Limited lead female characters is an understatement with regard to this movie. The only part of the movie where there were a lot of females was during the scene where women were stuffing small packages of heroine. Traditionally the women have to be naked since there is the possibility they might steal some, but seriously, black nude females? Goodness knows we never see enough black women poorly represented in the media.

The female characters of this film were rendered powerless. The one incident where Eve (Lymari Nadal) spoke up against a man, she was immediately slapped in the face. She cowered with fear and was not able to defend herself. Mama Lucas (Ruby Dee), the mother of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), never asked her son how he had enough money to afford to buy her a house clear out of the blue. She was portrayed as being completely naive throughout the film. Towards the end of the movie she confronted her son about his gangster activities. After he lied to her she slapped him in the face for it. She said that she did not like to be lied to. The wife and mother of this film were both written as mentally and physically powerless in the face of male goals. What was the message of the movie? If a woman was in the way of what a man wants, then who is she to stand in a his way?

One of the most prominent themes of this movie was the use of female sexual powerlessness as a means to strike fear in the audience. There are two lengthy scenes where sexual powerlessness occurs. I will discuss one. The protagonist Riggs (Lyriq Bent) is faced with a moral dilemma. He either saves his fellow detectives or saves a prostitute. Jigsaw convinces the prostitute that if she kills Riggs then she will not have to go to jail for her crimes. When Riggs first sees her, her head is covered with a pig's head. Her entire body is in bondage. A 15 second screen shot from her high heels all the way up to the pig's head shows her breasts and thighs. Even in a horror movie, a woman in bondage and being tortured must look sexy. No where in the film are the men required to be physically and sexually objectified.

In Saw IV, both women and men are in bondage. Both women and men suffer from a huge power differential between themselves and the torturer. The difference between the males and female is not the magnitude of the torture, but rather, how the tortured respond to pain and powerlessness. All of the men in the film attempt to fight their way out of being tortured. The female character begs for help. The way that men react to powerlessness and the way women respond is entirely different. The writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan characterize men in the film to fight for their rights even though they are "in the wrong" until the bitter end. There is an endearing quality to a person who fights for their lives until the very end ... even if they are the antagonists. The prostitute was not written to have a fighter's spirit. She was characterized as being self-defeating and desperate.

Listening to the lyrics of the song is totally different from watching the video. Most of the video is empowering for women. Lil' Mama picks up Avril Lavigne in her shiny pink car. They both appear to be promoting sisterhood and solidarity. The video does not seem to match the lyrics of the song at all.

The music alone is another matter entirely. When a love triangle is set up in pop media there always seems to be a "cat fight". On one end of the corner there is one woman who says she's better and can do more for "the man". On the other end of the ring there is a different woman that says she can do better for "the man". Instead of one woman saying it we've got two women saying it! The video appears to be promoting sisterhood, but in reality, it is used to disguise what the song is really about. The focus of this song is about how a woman wants a man to dump his girlfriend for her.

The potential lover might need some assistance in deciding which woman to pick. There are several examples laid out in the lyrics as to reasons why the other woman needs to be kicked to the curb. Mind you, they are not his reasons for dumping her -- they are another woman's reasons:

1. She is stupid.

So when's it gonna sink in
She's so stupid
What the hell were you thinking?!

2. She is less of a person.

She's like so whatever
You could do so much better

That is exactly what we women need. We need to convince men that other women are stupid and less of a person. Why in pop media are there so many women that do their men’s dirty work? If the guy is really thinking about two different women (or more) at once, why would the characters Avril Lavigne and Lil’ Mama portray be any different than the other women he’s interested in?

Feminist Fix?