The second
film in my analysis of the
films of Ana lily Amirpour, is the desert denizen dystopia, The
Bad Batch; the next film in what I have dubbed Amirpour’s “Apocalyptic
Anomie” trilogy. For this sophomore outing, Amirpour trades Tehran for Texas,
and vampires for cannibals in this amalgamated homage to the work of George
Miller and John Carpenter. Through Amirpour’s deft hand and critical eye, she
weaves a story of brutal survival in a wasteland manufactured by a draconian criminal
justice system, while intimating at our own problematic interconnected web of immigration,
militarization, and poverty in the United States.
PLOT
When a young woman is extradited from the United States for unknown crimes into a lawless wasteland located in what was once the Texas desert, she is happened upon by a community of cannibals. Escaping their clutches after giving a literal arm and a leg, Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is rescued by a hermit (Jim Carrey) and taken to a compound called Comfort; ruled over by the enigmatic “Dream” (Keanu Reeves). Once recuperated, Arlen goes looking for revenge which sets in motion a series of events that causes her to question Comfort’s illusion of security, the horrors of scavenging poverty, and what it truly means to be one of “The Bad Batch”.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Production
The
writing of The Bad Batch took place while editing A
Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Since Amirpour has likened
the process of editing to the scene in The Shawshank Redemption when
Andy Dufrene crawls through a sewer pipe to escape, it is understandable that
she would need to have her own extrication from its disgusting monotony. In interviews, Amirpour has stated that while
writing The Bad Batch she was in a period of great transition in her
life; “one that violently rips apart your identity” and from that, she conjured
this vision of a woman in the desert, bleeding, missing and arm and a leg. That image stayed with Amirpour all the way through
the grueling 28-day shoot in the Salten sea deserts of California in April of 2015.
Amirpour
cites Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by
Lewis Carroll as primary influences on The Bad Batch. Being a western, El
Topo seem like an understandable source of inspiration especially given the
barren landscape. However, it is through the “looking glass” of Carroll’s Alice
that the film takes on this ethereal quality, especially at the opening when we
as an audience cross over with Arlen into the wasteland. The menagerie of characters
and nightmare fueled experiences she has on her journey to find Comfort and “Dream”,
is such a mesmerizingly beguiled adventure that it could have sprung from
Carrol’s Consciousness (including the grooming pedophilia towards the end of
the film).
In addition to the direct influences of Carroll
and Jodorowsky, there are also flavors of George Miller’s Mad Max series
(Fury Road coming out in 2015) and John Carpenter’s Escape films.
Like those films, The Bad Batch has an authoritarian government (the acronymically
vague USRCS) that deports denizens depending on dubious deplorability. The
audience is unclear as to the so called “crimes” that these people were found
guilty of to deserve such punishment, or how many of “The Bad Batch” there are,
outside of the brief glimpse of the prison-like number that is tattooed behind
each person’s ear, right before they are released. This number increases with
each person it is applied to, the most recently removed having the most up to
date number as to “The Bad Batch’s population. This is akin to the Carpenter
classics, just as the communities Arlen encounters, with their clothing,
technology, and other resources being based in the scavenging and repurposing of
products for what they need, is a cornerstone of Miller’s Mad Max Movies. While never stated, I am sure that there was
Cannibalism at the beginning of Mad Max’s post apocalypse. While Miller spared
the audience, Amirpour makes us stare it right in the face. It is with such
indifferent detachment that Arlen’s arm and leg are removed from her body, and
placed on a grill, that makes this contemporary horror world feel lived in,
raw, real. So real in fact, that given the time-period when this film was
released, it feels like we are just a proverbial stone’s throw from this
outcome.
