Class Relations – Bitch Flicks

Manic Pixie Revolutionary Awakenings

Maria essentially makes Freder the chosen one—she inspires him to go underground and gives him his purpose when he awakens to the dystopian system in which he lives. Without her, the story does not proceed and the system continues unopposed.

This guest post by Julia Patt appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Contemporary audiences best know Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for its unlikely restoration after museum workers discovered several missing scenes from the film in Brazil in 2008, 80 years after the film’s 1927 release. An archetypal depiction of the class struggle, Metropolis continues to influence dystopian landscapes, from George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead to The Hunger Games.

In the opening scenes of the film, we learn that the Metropolis is in fact two cities: the wealthy city above and the workers’ city below. Our protagonist is Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), son of the Metropolis’ Master, Joh. Freder differs little from the other men of his class—indulging in meaningless contests in the city’s stadiums, enjoying the comfort of elaborately dressed and painted women in the Eternal Gardens, and completely oblivious to the trials of the working class. It’s only when Freder encounters Maria (Brigitte Helm) that he deviates from the course set for him.

In this first scene, Maria brings a large group of children up to the Eternal Gardens so that they may see the people who live there. “These are your brothers,” she says again and again, perhaps addressing both groups. While the other visitors seem alarmed by the newcomers and move away, Freder stands transfixed, watching Maria.

He then learns of the deplorable conditions in the city, but only because he follows Maria underground. There he sees terrible accidents, men lagging with fatigue at their posts—all the horrors of the industrial world with its vast inequalities. Afterward, he tries to explain the conditions to his father, who is unconcerned, so much so that he casually dismisses one of his own employees to go join the ranks at the machines.

Although he prevents the man’s suicide and saves another from exhaustion, Freder can find no overarching solution or purpose apart from pursuing Maria and at several moments bids these other characters to wait for him. He’ll find answers, he seems sure, when he finds the woman who has so shaken him. He’s not wrong, either. When he later finds Maria—more than 30 minutes after her first appearance—she is delivering a modified sermon about the Tower of Babel, ending with the maxim: the mediator between the head and the hands is the heart.

Joh, Freder’s father, immediately recognizes the danger she presents and turns to the inventor, Rotwang, to help him discredit her. They decide to give Rotwang’s greatest creation, the Machine-Man, Maria’s face. It’s worth noting, however, that the Machine-Man had a female form well before this plan—Rotwang created it to replace the woman he loved. Joh and Rotwang are naturally delighted with the Machine-Man version of Maria, calling it the most perfect and obedient tool. Each believes that the Machine answers only to him, although it is ultimately unclear whether the Machine has motivations of its own. (“Let’s watch the city go to the devil!” it exclaims toward the film’s conclusion with noticeable glee.)

It does, however, fulfill its joint purpose, which is to bring chaos to both the city above and the city below. In the Metropolis’ nightclubs, the Machine dances, driving the upper-class men to violence and delirium. Below, it incites the workers to revolution and encourages them to destroy the machines that keep both cities alive and functioning.

Thanks to the Machine’s efforts, the Metropolis comes close to complete destruction, with the workers’ children trapped in a flooding city below and the wealthy stalled by massive power outages above. Rioting breaks out as the two classes encounter each other on the surface. However, Maria saves the workers’ children—with Freder’s assistance—and later, the mob unwittingly destroys the Machine-Man. After seeing his son nearly die, Joh has a somewhat convenient change of heart and, with Freder’s help, joins hands with the worker’s foreman.

All this comes at the hands of one woman and her doppelganger—equal forces for peace and chaos. But Maria isn’t a character with much agency or screen time. Freder’s pursuit of her dominates our attention throughout the film. And ultimately she is not the mediator, rather only the inspiration for him, the original Trinity to Neo’s Chosen One in The Matrix.

Maria is an unusual character in other respects. It’s unclear what her position or profession is, although it seems likely she might be a teacher or a minder for the children, and she doesn’t quite seem to belong to the working class. Neither does she seem to spend time with other women. Only men come to the meetings she calls; in fact, we see no women workers at all until the film’s final act.

There seems to be a suggestion, then, that only men can overthrow the oppressive society—we see three men clasp hands at the end of the film to show that peace is possible. Aside from the women in the mob of workers, women in Metropolis remain isolated, surrounded by crowds of men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no moment of: “These are your sisters.” However, without Maria, revolution seems unlikely. She threatens the status quo by calling her meetings; she inspires Freder to leave the city above and witness the city below. Her image—properly manipulated—is enough to create division within both societies, but she also contributes to the unity.

The Machine-Man, of course, has even less control over its destiny. Its appearance is stolen, an appropriation of Maria’s body for the benefit of the patriarchal upper class. If it loves chaos and seems devious, we should remember that it was designed to behave as it does. It is an ideal tool because it appeals as women as meant to appeal without any desires or notions of its own. But it’s worth noting that the other women of the upper city are also tools of the patriarchy, used for a particular end other than their own determination, however willing their participation in the system might appear.

Ultimately, Metropolis gives us two images of how women function in repressive societies—as revolutionary visionaries and unholy temptresses. However, it falls short on both sides: they can neither overcome nor create the dystopian world as they choose.

We find a similar duality of character in François Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. The film deals similarly with a male hero of the dominant society awakening to the realities of the world around him: Guy Montag (Oscar Werner). Montag belongs to the enforcement class—he burn books—and lives a comfortable if unhappy life with his wife, Linda (Julie Christie).

Linda is the picture of complacence. She consumes the media her society dictates, wants what her culture tells her to want, and questions little.

We wouldn’t know anything of her unhappiness, save for the fact that in her second appearance in the film, she has apparently overdosed on pills. It’s never settled satisfactorily whether she did this intentionally or by accident. The emergency crew treats it as a routine occurrence, so it seems likely that Linda represents the typical woman of her station—lonely, uneducated, and lacking control over her life in any meaningful way.

Montag is visibly shaken by the episode, but only to a point—he is in the midst of a transformation inspired by Clarisse, a woman he meets on the train. In a deft move by Truffaut, Christie also plays Clarisse, distinguished from Linda only by her short hair.

Although he is not as immediately taken with her as Freder is with Maria in Metropolis, Montag clearly finds himself drawn to Clarisse. (She is often regarded as one of the original manic pixie dream girls.)

He seems happy to see her again and goes so far as to visit the school where she works with her after she’s fired. He particularly seems moved by her emotional response when the children don’t remember her—she cries the tears Linda can’t.

But most importantly, Clarisse puts Montag on the path to his awakening by asking him, “do you ever read any of the books before you burn them?”

Don’t mind me…just here to inspire you to a revolution.

Clarisse, like Maria, is an active participant in a movement to change the way her society works. She warns a man at the beginning of the film that the firefighters are on the way to his house. She doesn’t teach the way she is directed to and she challenges all of Montag’s preconceptions about the world in which he lives. However, as with Metropolis and Maria, Fahrenheit 451 is not Clarisse’s story. And strikingly, the dual casting of her and Linda suggests that the two play complementary roles in Montag’s life. One represents the inadequate if safe life he’s lead and the other the intellectual freedom and curiosity he learns to want. But under slightly different circumstances, Clarisse might have been Linda or vice versa. Their individual desires, while relevant, do not drive the narrative the way Guy’s do. Rather, like Maria and the Machine-Man, they represent the two possibilities in particular dystopian systems—their roles largely determined by the needs of men in those societies, be they revolutionary or otherwise.

Ultimately, what are we to make of these manic pixie dream girls with their unusual ideas? Is there a moment when they might do more than inspire others and take real revolutionary action on their own? And is it possible to tell the story of a woman coming to the same realizations that Freder and Guy do?

Or, does it all come back to the creation of the Machine-Man—the ultimate symbol of society’s desires with no identity of its own?

Recommended Reading: “Reproducing the Class and Gender Divide: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis”

Julia Patt is a writer from Maryland. She also edits 7×20, a journal of twitter literature, and is a regular contributor to VProud.tv and tatestreet.org. Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/chidorme

Prom and Female Sexual Desire in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and ‘The Loved Ones’

In this piece we focus on prom as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of ‘Carrie,’ ‘She’s All That,’ ‘My-So-Called Life,’ or ‘Glee,’ to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack” movie ‘Pretty in Pink’ with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements ‘The Loved Ones’ directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

This is a guest post by Ingrid Bettwieser and Steffen Loick for our Representations of Female Sexual Desire week.

Girls want relationships, boys want sex. The notion that adolescent girls don’t act on their own sexual desires (and just look sexy) still seems to be a prevailing cultural organizing principle perpetuated by many media illustrations. For us the concept of “Prom” brings together – in a pop-cultural genealogy – diffuse notions of (predominantly) heterosexual teenage desire, depictions of romantic love and binary coupling combined with teen-horrors of social exclusion, acknowledgement and coming-of-age. Prom epitomizes the time and place where sexual subjects/objects of desire are ordered normatively. Individual freedom (not to go to prom but fall out of the place of acknowledgement) and social force (go to prom but subject to normalizing scripts) are negotiated accordingly.

In this piece we focus on prom as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of Carrie, She’s All That, My-So-Called Life, or Glee to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack”-movie Pretty in Pink (1986) with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements The Loved Ones (2009) directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

Pretty in Pink: Prom and female heterosexual desire economized

In Pretty in Pink we follow Andie Walsh, a white working class high school student, whose symbolic entrance into upper class is negotiated in a romantic Cinderella narrative. As the story unfolds it becomes evident that Andie is motivated by economic desire that she can only satisfy through a makeover. In this process she turns from quite independent but socially marginalized teenager to coupled with a “richie” but silenced.

Due to a scholarship Andie attends a private high school and falls for yuppie Blane. The two start dating despite Andie’s geekish best friend Duckie (also a so called “mutant” e.g. working class member), who follows her around quite intrusively and whose love for her is unrequited since she doesn’t show any romantic interest in him. Duckie even warns Andie of the potential sexual motives Blane might have: “He is gonna use your ass and gonna throw you away!” But regardless of any peer skepticism, Andie assumes that hating people because of their money would be some kind of reversed injustice.

Pretty in Pink: Duckie is no object of Andie’s desire — Duckie is no object of Andie’s desire

After a disastrous date, where Blane’s rich friends humiliated Andie at a party, Blane asks Andie to go to prom with him. This important question leaves Andie utterly speechless and she kisses Blane right away in front of his BMW. Only as soon as she enters her house she screams out loud and tells her father, “I can’t believe it happened!” As if Andie is not entitled to have sexual feelings on her own, she uses a passive voice without seeming to be involved in any action. Being asked to prom and the couple’s first kiss intermingle to a single event that alludes to the sexualization of prom.

But in due course Blane stops answering Andie’s calls and freezes her off because of peer pressure and out of his own doubt in the relationship. After dramatic events, Andie decides to go to prom nonetheless to prove that “they didn’t break” her. Moreover Andie bonds with her elder friend Iona, a strong and creative record store manager, who advises Andie to go to prom in the first place when she questions the necessity of it being a “stupid tradition.” Iona stresses it would be essential in later life: “It was the worst, but it’s supposed to be, you know, you have to go.”

Lamenting her wasted creative talents, Iona asks Andy in another situation, “I am good in bed, should I be a whore?” It becomes clear that sexual abilities are to remain outside the realm of economic usability. In the course of events Iona goes through a transformation from punkish and outstanding to “mom-ish” in order to progress in her own cross-class relationship. When she is dating a “yuppie” she aligns the criteria for her happiness: “He is so nice, he is employed, he is heterosexual.”

