Bearing it All: Subverting the Patriarchy in "Cocaine Bear"
A (slightly) tongue-in-cheek feminist analysis of the horror-comedy from Elizabeth Banks.
When I first heard about the plot of the film Cocaine Bear, I at first refused to believe it. Surely, I thought, it wasn’t possible for an entire movie to be focused on a bear that eats cocaine and goes on a killing spree. Imagine my surprise, then, when that’s exactly what happens in the film, which was produced and directed by none other than Elizabeth Banks. Though based, very loosely, on a true story, it’s not long before the movie gives into its own ridiculous (and thoroughly entertaining) premise.
The film opens with a drug smuggler dropping bundles of cocaine, only to strike his head and fall to his death. The scattered packages are picked up both by a pair of middle schoolers and by the bear which, as one would expect, soon becomes hyper-aggressive and violence. Meanwhile, Kerri Russell’s Sari sets out to rescue her daughter, while a pair of criminals, Eddie and Daveed (Alden Ehrenreich and O'Shea Jackson Jr.) are dispatched by Eddie’s father, Syd (the late Ray Liotta) to procure the missing cocaine. Chaos and bloodshed and bear mauling ensues.
At first glance, it’s the type of film that’s very easy to dismiss out of hand as just another piece of schlock and, to be sure, there are some very schlocky moments, instances where bits of blood and gore and body parts go flying every which way. However, beneath all of the slapstick horror comedy there is a surprising examination of, and subversion of, the patriarchy and its perpetrators.
To begin with there is the bear itself. For almost the entire film it is the source of terror and horror. As it grows more and more addicted to the delicious white powder, it also becomes more murderous, and it manages to slaughter a pair of paramedics, a hiker, and park ranger (played with scene-stealing verve by beloved character actress Margo Martindale). In that sense, the creature is the epitome of the unknowable (which, in the cinematic imagination, is almost always coded as feminine). This gendered association is made explicit when it is revealed, late in the film’s third act, that the bear is in fact female with two cubs who are, like their mother, addicted to cocaine.
During the film’s climax, Liotta’s Syd, having grown frustrated with his underlings’ inability to procure the cocaine, sets out to do it himself, though not without first insulting his son and his accomplice, referring to them both as pussies. It’s easy to see how he becomes this film’s stern, unloving father, willing to ruthlessly emasculate even his own son in an attempt to shore up his own faltering sense of masculine power (represented here by his control over the cocaine). Syd soon discovers, however, that turnabout is fair play. Not only does Sari manage to seize control of his gun (read: the phallus) from him, he is also disemboweled by the very mother bear he has sought to destroy with the weapon of his patriarchal authority. The Father is literally dismembered by the unruly mother(s).
Of course, it’s not as if his accomplices are particularly effective at their jobs, either. His son Eddie seems to have always struggled under his father’s oppressive shadow, never quite able to measure up to his lofty expectations nor able to exercise the sort of ruthless disregard for life that has clearly motivated and characterized his progenitor’s rise to power. It’s thus all the more significant that Sari not only inspires him to rebel against the father who has so relentlessly emasculated him) but also helps to care for him and an injured Daveed. In the world that Cocaine Bear creates, it is the mother (or Mother) who comes to bear the power of the phallus, even as she lays it down in favor of the principles of nurturing and care.
The men of Cocaine Bear, then, are always nefarious, bumbling, ineffectual (or some combination of the three). Even Bob, the detective who is the agent of the law (or, if you’re of a psychoanalytic frame of mind, “The Law”) is as ineffectual as he is well-meaning. Though he clearly intends to bring the drug smugglers to justice, he spends most of his time being an amiable bungler; arguably his only effective moment is when he shoots Daveed, but even here he just manages to blow off his fingers rather than seriously injuring him. In the end, he becomes just another body, after he succumbs to a gunshot wound delivered by Syd.
The brilliance of Cocaine Bear’s takedown of the patriarchy lies in its ability to hide its critique beneath a transparently ridiculous premise. To be honest, I was actually very surprised to find so many hidden layers and engagements with the fraught politics of gender. In fact, it wasn’t until I was talking with my friend after the film was over that it occurred to me just how unruly and subversive it truly is. Like the bear herself, it refuses to obey any of the rules, freely blending comedy and horror. And if, as some critics seem to believe, these elements sometimes sit uneasily next to one another, I would argue that that is just another iteration of Cocaine Bear’s transgressiveness.
It’s also revealing that, in the end, the Cocaine Bear has emerged relatively unscathed from her encounter with the world of humanity. After all, she’s endured quite a lot–including receiving a very nasty gunshot wound from Syd that sends her tumbling over a cliff–but, like the monstrous repressed, she always manages to come back again. In a more conservative and restrained film than Cocaine Bear she would probably have been dispatched, her cubs taken away and placed into protective custody. This film, however, allows her to remain alive, roaring triumphantly from atop her mountain home, defying the patriarchal human world to try to defeat her. When, in the film’s final frames, the three bears turn their attention to yet another hapless hiker trying to capture them within the confines of the film frame, it’s a potent reminder that there are some powerful, gendered energies that are far too powerful to ever be tamed.
Long live Cocaine Bear!