Shadow Boxers
Remember how much I hated Million Dollar Baby? Part of what irritated me about the film was how compelling I find the idea of female boxers, and how that idea was wasted in such a bad movie. Given that indignation, I was very excited when Netflix suggested I check out the documentary Shadow Boxers (1999). This short (only 72 minutes) film by Katya Bankowsky is about female boxers in general, but it mostly tells the story of a particular boxer, world champion Lucia Rijker. (Tying it back to Million Dollar Baby, Rijker both played the Billie the 'Blue Bear' in that film and served as Hillary Swank's boxing coach. She has since moved on to play Dusty on The L-Word.).
Like Million Dollar Baby, though, Shadow Boxers was a disappointment. The film seems to go out of its way to not talk about the barriers women face in boxing as anything serious. Near the beginning of the movie, Rijker tells the story of meeting with a potential promoter, who previously said he "didn't promote girls." The reason he chose to promote her? Because she was "sweet" and "feminine" and "wore a nice dress" to the meeting.
Not exactly what one should be looking for in a boxer. Later, Rijker is living with eight male boxers in a training facility, and she's interviewed for several minutes about being a woman among so many men and how she has to deal with loud music and dirty dishes. The whole interchange, which takes place as Rijker is making her bed and tidying her room, is way too stereotypical for my liking. It says very little about Rijker being a boxer and focuses instead on her being a "girl".
I was similarly annoyed by the focus on "girlyness" in some of the film's other portrayals of female boxers. Featherweight Golden Gloves champion Jill Matthews comes out of the ring in one clip and her first words are "is my make-up messed up?" Later, when she is asked how she prepares for a fight, she replies that she gets a manicure and a pedicure. I wasn't sure if these comments were included in order to make female boxers seem less threatening or just to be funny, but either way, they fell flat for me. The filmmaker's insistence on underscoring the femininity of her subjects subtracted from her focus on them as the elite athletes they are. At one point, there is a brief interview with an amateur female boxer who tells the camera that to begin with she had to box secretly, as her husband didn't believe she was actually doing it and thought she was having an affair with her trainer. I thought for sure that story would end with the boxer leaving her loutish husband and forging her own path, but instead it ended with her husband and trainer congratulating one another on her success.
Though the women featured in the shorter clips mostly come off badly, Lucia Rijker is an impressive figure throughout the movie. Her boxing skills are clearly unequaled, and the level of introspection she shows into what boxing means to her and how she handles the dangers inherent in the sport are unexpected and thought provoking. I felt like I was seeing only a tiny bit of her potential; if the questions she'd been asked were different, she'd have much more interesting things to say. This is failure I have to attribute to the filmmaker.
Shadow Boxers' subjects are multiracial, but the actual subject of race is never addressed. Rijker is Dutch and non-white, but her heritage is never discussed. Most of the male boxers featured in the film are Black, though Rijker's trainer is white. The other female boxers featured at the beginning of the movie are of several different races. Rijker's opponents comprise both women of color and white women from both the U.S. and Europe. Given this ethnic and racial diversity, and the legendary racism in professional boxing, it seems it would have been appropriate for the film to discuss race, at least in terms of Rijker's experience with being a non-white woman fighting in the U.S., but it doesn't.
Because this film fell short in so many areas, I am giving it just two stars. More than anything, it is another case of lost potential, in which a really great story about women could be told, and instead it is replaced by a safe and familiar narrative.
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There's a kick-ass woman mountain guide in the new Journey to the Center of the Earth. Can't remember the name of her character (or anyone else's in that film), but you might want to check her out.