"Gone Girl," a film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestselling thriller, captured the American audience by storm after its 2014 release. The story centers around Nick and Amy Dunne, a previously blissfully married couple whose marriage has deteriorated after years of miscommunications and mutual disappointment. Long story short, this leads Nick to have an affair with a much younger woman, and Amy to plot the ultimate act of revenge for that wrong.
Both the novel and the film leave you thinking critically about subjects such as marriage, relationships, and the media’s obsession with sensationalizing half-truths. However, what seemed to stick out for so many viewers was Amy Dunne’s “Cool Girl” monologue, where she laments the largely unattainable ideals of perfection that men have for their dream woman, expecting them to somehow remain thin and feminine while gorging on pizza and watching the football game with him and his friends.
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There’s an element of truth to the character’s words, most definitely, and I wasn’t surprised when I kept finding the quote repeated in countless articles. However, I got a little disturbed when I began seeing her character lauded, tied to the noble cause of feminism and equality. This is where I have to draw a hypothetical line in the sand.
Amy Dunne is not a feminist icon, and should not be credited as such. In fact, she’s just about every negative stereotype rolled into one. She’s a narcissist, a perpetual victim who uses every possible micro-offense as an excuse to fuel her anger. Her husband cheats on her, which I won’t deny is horrible and heartbreaking, but as punishment she fakes her own death. As the story progresses, we learn this is not the first time she’s destroyed a former lover. Once Nick discovers what she’s trying to do, he tracks down one of her old boyfriends, and learns that she falsely accused him of rape a decade before. As a result, he was made to spend years in jail, any career prospects he may have made were ruined, and for the rest of his life must register as a sex offender. And let’s not forget the time she brutally murdered Neil Patrick Harris after she changed her mind about Nick and decided to go back to him. She needed a cover story as to why she disappeared in the first place, so she killed him. Just like that.
While Amy is a fascinating character, played to perfection by Rosamund Pike, she is not a feminist but a sociopath. Yes, the men she got involved with were in many ways lousy and awful, but that doesn’t give her the right to murder or destroy their lives. If anything, she took advantage of benevolent sexism, using her idealized place in society as a woman to get her own way. This is not empowering.
