[Three new movies recall the 1930s gangster movie era, but with a
twist. They sketch the outlines of a dysfunctional social and economic
reality by focusing on people who are caught in the gears of the
system, in one way or another]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

SOCIETY IS A MESS IN EMILY THE CRIMINAL, BODIES BODIES BODIES, AND
NOT OKAY  
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Alissa Wilkinson
August 12, 2022
Vox
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_ Three new movies recall the 1930s gangster movie era, but with a
twist. They sketch the outlines of a dysfunctional social and economic
reality by focusing on people who are caught in the gears of the
system, in one way or another _

Aubrey Plaza is doing crimes in Emily the Criminal. , Roadside
Attractions

 

For a brief period in the 1930s, after the birth of talkies but before
the self-censorship of the Hays Code
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Hollywood was fascinated with movies about a certain type of man: the
gangster. He represented a problem, the criminal life, but was also
undeniably a product of the system — one in which the Depression was
taking hold. At the time, theater attendance was plummeting, and
cinemas were closing. Thanks to sound, the shady dames and gangsters
and gunshots could now be heard; showgirls could now dance on a chorus
line to music; you could now listen in on innuendo and lingo. The
results weren’t always great — but from about 1930 to 1934, they
could get people desperate for distraction in the door.

The iconic films of the era were the gangster movies like _Little
Caesar_ (1931) and _Scarface_ (1932), about men who were usually
poor, from immigrant backgrounds, and turned to a criminal life in
order to make money. They came into contact with “respectable”
society because of what they offered: booze during Prohibition,
gambling, worlds of underground pleasures and forbidden vices. As the
film scholar Robert Sklar puts it, “Hollywood’s gangsters stood at
the very center of their society’s disorder — they were created by
it, took their revenge on it, and ended finally as its victims.”

So ultimately, gangster films were about the systems, institutions,
and societies that create the gangster. Sklar says they “condensed
social conflicts and disorders into the ambitions and dreams of their
heroes.” Sitting out in the cheap seats, you were quietly getting a
taste of what was wrong with society.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we’re experiencing a new age
of the social realist picture, in part because Hollywood is mostly in
the superhero and franchise business these days. But that doesn’t
mean you can’t find movies that try to address the messed-up world
the audience lives in, from racism
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violence
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change
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violence
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Yet the subgenre that feels most married to the gangster pictures of
old isn’t about gangsters, exactly. Instead, it’s about young
people stuck in bigger systems they can’t control and don’t really
know how to navigate. As often happens, three of this summer’s
movies come at that subject from slightly different angles, each
featuring Gen Z or millennial protagonists. They’re at the center of
their society’s disorder, created by the economic and social systems
of contemporary America and trying to take their revenge, with
middling degrees of success.

Two of them are comedies, albeit very dark ones. _Bodies Bodies
Bodies_, directed by Halina Reijn, centers on a bunch of rich kids and
one boyfriend (Rachel Sennott, Amandla Stenberg, Chase Sui Wonders,
Myha’la Herrold, and Lee Pace) who gather for a rager of a weekend
at a house owned by the parents of another friend in the group (Pete
Davidson). A huge storm hits, the power goes out, and while they’re
holed up inside the palatial estate they discover one in their number
has kicked the can. From there, things get messy. Real messy.

[A group of young people stand cheering in the rain.]

The rich kids of _Bodies Bodies Bodies_.

 A24

_Bodies Bodies Bodies_ is satirical, skewering the one-upsmanship of
any highly privileged group of people who want to maintain their
privilege on the one hand and speak in progressive idiom on the other.
(“Don’t call her a psychopath. It’s so ableist.” “You’re
always gaslighting me.”) But the real protagonist of the film is
level-headed Bea (Maria Bakalova), an immigrant who is brought into
the group by her new girlfriend Sophie (Stenberg) and is struggling to
find any way to relate to these people. She discovers that all of
their open-mindedness can’t really find a place for the reality of
her life, her job, and her experiences. And she has to literally fight
to stay alive.

