(Includes a new footnote for film critics)
Opening Credits
A “mainstream movie” is where I can confidently tell strangers how good it is;
an “art house movie” is when I can’t rate it for you unless I know you. Sean C
Teaser
A dirty, disgusting movie? Disempowering? With much nudity, and much sex? Well, here in London, the cafe nata chain had a Poor Things competition; the winning customer got tickets for two to Lisbon. A young lady at nata told me the staff got to see the premier, showing the uncut version: Long, but they liked it.
That’s queer, because expert female film critics for the Guardian thought the show was a “male chauvinist fantasy.” I would reply: “Ya, but could this movie be feminist?” Even though rated R?
This week I saw Poor Things, the art house flic starring Emma Stone. As the crowd was leaving a young man said, perhaps to older relatives, “I don’t know if I should have even seen that film.”
Act One
Now, for the finest films—and this art one is given four stars out of four—one is best advised, during the trailer for it, to do the same as a film expert does: Galen Bullard, author of Kubrick’s Prophecy, told me he closes his eyes and covers his ears. Because just as one opens a classic English literature novel that is bare with only a title on the cover, so too should one go into Poor Things knowing only the film’s title. Seriously. (Except, of course, one deserves to be warned that it has an R rating for nudity and sex—but not for the violence) That said, I want to reveal as little as possible, but in order to delve into whether this film is feminist, I must note: …
The creative costumes are exquisite.
The actors, who are very respected by their peers for their craft, give excellent performances.
The sets are imaginative, surreal, and worth the price of admission.
Colours change, cinematography changes, characters of new speech patterns are introduced.
The artistic score fits perfectly—but is very unlikely to be packaged as a movie soundtrack.
… The flic is reviewed on the website of Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert (deceased). One would expect a lot of comments—the list is 94 comments long, as compared to only 21 for Citizen Kane. One would expect the film lovers to share their awe and appreciation of the notes I have listed above. One would be wrong.
In fact, I don’t think the men even troubled to help each other examine the film title, to discern who the “poor things” are. Surely an indicator of a feminist film could be when most of the blog comments are by males, and they are mostly arguing with each other. Another sign might be that it has a female producer, who is also the star.
As for those scandalized myopic males arguing, their payoff is they don’t have to raise their eyes as to ask whether women should have equal rights. One might think that question to have been already answered to everybody’s satisfaction back in the 1970’s during the heady days of women’s liberation. One would be wrong.
Act Two
What sisters back then discovered, meeting in their living room circles for “consciousness raising,” is that surfacing facts, integrating facts, and then seeing our common world with new eyes is exciting but also hard. It would be yet another decade before film aficionados came across the the 3-point (Allison) Bechtel test: Does the film include 1) a scene of two women, 2) talking with each other, 3) about something other than a man? Some of my favourite superhero films —but not Wonder Woman— fail that test. The ancient Chinese said, “Women hold up half the sky.” Maybe so, but a lot of us are Atlas standing bored with with our eyes half closed.
For my part, I am conscious that I have been conditioned to think that any Hollywood males who would deserve having sex with a heroine must be tall, dark and handsome. Emma Stone knows better.
Act Three
Dimly —without understanding why— I know that, for every time and space, the more authoritarian a government is the more it seeks to control women, for example, to control more of a tired housewife’s birth control and abortion. During the desperate years of WWII, when we had Rosie the Riveter, the Nazis kept their women out of the factories.
To reference an idea in Emma Stone’s film, not a single democracy allows, as some non-democracies do legally right now, clitoris removal against a person’s will… This while progress towards equal rights, as Reverend Martin Luther King noted, does not roll in on wheels of inevitability.
Viewing the male characters in the film, of the same socio-economic class, we can explore some feminist check-boxes for Poor Things: …
Do they think that women are not reasonable creatures, simply not fit to be doctors of science or medicine or even occupy observation seats in a surgical operating theatre?
Do they try to control a woman, but not each other?
Do they gaslight a woman, but not each other?
Do they use emotional coercion, even grabbing, on a woman but not each other?
Do they think that women, and men of the lower classes too, must not own or brandish a weapon, while they themselves are fully entitled? Like some whites today imagining only a fellow white, but not George Floyd’s cousin, when it comes to the right to carry hand guns with “open carry” or “concealed carry.” (Reminder: Brandishing in our country is against the law)
Most importantly, do all the women in the movie agree agree with being second class… or do one or more women, as a feminist indicator, aspire to knowing her right to equality?
… If the boxes above, all ‘yes,’ are not addressed in the blog comments, if instead male writers focus intently on their preferred male gaze then—? Maybe society needs more feminist art movies.
End Credits
If I met Emma Stone I would look her in the eye and firmly shake her hand, to thank her for producing and acting in such a fine film.
… …
Encore I quote at length from a feminist classic, Jane Eyre, on April 10 in Bella Baxter as a Victorian Man From Mars
Sean Crawford
London
January, 2024
Film Club, after show discussion
As for whether self respecting people of 21st century society are “consciousness raised,” well, as I wrote this I found a news clipping:
(From the Guardian, Jan 27, 2024, Opinion by Arwa Mahdawi)
QUOTE …When high-profile figures like Taylor Swift are targeted with deepfake porn, it sends a message to young girls: put your head above the parapet and you will be punished for it. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, how many billions you have in the bank, the world will still find a way to objectify and humiliate you.
Girls, by the way, are hearing this message loud and clear. A 2022 study in the UK found that girls aged nine-to-18 ranked “being a leader” the lowest priority in a list of 17 attributes for future work. Why would they want to be leaders, why would they want to be in the public eye, when they see what sort of abuse those women receive? UNQUOTE
Update for Curzon art house
Film Critics, a thought:
I once saw the forgotten film Butterfly Effect where the audience, and the character, wait with bated breath each time as he periodically sends time messages to change history. In other words, a suspenseful series of events. The reviewers who hated the movie all made a point of writing, without feeling suspense, that each change makes things worse. My conclusion is the critics “joined the dots” in a way that the viewers like me, perhaps being less film jaded, did not.
To apply this to Poor Things, I wouldn’t trust any critic who says this film is about a character’s conscious journey into learning about sex. That’s wrong, as the lady does not connect any dots as she is living them, and is not on any conscious knowledge path except for science.
UPDATE: (6 February 2024) Today here in London the Evening Standard noted that FGM, female genital mutilation, happens not in another time (back during Poor Things) nor in another space. (Asia, Africa) Nimco Ali (page 17) writes “Yet here in the UK the work is not complete — FGM has also affected 137,00 women and girls in England and Wales, an outdated figure based on the 2011 census.” More: “I remember walking in Bristol a few weeks after my interview with the Evening Standard and a man throwing his tea at me and spitting on the floor near me.
My soul left my body for a second not knowing what was happening to me and as I was rushed away by my sister I kept screaming.”
