Libba Bray’s novel BeautyQueens is a satire that plays out like an all-female Lord of the Rings, a
project that is now, contentiously, in development at Warner Brothers. The
author has written an essay for Entertainment Weekly about what
happened when Hollywood came calling for her project, and it’s definitely worth
the read if you’re interested in what people are calling, “Hollywood’s Woman
Problem.”
If you haven’t read the book, here’s my review:
When a plane full of teenage beauty contestants crashes on a
not-quite-deserted island, the young women find themselves fighting for
survival with all their pageant skills and determination.
It’s an old show business axiom that “Satire is what closes
Saturday night.” In Beauty Queens, Bray
lets loose on a ton of popular culture topics, from reality shows (Amish girls
and strippers share a house on Girls Gone Rumpspringa) to beauty
pageants to plucky businesswomen running for president. She hits her targets too, for the most part,
although the arch tone of the book’s prologue is a little annoying.
The result is not unlike the HBO movie about the Texas
cheerleader murdering mom, which was played tongue-in-cheek to good
effect. The problem is that this
estrogen-soaked version of Lost meets Lord of the Flies meets Survivor
is kind of one note and awfully silly and it’s hard to see what demographic
it plays to.
There’s also a part of us that sees the story more like one
of those parodies of contemporary movies, like Vampires Suck. Adding the satire to the comedy is not
necessarily a commercial choice. (Two
hilarious satires about politics, Election and Dick were both
disastrous at the box office ($15 million and $6 million returns, with no
international distribution), and this satire seems to have an even more narrow
focus.) Also, the shows that are the
targets here seem like somewhat dated topics—having been done to death in
Comedy Central and Mad TV and SNL and … many other places.
