Red Rocket (2021)
Directed by Sean Baker
The late bell hooks dedicates a chapter on greed, addiction, and capitalism in All About Love: New Visions, citing that “when greedy consumption is the order of the day, dehumanization becomes acceptable. Then treating people like objects is not only acceptable, but is required behavior.” Sean Baker’s Red Rocket observes Mikey (Simon Rex), a washed-up porn star banished from Los Angeles and returning to his hometown, Texas City, to start anew. At the end of his rope, he pleads with his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother for a place to stay, proposing that he’ll help with rent and chores as a form of repayment. They reluctantly take him in. Without a job, he does something that he hasn’t done in over a decade – he tries to play it straight. Careening through Texas City, the town’s oil refineries constantly pumping out noxious fumes into the background, Mikey contends with the bureaucracy of trying to start over, petitioning with management at restaurants and the like for a job. It goes nowhere. Cycling throughout Texas City on a child’s cruiser bike, the bottom half of a “Make America Great Again” billboard takes up a significant portion of the frame. It’s 2016 and amid the clouds of anhedonia is a specter of egomania that serves to reinforce an all too vivid portrait of masculine narcissism.
Not easily discouraged, Mikey quickly backslides, selling weed for a small-time neighborhood dealer. Whatever ethical values Mikey once held have been thoroughly eroded, driven by a consumer culture that only promotes a psychological state of endless craving. It’s no wonder that Lexi initially refuses Mikey’s advances, permitting him to sleep in her bed only after he functions as provider. “Both men and women remain in dysfunctional and loveless relationships when it’s materially opportune”; another quote from hooks that serves to underscore the transactional nature of Lexi and Mikey’s relationship. The hurt that both characters exhibit scars the spirit, but whereas Lexi has her mother, Mikey operates entirely selfishly. He lies to everyone as a tactic of becoming upwardly mobile. In fact, every major character in Red Rocket is paired with a significant other: Mikey’s neighbor Lonnie (Ethan Darbone) and his father, the queenpin drug dealer Leondria (Judy Hill) and her daughter, and the donut shop clerk Raylee/Strawberry (Suzanne Son) and her boss. It’s Strawberry that captures Mikey’s imagination.
In a quintessentially American move, Mikey isn’t satisfied with his role in the community, hoping to leverage his momentary success for a return to the adult film world. In Strawberry, he sees his ticket out of Texas City, hoping to persuade the 17-year old to give up her small-town ambitions for the quote unquote glamour of adult filmmaking. It’s about as sleazy as it gets, with Mikey promising Strawberry an escape from all the day-in-day-out drudgery and disappointment. To her credit, Strawberry isn’t merely a victim, and seemingly understands Mikey’s hustle. His predatory tactics are rendered through his meathead charm – he makes you want to believe in a world outside of the one in Texas City. The hole he digs gets deeper and deeper; where he pretends to be someone he’s not, peddling on hypothetical futures rather than the present.
Much like Baker’s last film, The Florida Project, Red Rocket threads a unique line between exploitation and empathy. It’s a softer, more congenial version of what Harmony Korine has done for decades. A man like Mikey would fit in a film like Spring Breakers or even Gummo; a toxic force deluded by images of the past. Whatever remnants of his true self are buried under the despair of his own perceived failures, giving way to a kind of nihilism that has obliterated his life. It’s a necrotic rot of the spirit that I know all too well. As the film reaches its conclusion, Baker utilizes a similar fantasy sequence as he did in The Florida Project, leaving Mikey at a similar place from when he started in the film. The clever deployment of *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” and it’s subsequent repetitions throughout the film echo a dispiriting pop anxiety about the self-destructive patterns that Mikey has embraced throughout his life. Hearing the song played in reverse at the film’s end only reinforces the painful capital T Truth that Mikey’s constant yearning for instant gratification has drowned him, left him to become a cog in an unforgiving system, ultimately left to dehumanize others to gratify himself.