Culture is political, it is said in dozens of interviews every month. Talking about hyper-political consciousness both when creating and consuming fiction possibly says more about the times in which we live, about the way in which the public perceives the work, than about a paradigm shift in the essence of the artistic work. What cannot be overlooked is that, in reaction to a context of tension where ideals have been placed in the sterile trenches of social networks, subtlety often blows up.
There are authors so obsessed with positioning themselves, with presenting themselves as champions of a cause, with the idea of ??creating a necessary piece, that they forget about history. Because it is one thing to take into account what you want to tell, what topic you want to address, and another for this topic to be present so visibly in each frame that it is almost like a watermark.
Girls’ Night Out (Disney) is the perfect example. It is so direct, so obvious and so complacent that it cannot even do a favor to its cause, the feminist one, for being incapable of constructing a story with the capacity to last beyond the three hours that the viewing lasts.
It is a work that, more than denouncing or outraged with its plots related to sexual violence and the patriarchal nature of the judicial system, seems designed to please an already convinced viewer. There is no challenge, there are no nuances, there is hardly any character dynamic that surpasses a very simple conceptual scheme.
The plot, by the way, revolves around four friends who spend a weekend at one of their homes when another childhood friend shows up who turns out to have three men kidnapped in a nearby cabin. They are the three rapists of a teenager who, during some town festivities, was sexually assaulted and, for reasons that are not completely clarified, the three culprits ended up on the street, being able to continue drinking their beers and watching soccer games in the bar.
María León has a charisma and toughness that elevates the material at her disposal as the vengeful woman who seeks justice on her own, and she makes a good tandem with the brilliance of Veki Velilla, who plays the same character in her youth. The pity is that both the characters and the main plot move through known and predictable terrain.
It neither dares to delve into black comedy, nor does it plan thriller elements, nor does it have an interesting approach to violence (or its absence), resulting in a harmless series despite how powerful its theme is a priori. It’s as if I trust Máxime Rodríguez’s music as the only way to have a personality and, unfortunately, her compositions cannot be the only resource.
It is possible that, from this moment on, Girls’ Night will enter lists of feminist series or series about sexual violence, but it will be there because of the emphasis of the message and not on its own merits. The hell of mediocrity is full of series with good intentions.