US Political Context
Three months after production
wrapped on The Bad Batch, Donald Trump, then a real estate “billionaire”
and media personality, awkwardly rode down an escalator and proceeded to give
what would be, at the time, one of the most racistly unhinged and deranged Presidential
running announcements in history.[1] In this speech, Trump condemned
Mexican Immigrants as drug
addled rapists who needed to be removed and our borders
strengthened. By the time the film was released widely, two years later, Donald
Trump had been elected President and he had instituted a Six
country travel ban on non-white countries he
reportedly called “shitholes.” It is eerily prophetic
that the expulsion of “The Bad Batch” depicted in Amirpour’s film, is like the
eventual (and current) state of the US/Mexico border in how we handle asylums,
the separation of families, and the erecting of detention centers (see Social
Analysis). People did not want to experience this harrowing tale both in the
news and in their entertainment media, which many use as a form of escape from
real world troubles and issues. This most likely contributed to, but was not
likely the cause of, the film being leveed with heavy artistic and commercial
criticism upon release.
Critical
Reception
The international success
of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night provided a lot of opportunities for
Amirpour. Yet, it was clear, even from the reviews of her debut film, that many
in the industry wanted to label and pigeon-hole her into a certain style while making
assumptions about the themes she is interested in. The industry was trying to
codify and package her art. It is clear with the critical response to The
Bad Batch, many people either didn’t get what Amirpour was attempting to do,
or did not like what she presented because it went against the image of who
they thought Amirpour was; which made some people
resentful. Therefore, in addition to only making $201,000 off of a
6 million dollar budget (not including marketing), the film
holds a review
aggregate of 46% from 101 critical reviews, despite winning the
Special Jury Prize at the Canne Film festival, the year of
its release.
bell
hooks (2009) discusses, in the context of blackness in cinema, the support for
the progressive vision of the Avant-Garde; to which she identifies as any
filmmaking/filmmaker who is non-white or that does not reproduce a white cultural
narrative. “Patriarchal cinematic practices inform so much of what is
identified as film… that audiences are more comfortable watching black women
when we are kept in our place by sexist and racist characterizations.” (hooks
2009:127). This perspective, much like the discipline of Sociology, sees the familiar
as strange and sees strange in the familiar (hooks 2009). To that end, it is hooks’
(2009) belief that if filmmakers of color would discard the “patriarchal
cinematic pedagogy” there would be a revolution; because without it, no amount
of deconstruction of “white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cinema” will
lead to social change (hooks 2009:135).
Through
the lens provided by hooks (2009), Amirpour’s The Bad Batch is
recontextualized. A lot of the expectations for this film centered around
Amirpour continuing to explore the themes of her previous work, namely feminism
and female empowerment. And while a woman coming into her power amidst a
“preapocalyptic” arrakeen landscape is central to the plot and various themes
of The Bad Batch, many people did not care for the abrupt harshness of
the world Amirpour depicts: a gruelingly punishing world that exacts a literal
extraction of its proverbial pound of flesh from the protagonist, left many in
a state of shock. Yet, because the protagonist is a woman, many interpret the violence
that is put upon her was because of her gender presentation, and that
presenting such violence, on such a body, normalizes misogyny. Also, considering
this violence is exacted by other women, it displays the different forms of
internalized misogyny that can exist within patriarchal (sub)cultures, including
“The patriarchal bargain”, which sees women reinforcing stereotypical gender
norms, and propping up men into authoritative positions to then glean some of
that power for themselves by their relational proximity to men. The patriarchal
bargain could be an interpretation of the actions of Arlen’s captors,
considering that the men of “The Bridge” community are ‘roided’ out cannibals
and the pained reluctance and nonchalance, with which these women dismember
Arlen. Yet, it is the harshness of this landscape that produces such behavior which
is not exclusively levied against women; men in equal measure are dismembered
for the community’s sustenance. Thus, a
lot of the pushback on this film is from those whose expectations weren’t met
by the film’s final form, and the themes that they were expecting did not have
the same clear socio-political delineation as was seen in Amirpour’s previous
work. However, this is the avant-garde filmmaking
that is necessary to break us of certain forms of white supremacy cinema. As
bell hooks (2009) states: “…the more commonly accepted markers of avant-garde
filmmaking may be too restrictive for work that endeavors to engage in the
politics of representation (p 133). While that may not be exactly what Amirpour
is attempting to do here with The Bad Batch, we need filmmakers like her
to continue to push outside of the socially acceptable “revolutionary boxes”
social systems generate so that they can control and minimize the effects of
ideologies that are fundamentally disruptive to its operation. Such is the case
with any female empowerment and Feminist rhetoric media content that seems to
present a progressive perspective, only to be one that is easily consumed,
repackaged, and sold back to us as a commodified identity; thereby becoming nonthreatening
(Zeisler 2016).
