reproduced. That we continue to only be depicted as without agency, either hypersexualized or completely desexualized, and always operating in service of the white character’s needs speaks to a degree of exploitation which is centuries deep within the white imagination.

That whiteness is associated with cleanliness, and cleanliness with godliness makes the mere expectation of perfection a white supremacist patriarchal notion—which is perhaps what the film is trying to say. Nevertheless, it utterly fails to accurately assess its racialized dynamics or create space for its Black woman lead to develop. As such, it’s a perfect example of the necessity for a wide range of Black perspectives on a given work, without which, exploitation- the shitty kind- is basically inevitable.

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