Warning – Spoilers ahead!
The Glass Onion, released on Netflix in 2022, has proven itself to be just as in depth and thought provoking as its predecessor, Knives Out. While the Glass Onion has inspired a ton of analysis all over the internet examining the messages and values of the movie, the visual metaphors and even character analyses, the character Whiskey deserves her own conversation.
Whiskey, played by Madelyn Cline, is the girlfriend of Duke Cody who is a men’s rights activist. Duke Cody, played by Dave Bautista, is introduced to the audience from one of his online streams where he models influencers such as Andrew Tate and others who spread ideologies to dismantle feminism for their own personal gain. Whiskey is not only complicit, but an active participant in Duke’s stream.
Whiskey is there to support and prove Duke’s point of view, by giving it validity as a woman, while also cementing falsehoods about what feminism is to their viewers. In the particular stream the audience views by way of introduction, the pair are claiming that feminists hate boobs. This is an example of a classic straw man logical fallacy. In a straw man argument, one misrepresents their opponent’s argument then attacks that argument instead of their opponent’s actual one. Duke’s ideology is not based on logic, it is based on him gaining power. Duke’s online community are people who cannot or do not want to critically think through the argument he presents nor hear an opposing argument to challenge the beliefs being instilled.
On Miles Bron’s (played by Edward Norton) island, Whiskey is not invited on her own merit or through her own relationships with ‘the disrupters’. The disrupters is the name Miles Bron has given to him and his core group of friends, the friends who built their success alongside each other. Whiskey is simply Duke’s plus one and arm piece. The other additional character outside of the core friend group of Miles’ is Peg, played by Jessica Henwick, who is Birdie’s assistant. Birdie Jay (played by Kate Hudson) is a fashion designer of her own brand. Peg is building her career through a professional relationship and is networking with her merit rather than through a sexual relationship. Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) uses some trickery to join the group as he has been hired to investigate them. Even Derol (played by Noah Segan) who is uninvolved with the entire plot is there because of his friendship with Miles. This demonstrates how Whiskey’s relationship with Duke does open opportunities that she wouldn’t have access to alone.
When Whiskey is first shown cozying up to Miles Bron, with Duke looking on from a distance with binoculars, the first audience assumption is that she is cheating on Duke. However, it is later revealed that she is with Miles to convince him to give Duke a feature on Alpha News. Around this time the audience begins to catch on that Whiskey is not just the pretty face she has led us to believe. She is strategic, cunning and is working for her own interests.
It says a lot about us as viewers that we are initially surprised that Whiskey is not passively living her life, and instead that she is a human making the most of her situation. Whiskey is smart, has aspirations and weighs her options for what brings her the most gain. But it is a mistake to assume that this reveal of agency in Whiskey makes her a feminist character because she is not.
Now, don’t mistake this analysis as condemning Whiskey for not being a feminist because her character not being a feminist character is the point the film is trying to make. It’s part of the overall theme of the Glass Onion. Something that seems to be complicated with layers, but is actually quite simple. With Whiskey’s intelligence revealed, we as viewers expect her and her actions to be more complicated than she initially presents when the truth is her misogyny has not changed or been excused. None of the disrupters are feminists because they don’t advocate and help others, they only advocate for themselves. And this pattern of behaviour applies to all social change movements: Miles Bron perpetrates systematic racism through stealing the ideas of his black, female business partner Andi Brand (played by Janelle Monáe). Further, Miles goes on to then publicly destroy her career with lies, turning her friends against her. When the disrupters disrupt society, it is to gain power for themselves and not to make the world a better place for the people around them.
Whiskey being smart does not mean she isn’t reaping the rewards of fitting the male gaze. Being conventionally attractive has a huge genetic component outside of being thin, dressing well and wearing makeup. This gives her an advantage over other women which she chooses to use as far as it will take her. It is important to realize while she is using her body to gain herself power in the professional world, Duke is also using her body for that purpose for himself.
Whiskey being a modern woman from the West benefits from the radical feminism that came before her. Everything from being able to vote, to the right to work, to the right to control your own finances all contributes to the free life she is able to live now. Things like easy access to birth control, laws against sex discrimination in the work place and the right for women to hold political positions pave the way for her ambitions. Despite her work to dismiss and repeal feminism, her greatest aspiration is a feminist one.
What is often missed in feminist analysis is that the path of least resistance can be rewarding because you are being rewarded for your complicity and conformity. Feminism is about resistance and change; it is pushed back by those who benefit from gender inequality. When you choose to rebel to people who have more power than you then there are consequences that are placed on you when they fight back. Sometimes subtle actions, like being black listed, but impacts can escalate into violence. For the rights that Whiskey enjoys, feminists were jailed, their reputations ruined and some were both physically and sexually assaulted. Whiskey weighs her options in the political context of her time, choosing the path that will reward her the most. But in getting ahead herself, she closes doors for the women following behind her.
