GIRL 6 C+
USA (108 mi) 1996 d: Spike Lee
That’s the business, honey bunch. —Susan Batson, Acting instructor
It’s sex in the city, Spike Lee style, with a Prince soundtrack wailing in the background, and with Lee offering us a primer on just how you make it in show business, emphasis on the word business. This is not some misogynistic fantasy about the way it could or should be, but simply a rather comic take on just how absurdly sexist the business already is, where nearly all the big name stars do nude scenes at some point in their careers, especially women of color. Again, this is not hypocrisy, this is the business, and from Lee’s point of view, the starting point of the story, the entry point. Theresa Randle has an Alice in Wonderland journey as she naively attempts to break into the movie business “without” demeaning herself by stripping for the prospective director, but runs into a wall of indifference, as talent is measured through sexuality. When she does an audition for a typically arrogant white director, played here by Quintin Tarantino, supposedly the rage of the industry, he requires that she remove her clothing, which causes her a great amount of stress, as she needs the part but doesn’t want to go down that same broken road of having to resort to racial stereotypes of black women once again being manipulated by an industry controlled by white men. She wishes to be judged on her talent, which isn’t getting her the time of day. Sex is what moves the talent meter.
Written by feminist playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, a MacArthur award “genius grant” recipient in 2001, and Pulitzer Prize winner in 2002, this is a rather subversive attempt to comment on the brick wall that black women hit when faced with breaking into show business, as they are rarely, if ever, accepted on talent alone, where they have to be the sexiest and most sizzlingly hot creature on the screen, perfectly exemplified by Dorothy Dandridge in CARMEN JONES (1954), the tragic sex symbol in an all-black cast ironically filmed by white director Otto Preminger. Randle starts out with the beauty of a model, but no pizzazz, nothing to light up the screen, where easily one of the best scenes in the movie is working with her way-over-the-top acting coach who continually berates her for being an emotional dud, seen here: GIRL 6 - ULTIMATE READING! - YouTube (3:04). After this theatrical dressing down, and little else to show for herself, she finally lands a job working for a phone sex company headed by Jenifer Lewis, a mother figure who quickly shows her the ropes. What’s inevitable is her discovery that in order to pay her rent, she’s forced to do behind closed doors what the movie industry would pay handsomely for if she’d do it onscreen. Randle is deliciously sexy in the role, becoming the premiere call girl because of her theatrical talent over the phone, but success has a way of playing mind games, as soon she can’t differentiate between her job and her real life persona, as they’re interchangeable.
The film itself is very erratic and one of Lee’s least understood films, never really making the case to reframe the inappropriate stereotypes, where once Randle quickly rises to the top of her field, which she does easily and naturally, becoming comfortable with herself as a sexual presence, it apparently stutters and hesitates about where to go next, as she instead has a kind of mental breakdown, where she starts imagining herself in black roles throughout history, where the movie seamlessly intermixes fantasy with reality. Men are purely secondary roles in this film, which prefers the female perspective, as Lee plays the Mookie role a few years down the road as the good-natured neighbor in the building, while Isaiah Washington plays multiple roles, including a clever street thief, her former boyfriend, and the Harry Belafonte role as the soldier in the CARMEN JONES sequence, where the fragmented approach to his role may interestingly be a telling comment on men, as women tend to like part of who they are, but dislike other parts, never seeming to be able to find a complete man. Randle’s imagination also takes her through a roller coaster journey of various destinations, which include some major songs, Prince - How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore? on YouTube (3:51) or [1982] Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl on Vimeo (4:15), but also rather hilarious tributes to black TV sitcom staples like Good Times (1974 – 79) and The Jeffersons (1975 – 85), playing Thelma with Spike Lee dressed up as George Jefferson, doing his strut, even dancing the Funky Chicken, while also taking a stab as Pam Grier in a FOXY BROWN (1974) meets SHAFT (1971) flashback, where she takes care of business before he can arrive on the scene, all but eliminating the need for a male role except to add extraneous violence, which she rightly points out is completely unnecessary, as all the dirty work has already been done. Randle is exquisite throughout, perhaps breaking the all time record for most hairstyle changes in a film, where it’s a shame her career never blossomed, but the movie squanders a good idea and breaks down into a myriad of different directions, mixing fantasy, satire, and social commentary with parody, none of which are made clear except for the fact that its easy to lose yourself in this industry, which wants you to be all things to all people.
