logo

search

  • Home
  • About the Harpies
  • Contact Us
  • FAQ
delete
bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark

In Dreams Come Responsibilities

Posted by Pilgrim Soul in Culcha Vulcha, Thoughts on Dec 17, 2009, 2:29pm | 7 comments

A couple of days ago a friend and I went to see Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lovely Bones.  I had seen the reviews, or rather, had seen the Rotten Tomatoes rating; but I tend not to trust male film critics on the subject of movies about women.  They usually get their wires crossed somewhere, much like poor Mr. Edelstein did over at New York magazine when he wrote his execrable review of Precious and then got angry when a “posse” (his term!) of feminists disagreed with him.  Sad little man.  At any rate, that is my best excuse, other than that I have always thought the book was interesting.

Jackson adapted the screenplay with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, one of whom I think is his wife, so I don’t want to get too essentialist.  But I couldn’t help but wonder, as I watched the film, if this wasn’t a prime example of the way the framework of high fantasy epics like the Lord of the Rings are… unhelpful, from a feminist perspective.

See, Peter Jackson, if you’ll recall, in collaboration with one of those same women, once made a film called Heavenly Creatures.  I greatly admire Heavenly Creatures, and not just because it was Kate Winslet’s film debut (!).  I admire it because it is a movie about female friendship that focuses on the intoxication of it, and the terrible consequences that flow from that intoxication, without ever feeling like an indictment of female friendship itself.  That’s hard for anyone to pull off.  So Peter Jackson has, in my personal universe, a proven ability to make decent movies about women, and women’s experiences.

And The Lovely Bones, is a book about violence against women, whether it likes it or not.  And, I’d say, a good one at that, though Alice Sebold has fallen out of vogue since its publication.  (Her followup was a long time coming and it was terrible.)  The subject matter is of course rather voyeuristic: the rape and murder of a young girl.   But she has a knack for affecting scenes described with dispassion. Like this one:

“They found a body part.  It might be Susie’s.”

It was a hard sock in the stomach.  “What?”

“Nothing is ever certain,” my father tried.

Lindsey sat down at the kitchen table.  “I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“Honey?”

“Dad, I want you to tell me what it was.  Which body part, and then I’m going to need to throw up.”

My father got down a large metal mixing bowl.  He brought it to the table and placed it near Lindsey before sitting down.”

“Okay,” she said.  “Tell me.”

“It was an elbow.  The Gilbert’s dog found it.”

He held her hand and then she threw up, as she had promised, into the shiny silver bowl.

It is, in short, melodrama largely without melodrama.  Opinions differ on whether that tone is even throughout and admittedly, the couple of times I have picked the book up over the years to reread it I usually lose interest after the first few chapters.

But my point is  you will find no scene this subtle (and this is not even that subtle!) in the movie.  Jackson, Walsh and Boyens present a boiled down, almost mythical version of the story.  No one finds Susie’s elbow; the parents are simply told she’s dead.   Susie’s rape at the time of her murder is glossed over and never explicitly or implicitly spoken of; her sister’s eventual liberation from grief through a relationship is a thing of chaste kisses, not sex, like it is in the book.  What the afterlife “looks like” in the book is not nearly so important as the manner in which it serves Susie’s coming to terms with her death, but all we get is spectacle spectacle spectacle instead of soul soul soul.

Sure you can’t fit whole books into movies, and yet, Jackson managed to fit a good deal of the Lord of the Rings in.  And here is where I think the difference is: those books were written in a highly abstracted style.  Elves don’t speak or think like humans, which allows you to dispense with messy human emotion, and dwell on empty concepts like Honour and Country and Friendship.  And in the context of fantasy that often makes a sort of visceral sense because we aren’t expected to connect it to anything personal or concrete.

But here’s the thing, kids: I’m not sure we can do feminist without the personal and the concrete.  We certainly can’t do nuance, and I think, in general, the experience of violence against women required nuance in its treatment because otherwise it’s just a fist in someone’s face, or, as here, a death not shown and the full extent of it left unsaid because it would be shocking, and we wouldn’t want anyone to be shocked.  Or, at least, we don’t want anyone to be shocked by epics.  We want to be lifted up by them, and the problem is that the story of being murdered for no reason other than you are a girl and you happen to be close at hand: it isn’t uplifting.

And when filmmakers like Jackson and walsh – who used to understand nuance – make such a tone deaf movie as this one, I can’t help but blame fantasy for it.

Bookmark and share this post:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • De.lirio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • TwitThis
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • email

7 Responses to “In Dreams Come Responsibilities”

  1. bluebears says:
    December 17, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    I really liked Heavenly Creatures as well, but that’s about it for Peter Jackson movies for me.

    I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to here that they glossed over the rape. Not that it should have been sensationalized either but that’s just so…again, disappointing. Particularly to hear that in its place they emphasized some fantasy bullshit.

    I actually didn’t really like the book, I had first read her memoir of her own rape and didn’t like it, but couldn’t quite put my finger on why but then felt compelled to give TLB a try because people loved it so much and again, I just didn’t really like it. Something about the way she writes about the aftermath of rape? I don’t know. It puzzles me.

  2. Cimorene says:
    December 17, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    Could you clarify what you meant in the last sentence, about fantasy being to blame for the lack of nuance? Because I’ve found, at time, fantasy (in the form of books mostly, I guess) to be excellent at using nuance to deal with complicated issues affecting women. Or did you mean that making the Lord of the Rings ruined Jackson et al?

