Gone Girl Feminist Critique

     The film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is as provocative as controversial.  The movie does not conform to the normal gender roles portrayed in modern works of culture, and defines characters in a way that makes the main character a hero and a villain.

     The story of Gone Girl puts a feminist psychopath against a misogynist jerk in a dysfunctional marriage. The wife, Amy, sets up her philandering husband, Nick, for her murder. the two characters vie for the reader's sympathy, lying and manipulating one another in order to survive. Most viewers would see Amy as the "worse" spouse: she's smarter, stronger and willing to commit murder. One one hand, some argue that a conniving character like Amy only gives women a bad name, but on the other, viewers might see Amy as an empowering character because of how she takes control of her life. Ultimately Flynn and the director portrayed a female lead with a complex and intricate persona that challenges stereotypical female characters in modern film and culture. As Amy is depicted as a powerful woman who does not let her husband or society control her, Nick is the opposite of typical portrayals of men. Nick is not a manly man who runs his household or is in control of his life. Nick is oblivious to most of his wife’s life, he isn’t a hard worker who provides for his family either. Gone Girl challenges gender roles all around; the film portrays a woman as a leader and a rebel against society and patriarchal wedlock itself, meanwhile, the man is useless, lazy, individual who is clueless about his surroundings.

    As Amy is making her getaway, she goes on a rant about women who try to become the "Cool Girl" in order to please men. This monologue showed how her life did not revolve around a man, and she was an independent person who had her own thoughts and agenda.

According to Amy, the Cool Girl is a woman who pretends to like what men like in order to attract attention. She's the type of girl who unabashedly loves sex and drinking beer and eating and is always ready to forgive her husband's foibles. Amy almost points out to the audience how bad it is for women to fall into a roll of servitude. Amy also looks down upon some women who assume traditional female rolls as mothers and wives, again calling out how social standards and expectations hold women down.