Everything you need to know about Hustlers you can learn from Keke Palmer. Based on the New York magazine story about strippers who drugged men and racked up their credit card bills in New York City, Hustlers could glamorize the women involved or it could villainize them.
One of the stars of the film, Palmer claims it does neither. “I liked that it was balanced because it either goes one of two ways,” she told the Wall Street Journal.
“Either it’s like super, super sad, sad, sad or overly glamorized. When I read this, I felt like it was a balance of both. You had those moments where you thought it might be glamorous and you had those moments like, ‘Damn, this s–t is tough.’”
This seems to be the way the film sees itself; the women are captivating, sure, but their lifestyle certainly isn’t all fun and games. Or is it?
The film begins with the pretty sides of things. Jennifer Lopez dominates the screen as the ringleader Ramona, based on the real-life Samantha Barbash, who was caught in 2014 for masterminding a plot to rob from the rich (Wall Street bros) and give to the poor (strippers).
Her show-stopping performance has already generated Oscar buzz. She’s charismatic and even motherly to her coworkers, but there’s a darker nature lurking beneath the surface.
When the journalist writing the story tells Destiny (played by Constance Wu and based on Roselyn Keo, Barbash’s partner in crime) that she knows she should feel sorry for the men who were scammed, but she doesn’t, Destiny responds that she does. After one wild night, one of the men calls crying, asking for the money back so he can pay his mortgage. Ramona takes the phone, and the women hang up.
Ramona, with her alluring demeanor and motherly tone, illustrated by her propensity to call everyone “baby,” makes for an incredibly sympathetic con, even after the scene where she chides Destiny for feeling guilty for the men. (In real life, Barbash says she’s much more Cardi B than J-Lo.)
As the film goes on, its protagonists indulge in the excesses of capitalism that they’ve purported to despise, buying each other Louboutin shoes and fur coats. They’re scamming those Wall Street businessmen whose theft from everyday Americans led to the financial crisis, so it’s justified — or so the argument goes. But Ramona and Destiny are not just in it to take care of their families. They’re in it for the glamour, too.
One of the successes of the film’s well-crafted soundtrack (ranging from Fiona Apple’s Criminal to Frédéric Chopin’s Étude, Op. 25, No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor) is the way it undermines the story the characters tell themselves.
Each woman is eventually caught by the police to the tune of Lorde’s Royals. The song’s lyrics decry the standard pop culture depiction of the sensational party life: “That kind of lux just ain’t for us/ We crave a different kind of buzz.”
The film seems to want to remind us, like Teen Vogue, that sex workers have careers like everyone else. Destiny makes a pointed comment about her work being totally fine before she falls into illegal activity. Lili Reinhart, who plays the stripper Annabelle, said that she thinks “deep inside, every woman feels the need to get on a pole at least once.”
This is the type of endorsement that prompted Common Sense Media to warn: “Chris Rock famously said that ‘a father has one job: to keep their daughter off the pole’; this movie could make that job a lot tougher.”
Critics have praised Hustlers as a film about female empowerment. Despite a vague awareness that the life it shows is not all it’s cracked up to be, the film seems intent on cashing in on that brand. Destiny’s voiceover explains that some of the men could get violent or aggressive, but the film never shows the men who go to the strip club doing anything more shocking than passing out flat on the floor. Neither do you see the women expressing any of the emotional damage described by actual strippers.
Wu described Hustlers as “female Goodfellas,” and in some ways, she’s right. Both films tell the story of a criminally involved group of people who kind of seem like they support each other until they don’t. Implausibly, Ramona hugs Destiny after learning she’s taken a plea deal with the police. In real life, their friendship didn’t end so cordially. They reportedly haven’t spoken since.
The film seems to want to remind us that breaking the law is bad, and doing so even for a seemingly good reason can ruin friendships and your own life. But it also wants very much to reassure us that the stripping part was never a problem. The stars of Hustlers live in a fantasy land where, barring a few sleazy guys, stripping is an empowering choice for women to make.
For her part, Wu is naively optimistic about what viewers want out of the film. “I’m going to say something real cheesy right now, but I do believe it’s true: People might say they’re looking for tits, but I think they’re looking for heart,” she said. “And they’re just saying tits because it’s a less vulnerable thing to need, to say. It’s cooler and more macho to objectify women.”
Through the film’s relationships, particularly the one between Lopez and Wu’s characters, Hustlers has a lot of heart. But this is the real world, and plenty of viewers will watch it just for the smut. The film will not remind them that the entire industry — not just this one criminal offshoot — is anything but empowering.
