We Should All Be 'Bottoms'
By Mackenzie Turner
The highly anticipated 2023 release, Bottoms, pulls no punches. You are either along for the ride or kicked off. Bottoms is a certified cult classic, claiming its stake in the hall of fame of comedy movies. 28-year-old queer Canadian Emma Seligman writes and directs this film. Seligman co-wrote the screenplay with lead actor, Rachel Sennott, who also starred in Seligman's debut feature, Shiva Baby. Sennott plays the strong-willed, sarcastic PJ alongside Ayo Edebiri, who co-stars as the awkward, quirky Josie. Edebiri's talent shines through in this film just as it does in her other recent projects, Abbott Elementary, and The Bear. This dynamic trio works together flawlessly to create a magnetic film that you can't look away from for its 91-minute runtime. Bottoms is a raunchy tongue-in-cheek queer teen comedy that satirizes classic tropes and archetypes.
The film is wholly original while still managing to pay homage to the greats of the genre. Bottoms effectively captures the gay experience where other contemporary queer films fail. While other queer films of late, such as Greg Berlanti's 2018 film, Love, Simon, are criticized for presenting gay life as palatable for straight audiences and for centering coming-out narratives, Bottoms refuses to tone down its humor to have mainstream appeal. While stories about queer struggle and pain are important to tell, one type of narrative should not dominate queer filmmaking. Rather than simply being a film about gay people, Bottoms is a film made for gay people, centering the queer spectator.
Bottoms follows two high-school best friends, PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), as they try to win the affection of cheerleaders Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). Other than the fact that Brittany and Isabel are seemingly straight and that Isabel is dating the star quarterback, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), there is just one problem – PJ and Josie are losers. They are at the bottom of the social ladder. Fortunately, the perfect opportunity arises when PJ and Josie accidentally bump into Jeff with a car, and he falls to the ground feigning an injury. When they go back to school, rumors spread that Josie and PJ went to juvie over the summer. The following day, they are sent to the principal's office, where they are threatened with expulsion. To avoid this fate, Josie and PJ make up a lie that they were practicing for their "feminist self-defense club." Surprisingly, this lie works, and the two decide that creating a self-defense club, under the guise of promoting female empowerment, is the perfect way to get the attention of Isabel and Britanny. Equipped with their new street cred, they succeed in getting Isabel and Brittany to join the club. However, just as PJ and Josie begin to get close to their crushes, their lies threaten to catch up with them.
Seligman reinvents the teen comedy through a female-focused, queer lens. This film subverts classics such as American Pie and Superbad which focus on the male sexual experience. In doing this, Seligman rejects the dominant mode of filmmaking and establishes an oppositional gaze. She establishes a gaze that humanizes queer women rather than objectifying or sexualizing them, thereby defying the "male gaze." The male gaze, a term coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey, has long determined what sex and intimacy look like on screen. This film offers a different way of looking. In Bottoms, the female characters are not sexual objects for a cisgender, straight male protagonist and viewer to enjoy. Rather, they are complex, flawed human beings. The film refuses to present a respectable or palatable version of queerness and womanhood. The script pushes boundaries with what is acceptable with jokes that are incredibly offensive. Nothing about this film is politically correct.
While women are socialized to be kind and polite, this film is incredibly refreshing in that its female characters are allowed to be conniving and mean spirited. Not only that, but also extremely violent. In mainstream films, women are not typically permitted to show the kind of rage and violence that Bottoms depicts. The fight scenes are surprisingly graphic, full of punches, bloody noses, and black eyes. After the initial shock wears off, however, the girls feel a sense of euphoria and become proud of their battle scars. They become empowered by their strength. Bottoms offers a fresh perspective on femininity in cinema, not bound by what has come before it but rather an indication of what is to come.
