Breaking the Illusion: Exploring Gender Dynamics in Don't Worry Darling

Following her debut Booksmart, Olivia Wilde released her second feature film Don't Worry Darling in 2022, taking a drastic turn from teen comedy to suspense thriller. Considering that it only had a budget of $20 million, the movie has achieved great success by grossing over $87 million worldwide. However, although audiences loved it, the reviews it received were not as favorable. With a low 38% rating in its Fresh status on Rotten Tomatoes, professional film critics are obviously not satisfied with the film. Rumors of discord among the director and actors during the film's release shifted the focus of discussions away from the film’s content. Now that things have settled down, it is important to seriously analyze the successes and failures of Don't Worry Darling. Wilde proved herself as an excellent genre film director through this movie and expressed her authorial vision clearly. Her mistakes are an imperfect answer to a difficult question and the question is: how can female creators make their works known to a wider audience in the film industry that is still primarily dominated by men?

Don't Worry Darling tells the story of a blissful couple, Alice (played by Florence Pugh) and her husband Jack (played by Harry Styles), who live in a mid-century modern community and share close interactions with their neighbors. Similar to Jack, the men in this community work for the mysterious Victory Project under the leadership of Frank (played by Chris Pine), while women are housewives who dress themselves up well. Every day after sending their husbands off to work, they will get on with the household chores and prepare dinner and anything else that their men need before they return home. The head of the housewives is Frank’s wife, Shelley (played by Gemma Chan). She teaches the women dancing and organizes welcome parties for families which newly joined the community.

In a nutshell, this community that is located in the desert is beautiful, quiet, and well-organized. However, Alice is constantly put at unease due to the strange and self-harming behavior of her neighbor, Margaret (played by KiKi Layne). After discovering a crashed plane, hollow eggs, and the odd behaviors of residents within the community, all Alice, who feels trapped in a nightmare, wants to do is to escape this seemingly pleasant community with Jack. One day, she finally realizes that everything about the Victory Project is fake. In reality, Alice, who is a doctor, is confined in her home by Jack. While in a coma, her brain is forcibly connected to the illusory world created by Frank. Alice wants to escape this world and wake up from her coma.

Don't Worry Darling is a story about a woman who sees through the lies and acts of oppression in her life and decides to leave her family. This tale has been retold many times throughout the women's liberation movement. Similar stories can be found in Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House, Ridley Scott's film Thelma & Louise, and Elena Ferrante's novel My Brilliant Friend. Nora, Thelma, Louise, and Lila all choose to run away from their families to fight back against the overt or discrete acts of oppression and misery they experience in their daily lives. However, there are also stories that adopt a different perspective, such as the 1975 and 2004 versions of The Stepford Wives, which show how independent women are transformed into obedient and submissive wives by their husbands. One of the most well-known examples of such a story is Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Don't Worry Darling is valuable because it attempts to reveal the true meaning of a patriarchal family for women through a fable. This is especially important in today's society where patriarchy is becoming more subtle and sophisticated, making it harder to recognize how it transforms and tames women.

Wilde once stated that Frank is based on Jordan Peterson, a conservative writer known for stirring up controversy. She refers to Peterson as a "pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community." The term "incel" stands for "involuntary celibate." Wilde believes that incels are mainly white men who are basically disenfranchised and think they deserve sex from women. According to her, incels always believe that society has treated them unfairly, that feminism is unnatural, and that it needs to be put back in the proper place. The Victory Project in the film is designed specifically for this group to create a fantasy world that caters to their deepest desires.

In the fictional universe of the Victory Project, men who were previously unemployed like Jack become successful people dressed in suits and ties. Women, on the other hand, are portrayed as classic American middle-class housewives from the 1950s. Men dominate this world and control its development. They are unassailably the center of this universe. Meanwhile, women exist to serve and revolve around them, without having any other desires of their own. Don't Worry Darling spends a lot of time showcasing the highly realistic fictional world of the Victory Project and its audiences are captivated by it. However, this can lead to them overlooking an important question: why must women exist in the world that men fantasize about and be portrayed as beautiful and submissive housewives?

In the movie, miserable Alice asks Jack what happened. Instead of explaining, Jack simply responds, "I love you." He is probably too in love with her. But the moment he ties her to the bed and turns her into a woman who kisses her husband goodbye in the morning while in his button-down shirt, the love between them has vanished. Jack’s actions do not reflect love. He forces Alice to live in a fantasy world where she is only allowed to be a wife and physically and mentally enslaves her in the name of love. Jack claims that he has given Alice a good life and works hard every day to maintain such a life. The reason why he is willing to suffer in order to earn money and ensure he can enter the world of Victory Project is the same as the purpose of women’s existence in that world. Be it in the real world that Jack and Alice actually live in, or the fantasy world they think they exist in, men are expected to succeed and a necessary trait of a successful man is to have a beautiful woman.

In Don't Worry Darling, it is unclear why Jack decides to bring Alice into the fantasy world. My suspicion is that Alice asked for a break-up, which caused Jack's already dull life to deviate further from the standards of a "successful man". What is terrifying about Jack's belief in these standards is that he is guiltlessly willing to enslave the woman he once loved to achieve them. As for the women who have been enslaved, if they cannot see through the lies in their lives, they will lose their freedom and be trapped in a cage. In the end, Alice chooses to kill Jack and leave the illusory world. She regains her freedom, but the movie presents me with deeper questions: What kind of world do I live in? Am I truly free?

By telling Alice's story, Wilde obviously thinks that people in the real world will soon face similar struggles as hers or in fact, are already stuck in them. The film's use of a dual world and depiction of Alice's difficulties demonstrate Wilde's growth and ambitions as a director. She aims to uncover and reform the deeply ingrained patriarchal system in today's Hollywood. Living in such a world, awakened women have no choice but to fight more resolutely against the exploitation that occurs under this system, just like Alice.

I also acknowledge the sacrifices made by female creators to express themselves through this film. Don't Worry Darling is set in a virtual game-like world that is male-centric, similar to Greta Gerwig's Barbie which satirizes the patriarchy in the fictional Barbie world. This approach to handling the core idea that they hope to convey is like covering a valuable gemstone with many layers of foam wrap. When it gets presented to the viewers, it will reach a wider audience but the layers of narratives obscure the luminous gemstone, undermining the sharpness and critical analyses of their works. I understand why female creators choose to use such narrative strategies in today's world. I also hope that the success of Barbie, which is the first global box office movie directed by a female to break the US$1 billion mark, can inspire all female creators to be bolder and more direct in expressing their thoughts through films. Barbie’s success sends an important message: the popularity of movies directed by women is on the rise.