Teeth

(2007) ****

 One can view Teeth in the same light as 2004's Saved!– it is satirical and provides a sarcastic critique of socially conservative mid-Western life.

Landshark did a great job reviewing the film earlier this year. Now here's my two cents. :-)

The film's protagonist Dawn is a spokesperson for a teen Christian group preaching for sexual abstinence and discovers through very unpleasant means that she has teeth down there. This simple premise beautifully opens up a lot to discuss about adolescent girls' body issues, right-wing religious agendas to “own” a girl's virginity, and the encouraged ignorance towards learning about the precise anatomy of female genitals. The 2^nd wave feminist in me loved dissecting this movie!

Doesn't she look so wholesome?

First of all, Teeth inadvertently interconnects body issues/insecurities with a religious agenda to keep young people ignorant about their own bodies and exploring desires that are inherent in our biological instinct to survive by mating. In the book The Purity Myth, author Jessica Valenti discusses the extents to which adults – mostly men – have attempted to restrict the girls in their family from asking about how babies are made or why we look the way we do when we're nekkid. Now, I have a lot of respect for a parent or family figure who will go to any extent to protect a child (regardless of whether that family member is male OR female), but The Purity Myth strives to make the point that we are perhaps TOO obsessed with the virginity of girls – in fact, why are we not trying to preserve the virginity of young boys, too? Just something to think about.

An excerpt of Purity is here, with a description of “purity balls,” not quite like a quinceanera but endorsed by the church and, to many girls and their families, a big deal on the road to growing up.

There is a very touching moment in Teeth where Dawn becomes curious about her OWN body parts; upset that her school will show diagrams of boys' wee-wees but has a giant sticker to cover up a lady's va-jay-jay, she takes her textbook home and soaks the page in water to remove the sticker. Underneath lies the symbolic (and literal) truth of who she is and what she looks like, what every girl looks like. I know this all seems so mushy and sensitive for a horror movie, but I feel like Teeth handled this scene perfectly to make the point that we should be allowed the knowledge of how all our parts look, work, and function. Without it, we can become almost as lost as going towards the other extreme of sexual promiscuity.

Oh yes and there's lots of screaming teenaged boys.

Screaming Teenage Boy.

When I was a freshwoman in college I watched a video about how women are advertised in the media (yep, that's right – advertised): Killing Us Softly 3 provides a thorough look of a multi-generational problem of exploiting women not only as objects, but as superficial beings to be [mis]handled and, depending on what they wear, deserving of mistreatment. Its relevance to Teeth lies in the common theme of body image and insecurities perpetuated by ads that show the desired woman as passive.

[SPOILER-SPOILER]

As entertaining as Teeth was, I refrained from giving this 4.5 stars because although Dawn is left with a very empowering tool for her to use at her will, the way in which her vagina dentata are revealed are solely through rape scenes that would no doubt traumatize any female-bodied persyn that didn't possess this “gift” or the knowledge of how to wield it.

In the very end she shoots a sideways smile at the camera as if to say, “oh yeah, I got this” – but what has she really got? In order for her to teach anyone a “lesson,” to be a sexual warrior battling the masses of male misogynist pigs, she needs to get vulnerable enough and actually let them get it in before she cuts it off.

I know that to some this might be a delight to have and to feel like you are doing a great justice to the silenced voices who are taken advantage of every day, but when I see this I can't help but think of the long-term trust and psychological issues that would arise from voluntarily walking into a situation of sexual exploitation and putting yourself at risk for multiple types of assault.

Overall -- a great movie to watch on many different levels! I watched this one with JSP and we were talking about this shit for about an hour afterward. There's much to pick apart, if that's what you want. If you want to be entertained, you most assuredly will be.