  3. Clare K. R. Miller says:
    December 18, 2009 at 1:11 am

    Ditto what Cimorene (love the name!) said–or do you perhaps mean the popular expectations of fantasy movies, rather than the genre itself? I do wonder how one can blame the genre for the differences between a fantasy book and its movie adaptation!

  4. Evamaria says:
    December 18, 2009 at 4:24 am

    Every review I’ve seen so far seems to agree that the movie doesn’t really work – which is a pity, because I was one of the people who really liked the book. And I love both Heavenly Creatures and LotR, so I was kind of hoping for the best, I guess…

    The Lovely Bones already considerably toned down the stark realism of Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky (which read like a punch in the gut, in the best way possible), it’s disappointing that they flinched away from the impact and horror of rape and violence against women.

  5. Pilgrim Soul says:
    December 18, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Cimorene – I do blame the genre somewhat though I recognize that I am using a definition of it that’s tainted by an assumption that it “belongs” to the men who are traditionally identified as articulating it. But what I am saying is that I find, overall, “high fantasy” – i.e. fantasy that operates at a high level of abstraction, like LotR in particular yes but I suppose you could say the same for a Pilgrim’s Progress or even for a lot of the sort of genre fantasy books or hell, Star Wars (which I happen to enjoy as shlock!) – as a harmful aesthetic. Feministically-speaking.

  6. Clare K. R. Miller says:
    December 18, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    Pilgrim Soul, could you explain your understanding of the fantasy genre further? Maybe it’s because I’m a fantasy reader and writer and thus very deeply into the genre, but I’m very confused as to how fantasy itself can be a harmful aesthetic. If you were talking specifically about LotR, or Pilgrim’s Progress, or, hell, Harry Potter, or any other specific work, I might understand where you’re coming from, but as it is I’m lost.

  7. You’ll Laugh - The Pursuit of Harpyness says:
    January 8, 2010 at 9:18 am

    [...] of the areas I’m continually thinking about is the presence and representation of women in imaginative work.   And because I’ve been sort of working up to a hypothesis about male/female aesthetics in [...]

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

random posts

U.S. Air Marshal Accused of First Degree Rape...
HA HA HO HO HEE HEE FAIL FAIL FAIL...
Every Working Woman Needs a Wife. Especially This ...

recent comments

  • Skada: In my pre-feminist days, I used to wish people would catcall...
  • Cimorene: @Cat - This is an excellent point; my apologies for neglecti...
  • mischiefmanager: That cartoon is so sad, and so true. I don't get that stu...
  • Dawn.: Hugh Hefner is a total douche-bag. I'm not surprised some ri...
  • Cat: Just thought I'd add that you ought to refine your definitio...
  • JessMess: THANK YOU so much for this. I read it on a certain other sit...

Tags

Abortion Activism Anger Anti-feminists Assweasels Beauty Culture Busybodies Children Choosing Your Choice Double Standards Education Empowerfulment Fashion Fat Is A Feminist Issue Feminism Great Male Narcissists Hollywood Ladylike Endeavors LGBT Marriage Masculinity Misogyny Motherhood Overshare Politics Race Racism Rants Religion Reproductive rights Sex Sexism Sexual violence So-Called Self-Improvement Solipsism Stereotypes The Media Theory and Practice Things That Are Awesome Unexpected Consequences Uteri Police Violence against women and girls Women's Health Women's Work Work Administrative Professionals Day (2)
Anonymous Prosecutor (3)
Culcha Vulcha (31)
Feminist Food for Thought (12)
Friday Fun Thread (47)
Guest Post (16)
Harpy Book Club (10)
Harpy Cinematical Society (8)
Harpy Droppings (2)
Harpy Hall of Fame (20)
Harpy Periodical (3)
Harpy Seminar (23)
Harpy Shout-out (51)
Harpy Televisual Society (3)
Heard (1)
Help Me Harpies! (5)
Honorary Harpies (16)
Housekeeping (23)
International Museum of Women (1)
Language Matters (19)
Linkaround (5)
Morning Snark (39)
Reader Request (7)
Retro Pleasures (10)
Solo Flying (54)
Thoughts (835)
You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me (100)

WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.

Blogroll

  • A Truly Elegant Mess
  • Bitch
  • Bookslut
  • Deeply Problematic
  • Echidne of the Snakes
  • F Bomb
  • Feminist Law Professors
  • Feminist Philosophers
  • Feministe
  • Feministing
  • Fugitivus
  • FWD/Forward
  • Geek Feminism
  • gudbuy t'jane
  • Hoyden About Town
  • Hysteria!
  • I Blame the Patriarchy
  • Jezebel
  • Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose
  • Katha Pollitt
  • Like a Whisper
  • Maud Newton
  • Pandagon
  • Racialicious
  • Rage Against the Man-chine
  • Salon’s Broadsheet
  • Shakesville
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • The Angry Black Woman
  • The Curvature
  • The F Word
  • The Feminist Agenda
  • The Feminist Texican
  • Tiger Beatdown
  • Womanist Musings
  • Women’s Voices for Change

Archives

  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009

Search

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Valid XHTML
  • XFN
  • WordPress

Twitter Updates

google

google

.

Copyright © 2010. Creative Commons License
The Pursuit of Harpyness is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Powered by Wordpress | Designed by Elegant Themes

The harpy art you see in our banner above is by Ursula Dodge. Visit her etsy store!