Race
Controversy
One
of the more specific and salient criticisms of The Bad Batch, is its racist
depictions of violence and death. The only characters in the film to die are Black.
First, Arlen (played by Suki Waterhouse, a White woman) shoots a Black
woman in revenge for her dismembering, even though this black woman was a
reluctant cannibal, and was not responsible for Arlene’s amputated limbs. Granted it is through that murder that Arlen finds
purpose, and begins to value life, but I think that we have come further along
in Cinematic history, even in 2016, than to have a Black character not only be “fridged’
for the propelling of a White female narrative, but to have that White Female
character supplant her victim by taking her place within the family unit. The second
and the last person to die is a fellow cannibal who looks to trade gasoline to
Miami Man (Jason Momoa) for Arlen. Miami Man seemingly agrees, allowing the cannibal
to walk a few feet away before killing him with a series of knives, and then
retrieving Arlen. Many film scholars have taken the stance that just because something
is depicted on screen does not mean that the filmmakers have a tacit endorsement
of that behavior or action. Amirpour
seems to share this sentiment when she was called out 8 weeks into her festival
run by an audience member who was offended by the depictions in the film.
Amirpour cocked her head to the side and said “Just
because I give you something to look at, doesn’t mean I’m telling you what to
see.” While Amirpour is not doubling down on the depictions
in her film, she is less than conciliatory to this interpretation of her work.
It was only after this continued to come up, that she gave a lengthier
response:
“I’m
a brown woman immigrant, my family escaped the Iranian Revolution, I grew up on
two continents, English wasn’t the first language in my home,” she said over
lunch in New York a few days before the film’s release. “I know what it is to
be the ‘other’ very, very well. My film and my filmmaking is all about asking
questions about how the system pits us against each other. If anything, this
movie is about how we are eating each other. It’s fine, I get it, some people
don’t see those things or ask those questions. Cinema is a private, personal
experience for an individual. But this felt personal against me.”
While Amirpour implies
that her brown skin and ethnicity means that she can’t be racist, a false
assumption and a callous use of one’s own identity as a shield against the
criticism of their art, she does provide an alternative answer. Sociologically,
this is also interesting when thinking about “the death of the author” and the
public ownership of media content. Based on the quote(s) above, it does not
seem like Amirpour intended to only depict violence and death through Black
bodies. However, with increased racial media literacy on her part and the part
of the editor, the racial optics would be glaringly apparent regardless of intention.
Additionally, for depictions of dangerous,
illegal, or otherwise disgusting behavior, actions, or ideals to not be an endorsement,
there needs to be either consequences for such behavior, or a clear delineation
of morality between those individuals that commit those acts/atrocities and
those that don’t. One of the problems
with “the art is subjective” stance, is that it often is used to protect
artists and filmmakers from the consequences that their content produces in the
populace, rather than filmmakers feeling socially responsible for how their
work is received. From film we get introduced to new ideas, gain new goals or
career paths, see and understand the world in a new and different way; it is a
source of knowledge and a source of influential power that the creators of such
content should hold with more responsibility and respect.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
The
opening of The Bad Batch begins in media res, and before we get a single
clear piece of footage, over the production company logos, we begin to hear the
authoritative extradition process for those deemed unworthy to stay/live within
the United States. The voice over explains how those deemed as “Bad Batch”
shall be treated and how others should interact with them. We see quick cut
shots of a woman getting a head tattoo above the arch of her ear with the
letters BB and a number. She is then taken out to the desert and forced to walk
through a barbed wire chain link fence. She is allowed her belongings, a single
meal, and a gallon jug of water. The sequence lasts less than one minute. In
that time, the audience is left to ponder the single most important question: What
are the social conditions necessary to allow this to happen, and how did we get
here? These questions lead to
implications about modern US immigration and the militarization of the border, that
when contemplated in the
current socio-political context, are closer to resembling the events of the
film
than most are comfortable with, or even willing to admit.
