Pimp

I hate the word problematic. It is too vague to be a useful word. So, with that being said, let me now write so, so many paragraphs explaining the specifics of how the movie Pimp is problematic.

The film is about a young, female pimp named Wednesday. Wednesday learned pimping from her father who died when she was 10. Since then, Wednesday has followed in his footsteps to limited financial success. Wednesday’s closest family are her drug addicted mother and her girlfriend, Nikki. Wednesday begins pimping out her girlfriend which leads to a new chapter in her life where she is more successful. However, Wednesday gets cocky and lures away another woman named Destiny from her current pimp, Kenny. Well, Kenny’s kind of crazy and doesn’t think much of Wednesday stealing his girl.

Some positive reviews I saw of the film called this movie gritty and realistic. I disagree. Pimp is perhaps gritty but in no way idealistic. Low-class crime culture, especially among black people is both glamorized and exploited. While the film shames prostitution as a profession, it does glorifying the position of being a pimp, at least a successful one.

Pimp tries to cover up its misogyny by having a female lead character but I ain’t buying it. This film is terrible towards women. Wednesday herself is overtly sexist. We see depictions of her insulting the sex workers who work for her, shaming the entire profession of prostitution and pimping out her girlfriend without a second thought. Through all of this, there is not a moment of empathy or self-reflection from Wednesday. At no point does she learn to respect the other women around her. I think the film’s idea of empowering women is through depicting Wednesday as tough, cool among her peers, sexually successful and self-reliant. But on “empowering” their lead character, Pimp leaves all women, fictional or otherwise behind.

Pimp gives Wednesday dimensions that make her different than similar characters. But the film refuses to explore these dimensions. There’s no depth to this character or story and no self-reflection from Wednesday about her identity of being a woman or being queer. She also experiences very minimal sexism and her queerness never comes up at all. This is not a case where I will champion these aspects being minimized and understated. Instead, ignoring these aspects erases what makes Wednesday a unique and interesting take on a common character.

I had assumed based on the subject matter and the fact that Lee Daniels produced the film that the film was directed by a black person. After the first act, I started to doubt that assumption so I looked up the director. Yeah, as it turns out, a white woman directed this movie. And you can kind of tell. I’m also a white woman so I’m not an expert about black culture. What I can tell is when things don’t feel authentic and that’s the case here. This doesn’t feel like it knows any truth about living in the ‘hood. It feels like a regurgitation of other, better movies and TV shows.

At least the acting is good. The supporting cast is strong, especially Edi Gathegi as the antagonist, Kenny. And Kiki Palmer gives the best performance I’ve ever seen from her. She really commits to the role and absolutely disappears into it. But while on the one hand, good for her, on the other hand, I felt about her role in this the same way I felt about Tom Hardy in Capone. For all the talent they show as actors, their willingness to commit so fully and display exactly zero second thoughts sort of reflects poorly on them and how absolutely committed they were to bringing a bad character in a bad movie to life.

Admittedly, the film picks up a bit for the third act. Consequences start to kick in and that’s where Edi Gathegi comes into things. But even if the last 1/3 of the movie was passable, that still means 2/3 of the movie sucked and that’s still a failing grade. Pimp was a missed opportunity. It could have been an interesting character study about a character searching for power while being at the intersection of several marginalized identities. Instead, Pimp is a simple and offensive film that exploits black people and is overtly sexist towards women. In short, Pimp is both problematic and more basically, not a good movie.

Overall rating: 4.7/10

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