_Bodies Bodies Bodies_ pairs well with Quinn Shephard’s _Not
Okay_, about a 20-something aspiring writer named Danni (Zoey Deutch)
whose attachment to social media and wealthy upbringing has long rid
her of anything resembling shame. What Danni has is an unremarkable
life, living in Bushwick and working at an online magazine; what Danni
wants is to be famous. Also, to get her co-worker Colin (Dylan
O’Brien) to know her name.

One night, high and alone in her apartment with her guinea pig, Danni
cooks up a scheme that involves pretending to be in Paris for a week.
But when a bombing happens in actual Paris, things go sideways.

In _Not Okay_, the villain is Danni, but she’s also the protagonist
— not really an antihero, but certainly not someone you want to root
for. But the bigger villain is internet brain, or maybe internet fame,
the kind of social structure that’s been constructed with rapid
speed that dictates your worth by likes and comments, and, more
importantly, by whether other important people recognize you. And like
the gangsters of old, the system eats her alive.

But the best of this trio isn’t a comedy at all — it’s _Emily
the Criminal_, directed by John Patton Ford and starring Aubrey Plaza
in the title role, flexing some dramatic chops. (It’s worth noting
that a few years ago, Plaza also starred in _Ingrid Goes West_,
perhaps the ur-text for the millennial malaise mini-genre.)

Emily leads a life that’s uncomfortably familiar to most
millennials, or at least those of us without a familial safety net to
lean on. She went to art school, took out $70,000 in student loans,
and then wasn’t able to finish school. She can’t get a high-paying
job because of a blemish on her permanent record, so she’s stuck
working in catering while paying LA rent and hoping she’ll find a
way out of this mess. That way finds her, thanks to a co-worker. And
it’s really, really illegal.

[A young woman in a beret and a blue dress takes a selfie, two ring
lights in the foreground.]

Zoey Deutch in _Not Okay._ 

Searchlight Pictures

_Emily the Criminal_ hews most closely to the gangster film dynamic,
with Emily drawn deeper and deeper into the operation. But the film
doesn’t glamorize any of that. Instead, we see her buffeted on all
sides by a system that gives her virtually no other choice. There’s
the boss who scoffs at the idea that she should have rights, since
she’s just a contractor, without a union to protect her. There’s
the woman who runs an advertising agency who gets angry at Emily for
not taking a six-month unpaid internship, saying that when _she_ was
her age, she was the only woman in a room full of men, and that Emily
is just a spoiled brat for needing a paycheck. There’s the student
loan company that only applies money to her interest, not her balance,
a practice that leads to ballooning, unpayable balances
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And there’s the hiring manager who lies to her about not performing
a background check in order to lure her into a trap.

It’s a mess out there, and _Emily the Criminal_ plays like a
thriller precisely because Emily is less and less willing to put up
with it. What she wants is freedom. Whether she’ll get it depends on
how much she decides to go along with what the economy allows.

All three of these movies, interestingly enough, don’t focus on men;
they’re about women who are almost entirely unlikable, albeit for
different reasons. (_Not Okay_ even carries a tongue-in-cheek
“content warning” for an unlikable female lead.) They’re young,
they live in a world dominated by a widening wealth gap and the fake
reality of the internet, and they’re desperate to do whatever it
takes to get ahead, each in their own way.

But in principle, these do what the old social realist pictures do:
sketch the outlines of a dysfunctional social and economic reality by
focusing on people who are caught in the gears of the system, in one
way or another. In painting that picture, they capture a generation on
the brink. That also makes them a lot like the films of the
Depression, barely 90 years later. What goes around sure does come
back around.

Bodies Bodies Bodies _is playing in theaters._ Not Okay _is
streaming on Hulu._ Emily the Criminal _is playing in theaters._

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* social realism
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* economic inequality
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* economic insecurity
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* wealth gap
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* millennials
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* gen z
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