Immigration
Since its inception, the United
States’ track record on immigration has been abysmal. From the genocidal
removal of native peoples, the involuntary human trafficking of Black slaves
for profit, race based quotas on voluntary immigration for ethnically white and
non-white people, the criminalizing of people of color’s mere existence/presence
in the country based upon whatever endless war we are fighting abroad, to the
fear mongering of white naturally born citizens in order to ensure a
militarized southern border that is racistly hypocriful compared to its
northern counterpart, and the separation of immigrant families leading to child
death are all aspects of the bipartisan anti-immigrant deportation machine that
has been identifying, dehumanizing and removing varieties of people of color
from the United States for centuries (Goodman 2021).
This
extraditing mechanism is supported by three pillars: formal deportations, voluntary
departures, and self-deportations; all working in tandem to guarantee “the land
of the free” only applies to white people. In fact, “eight out of every ten deportations
since the 1880s have occurred via a fast track, administrative removal procedure
euphemistically called “voluntary departures.” (Goodman 2021: 221). This
implies that while not initiated by the individuals themselves, there was
little to no resistance when identification and removal was applied to them. Many
others “choose” to self deport due to the horrendous anti-immigration laws,
threats to actual acts of violence, and perpetual fear mongering designed to
make living in the United States so miserable that people leave.
Given
Miami Man’s “Bad Batch” number (88), it is implied that he was one of the first
to be deported under the new law. His crime? He was a Cuban immigrant living in
Florida. This is analogous to actual US immigration policies that see non-white
immigrants as the enemy, thereby deporting them first under some new draconian
policy that criminalizes human existence in a particular geographic location. Typically,
the policy is first applied to those who’ve been scapegoated as undesirable
leeches on the limited resources of a country, then behind closed doors quietly
expanded upon to apply to scores of others. Unfortunately, this seems to be
playing out in real time with Donald Trump’s 2025 plan for immigration (if he
reclaims the presidency in November 2024).
The
fictitious immigration policies of Ana lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch and
Donald Trump’s proposed 2025 Immigration agenda are staggeringly similar. In
the beginning moments of the film, after being dropped off by border patrol
agents, Arlen walks past a sign that reads:
Beyond
this fence is no longer the territory of Texas; that hereafter no person within
that territory beyond this fence is a resident of the United States of America
or shall be acknowledged, recognized, or governed by the laws and governing
bodies therein. Good Luck!
Title 18 USRCS
In the film, as stated above, this is something that
was first applied to migrants and other documented or undocumented immigrants
then expanded to other people defined as unsuitable. We do not know what
“crime” Arlen, who is presented as a young white woman, could have committed to
earn her a “Bad Batch” number. But the way that she looks longingly mournful at
a picture of her and another woman early in the film, it is possible that she
is bisexual, thus explaining her exile. This
gives credence that in the film there was a reestablishment of a white heterosexual
Patriarchal Christian ethnostate; one that Donald Trump seemingly wants to (re)create
with his 2025 plan.
If
re-elected, Trump’s
Project 2025 plan proposes:
·
Outlawing Plan B and other “Morning After”
pills and their distribution across the country through The Comstock Act of
1870
·
Elevating Christian Nationalism and its
influence on government.
·
Dismantling strategies for eliminating
Green House Gasses including the EPA.
·
Expand Presidential Powers under Article 2
and adopt the unitary executive theory.
·
Eliminating the independence of the DOJ
·
Outlawing Pornography
·
Retaliation and retribution against
political opponents and the Media
·
A Reintroduction of the citizenship
question on the US Census
·
Mass Deportation of Immigrants by Deputizing
the National Guard, ATF, DEA, and local police forces and deploy them in “blue”
states to conduct immigration raids.
·
Re-establish a Spoils system that grants
government jobs to those loyal to the party (i.e. Trump)
It is this nakedly
authoritarian proposal which centralizes institutional power in the executive
branch, dismantles the other branches of government or absorbs them; thereby
eliminating the checks and balances system. Suddenly, 2025 feels like a possible
prologue to the events in Amirpour’s The Bad Batch. Such an oppressive
government must exist for an immigration policy that not only restricts access
into the country, but unilaterally revokes/denies citizenship for not following
the whims and desires of a single person, political party nor their cultural
identity.
