PsychedelicDiamond said:
I think it's unfortunate that you didn't comment on the character of the "High Roller", the other sympathetically portrayed male character and the one you'd least expect to be shown that way. It's shame that his only scene was in the directors cut.
This is a good point that I will iterate with a quote from the character:
"High Roller: All I require from you is a slither of a moment. To have you not by force, but simply as a man and a women. To see in your eye, that simple truth, that you give yourself to me freely. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Now of course, for such a gem, I will give as well. I'm willing to give you freedom. Pure and total freedom. Freedom from the drudgery of everyday life. Freedom as abstract ideal. Freedom from pain. Freedom from responsibility. Freedom from guilt. From regret. Freedom from sadness. Freedom from loss. The freedom to be happy. Don't close your eyes; I need you to look at me. The freedom to love."
The other thing is: While i see where your interpretation of the movie as a commentary on the progress of feminism comes from i interprete it a bit differently. To me it's mostly a coming of age story. Babydoll, representing childhood, obviously has to sacrifice herself for Sweetpea, the adult, to survive. This happens, in the burlesque world, with the loss of her virginity to the High Roller and in the asylum world with her lobotomy. While the symbolism of sex as a rite of passage is fairly obvious the lobotomy part is far more interesting. She accepts the loss of her free will to let the other part, the adult, take control. That seems pretty brutal but it's not that bad of a representation of the transition into adulthood.
I like where this is headed, however, in accord with what the high roller has to say on the subject the implication is that "hanging on" to the virginal archetype is in and of itself a self reinforcing narrative on Babydoll's part. Couple this with Bob's observation that Baby slays the dragon and offspring, baby "cannot" be a mother, or a parent, simply due to being virginal and a "baby". This synthesizes both approaches.
The idea of loosing one's "free will" to the lobotomy is interesting but I would disagree on the face of it. That until one confronts the myriad self reinforcing projection of archetypes and personalities onto others (simply psychological projection) one is not "really" free, one is a slave to ones' own projections and (real or imagined) expectations of others.
This seems close to the concept known as hypoagency, specifically female hypoagency; simple "one agency" when in a situation with many agents/actors/people.
Waxing a little Nietzschean personally I simply found the asylum to be a metaphor for all the competing wills contained within some individual, maybe or maybe not female. The metaphor is one of psychosis. To wax a little Jungian the lobotomy is just this:
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious C.G. Jung. -Study in the process of individuation
Mind you I find Sweat Pea to still be a "persona" forse. Though one persona and one mythological world (a real world with only a single set of filters) is better than half a dozen personalities and 3 worlds of psychological retreat.
As far as it goes "high roller" is not just a man, but an idealized "real man". One that creates a "space" for a woman to be a woman. He doubles as both the psychological dumping ground for all the myriad troubles that sexual responsibility entails, but also as the "safe bet", or "sure thing", in the gambit to secure a mate. It's all just smoke and mirrors though, reinforcing the character (unreliable narrator's) formation of archetype(ing) of people whom they are encountering or dealing with in the present or the past, or even that idealized future.
Could go so far as to say he is a quintessential "alpha". Sweat Pea maybe a nod to the fairy tale of the princess and the pea, princess elevates to "Queen" through male intervention, going any further than this means reading just so much into it, simply because the audience is never presented with a "male" other than the old guy, wise old man/hero's journey.
Sucker Punch = MTV + Jung + Fred. N. + Princess Pea (fairy tale) ? Don't see much more than that... could be wrong, it's art I spose.