"Joy Ride" and the Pleasures of the Unruly Woman
The new raunch comedy is a timely reminder of the radical potential of unruly femininity.
Maybe it’s because I’m gay, but I’ve always loved unruly women.1 Whether it’s the funny foursomes of The Golden Girls and Designing Women, the biting acerbity of Murphy Brown, or the many big-screen adventures of one Melissa McCarthy, these are the women whose unruliness–their refusal to abide by the codes and restrictions that so often dictate and circumscribe women’s behavior–is the key to their appeal. I therefore knew going into Joy Ride that I was going to love it, because this is the kind of comedy that seems to call to me. There is something liberating about watching women behave badly and against all of the expectations in which society imprisons them, and this film offers such behavior in spades.
The unruliness is on display from the very first scene, in which we meet Aubrey and Lolo. The former is the adopted daughter of a White couple, while the latter is the daughter of two Chinese Americans who move to an all-White neighborhood. As they grow older, Audrey (Ashley Park) becomes a successful and high-power lawyer, while Lolo (Sherry Cola) becomes a struggling artist. When Audrey is sent to China to close a business deal, Lolo tags along, as does her nonbinary cousin, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and, once there, they also meet up with Audrey’s college friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu), who is now a very successful actress. Of course, it isn’t long before things start to go awry. While attempting to fete the powerful businessman Audrey gets ensnared in Lolo’s plot to help her discover her birth mother, and the four set off on a journey across China.
All four of the characters, in one way or another, are driven by desire, and the film makes a point of showing us that these desires, far from being something to be ashamed of, are instead worthy of validation and fulfillment. Like all unruly characters, the foursome isn’t afraid of sex and, indeed, they actively seek it out. In one of the film’s most hilarious moments, Lolo, Audrey, and Kat engage in sexy shenanigans with several of the members of a traveling basketball team. The only problem is that, in their excitement, they manage to inflict no small amount of physical harm on their partners; in this case, female desire has literally broken out of its bounds and wreaked havoc.
It’s hilariously staged, of course–Audrey takes a call from her boss, Lolo makes a point of making all sorts of ridiculous sex sounds, and Kat engages in some very lewd behavior with a vibrator and a basketball–and this is the point. Joy Ride eschews the sensual in favor of the sublimely ridiculous, and therein lies its radical power. These three women pursue their own pleasure; men are just the accessory. (Meanwhile Deadeye engages in a dance-off with another team member, leading to similar physical damage).
Time and again throughout the film, we see these four engage in behaviors that burst open the codes of respectability, whether it’s stuffing drugs into their orifices or, as Lolo does repeatedly, talking about sex and other lewd topics nonstop. Even Kat, despite her seemingly prissy attitude, is a creature of ravenous appetite and, to make matters worse (for her, at least), she also has a vaginal tattoo that is sure to cause trouble with her super-Christian boyfriend. This brings us to what is perhaps the most hilarious and raunchy of the film’s many comedy setpieces. As the foursome attempts to convince a skeptical airport employee that they are, in fact, a K-pop group, Kat’s dress is inadvertently pulled down, revealing the tattoo (and her vagina) for all, including the audience to see. Like so many other moments in the film it’s both hilarious and revolutionary, precisely because women’s bodies are so often a source of shame. Here, instead, they are a source of humor and, ultimately, reclamation.
For, though this SNAFU at first causes problems–because of course Lolo’s livestream of the event goes viral–it also sets the stage for each of the characters to enact the future they really want for themselves. Audrey, freed from the inanity of her current firm and its cringe-inducing “ally” (played by a pitch-perfect Timothy Simons), now has the means and opportunity to start her own practice, one that will, presumably, not be hampered by the same sort of blatant and latent racism of her old one. Lolo, having acknowledged Audrey’s criticisms, is now working for her parents but also selling her art while Kat, having told her boyfriend the truth about her sexual longing, finally gets to consummate their physical bond. And Deadeye, of course, gets to be their usual zany self, though with the friends that they have always longed for.
Beneath all of the fun and the raunch and the hilarity, however, there is a genuine heart to Joy Ride (as is so often the case). After all, the precipitating event for the cross-country trek is Audrey’s Lolo-inspired search for her birth mother who, it turns out, is not only Korean but also, sadly, deceased. Fortunately for her, however, she meets the late woman’s husband, played by Daniel Day Kim who, in turn, allows her to see a video her mother recorded before her passing. When Audrey sits before the computer and watches this moving farewell, it’s like a punch in the gut. By this point we know how much this whole journey has meant to her and her sense of her place in the world (or lack thereof) and so, though she may not get to meet the woman whose spectral presence has meant so much to her, she can at least find some measure of peace. It’s also a wrenching moment for anyone who has ever had to be distant from a loved one when they passed away, a phenomenon that was quite common during the height of the pandemic and which gives this moment an even more devastating pathos.
Joy Ride is many things–a heartfelt and sophisticated look at the double identities that immigrants often feel, particularly in today’s America; a celebration of being a hot mess; a touching look at romance and the power of friendship–and therein lies its power. Like its raunchy predecessors, it demonstrates the extent to which the unruly woman continues to be a powerful influence in popular culture, one that is an fierce and unapologetic antidote to the misogyny that is still far too much a feature of the modern world. Even more importantly, though, it’s also a reminder of the power of pleasure to shatter expectations and restrictions. In such pleasure, I would argue, there is a radical potential. Let us hope that Joy Ride is the first of many such films to come.
I borrow this term from the film scholar Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, whose book Unruly Women: Gender and the Genres of Laughter is a great book. Anne Helen Petersen has a simiarly insightful book, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman.