{"id":16146,"date":"2021-03-19T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16146"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:16:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:16:56","slug":"the-fascinating-failure-of-spike-lees-girl-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-fascinating-failure-of-spike-lees-girl-6\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fascinating Failure of Spike Lee’s Girl 6<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Can a movie be both of<\/em> its time and before<\/em> its time? Girl 6<\/em> is not a movie most people mention when they talk about Spike Lee\u2019s filmography. The 1996 film, penned by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks in her screenwriting debut (and the first film Lee directed that he didn\u2019t also write), was a critical and commercial failure. The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Rita Kempley<\/a> described it as \u201clittle more than a profane litany punctuated by Oscar-caliber orgasms,\u201d while the Post<\/em>\u2019s Desson Howe<\/a> suggested the film was such an embarrassment from Lee that \u201cit\u2019s enough to reduce expectations over him forever.\u201d Howe\u2019s contempt was uninhibited, but he wasn\u2019t alone. Girl 6<\/em> was so dismissed that barely any reviews of Lee\u2019s next narrative feature, 1998\u2019s He Got Game<\/em>, mention it as part of his filmography, and Lee waited nearly 20 years before again directing a film primarily from the perspective of a female character, 2015\u2019s Chi-Raq<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps Lee, who will serve this year as the first Black American jury president at the Cannes Film Festival, will break his silence there on Girl 6<\/em>. (Probably not, but hey, anything is possible!) The film did screen as an Un Certain Regard selection at Cannes back in 1996, although Lee has distanced himself from it in years since. No audio commentary on its 10th anniversary DVD release in 2006. No acknowledgment of singer-songwriter Teyana Taylor\u2019s homage to Girl 6<\/em> in her music video for the 2020 single \u201c1-800-One-Night,\u201d which Taylor directed under the moniker \u201cSpike Tey.\u201d And the same goes for Parks, who became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her 2001 play Topdog\/Underdog<\/em>, wrote the screenplay for this year\u2019s The United States vs. Billie Holiday<\/em>, and has steadily refused to discuss Girl 6<\/em> since its release. Even in April 1996, when Parks sat<\/a> with New York Times<\/em> writer Monte Williams for a profile piece, she wouldn\u2019t discuss reactions to her work (\u201cI don\u2019t read reviews \u2026 I refuse to have my ego inflated or deflated by someone I don\u2019t know\u201d) or elaborate on how her months-long gig as a phone sex operator in London informed the screenplay. \u201cI don\u2019t want to do this if that’s going to be the focus of your story,\u201d Williams quoted Parks. \u201cIt was one little job I had in order to pay the rent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this is to say: Girl 6<\/em> is a movie practically disavowed by its creators and impossible to find on streaming services, and admittedly, it is a mess. Lead character Judy (Theresa Randle), who interrupts her dreams of becoming an actress so she can pay her bills as a phone sex operator, is developed primarily in terms of her relationships with men. Parks\u2019s script sprints toward provocative observations about gender, race, and sex before stopping abruptly and walking away from the very conversations it started. Quentin Tarantino, Ron Silver, Madonna, and Naomi Campbell make cameos that distract from, rather than enhance, the film\u2019s purposeful blurring of fiction and reality. Lee\u2019s character Jimmy reads a letter that Judy receives from a client about his need to masturbate while eating cereal doused in her breast milk, and it all feels very Jerry Springer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, sex work is work, and Girl 6<\/em>, to its credit, acknowledges the labor exhibited by these women with every phone call. The mixture of sensuality, therapy, and friendship they need to offer to men who are already using them, and who can in a moment turn to abusing them. The distance and fortitude they develop to remain uninvolved emotionally with these callers, some of whom proclaim love, devotion, and fidelity, and others who are violent, cruel, and contemptuous. Girl 6<\/em> too often props up didactic dynamics of good vs. bad when it comes to employers\u2014Jenifer Lewis runs a phone sex company that she insists is like a family, while Madonna runs a sleazier joint where bestiality, coprophilia, \u201cyada yada yada,\u201d and other potentially harmful sexual preferences are condoned\u2014without considering that all of this is manipulation of some kind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But there are kernels of ideas here about which aspects of ourselves are performative versus which are authentic that serve as direct precursors to films like Boots Riley\u2019s Sorry to Bother You<\/em> and Steven Soderbergh\u2019s The Girlfriend Experience<\/em>. Girl 6<\/em> is a fascinatingly clunky misfire unwilling to truly commit to the full ramifications of its flirting-with-filth narrative, but its observation that objectification and sexualization go hand in hand with womanhood still feels timely. Not much has changed in 25 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set contemporaneously in New York City in the mid-\u201990s, Girl 6<\/em> begins with a dehumanizing movie audition: Judy (Randle) wants to deliver her version of Nola Darling\u2019s monologue from Lee\u2019s 1986 film She\u2019s Gotta Have It<\/em>, but Tarantino (appearing here before his still-ongoing feud with Lee), playing an extra-lecherous, extra-aggro version of himself, cuts her off. He wants to find \u201cthe total game, know what I\u2019m saying?