This general attack on Immigration in the United States is
entirely cultural; a form of racism that seeks to disempower the political
capital of immigrants as an economic and social resource. Xenophobic fear of
lost (read as “stolen”) jobs has roots in the first immigration act
restrictions against Chinese immigrants (Desmond 2023). Immigration policy,
especially the one under the Trump 2025 Project, will seek to circumvent the constitutional
right for states to be able to govern themselves, as 50% of immigrants live in
the states of California, Florida, and Texas, which, regardless of rhetoric, has
not caused an increase in those state’s poverty rates (Desmond 2023). In fact, many
immigrants have some of the highest rates of economic mobility. Their
collective success impacts neither white wages nor employment, because most
immigrants are competing with other immigrants for the same jobs (Desmond
2023). However, politically manufactured “border crises” are economic boons for
the collusive connections of the Military Industrial Complex that, fueled by fear
mongering tactics, continues to maintain the bipartisan supported economic
viability of military production.
After
9/11, the beginning of “The War on Terror”, and the establishment of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there was an increased effort to funnel
military style weapons, gear, tactics, and training down to the US/Mexico
border to “secure it”. One of the first offices under this new initiative was
the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). According to Balko (2021) these
members became “the most violent and racist in all of law enforcement, [as] they
do not exist within the realm of civilian law enforcement. They view people…as enemy
combatants, meaning they have no rights” (p.414). It is these kinds of federal
officers that Donald Trump, in his 2025 plan, wants to send into “blue” states
in cities like Seattle, Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleavland and Milwaukee (Balko
2021). Such an action seems expected in a “pre-Apocalyptic” film like The
Bad Batch. It is a harder pill to swallow when it’s presented as possible public
policy.
Disability as Metaphor for Hardship
Throughout film history, disability has always had a precarious
representation on screen. From the work of Lon Cheney in the silent film era, to
current blockbusters, disability has always been used as a tool of emotional
evocation for non-disabled people (Norden 1990). Consistently, Disabled people
and their bodies are used as conduits for filmmakers to reach their (usually
non-disabled) audience (Snyder and Mitchel 2010). Through these images, the non-disabled
are infused with a range of emotions, from relief to dread, that this disabled
body is not them… but it could be. The chief emotion that is regularly deployed
is pity (part of the dread/relief cycle) which fuels the tired trope of inspiration porn.
This is the process by which the disabled body is used either to motivate non-disabled
people or cause them to be self-reflective on the “value” of their
ablebodiedness. Yet, in addition to being generally ableist, continuing
to view disability in this way masks its normalcy. The image of the disabled
body is still overpopulated within the horror genre. It regularly presents
images of disability as punishment, or as a cautionary tale, and maintains
the perception that disability is the horror itself. Disablement
exists simultaneously as the threat from an antagonist (who often might also be
disabled) and the source of retributive justice for the protagonist.
The disablement that is depicted in The Bad Batch is
designed to present the perilous dangers of the world. You will lose literal
parts of yourself out there. As Arlen is
chained up and looks around at the other disabled prisoners, waiting to be
slaughtered, there is a sense of helplessness. Additionally, once she escapes,
a process that through quick editing jumps over the actual freedom from the
compound, her recovery, and acclimation to a prosthetic leg is similarly
truncated. This, intentionally or not, makes glaringly obvious that the
filmmakers did not think to have a disability consultant on set to accurately
depict the movement, and needs of a double amputee. Amirpour also seems to
handwave the process of moving from vulnerability to strength through the
film’s time jump; being more interested in the way that acquired disability
creates a desire for revenge, above anything else. Here, Arlen’s body is
fridged (well, literally grilled) to motivate the story. Without this disability
trope, there is no initial motivation for Arlen to move through the rest of the
film. Thus, disability is presented here as both trauma and a plot contrivance.
The Lesser of Two Evils
Durkheim’s (2014) understanding of the social order revolves
around a society’s social solidarity or integration within a particular group.