While Whiskey has agency in her life, she is at the whim of Duke’s career. She is suppressing her desires of what she actually wants for Duke’s live streams to be, saying she wishes he wouldn’t get so into the men’s rights activism. This statement implies she does not contribute to the content Duke comes up with. Her role is to agree and be beautiful. And she is rewarded greatly with money, notoriety and networking opportunities. Conforming to what the higher powers want holds greater material short term benefits than rebelling and facing consequences.
Whiskey’s far off dream of holding office has to be questioned to what her motivations are. First being what does she actually bring to the table in terms of beliefs and leadership? What does she want to contribute to the world? It seems like she does not bring any innovation or social contribution to the table. Politics for her is just power for herself for the sake of having it. With her current involvement in men’s rights activism, the only way she could get into politics is if she was to support an agenda that allows sexism or sexist speech in their candidate’s past. Or if she would want to support a socially progressive platform later on, a potential strategy for her would be throwing Duke under the bus claiming something along the lines of grooming or manipulation. Perhaps even claiming abuse. This is not a far stretch to say when observing the behaviour of the disrupters. We as viewers can see that as disingenuous as Whiskey is gladly working with Duke on her own free will. If she did this, hypothetically of course, there would be huge potential that she would be found out, which would be disastrous to women and girls everywhere. If the truth came to light and it could cause real survivors great harm when her lies are used to dismantle their truths. But, this disaster scenario could only occur if she could start breaking the glass ceiling she is reinforcing. She is setting herself up to be a hypocrite, pedalling an image that women can’t be leaders but she can be.
There is a huge difference between advocating harmful ideologies against women and hating women in person through insults. A red herring of Whiskey’s feminism is that she is kind to the women that she speaks to. She makes the effort to sympathise and connect to Helen Brand when she was undercover as her twin sister Andi. Later, when Helen begins to comfort Whiskey not knowing that Duke was just killed, Whiskey viciously attacks her believing that Helen killed Duke. Helen had not only made the mistake of not realizing that Duke was dead, but also of assuming that Whiskey’s relationship with Duke is a real relationship instead of a business one. While it’s unfair to say that Whiskey purely attacked Helen over her meal ticket instead of self defence and revenge, this moment says a lot about their characters. From Helen, she also assumes that Whiskey is blind and passive in her relationship. Whiskey, when believing that Helen killed Duke for her own wellbeing, a selfless motive, resorted to violence without hesitation which leaves you wondering just how much she meant that initial kindness or how she feels when she perceives a woman getting in her way. She does not harm Miles Bron in that way when he is revealed as the killer. More than that Whiskey is willing to let him get away with murdering Duke, likely with the strategic belief she can use his death to get more power and money from Miles.
Taking a few steps back to the fact of Whiskey ‘spending time’ with Miles Bron demonstrates that it is not masculinity that inherently holds power – it is money. Duke is younger, stronger and more muscular. He carries a gun at all times and bases his career on his believed masculine ideal. But for both Duke and Whiskey’s benefit she goes to Miles who is older, more frail and more emotionally soft at times. Miles is not more masculine but has more power as Duke watches him with his girl – a situation Miles allows despite his supposed friendship with Duke. Duke’s masculine strength and weapons did not protect him from the ordinary pineapple juice Miles gave him, destroying the idea that heavy masculinity is essential to life preservation.
The contrast, or more like similarities, between Whisky and Birdie is interesting.They are the conventional beauties of the women on the island, which factors into the creation of both of their careers. While Whiskey is not the air head that Birdie is, it’s more likely their difference in status is more about the stage of life they are in. As Birdie grew out of her modelling career as all models eventually do, it is the notoriety that allowed her into a fashion adjacent field. It is her name and modelling career which allows her to be a fashion figure head, marketing her previous youth because it is near impossible to enter the industry for the first time at her age. Whiskey is using her current youth to secure her future as well. The main difference between them is while Whiskey is smart, Birdie is not. And yet despite this difference their careers are taking similar trajectories. Intelligent or not they both use their looks while they are young in the hopes of creating a steady profitable career later on. Intelligence and knowingly playing the game does not give special advantages compared to someone who is blindly conforming and reaping the benefits. “Aware” women are not more empowered. They are both vocally politically incorrect and equally disregard women trying to make it in the industry. Birdie’s version is her lack of care over Peg’s career where she is a lot more vulnerable as an assistant and woman of colour and is frequently in jeopardy because of Birdie’s careless decisions.
Whiskey fits into the disrupters because she is just as self-serving. And just like everyone else part of Miles Bron’s core group, she is expected to be deep and complex because of her apparently unexpected intelligence, but not being a total idiot does not make you a genius and ultimately she is what she reads as on the tin. The first assumption was the right one.
In an era of ‘strong female characters’, Whiskey is not a bad character. Because she is a character you are supposed to learn from, not model yourself after. Her inclusion in Glass Onion allows for deeper discussions about feminism at a time of great misinformation about what feminism is. The corporate/capitalist rebrand of feminism into being ‘girl bosses’ comes to mind as we had to check our internal biases as we were tricked, even for a moment, that Whiskey was anything other than a self-serving misogynist.