When Amanda Waller describes the assets that Harley Quinn will provide to her military-controlled team of baddies, she says, "She's crazier than him [the Joker]... and more fearless." These traits seem abstract when you line them up with the contributions that other Suicide Squad members bring to the table: deadly marksman skills. Pyrokinetic powers. Tricked-out boomerangs. And the list goes on. From the beginning of the movie, I'm asking myself why Harley needs to be there.
My conclusion? She's there to complicate things. Yes, there is some sexism, some sexy Hollywood appeal contributing to her prominence in the movie. But I'm saying that there is more.
*Note: I'm not considering the character Harley Quinn outside of this film. I'm just considering what happened in the movie, because this Harley Quinn isn't meant to be the same as the first one introduced on TV in the '90s, and there have been many evolutions of the character in comic books since then.
Imagine the movie without her. There is already enough grunge-y, brutish passion in this movie's fighting scenes and dark aesthetics. But without Harley Quinn, the emotional family-centered backstories of Deadshot and El Diablo would be the only instances of complex, warm passion. Oh, and even those stories might not get told, because Harley Quinn's incessant bubbly commentary essentially starts every conversation. But, unlike Deadshot's and El Diablo's, Harley Quinn's backstory includes no family. It's about abuse, codependency, and distinctly disturbing love.
When the movie ends, I'm done thinking about the ramifications of Deadshot's and El Diablo's losses. But I still feel the weight of what has happened to Harley. It's still happening to her, as the movie ends with the Joker "rescuing" her. And it feels relevant, because Hollywood makes any tale of abuse that surfaces into something simple, something tragic but black-and-white. I'm not saying that viewers can't 100 percent condemn the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. I certainly condemn it, because its foundation was abusive. But I recognize that this stuff is real. You can be "in love" with your abuser. Love is not always a positive thing for individuals involved. And, as the director David Ayer said, “I’ve known strong, powerful women who at the same time could be beholden to really bad situations and make bad decisions. We all know these people, whether they’re our sisters, our cousins, our friends, whatever." This is true for people of any gender. So we're supposed to enjoy Harley Quinn; we're supposed to cheer for her. That doesn't mean we expect her to make the right decisions. But we expect her to be complex.
And she does that well. To defeat Enchantress, Harley disguises her approach as an act of submission... and then quickly decimates the villain in the name of protecting her friends. Seeing Harley do this initially made me think, "Yes! She's learned from her relationship with the Joker and now she will never be submissive again." But... that wouldn't be very complex, would it?
Finally, I'll say that her attributed "powers" of fearlessness and craziness surpass what my initial reaction absorbed. She isn't just crazy in the sense that she is mentally ill (note: Don't call people with a mental illness "crazy"; it's rude and damaging!). There is more to it here. When Headshot says something and includes the word "crazy," she immediately starts paying attention as though he were speaking to her. She adapted to her new life by embracing craziness. And she did so by choice. In one scene, where she imagines a quiet life married to the Joker, we see that she naturally wishes to be "normal," like the setting on the dryer. However, she combats that wish by declaring that "It isn't real." There's no way she can go back, and so she recklessly, loudly, charmingly abandons everything normal, choosing to love herself even though she can only do so in a twisted way. Because she is so audible in her "crazy" talk, she brings the group together and we see each member of Suicide Squad as alienated rather than evil. She complicates the judgment applied to the squad's bad deeds. Not because she is insane and doesn't know what she's done... but because she can be insane and know exactly what she's doing a lot of the time.
I'm not saying that the new Suicide Squad's Harley Quinn was a perfect representation for abused people or mentally ill people. She wasn't a very relatable or accurate representation for either of those groups. But she did make me think about relevant topics in a different way. She was more than a hot woman giving the movie sex appeal. She was complex.
