COMM 380: Media Criticism
A Tale as Old as Time: A Critical/Cultural Analysis of The Florida Project
by Bailey N. Walker, '21
Major: Communication, Public Relations
The Florida Project is not a story burdened by an abundance of privileges. It is a story of poverty, housing insecurity, and difficult choices made under systems of overlapping oppression. However, as it is a tale that is told in a world where such overlapping oppressions exist, it cannot help but exhibit the privileges afforded to the storyteller by the world.
When consuming this and similar media it is crucial to examine both the creator and the systems in which the media exist. The Florida Project is an exciting and under-recognized depiction of poverty, womanhood, and childhood in the Sunshine State, but under scrutiny, its admirable qualities are less abundant than it may seem at first glance. Examination of the construction of The Florida Project through critical/cultural analysis reveals lackluster female representation throughout the film.
The Florida Project follows young mother Halley and her six-year-old daughter Moonee through a muggy Florida summer. The pair lives in a rented room in a grimy, candy-purple motel named the Magic Castle managed by a beleaguered yet kindly Bobby. Moonee and her friends are the rulers of their strip mall kingdom, exploring and adventuring with electric, bratty, charming childhood zeal. Simultaneously, Halley struggles to pay the weekly rent and provide food for Moonee. To make ends meet she sells perfume in resort parking lots and eventually turns to sex work. The pair endures loss, humiliation, and trauma against the backdrop of a rarely seen but heavily felt Disney World. The film culminates in an investigation of Halley by the Florida Department of Children and Families, which arrives to take Moonee into foster care. (Baker, 2017).
The film is shot beautifully, in a saturated fairytale color palette and smooth, well-timed clips. The specter of an inaccessible Disney World looms large over the film, reinforcing the themes of poverty and childhood optimism. Director Sean Baker is no stranger to such “stylistically savvy” (Da Costa, 2017) films depicting marginalized communities (Fleming, 2018).
A deeper understanding of The Florida Project can be gained through the application of critical/cultural theory. Hanson describes this theory, writing “the critical/cultural approach takes a more qualitative examination of the social structure in which communication takes place. It considers how meaning is created within society, who controls the media systems, and the roles the media play in our lives” (Hanson, 2017, p. 32). The critical/cultural approach asks the viewer to consider systemic issues when examining a piece of media, like how the race, class, and gender of a filmmaker can influence the construction of the content they produce. This context is crucial to understanding the values and worldview espoused in a piece of art, and how they may in turn influence viewers. As such, a critical examination of the construct of the film and its impacts is necessary even for important, beautiful films like The Florida Project.
Sean Baker builds the story of these young women from the perspective of Moonee, and the film’s construction reflects her childish outlook. The colorful settings are particularly evocative of childhood wonder and are often in sharp contrast to the violent and distinctly adult scenes that play out within them. By using Moonee as the audience’s guide, Baker reinforces this dichotomy between the sweetness of childhood and the pains of impoverished adulthood. In a particularly striking scene, Moonee takes photos of her mother in a string bikini, which Halley later uses for an online sex work profile. Moonee, of course, is ignorant of this and delights in dressing up in swimsuits and taking selfies with her mother. The audience, watching this scene play out within the fairytale- purple Magic Castle, is fully aware of the weight of this childhood ignorance.
From first glance, The Florida Project is a heartfelt rendering of struggling women framed within the relatable resilience and joy of childhood. The construction of this film is aesthetically pleasing and deeply poignant. Baker’s choice to tell the tale through a child’s eyes is heart wrenching and bittersweet and forces audiences to grapple with the truths Moonee does not yet know. Furthermore, it is female-led and centers around female journeys. This is, of course, remarkable: too few films, especially those directed by men, focus solely on women and their tales. It accomplishes this without fetishizing its leads and does not dwell on gratuitous sexual trauma like so many other films of female struggle (Wilson, 2017). For this, The Florida Project deserves praise. However, while it doesn’t fall into these most obvious sexist traps, The Florida Project fails to bring its female characters into full, humanitarian relief.
The film is largely comprised of scenes of women in pain, with little time devoted to their inner lives. “Baker isn’t a poor child, a black trans woman, or a uptalking porn actress. He’s a young, college-educated white male film director, and likely wary of over-identifying with his subjects or assuming too much about them. But rather than creating space for them to flourish, the level of the distance he imposes between his directorial perspective and his characters’ psychology leaves them with a kind of emptiness,” (Da Costa, 2017). The hopes, goals, or dreams of these women are left unexamined, and without emotional struggle towards something their pain rings hollow.
This is illustrated in a scene where Halley violently assaults her former close friend Ashley for rudely confronting Halley about her sex work. Halley punches Ashley multiple times in the head with startling force in a display of unexpected violence, leaving Ashley’s face bloodied and severely swollen. (Baker, 2017). The scene is jarring not only because of the physical altercation, which Baker frames as taking place in front of a small child but because Halley’s reaction is outsized and out of character. Prior to this, Halley’s responses to provocation are shown to be mostly verbal, or largely symbolic, like slapping her soiled menstrual pad on a window. (Baker, 2017). The sudden burst of violence reads as a catfight instigated by the need for an exciting, emotionally wrenching scene rather than the characters’ goals or emotional arc.
Da Costa elaborates on this idea, writing “The audience is invited to believe that their lives are devoid of thoughts and motivations beyond hustle and pleasure, and so the movie ends up feeling like a millennial Instagram feed: cute, edgy, explosive, pithy, but shallow” (Da Costa, 2017). Without earnest examination of these characters as complex people, their pain is without point. It is here that Baker’s use of a child’s point of view to construct The Florida Project fails. Showing these complex, layered struggles of poverty and
womanhood through a child’s eyes inadvertently strips the female characters of depth. The film’s pastel glaze of childhood wonder does an admirable job of distracting the audience from the suffering of the female leads. A critical/cultural theory would ask that this message of hollow female struggle be examined for its potential to influence future media. (Hanson, 2017, p. 32).
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is indeed laudable in many ways. However, critics may have been too hasty in labeling it “revelatory” (Scott, 2017). In analyzing the film through critical/cultural theory, it becomes clear that Baker’s use of childhood perspective has unintended consequences for the portrayal of women. A harsh interpretation of this film would say that this approach simply repackages old female pain in a new coat of purple paint. This is not to say that Sean Baker should not have told this story or tell others like it in the future.
The Florida Project is a rare example of a film that appreciates a child’s perspective and showcases the honest resilience of a child’s outlook. However critical/cultural theory requires us to be aware of the privileges held by those “who control the media systems” (Hanson, 2017, p. 32), and Baker’s construction of this world requires more thoughtfulness with regard to women. This approach will give Baker’s future films happy endings.
References
Da Costa, C. (2017, September/October). Review: The Florida Project. Retrieved from
https://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-the-florida-project/
Fleming, M., Jr. (2018, January 02). 'Florida Project's Sean Baker Checks The Little Rascals Into Transient Motels Near Magic Kingdom: Q&A. Retrieved from https://deadline.com/2018/01/the-florida-project-sean-baker-willem-dafoe-