Misogyny and Anti-Latino Racism in the movie Constantine (2005)

Rating: 3/10 (21 October 2012)

Anti-Mexican racism In the movie, a Mexican guy poking around in a decaying building in the desert finds the 'spear of destiny' (Lance of Longinus) wrapped in a Nazi flag, which grants him superpowers to break stuff and jump high. He immediately starts walking and crosses the street without looking, mangling the car that crashes into him. He keeps walking straight to the American border and uses his new superpower to jump right over the barbed wire border fence. In a deleted scene, he is confronted after crawling under the fence by two border patrol officers, who he threatens menacingly and somehow forces to shoot themselves. Then he walks up to a white guy sitting in his car at WalMart and murders him for the car. Meanwhile the rest of the movie is going on between a bunch of white people. The Mexican guy arrives for the climax after having driven straight to Los Angeles, and he attacks the heroine in a crucifix-shaped pool and drowns her (to send her to hell). When the hero arrives to save her, the Mexican man's corpse is briefly shown floating in the pool, then it (suspension of disbelief) disappears by the next shot. There is no other reference to the spear of destiny having some mystical power to possess people and make them do the devil's bidding, and both main characters later handle it without difficulty. Since he had no presumed foreknowledge, the only plausible explanation is that the Mexican man was already in the service of the devil. I'm just surprised he didn't stop to steal some American jobs and collect welfare before completing his ridiculous Odyssey to the movie center.
Rape imagery and Misogyny The first scene with the protagonist was an exorcism of a Latina girl which startlingly paralleled how a rape scene would have gone: she is tied down by her Latino community, the hero-exorcist (Constantine) dehumanizing her by covering her mouth and eyes while a scream tries to escape her throat. Then Constantine denies her and her community witness to the act of the final exorcism (themes of WITNESS are important in psychology). When one Latino man looks he falls back against the wall in pain. I won't extrapolate that trapping the demon in the mirror and forcing it out the window was an extension of the same story, though it could be noted that 1/3 of rape victims contemplate suicide and many perpetrators are never prosecuted. There's also the issue of violence against women. Constantine drowns the heroine in his bathtub without warning her beforehand (to send her to hell at her behest); does that seem like even human behavior? Not surprisingly, she expresses some tacit interest in the nihilistic, misogynistic protagonist who complains about getting to fight demons for a living.