A Story About Control
music in Hustlers
“This is a story about control
My control
Control of what I say
Control of what I do
And this time, I'm gonna do it my way”
This spoken intro kicks off Janet Jackson’s 1986 “Control,” a single from the album that marked her independence from her father/manager, the album that was her first commercial success.
These lyrics also introduce the 2019 movie Hustlers. We see “new girl” Destiny (Constance Wu) getting ready backstage for her first day of work at Moves, a New York strip club, amid a humming bustle of women tweaking their makeup and making last minute wardrobe fixes. A thesis, right away: this is a movie about power, about who gets it and how to take it back.
As the beat of the anthem picks up, Destiny is introduced to the crowd along with her coworkers. An announcer tells the crowd they have the “opportunity to have fun with any of our lovely ladies.” Viewers then get a tour of the club through Destiny’s eyes, where many preconceived notions one might have about working at a strip club are confirmed: the work seems tedious and a little gross, and the men in the back offices take money from the women who do the real work. It hardly seems like Destiny is doing things “my way.” This is how things are, but as the song promises, not how things will always be.
Songs are time travel. Music is second only to scent in the way it can take me back to old relationships, summer afternoons, angsty weekends spent with headphones on in bed. The events that take place in Hustlers begin in 2007. Much of the popular music that makes up the soundtrack is familiar, but just old enough to make me go “Oh I forgot about that!” despite the fact that Flo Rida was on the radio multiple times in an hour, and I never thought I’d be able to get those hooks out of my head. Many of these songs I heard for the first time, censored, at middle school dances. I was a kid in the middle of nowhere, and the news was something that existed largely in the background, ignored whenever possible. As a result, I don’t have vivid memories of the early aughts recession, but I felt the ripples. Applying for colleges had at one time felt limitless, with examples like Rory Gilmore and Willow Rosenberg making the faraway Ivys seem like an achievable dream. In reality, where I was, a class of ‘13 student was much more focused on in-state tuition and a “safe” business major, having seen what debt had done to our parents, our siblings, our neighbors, our babysitters. The recession is a paradigm I remember, even if I don’t realize I remember.
The music in Hustlers is meticulously crafted, intentional in every way. Writer/director Lorene Scafaria says she knew exactly what song she wanted for specific scenes, telling multiple sources that she doesn’t know what she would have done had artists not permitted the use of their songs, they were that crucial to the storytelling. The music not only overtly underscores the plot, but also functions to take us back to that place, acts as a time capsule of our ever-changing mentality about money and greed.
Shortly after the scene set to Jackson’s “Control,” Destiny first sees Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) perform to “Criminal,” Fiona Apple’s 1997 song with the iconic opening line “I’ve been a bad, bad girl.” The scene has taken on a life of its own, and for good reason. Viewers take in Ramona’s gravity-defying performance from Destiny’s perspective, and between feats of athleticism and showmanship, the camera shows Destiny’s awe-struck face, mesmerized not by sexual desire but by admiration. The song confirms Ramona’s power. She will “break a boy just because she can.” It’s a song about the power of female seduction, about the ways some women can wield their sex appeal as a tool, as a weapon, even when it is unfair or “criminal.” Its lyrics are self-conscious and repentant, and Apple even says “tomorrow brings the consequence,” but it is clear who is in charge of the scene, the power that bad, bad girl Ramona has. Later in the movie, we hear Sean Kingston’s 2007 hit “Beautiful Girls,” with the hook “Damn all these beautiful girls/ They only wanna do you dirt/ They'll have you suicidal, suicidal.” The women have complete control over men’s lives by virtue of their desirability.
Upon release, the video for Apple’s “Criminal” was met with prudish outrage by many critics (much like the response to Lopez’s Super Bowl performance shortly after Hustlers was released). The video featured Apple singing in various states of undress (although the material was less racy than many Calvin Klein or American Apparel ads) at a party. It was a song about feeling conflicted about using sex to your advantage, with a video to match. Naysayers overlooked or ignored the perspective of agency in the song and claimed that Apple was trying to capitalize on her sexuality, which, of course, was kind of the point.
In the time since, Apple has continually been a figure who refuses to “play the game,” who works on her art and doesn’t care about likeability if it comes at the expense of what is important to her. Both “Criminal’”s Apple and the character Ramona have a power in their appearance, although they were not the ones to create that power dynamic. They are two sides of the same coin: people in a bullshit world who are, at times, unsure about how playing the game makes them feel.