Pretty in Pink: Andie cares for her part-time working father — Andie cares for her part-time working father

The desired combination of nice/employed/heterosexual is combined with a degrading of working class masculinities in homophobic modes as inefficient and therefore undesirable throughout the movie–Andie’s father, who hangs around the house during the day, is taken care of by Andie herself as he doesn’t get over the abandonment by her mother; Duckie, who doesn’t seem to be interested in finishing high school is mistaken for a male sex worker in one scene (the character’s sexual orientation/gender is still speculated on as supposedly “effeminate” or “gay”). Iona has an argument with her obviously incapable partner who demands not only house-work and sex but also transportation services and even Blane is “degraded” by his upper class friends as a “faggot” when seen with Andie.

Not so decent Benny and Steff — Not-so-decent Benny and Steff

Andie’s sexually decent behavior is contrasted by upper class Benny, who is obviously sexually active and in one scene tells her boyfriend Steff that she would be “one more step away from virginity” for which he labels her a “slut.” Andie’s character, however, doesn’t seem to be sexually motivated at any time and instead rather marked by protestant chastity. Female sexual desire is not absent here; it is told as economized and rationalized desire that can be satisfied through expressive self-entrepreneurship and working – even on a prom dress. Material wealth as represented here is therefore fetishized but corrected in its moral degeneration via Andie’s display of female sexual decency and DIY diligence. In order for her not to be labeled a “slut,” she cannot display sexual agency.

Andie's father gives her a pink prom dress — Andie’s father gives her a pink prom dress

In the end Andie creates herself an outfit out of two pink prom dresses–one of them given to her by her father, the other one being her friend Iona’s old dress. After days of working Andie goes to prom alone where she is met by Duckie and they walk in together as friends. As soon as Blane spots Andie he comes along and tells her he would’ve always believed in her whereas she didn’t believe in him. (Which is pretty implausible considering his behavior.) With Duckie’s approval, Andie finally follows Blane to the outside parking lot without many words. The movie ends with their final uniting kiss.

Prom and the monstrosity of female sexual desire: The Loved Ones

The Loved Ones (1999) could have been the ultimate feminist revenge-fantasy I have long craved. I imagined the film to be an utopist notion against the always similar plot-narrative of prom night as a heterosexist spectacle of the male desire. The heroine does not transform into a beautiful “swan,” the mandatory happy ending does not occur, and the anticipated couple does not find each other. Instead, a nerd-stereotyped boy experiences in a subplot that the reality of actually going to prom with the female object of desire is sad, awkward, and leaves a hollow feeling.

The film torpedoes the classical structure of the prom night narrative from the beginning: The female main character Lola, who is orchestrated to appear as unimposing and weird in her first scene, asks her crush, the melancholic school-bad boy Brent, to the ball herself. She is active and autonomous and waiting for a boy to ask her seems not to be an option. After Brent rejects her request, she secretly observes him having oral sex with his girlfriend in a car. Lola’s face is rigid and empty. In the next scene we find her sitting in her pink-colored room, gluing Brent’s yearbook-picture into her scrapbook. She even paints a heart around his face. While doing this Lola listens to a song of the singer/songwriter Kasey Chambers, which might become the hymn of the next generation of sad teenage girls: “Am I not pretty enough? Is my heart still broken? […] Why do you see right through me?”

One finally realizes that this self-dramatization as the sad outsider girl is just a performance when her father gives her a pink dress with matching shoes as a present. Unlike in Pretty in Pink, the dress scene takes places in a very early stage of the storyline, but it’s also one of the most important scenes of all. Thrilled Lola tries on the dress in front of her mirror, while her father – whom she tells to stay – watches her from the door. This two-sided lustful action, posing and watching, marks Lola via the insinuation of father-daughter incest, one of the most far-reaching narrative taboos, as sexually monstrous.

