Feminism as Farce: A Critique of Run Sweetheart Run
Ever heard that old chestnut about how the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist? Run Sweetheart Run (2020) has inspired me to coin a variation thereof: The greatest trick the shark could ever pull is convincing the world that he has been jumped.
Here’s a movie deliberately crafted to take the fictional treatment of the ideals embodied by the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements so over the top as to give their detractors a proxy appeal to ridicule—that is, the informal fallacy which misrepresents a serious position as absurd in order to dismiss it. Run Sweetheart Run plays like a trap, designed less to empower than to provide ammunition for those eager to mock social justice causes under the guise of critiquing art. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced this film is a mean-spirited remake of Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood—except somehow more cynical, less honest, and wholly uninterested in laughter.
Roger Ebert once wrote of that Wayans brothers vehicle that its target was “all of those movies about young black men in the inner city, like Boyz N the Hood, South Central, Juice, Poetic Justice, Menace II Society and Fresh.” It mimicked the spoof formula of Airplane! and Hot Shots! but turned that style against worthwhile films and values: “education, employment, responsible parenthood, staying off drugs, and staying away from gangs.” Yet at least Don’t Be a Menace never pretended to be part of the legacy it mocked. Run Sweetheart Run, by contrast, adopts the visual language and feminist posture of socially conscious films like Promising Young Woman or Catch the Fair One—only to make a mockery of them all.
It’s not just the supernatural angle that renders the material difficult to take seriously; genre alone doesn’t excuse thematic incoherence. No, the real problem lies in how the filmmakers bring their tongue as close as possible to their cheek without actually touching it. This creates a faux sincerity that serves as a built-in defense mechanism. Should anyone take offense, the film can always retreat behind the veil of irony—‘we’re just playing with genre conventions,’ it might claim—thus avoiding real accountability for what it’s actually doing.
Let’s consider the villain: a vicious, relentless, white, wealthy, middle-aged chauvinist who fancies himself God’s gift to women. If the shoe fits, right? But then, in a transparent bit of reverse psychology, the movie literally demonizes him. The metaphor collapses under its own weight. What might have been a chilling allegory for rape culture instead becomes a caricature of evil, complete with fantastical flourishes that surreptitiously imply sexual predators couldn’t possibly as bad as gynocentric media makes them out to be. Worse, this framing suggests that women’s fears—especially of powerful men—are exaggerated or delusional.
In a bit of grotesque sensationalism, this demon can sniff out menstrual blood. This leads to the preposterous image of the heroine hurling a used tampon onto a passing car in a failed attempt to throw him off her scent. Since this tactic fails, and since her menstruation is otherwise irrelevant to the plot, its inclusion reads less like a moment of feminist grit and more like a crude joke at her expense. It plays right into the worst sexist tropes: that women are hysterical, irrational, and emotionally compromised by their cycles. The film proceeds like one long “bitches be crazy” gag, all while pretending not to be in on the joke.
The antagonist also has a fear of dogs and a deadly allergy to sunlight, though these traits are never explained. Maybe he’s part vampire and, I dunno, part cat? Conversely, he can mentally control other men and break the fourth wall—powers that serve no narrative function except to derail the tone and feed into a gimmicky finale. His fourth-wall breaks, in particular, are jarring: they distract from his crimes rather than expose them. The effect is that the film quite literally turns a blind eye to the very issue it claims to denounce.
After 90 minutes of escalating horror and humiliation, the heroine physically wrests control of the story away from the villain, heavy-handedly ‘reclaiming’ the narrative in what amounts to a meta shrug.
Run Sweetheart Run, easily the most misogynistic film I’ve seen since Brightburn, punishes its women for having goals, portrays them as blithering idiots, and reduces empowerment to cliché. Even the film’s literal angel character is forced to utter a line so dumb it feels like satire: “Did you really think Eve came from Adam’s rib? Try the other way around.” As if the second proposition is any more coherent than the first. The movie belittles women, mocks their traumas, and couches it all in a slick, genre-savvy presentation designed to deflect criticism as easily as it draws it.
One female character, watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, remarks, “Homegirl’s about to get got, but, you know, in a fun way.” Um, no—I don’t know. And if this movie has a thesis, it might be something as tone-deaf as that. It expects us to ignore its cruelty because it sprinkles empowerment over its finale like glitter on trash. That dog won’t hunt, monsignor.
Now, if you wanted to play devil’s advocate, you might point out that Run Sweetheart Run was co-written and directed by a woman, Shana Feste. But then so was Triumph of the Will, and much more proficiently, mind you. Identity alone is not a shield against criticism. After all, the Wayans brothers are Black, and they still made Don’t Be a Menace—which, again according to Ebert, was “the first modern comedy to depend upon stereotypes of a racial or ethnic group for its existence.” The main, and perhaps only difference is that Run Sweetheart Run isn’t the least bit funny. On the contrary, it would be sad and pathetic if it weren’t so devious and underhanded.
And if you think the comparison is too far-fetched, consider this: remember the mailman who yelled “Message!” every time a ham-fisted moral awakening was reached in Don’t Be a Menace? Run Sweetheart Run has its own visual equivalent: the word “RUN!” appears onscreen in big, red letters. This is a running gag (but only in that it makes you want to puke), and it makes everyone involved in the movie look like complete fucking idiots—and, I’m afraid, intentionally so. It’s as if they were trying to prove feminism is dumb by making a dumb pseudo-feminist movie.
Works Cited
Ebert, Roger. “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” RogerEbert.com, 12 Jan. 1996, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dont-be-a-menace-to-south-central-while-drinking-your-juice-in-the-hood-1996.
→ Ebert’s review critiques Don’t Be a Menace for parodying serious films about inner-city life, noting how it undermines positive messages by reducing them to stereotypes. This serves as a parallel to how Run Sweetheart Run handles feminist and social justice themes.
Run Sweetheart Run. Directed by Shana Feste, performances by Ella Balinska, Pilou Asbæk, and Clark Gregg, Amazon Studios, 2022.
→ The primary text under critique. Marketed as a feminist horror-thriller, the film employs genre tropes and social commentary in a way that arguably undermines the very issues it purports to address.
Related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lee5IQPuj-M&pp=ygUSUnVuIFN3ZWV0aGVhcnQgUnVu
#BlackLivesMatter #MeToo #movieReview #runSweetheartRun
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