Following the “Criminal” dance, Ramona takes Destiny under her wing (and in her fur) and teaches her how to be a successful dancer. Leaving the theater the first time that I saw this movie, my friend and I talked about the nostalgia the soundtrack inspired. He, an elementary school music teacher, told me that along with club hits and top-40 radio standbys, Chopin’s Études were sprinkled throughout the film, compositions that are used as foundational building blocks in playing piano. The 27 Études are challenging, technically demanding pieces used to teach serious students, the way organic chemistry is used to educate future doctors. They are notable because they are interesting works to hear and play in addition to being useful pedagogical tools also. The music has a frantic, tension-inducing quality.
In the movie, we first hear Chopin when Destiny is learning from Ramona how to go from being an average dancer to a great one. She sits on the stage like a riveted kid at storytime as Ramona demonstrates the athleticism and technical skill required in pole dancing, calling out the names of different moves: “Front hook. Ankle hook. Knee hook. From here you could do the carousel, to switch, and wrap.” Also during this scene, Ramona and coworker Diamond (Cardi B) teach Destiny the strategy of seduction, the way to interact with customers that will make the best use of her time. They break down the formula of sexy, show the skill behind the work the way a magician might pass down secrets to a protege.
The Études crop up again and again throughout the movie as the women strategize how to stay afloat, as they plot and learn together how to survive. It’s telling that at the end of the movie, when Destiny confesses she is giving up on the con and on their partnership, the first thing Ramona says to her, voice thick with betrayal, is “have I taught you nothing?”
Seeing the tracklist independent of the movie, many of the songs may seem too on-the-nose, an obvious choice for a recession-era heist flick. But a 2007 strip club is not exactly the place for subtlety. Women cover every inch of exposed skin with body glitter and men offer up cash with unrestrained hoots and hollers. They say exactly what they want to say: “who hurt you?” “what did daddy do?” without fear of consequences. It’s transactional, it’s upfront, it’s naked. Customers are paying not just for a show, but for the ability to say and act how they want. In one scene, a man in an expensive suit peels one $100 dollar bill after another from a thick green stack. Ramona and Destiny, who have at this point entered into a mentor/mentee relationship, respond in turn by escalating the sexiness of their dance, touching each other more, the motivation for their performance clear. The soundtrack feels right, a Greek chorus emphasizing what the lived experience was like. The film is based, of course, on real criminal cases. It tells the stories of real people. During this era, Britney Spears’ synthetic cooing and Usher’s pulsing club hits were on the radio constantly, in the background of everything we did. The people listening didn’t know a shoe was about to drop and stomp all over the economy and that the songs celebrating decadence and luxury would take on a bitter, ironic tinge.
As we see Destiny apply what she has learned and become more successful, 50 Cent’s “I Get Money,” plays. The same year that the song was released, 2007, 50 Cent’s home was featured on an infamous episode of MTV’s Cribs. His mansion dripped with money. Every corner shined like diamonds in the light, and the house featured his many luxury cars and built-in stripper poles. It was, in so many ways, the peak of pre-recession decadence, and the song is the backdrop of unfettered spending. At one point later in the movie, a young dancer asks if the dress she has tried on makes her “look expensive.” The women, of course, had a desire to provide for loved ones and be independent, but also to obtain the wealth signifiers, to do what young Americans are told is noble and right — climb the ladder of success and look good doing it.
With her newfound success, Destiny is able to support herself and her grandmother and able to spend money on herself. During a shopping montage we hear the iconic “It’s Britney, bitch” and the beat of Spears’ “Gimme More.” As it is in Pretty Woman, the shopping scenes are ecstatic, aspirational, and poke fun at those who look down on Destiny and Ramona. But the song also offers foreshadowing. It’s difficult, once you start to have enough, to not want more. At one point, Destiny says that she thought there might be some “magic number,” a point when she would finally have enough and could stop hustling. “If I could save enough money, I could start clean...maybe score so big that we would never need anybody.” But in this world, there isn’t a magic number. The goal post keeps moving, and it’s obvious only in hindsight when things should have ended. As is likely with many crimes, had they stopped when they were ahead they would have gotten away with it.