The moment of transformation: Lola and her dress

The pink dress simultaneously initiates her transformation: Lola shifts to a bloody prom queen and anti-heroine who acts out sadistic desires in a series of violent acts against Brent’s body. They are all bizarre persiflages of prom rituals. She carves her initials into Brent’s chest, after the obligatory posing and picture-taking and pretends to dance with the enamored boy, whose feet are nailed to the floor while her father showers them in glitter.

These tableau viands of violence begin with the annexation of Brent: The drugged and kidnapped boy wakes up wearing a smoking jacket in a kitchen tied to a chair. The room is decorated with balloons, there’s even a disco ball at the ceiling. Lola moves close and injects him something that suppresses his ability to talk. Brent, by the way the actual hero of the story, becomes a victim; he has to remain silent and subject to Lola’s haphazard power. This increases Lola’s lust and her desire to put him at the center of her enactments of torture, pain, and degradation.

A grotesque version of prom night pictures

Unfortunately this is not about taking revenge for all the rejected high school girls. The film points out clearly that father and daughter have done this before and that especially Lola is a sheer monster. Not because her violence seems to have no boundaries–Lola is finally portrayed as completely monstrous when she becomes less sexually devoted to Brent, who starts to resist her. In the course of them dancing together, she admits to her overwhelmed father: “Your are the prince, that’s why I can’t find what I want. It’s you, it has always been you, Daddy.” The indicated kiss between them is stopped by Brent, who escapes and kills Lola’s father, what finally marks the restoration of sexual normativity and social order respectively.

In the end Lola represents abnormity, because she has violently abandoned her family. She not only cut the ties to her mother, like Andie does in Pretty in Pink, she also lobotomized and killed her. Lola’s sexual desire toward her father led to his death by Brent’s hand. When she is eventually killed by Brent and his girlfriend, it seems like the only plausible solution: disappointment. Not only is The Loved Ones not a feminist film, it’s also not a revenge-fantasy or even a film about a cool, crazed, pink female killer. It’s about a path of ordeals of a young man, who finds – after rightfully killing his sexually deviant female torturer – his long lost place in society with a more or less silent girlfriend.

Steffen Loick is doing his PhD on the relationship between gender identity and body optimation at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, German. Ingrid Bettwieser just finished school and works as an extracurricular educator at a memorial in Berlin, Germany.

‘Philomena’: A Feminist Gender and Religion Critique

Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who got pregnant as a teenager and was relegated to a convent where she was forced to perform grueling manual labor before her young son was sold to an adoptive US family. Fifty years later, Philomena works with a washed-up ex-journalist to find her son while he uncovers the dark truth behind her son’s adoption and the church’s betrayal. Overall, I’d say this is a feminist film that tries to expose oppressive gender roles that linger on today and allows its heroine, played by the exquisite Dame Judi Dench, to be her own person: a woman who makes her own decisions and mistakes while remaining irrepressibly full of humor and love.

I wouldn’t exactly characterize Stephen Frears much-praised film Philomena as a comedy. I’d describe it as more of a dramatized exposé of the corruption of the Irish Catholic church with moments of levity that give a desolate story warmth and humanity. Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who got pregnant as a teenager and was relegated to a convent where she was forced to perform grueling manual labor before her young son was sold to an adoptive US family. Fifty years later, Philomena works with a washed-up ex-journalist to find her son while he uncovers the dark truth behind her son’s adoption and the church’s betrayal. Overall, I’d say this is a feminist film that tries to expose oppressive gender roles that linger on today and allows its heroine, played by the exquisite Dame Judi Dench, to be her own person: a woman who makes her own decisions and mistakes while remaining irrepressibly full of humor and love.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DBPqcp6Hc4″]

Philomena is in the business of critiquing institutions; specifically: religion, gender, class, and media. The interactions between ex-journalist Martin and Philomena highlight class disparity. Sometimes the exposure is subtle. Martin flies to the convent while Philomena drives with her daughter. Philomena is giddy at the prospect of free champagne on the flight to America as well as the complimentary grand breakfast buffet and the posh hotel room. She doesn’t “get” Martin’s sense of humor or cultural references, and she reads romance formula fiction, never guessing at the “formula” obvious in all her books. These moments are designed to make the audience chuckle at the sweetness of Philomena’s naivete while underscoring her lack of privilege, education, and wealth.