According to Durkheim (2014), these social entanglements are simple in mechanically
solidaric societies and grow increasingly complex until they become organically
solidaric societies. Mechanical solidarity is usually a characteristic of pre-industrial
societies that have less complex social structural forms. Many of the ties that
bind in these communities are based upon kinship, direct mutual relationships. Whereas
societies with organic solidarity, which are organized based upon an acute
division of labor, consisting of shared values, and integrated rituals. In both
organizational forms there is a collective consciousness: the shared beliefs and
moralities that act as a unifying force amongst its people. Mechanically
solidaric societies tend to have a collective conscience that is concrete and
specific, revolving around religiosity and often cult like behavior. Contrarily,
organic solidarity has a collective conscience that is increasingly secular,
and values individual dignity, equality of opportunity, work ethics and social
justice (Durkheim 2014).
Because the communal organizations in The Bad Batch are
more so a part of Amirpour’s ethereal backdrop of nightmarish sublimity on
which the narrative is painted, it is difficult to graph on Durkheim’s ideal
types to a fictitious social structure that did not clarify the specifics of
its social order. At face value, The
Bridge community is mechanically organized, and Comfort is organized
organically. The Bridge community has
strict rules, is not interested in integration or expanding their society, and
has repressive sanctions. Of the people in the Bridge community that we meet, everyone
participates in the capturing and slaughtering of new ‘Bad Batch’ inmates. Social
bonds are based in a weak system of trade based on needs and survival. The
leader of The Bridge people, Miami Man, rules by fear and presence; caring
little about anything outside of his kin, specifically his daughter, Honey, who’s
reclamation becomes his central arc in the film.
Meanwhile, Comfort has structural organization, commerce, sanitation, water access, and a division of labor that provides health, food, and (relative) safety. From this organic solidarity rises a charismatic leader in the form of “The Dream” who establishes a dictatorial rule through the possession and distribution of hallucinogenic drugs and control of waste removal. He keeps a majority of the community in a perpetual state of intoxication to maintain passivity, and from that capitulation through distraction, he establishes a misogynistically pedophilic sex slavery ring which grooms girls for impregnation by “Dream” once they reach puberty. The harsh violence of the world is still very salient in each community. The delivery of that violence is what separates them. Do you want to be treated the same (as cattle) in one group, or do you want the illusion of safety/security while violence is perpetrated on bodies behind closed doors for the disgusting sexual proclivities of a misogynistic mediocre white man? In the sociological tension of agency vs structure, Arlen chooses the former, because as brutal as the world of The Bad Batch is, at least it does not pretend to be anything other than apocryphal.
CONCLUSION
Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch is
an eclectically gonzo amalgamated cataclysmic intersection of genre, tone, and
plot devices/contrivances. While it fails to reach the critical and commercial
success of its predecessor, the radical choices here make the world so
immersive; that its flavor should saturate all independent cinema. Amirpour is
the unsung hero of Gen X deconstructive avant-garde filmmaking, flaunting
convention in storytelling and character motivational tropes. She is just the
acrid balance to the homogenized monocultural saccharinity of big budget
industrially produced feature length content that is currently consuming cinema.
REFERENCES
Balko,
Radley 2021. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police
Forces New York: Public Affairs Press
Desmond,
Mathew 2023. Poverty, By America New York: Crown Publishing.
Durkheim,
Emile 2014. The Division of Labor in Society New York: Free Press
Goodman,
Adam, 2021. “The Expulsion of Immigrants: America’s Deportation Machine” in A
Field Guide to White Supremacy Kathleen Belew and Ramon Gutierrez (eds.) pp
220-229 Oakland: University of California Press.
Hooks, bell 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Class
and sex at the movies New York: Routledge.
Norden,
Martin 1994. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in
Movies New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Snyder,
Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell 2010. “Body Genres: An Anatomy of Disability in
Film.” In The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film Sally Chivers and
Nicole Markotic (eds.) pp179-204 Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.
Zeisler,
Andi 2016. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrl to Covergirl the buying
and Selling of a Political Movement New York: Public Affairs Press.
[1] He
would go on to top this racistly scapegoating lunacy many times over during the
course of his political career that is still ongoing, at the point of this
writing.