\u201d, and his dream girl is a combination of Halle Berry, Jada Pinkett, Whitney Houston, and Angela Bassett. Is that Judy? Maybe. But the director will only know if he sees what she looks like with her top off, and if Judy won\u2019t do it, well, one of the dozens of girls outside will. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forced into submission by Tarantino\u2019s \u201cdon\u2019t move, don\u2019t talk\u201d commands, Judy unbuttons her top, slips it off her shoulders, and bares her breasts\u2014before changing her mind a few seconds later and rushing out of there. No one respects her for this choice. Her agent (John Turturro) and acting coach (Susan Batson) both fire her, the latter screaming \u201cSo what?\u201d and \u201cGrow up!\u201d over and over again. With no way to pay her rent, Judy decides to make some quick money working as a phone sex operator at an office where girl power is the prevailing sentiment. Her boss Lil (Lewis) is matter of fact about how all the women should tell callers that they\u2019re white, blonde, and busty, and instead emphasizes the camaraderie they\u2019ll all develop together. And when Judy, who is hired as the office\u2019s Girl 6, rationalizes her new gig as another form of acting, she takes to it quickly and easily, developing three distinct characters: a dominatrix named April, a pre-op transgender woman named Esmerelda, and a girl next door named Lovely. When Lovely has her first successful call and brings a man to climax over the phone, the other women\u2014played by the likes of Gretchen Mol, Debi Mazar, and Mad TV<\/em>\u2019s Debra Wilson\u2014applaud her and present her with a congratulatory corsage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judy has found a sort of home here, and even begins falling for a caller (Peter Berg) who requests her specifically, and who talks to her less about sex and more about caring for his ailing mother. Maybe there\u2019s some sort of bond truly there. But to Judy\u2019s friend and neighbor Jimmy (Lee), all of this is strange. He has a long-term investment strategy of collecting rare baseball cards and waiting 20 years before selling them for what he anticipates will be huge profits, and he doesn\u2019t understand how Judy can, as he sees it, debase herself for cash. How is this different from prostitution, he wonders? And confused in another way is Judy\u2019s ex-husband (Isaiah Washington), who mistakes Judy\u2019s unabashed performances as Lovely (the film is never brave enough to feature sequences where she is April or Esmerelda) as renewed sexual interest in him. She agrees to go on what she thinks is a friendly dinner, and on the walk home he tries to shove her hands down his pants. \u201cYou\u2019re safe here. Very safe,\u201d Lil had assured her callers, but what about outside that office building? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No man seems to understand that this is a job for Judy, and Girl 6<\/em> at first raises compelling questions about the ways women perform gender, femininity, and sexuality, and how there is an undercurrent of mockery and farce to their phone sex work. Some women read books or magazines while panting and moaning, while others file their nails. The women laugh together when a man wants a threesome scenario, barely hiding their combination of mirth and disdain at how stereotypical these fetishes are\u2014schoolgirls, pleated skirts, and bathroom rendezvous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when Girl 6<\/em> tries to navigate the darker corners of this industry and its demoralizing ramifications, the film begins to unravel. Judy is too underwritten, and the situations in which she finds herself\u2014stood up by one caller who proposes an in-person meeting, and then threatened by another who discusses his fantasy of murdering her\u2014are too divorced from any real emotional impact. In the latter sequence, Lee portrays Judy as gliding back and forth through her red-hued apartment hallway, its aesthetics and lighting reminiscent of a burlesque or brothel. But is Girl 6<\/em> saying that all sex work is soul-crushing, or just that Judy is unfit for it? Is the burden of having to deny her Blackness to her clients, while the boss played by Madonna sardonically describes her as a \u201chome girl,\u201d what ails Judy? And the film\u2019s closing scene, in which Judy has moved from New York City to Los Angeles and walks out of another audition where a patronizing white director (Silver) tells her to take off her clothes, feels strangely cutesy. Did sex work empower Judy to realize the hypocrisy of Hollywood? Or is patriarchy so inescapable that all Judy can do is hope for a kinder person to give her another chance? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girl 6<\/em> doesn\u2019t take a real stance or provide a clear answer to any of these questions, which is why the film\u2019s rapid tonal switch from comedy to cautionary tale doesn\u2019t quite work. \u201cI get paid to talk now. I don\u2019t get paid to be bullshitting with you,\u201d Judy says to Jimmy in one of her lowest moments, when her entire selfhood has become consumed by the need for money, attention, and adoration; only days later, she\u2019ll be crying to a caller who gets off on her saying, \u201cI\u2019m not happy because I\u2019m a fuckslut.\u201d Girl 6<\/em> fails at capturing how the same woman can be both of these people at the same time. But what it does clearly convey is an insistence that capitalism forces capitulation: in racial code-switching, in how women shape themselves in response to male desire, and in how identities become brands. Girl 6<\/em> might have been a failure, but in those ways at least, it was perhaps more prescient than anyone in 1996 could have guessed.\u00a0\u00a0\"\"\/\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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