Destiny’s pre-recession happiness hits its peak in Hustlers when Usher makes a cameo as “Love In This Club,” plays. Destiny says the night Usher came to the club was the “last great night I remember,” a final moment when “everything was glamorous and cool,” and the actors do show a bubbly excitement that’s contagious to viewers. There are, of course, other moments of happiness, of relishing not only success but also each other. The Christmas scene, in particular, is a display of the things wealth can allow us, like gifts that make faces light up — a gorgeous dollhouse for a daughter, Louboutin red bottoms for a friend who is more like a sister, pearls for a grandmother who has never had pearls — but also, the contentment that is found when found family and multiple generations are in the same room, the joy of being together without worrying about whether they can pay rent.
The lack of music in certain scenes is just as important as the soundtrack. Some scenes that might otherwise be ghoulish take on a cartoonish quality or feel like a dream sequence as Scott Walker sings over a montage of the team drugging men and stealing from them. But during other pivotal scenes there is silence: when women are first getting ready backstage, the dressing room feels like a locker room: we get a peek past the illusion that is presented in the front room, we see the sweat and the safety pins and the tampons. In scenes where Destiny is fighting with the father of her child, we are witnessing the circumstances that make a person consider crime, and it’s not a cinematic moment with a swelling chorus or dance beat, it’s a moment of reality underlined and made stark by silence. Other times, moments of familial love among the women have no background music, only the sound of their comfortable chatter. These silences work as narrative turning points away from the costumey, performative magic of the show, and shine a light on the simple good — being with people you love without pretense — and the simple bad — the fighting and fear, times when it feels like time and sound stop.
Then, as a tenured club employee says, “2008 happened.” When the club’s well of Wall Street clientele dried up, the rules of the club became more lax, and what it took to make a living as a dancer became more debasing.
Ramona punctuates the “Criminal” scene when she passes Destiny after her performance and enthusiastically asks “doesn’t money make you horny?” That’s the reason they are all there, why they’ve been there from the beginning. At different times in the movie, it’s implied that the women would work elsewhere if they could, with Ramona at one point promising a young dancer that she will not have “to go back” to stripping. Despite her commanding stage presence, Ramona has had only the illusion of autonomy all along. To survive, we use the currency we have. When the economy tanks, when the men stop spending, her currency isn’t worth what it was. In a world where women are valued primarily or exclusively for their sex appeal, they are still dependent on the men who determine and assign this appeal.
So they get creative. They come up with a plan to get back on top, a plan that involves using their sex appeal to drug men and get them, in their inebriated state, to spend and spend and spend. It’s a testament to Scafaria’s storytelling that we are able to understand the logic of the grift. As Ramona says, “these Wall Street guys, you see what they did to this country? They stole from everybody. Hard working people lost everything, and not one of these douchebags went to jail.” She and the team are able to rationalize what they’re doing because they are all stuck in a rigged game, all, in a way, victims, and the men who become their marks represent the men who put them in that position.
In the movie, arrests are made on May 12, 2013, the same day that Lorde dropped the music video for “Royals.” The song plays as we see the characters we’ve been following put their hands in the air or in cuffs behind their backs. In the scene, the lyrics are a direct nod to the other contemporary songs used in the film: “every song is like/ Gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin' in the bathroom.” “Royals”' promises the women will never really make it to the top, “that kind of luxe just ain’t for us.” The limits of the system will never be smashed, these women will never be among the ranks of the Wall Street royalty who went free. In the end they would be punished.
The United States now faces a financial crisis that is both new and familiar. A little more than a year after the Hustlers release, the pandemic has shown us how the rules of success are exploited by those at the top. Aid has been given to some of the wealthiest corporations in the country, while individuals struggle. Millions of Americans have filed for unemployment and a huge number of businesses have closed their doors for good, while the world’s richest people get richer. Money continues to act as power, to protect people from devastating disease.
Cardi B, who worked in a strip club before she became a household name, has a small, scene-stealing role in Hustlers, although her 2017 hit “Bodak Yellow” is not in the film.
In the song, released a full decade after the events in the movie begin, she raps about her red bottom Louboutins. Having money makes her a boss and puts her in control. She is still who we’re trying to be, still aspirational, the winner who worked hard and overcame the odds in a rigged game. It, in many ways, feels like we are exactly where we were in 2007.