Philomena feels "like the Pope" for being allowed to ride on the airport transport service. — Philomena feels like royalty for riding on the airport transport service.

Other times, the class disparity is stark and painful. Philomena realizes she could never have given her son the opportunities and lifestyle he enjoyed as a result of his adoption. Martin is, on occasion, cruel to her because the things that excite her are old hat for him; he’s jaded and has come to expect a life of comfort and privilege. He also mocks Philomena for her faith, insinuating that her class status is why she believes in a higher power (because he is too learned and intellectual to believe in anything). The movie shows that though Martin is more worldly, wealthier, and better educated than Philomena, he doesn’t enjoy life the way that she does. She refuses to be bitter or angry like he is. He begins to understand and accept the fact that Philomena needs him, with his connections and his status as an upper-crusty white man, to find out the truth about her son.

Martin rebuffs Philomena for her excitement about the hotel's omelet station — Martin rebuffs Philomena & her excitement about an omelet station

Philomena‘s religion and gender critique go hand-in-hand. Religion judges and punishes young women (some as young as 14) for giving in to “carnal” desires that they haven’t been educated about to even understand the potential consequences. The film also highlights forced labor along with constant recriminations to show how religious forces incite fear, shame, and blame that Philomena and countless others carry for over 50 years. Philomena experiences a particular guilt because she enjoyed the sexual encounter that led to her pregnancy. The church teaches that female bodies and female pleasure are sinful, and many of the nuns are revealed to be bitter and vengeful, a perfect example of patriarchy-complicit female figures of authority. There is no discussion of the culpability of the male cohorts whose sperm was a necessary part of the baby-making equation. Sound familiar? The religious right continues this mentality with its abstinence-only education while heaping stigma galore onto young women who become trapped in pregnancy, insisting that the female body is a breeding ground for impurity and that all the fault lies within the woman, who is, in many cases, forced to suffer all the consequences.

Young, inexperienced Philomena at the fair.

The kicker is that “female sin” is big business for the church in Philomena. The convent forces young women to “pay off” their debt/sin by working ungodly hours (pun intended) in the convent, and then they illegally sell the babies to the US for a great deal of money. The church destroys evidence and refuses to help families reunite even after 50 years of separation. The film claims that this was in part due to a continued resentment and desire to punish the sins of the young mothers, but it’s perhaps more true that the church is covering its tracks. Here, the church, a religious institution, takes advantage of the weak, the helpless, the poor, and the disenfranchised. Here, the church, targets women in particular using the notion of female sin to solidify their dogma and to reinforce their power (financial in this case). The exploitation of women by religious institutions is not new and continues today, as female reproductive rights are leveraged to cause divisiveness and to reinforce the power of political groups, religious groups, and the patriarchy.

The real-life Anthony with a nun before he was sold.

Despite it all, Philomena remains a good-hearted person. She stands up to Martin when necessary, insisting that this is her story. She asserts that she’ll be the one who makes the decisions and that her reaction is her own, not his or a media that seeks only to capitalize on her tale of woe and exploit her for its own gain. She continues to love and accept her son regardless of the many things she learns about him that an old-fashioned religious person like herself could have found alienating. In the end, she forgives the convent, proving that she is the bigger person and more Christian than the nuns and religious institution that tormented her. While the circumstances of the film are tragic and devastating, Philomena’s doggedness, her bravery, and her journey have exposed wide-spread corruption and opened the door for other mothers to reunite with their long-lost children. Though she’s an ordinary woman without means, a fancy education, or influence, she stood up to a powerful institution steeped in centuries of history, and she said, “No more.” Philomena’s quest shows us that the personal is political and that one woman can make a difference in the the world.

Judi Dench sits with the real Philomena Lee.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.