Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Ladies First,’ a new world order rattles a misogynist named Damien. In the patriarchal world, he is at the top of his game. He is in line to become the next CEO of his company, Atlas Agency, and enjoys the sexual freedom that his money and power provide him. In this world, he doesn’t care for the opinions of women and refuses to see them as his equals. But things take a turn when he lands in a world where the gender roles have been reversed. Women rule the world, while men are forced into the roles that Damien thought were reserved for women in his world. Interestingly, he is not the first person to land her. He meets a strange man, who tells him exactly how to get out of this place. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Narrator Used to be Like Damien
When Damien discovers that he has been removed from his world, he immediately tries to find ways to get back to where he came from. However, it isn’t until he meets a homeless man with pigeons on his shoulders that he discovers the true path that will lead him out of what he considers no less than hell for himself. This Pigeon Man, whose real name is never revealed, tells him that there used to be another man, named Marcus, who also landed in this parallel world run by women. He succeeded in getting out by securing the topmost position in his workplace. Since work is different for everyone, the ladder to success is also different.
For Damien, it means becoming the CEO of Atlas Agency, which is what was supposed to happen in the world that he came from. It also becomes clear to Damien that if he does not succeed in his goal, he will never be able to leave this place. The Pigeon Man reveals he has been here for nine years, and considering his condition, it doesn’t look like he will ever be able to leave the place. It can be assumed that in the real world, Pigeon Man was also once a misogynistic, chauvinistic man who didn’t care for respecting and valuing women around him. Like Damien, he was drunk on the power that the patriarchal world provided him.
So, to teach him a lesson, the higher powers of the universe conspired to send him to a place where he doesn’t have the support of a patriarchal system. It is not clear whether he met another man like him who had tried or was trying to get out of there. It is likely that the Pigeon Man did not have anyone to guide him through this challenge, which would have made him more desperate and frustrated, which, in turn, would have pulled him farther away from being at the top of whatever career he was pursuing. As his failures rooted him further into this new world, the pigeons became the only ones who recognized that he was out of place.
The Pigeon Man is Permanently Stuck in the Parallel World
No one understood what Pigeon Man was going through, and eventually, it cracked him a little bit. Still, other men continued to arrive, and experience taught him how to identify them. Eventually, he met Marcus, who, by reaching the pinnacle of success, got back to his world. This is when Pigeon Man realized what he needed to do to get back. But by then, too much time had passed, and he had fallen too far. In his current state, there was no way he would be able to break into the world that once used to be his. By the time Damien comes around, Pigeon Man has completely given up on the dream of ever returning to his world.
Now, his mission is to help other men find a way out. He becomes their guardian through this transformative journey, helping them learn their lesson sooner and go back to their world a changed man. After Damien succeeds in returning to his world, Fred is dropped in his place. Much like he did with Damien, Pigeon Man decides to help Fred as well, and it is to him that he starts telling about how Damien turned from an inherently bad person to a changed man who wants to better himself as well as the world around. His narration appears at the beginning of the movie, showing that he already knows how Damien’s story will end. The twist is that he is not telling this story to the viewers, but to Fred.
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