Personal Agency, Titties and Shrimp: American Mary

Hey, kids. Because I believe in this kinda thing, here’s a trigger warning because American Mary contains a discussion on rape.

If you like your psychopaths with perfect eyebrows and a wit as sharp as their bone saw, consider American Mary, a sexy and stylized visual treat from the Soska Sisters. Mary, a very intelligent but very broke med school student heads to a seedy strip club to find work… and ends up performing some impromptu surgery for five thousand dollars cash instead. She thinks that’ll be the end of it, until a woman with an uncanny resemblance to Betty Boop shows up on her doorstep (or rather, inside her apartment) inquiring about a bit of skin removal for a friend in the body modification community. Mary turns out to be a true artist when it comes to extreme body modification, both voluntary and, uh… punitive.

This film is a lot of fun. No one’s going to argue that Katharine Isabelle deserves the Oscar for this, but she’s on point as a dead-inside med student with nothing to lose and just the driest sense of humor. We get a lot of fanservice of Mary in a surgical apron and not much else, which seems impractical, but I’m not inherently against it (Jennifer’s Body is one of my favorite films, after all). The story is rocky in places, and the pacing is just everywhere, but in the midst of the muck a diamond shines.  All the gore is practical, and the film gave extra jobs to tons of people in the real body modification community. Overall, it’s a decent and watchable B-horror film that actually treats both the stripper and body modification subcultures pretty well.

American Mary is a lot of things. It’s a unique character study of a woman who leaves her prestigious and strait-laced path to pursue a life on the fringes amongst thugs and criminals, which is pretty badass. The bitter center of its shiny candy exterior, however, is a rape and revenge plotline that serves as a major driving force to Mary’s character development, which is kind of a bummer. This film falls in the same trap as many others in its genre: its protagonist, no matter how otherwise bitchin’, badass, or utterly insane, simply lacks personal agency. Even prior to what will from here on out be referred to as “the awful, terrible, fucked-up thing,” or TATFUT for short (just kidding, that’s a stupid fucking acronym), Mary’s initiation into the world of totally super illegal unlicensed surgery is entirely out of financial desperation and circumstance. That’s fine, on its own. It would be really weird if characters in movies just started making ridiculous decisions out of the blue, apparently motivated by nothing all of the time. The problem is, Mary doesn’t really get to do much at all of her own volition until half way through the film. She tries to get a job as a stripper, but there’s nothing to really indicate why she would want to be one. She doesn’t even try to “walk sexy” according to the club’s manager, and she seems pretty begrudging of her situation for the duration of the scene. Sure, she’s funny and snarky at times, but she doesn’t get really fun until, well…

Okay, so we have to talk about the thing. I know you don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t really wanna talk about it. I didn’t really wanna SEE it, but here we are. Mary goes to a party WITH HER PROFESSORS and OTHER SURGEONS (who, by the way, are apparently twisted, sadistic, maniacal evil demon beings in either this realm or the next), who waste literally no time at all before drugging Mary and allowing her professor Dr. Alan Grant (c’mon guys, don’t drag my beloved Jurassic Park into this) to have his way with her in the other room, videotaping the entire gruesome episode. This is shitty on so very many levels. In terms of rape depictions, it could be a lot worse. It’s presented for exactly what it is; there’s no moral gray area, it is in no way celebratory or fetishized. It’s just a fucked up situation that could, and has, happened to countless girls and women before. This genre is complicated. On the one hand, I’m tempted to commend the Soska Sisters for showing rape as what it is: a gross and unforgivable abuse of power that should both terrify and offend. On the other, I sometimes wish this genre didn’t even have to exist. On yet a third hand (in the spirit of extreme body modification) I’m also not so naïve to believe that if society stops talking about rape that it will simply go away. Here’s a good Salon article about why the rape and revenge genre is still hella problematic. But whether you personally find it revolting or uplifting, the ethics are far from clean-cut. Surgeon humor.

Of course, as any great surgeon-turned-burgeoning-body-modification-artist hinging on a rage-induced break with moral qualms would do, Mary tracks down, kidnaps, and modifies Dr. Grant quite thoroughly in a manner that would make Cary Elwes either beam with pride or piss himself (BOOM. Princess Bride AND Saw deep-cut in one). Of course, it’s cinematically satisfying vengeance, but it’s actually after that when the film gets interesting. Mary quits medical school and begins modifying bodies full-time in a studio at her apartment, a champion of bodily autonomy who remembers what it was like to have hers taken from her. Here, the body modification community is presented in a very cool and nonjudgmental way. Mary, ever the pro at bedside manner, treats her patients with respect and openness, assuring them that they are limited only by their own imaginations in their options for self-expression.

It doesn’t really sit right with me to describe a rape and revenge body horror film as “fun,” but this movie is somehow all of those things. The question at the end of the day is, can films like this be empowering? I think the answer could be yes, depending on who you are. Mary is a bit unnecessarily sexed up, but she seems to find power in it. The use of sexuality to subvert sexual desire (read: she’s hot but she might split your tongue and mutilate the shit out of your downstairs) can turn exploitation on its head. And while the context in which Mary finds agency is horrific and unforgivable, watching her make her tormentor wish he had never been born is undoubtedly satisfying. These issues are not cut and dry. They’re messy. Like, human suspension with voluntary amputation messy.

This film is often and rightfully criticized for its slap-dash ending. Not only does it not give any closure, it also manages to kill off every main female character (Beatress, the Boop incarnate; Ruby Realgirl, the human doll, and the titular Bloody Mary herself) in the last ten minutes of the film. And if you wanna get really Freudian about it, they’re all killed by a man. With a phallic object (knife). By stabbing. You get the picture? No one but the vampire ladies themselves know what the Soska Sisters were trying to say with this ending. Maybe it was something about toxic masculinity and violence. Maybe Mary was doomed to be a martyr all along. Or maybe they just didn’t really know how to end their movie and tie up all the loose ends. Maybe you should write in your own theories, dear reader.