>Suicide Squad might not have come under so much fire from critics over its treatment of women if it had allowed even one of them to walk away with a greater measure of dignity.
>David Ayer’s superhero team-up revels in its abuse of women and racial stereotypes.
>But there’s one quick scene that stands out as the most bizarre and uncomfortable: Batman kissing Harley Quinn… while she’s unconscious.
>Granted, his punch is to subdue her, because she’s a villain — even though we only see vague evidence of this onscreen.
>Smith must’ve managed to hold back the tears of outrage while filming Suicide Squad, in which his character, an antihero assassin who kills for money and loves it, describes the mother of his child as a whore and advises a teammate to control his girlfriend by smacking her on the ass.
>In another scene, a member of the squad is introduced as he hops out of an SUV and sends his fist flying into the face of a female guard. “She had a mouth on her,” quips Slipknot, that’s clearly meant to draw laughs from the audience.
>But they’re villains! the refrain goes. They’re supposed to be jerks! It’s OK if they turn women into literal punch lines! Lighten up!
>But at a certain point in watching Suicide Squad, something becomes painfully obvious: It really seems to hate its women. And when it’s not busy hating those women, it’s casually exploiting other worrisome racial stereotypes.
>Treated as not much more than a black stereotype for most of the film, he finally earned my sympathy when he was forced to deliver the three most cringe-worthy letters: “BET" (Black Entertainment Television), the one television channel Killer Croc demands to be able to watch in his prison cell.
>It sends an unfortunate message to younger audiences: Strong women are mostly either crazy, evil, or both. When the same conditions do not apply to the men of Suicide Squad who are not objectified or abused or used as props for the benefit of their female peers, what’s Ayer’s excuse?
