From the moment the words of Janet Jackson commence Hustlers with her intro to “Control,” it is unequivocal that, indeed, “This is a story about control. My control. Control of what I say, control of what I do. And this time I’m gonna do it my way.” The “way” in question is Ramona Vega’s (Jennifer Lopez), a veteran stripper who fittingly makes her entrance onto the stage to the tune of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” the first time we see her. This is the writer-director–Lorene Scafaria–who brought us Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, after all–the woman knows how to curate a movie soundtrack that perfectly tailors each scene. And each scene is very much a musical mirror of the year in which it takes place, starting in 2007, the year before everything seemed to come crashing down. But just before the financial crisis that rendered Wall Street (therefore the bulk of strip club clientele) impotent, it was a free-flowing money parade. In short, as it’s put in the movie, “2007 was the fuckin’ best.”
In the article for New York Magazine that the film is based on, “The Hustlers at Scores” by Jessica Pressler (a role Julia Stiles takes on as a journalist named Elizabeth), Roselyn “Rosie” Keo is the prototype for Constance Wu’s Dorothy a.k.a. Destiny. The “brains” of what would become a very successful operation in the wake of the monetary wasteland that most strip clubs offered post-2008 unless you were Russian and willing to give blow jobs for $300. Destiny was not willing, particularly after a man talked her into it and she later saw that the bills he had placed out for her were three twenties. It was something of the last straw. And a far cry from the feelgood moments of 2007 that included sitting in a brand new car with Ramona as Britney Spears’ “Gimme More” blasted. “Gimme More,” indeed, was the theme song of their enterprise. The very mantra that led them to becoming overly arrogant in assuming they would never get caught. Even when Ramona started getting sloppy in who she allowed into the fold, like Dawn (Madeline Brewer), an ex-con with a drug habit. But before Dawn, the friendship between Ramona and Dorothy was ironclad, as though each one was the sister the other never had. In the article, of course, this element isn’t exactly as pronounced, played up for the purposes of a cinematic message on female solidarity and all that it can achieve and transcend. Yet one can’t deny that there is an unusual bond of sisterhood in the strip club setup of diversion and distraction. As Pressler wrote, “While evolutionary theory and The Bachelor would suggest that a room full of women hoping to attract the attention of a few men would be cutthroat-competitive, it’s actually better for strippers to work together, because while most men might be able to keep their wits, and their wallets, around one scantily clad, sweet-smelling sylph, they tend to lose their grip around three or four.” One of the three or four (not involved in the movie version of the scam) includes, briefly, Diamond (Cardi B, all too eager to return to the stomping grounds that shaped her) and Liz (Lizzo), who plays a flute solo for a fellow girl of the pole’s new tit job to honor them. Well-played on finding a way for Lizzo to showcase her flautist genius.
For most men, “losing grip” is also aided with a healthy mixture of ketamine and MDMA to ensure the perfect amount of memory and control loss. For again, as Janet Jackson already established, “It’s all about control.” Who has it and who doesn’t. While men like to think they do at all times–and usually did–Ramona was tired of an industry that preyed on the “weakness” of women. Men asking them condescending things like, “What did Daddy do to you?” What did he do that would make you a stripper? Probably something not unlike whatever he did to make you another asshole of Wall Street. The point was, more than half of the thrill of stripping men of their cash and dignity came from the idea of taking back control. No wonder Pressler billed Samantha Barbash as an “ultrafeminine package [with] a mercenary streak worthy of Gordon Gekko.” The allusions to Wall Street as a grand representation for America at large and the ideals that it places value on are rampant throughout the film. From Usher walking into the club to scenes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians on TV (which premiered, if one can believe it, in “the fuckin’ best” year that was ‘07) to Destiny calling herself the CFO of her own fucking corporation as she walks into the joint to Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake” (signaling this is around the time of 2011), there is no shortage of signs inferring a celebrity-obsessed culture that trickles down to the hoi polloi of the U.S. Personified in droves in the hustle-oriented city of New York. Everyone wants the labels, the luxury. The things that come so easily to the male stockbrokers and investment bankers and architects and financial advisors that orbit the world of the strip club to find release from the soul-crushing requirements of their day-to-day. While still soul-crushing to pay for women’s attention, it goes back once more to what Janet said: at least they feel like, in this scenario, they’re more in control. Masters of someone else’s fate as opposed to having his own strings pulled by “The Man.” This is why the cycle of unhappiness can never die, especially in New York specifically and America in general. As it is stated in the article, “…[Rosie had] studied the dynamics of the club and found its long-term prospects unappealing. ‘The reason why Wall Street guys party so hard is because they’re not happy with their jobs,’ she explained to me. ‘You make money, but you’re not happy, so you go out and splurge on strip clubs and drinking and drugs, then the money depletes and you have to make it again. The dancers are the same way. You make money, but then you’re depressed, so you end up shopping or going on vacation, and the money depletes, so you go back.’” Always crawling back for more pain as opposed to actively trying to break the vicious cycle of malcontent. Because, like Rosie said, “American culture is a little fucked up. You know?” Even in terms of how this movie was supposed to be Constance Wu’s moment (especially after all that struggle over top billing), but she instead got Angelina Jolie’d (remember how she, too, also a fur-wearing force of nature, upstaged Winona Ryder’s role in Girl, Interrupted?).
It can also be a particularly fucked up culture when it comes to exacting revenge, which tends to be done illegally. For the “justice” system certainly isn’t going to punish rich white men for their crimes in any manner befitting. Ramona is the one to remind Dorothy of that when she starts to get a conscience about the forced transactions: “If we don’t do it, someone else will. Ungrateful little bitch.” It’s around this point in the narrative that everything falls apart. The schism between Ramona and Dorothy only further makes the latter feel like she’s lost control, rehashing a recurring nightmare to Elizabeth that is as follows: “I’m in the backseat of this moving car and nobody is driving and I have to, like, get to the front seat to try to stop it…but I can’t get a grip on it. I can’t, like, stop it.” This scene manifests poetically after Ramona snaps at her for her display of remorse. Of course, Roselyn herself doesn’t come across as all that apologetic so much as matter-of-fact about the whole thing (and even a bit incredulous at times about how many women seem to think her actions were justified despite being objectively wrong). Regardless of the illegality or moral gray area of the endeavor, it was still a business, and she had a head for figures (much like the men ogling her and her fellow strippers’ bodies). With her pragmatism and Samantha’s sociability and contacts, they were, as phrased in both the movie and article, “like Kobe and Shaq. Untouchable.”
As untouchable as any of the corporate sluts they were conning believed themselves to be. “Those Wall Street guys. You see what they did to this country? They stole from everybody. Hard-working people lost everything, and not one of these douchebags went to jail. The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.” These are the lines Ramona delivers with such conviction in justifying her hustle to Dorothy. Yet in actuality, Samantha “Foxx” was quick to debunk any Robin Hood “intent” behind her scheme, balking, “Robbing bankers because they robbed Wall Street or whatever—that never crossed my mind. What crossed my mind is I’m a single mom and I need to support my son.” But in any Hollywood treatment, relatable motive is key to making criminals sympathetic characters. Even when wearing fur (how did J. Lo not get more flak for that looQue from PETA?) and even if they are, at times, caricatures of the “materialistic bitch” men like to peg women as already. And they like it that way. It’s a convenient stereotype that gives them a reason to treat women like whores that can be bought off. Just like it’s a convenient stereotype to bill all men as pigs. In this way, the Wall Street bro/stripper transaction is the most honest kind between men and women. Both can look at one another with total judgment and it’s fine, because they’re both getting what they want out of it. “Doesn’t money make you horny?” Ramona asks seductively as she carries an armful of it off the stage and walks past Dorothy. Well, sure. But it’s that and the power that comes with it, the autonomy of being rich knows no bounds in the capitalist center of the world. To admit to being duped out of that power, even if only for a night, for men, would be unbearable. Which is why the scheme worked so well for so long, for, as the cops tell Elizabeth in their interview with her, “Men don’t wanna admit what happened to ‘em, ya know? Being victimized…by a woman.” His partner adds, “We got so spooked, none of us went back to the club anymore.” Because what does it all boil down to in the battle of the sexes: power. Whoever has the most, therefore has the most control. Of course, it’s rather ironically fitting that Cardi B herself was no stranger to drugging men in their hotels during her salad days either.
In addition to the movie touching on the beloved zeitgeist of the moment that is giving men their long overdue comeuppance (in fact, “Don’t Call Me Angel” could easily play in the credits), it also helps to have a female friendship at the core of a script in the present climate, even if “in real life, Keo and Foxx haven’t spoken since. There wasn’t a deep friendship to salvage or to mourn–they just worked well together on something which happened to be illegal. She doesn’t see any of the old crew: Not everyone has grown the way she has, Keo notes. ‘It’s like when you move out of a neighborhood that wasn’t the greatest, and it’s like, why would you go backwards?’” This sentiment is a far cry from how Ramona bills the relationship to Elizabeth, remarking, “We used to say, if only we had known each other back then. Maybe we could’ve looked out for one another. Maybe our lives would’ve been different.” A.k.a. maybe they wouldn’t have had the hustle to dupe dickheads out of their “hard”-earned money. Accordingly, Dorothy assesses the situation as a case of the feeling of out of controlness that stemmed from being abandoned by her parents, offering, “Maybe the reason we did what we did was because hurt people hurt people, you know?”
No one looks more hurt than Ramona, on May 12, 2013, getting arrested outside of an ATM and being told to let the money in her hand go. As Lorde’s “Royals” plays, the dreams that these women had made come true together visibly blow into the wind, well-timed to the lyrics, “And we’ll never be royals/It don’t run in our blood/That kind of lux just ain’t for us.” Alas, in the end, while Hustlers is, on the surface, an underdog triumph, all it really serves to iterate is that a girl born into low-income circumstances in the Bronx ends up working retail while Jennifer Lopez plays her–and could very well get an Oscar nomination for doing so (despite a filmography peppered with trash including one of the worst movies ever made, Gigli–lest you forget–or even her most recent in Second Act, which also waxes on the justifications behind conning rich people in New York). There’s a meta cruelty to that. But, as Ramona shrugs it off, “Everybody’s hustling. This city, this whole country, is a strip club. You got people tossin’ the money and people doing the dance.” Some dancers are more rewarded than others, and some fall right off the stage in their attempts to play the game.
