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Mexican Women in Salt of the Earth and Biutiful (Shauna)

On a superficial level, there is very little in common between Salt of the Earth (1954), a bare-bones narrative of labor unrest in an arid, desolate New Mexican mining village dubbed Zinctown, USA, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s vivid, saturated, and jarring portrayal of contemporary Barcelona, entitled Biutiful (2010). Iñárritu addresses a distinctive socio-economic underbelly in Spain, filtering experience through a single Mexican protagonist, Uxbal (Javier Bardem). But he suggestively exposes broader demographic and immigration changes underway across Europe.

Javier Bardem in Biutiful. Creative Commons, by Cinema Davar.

At its core, Salt of the Earth is a decidedly local film. It employed neorealist techniques and was subjected to a variety of constraints imposed by Cold War politics. Political pressures helped to mold a particular atmosphere and imparted an unrehearsed quality to the film. According to Rosaura Revueltas, the actor who played Esperanza Quintero, “[The cast] never saw any rushes. The film was shot blindly. Scenes were never repeated. During filming, helicopters flew overhead in order to protest…”[1] Salt exudes a spontaneity that pervades even the most didactic scenes. This natural quality reinforces Esperanza’s radical and incisive soliloquy. In it, she articulates the crux of the conflict with her husband, Ramón: Anglo employers undermine and antagonize the Mexican miners, yet Ramón is complicit in discrimination, debasing his wife by discouraging her political engagement. The dismissive nature of his responses (“You’re talking crazy!” and “Will you be still!”) betray the truth in her words.

 

Biutiful represents an essentially global film, in which characters from developing nations are linked to each other and to Europe in a tightly wound economic network. This is not to insinuate that Iñárritu disregards the local environment. With the utmost care, he conveys textural and chromatic details of Marambra’s (Maricel Alvarez) apartment, the dank sweatshop housing Chinese laborers, and the living quarters of the Muslim Senegalese. Still, a nascent internationalism emerges, with Barcelona functioning as a hub for émigrés, human trafficking, and other illicit activity. The resulting social universe is exceedingly complex, and the wealth of visual information contained within each frame only compounds that impression. Iñárritu’s filmic precision approaches hyperrealism. His style proves expressive and photogenic, if at times unsettling.

Interspersed throughout the film are supernatural moments, which call to mind the magical realism of Latin American literature. Those moments function as visual breaths, which alleviate the slightly claustrophobic and suffocating experience of material poverty. In one sequence, two massive swarms of birds dance in flight over city. For a moment, they exist not as birds, but as abstract entities. Uxbal fixates on this display, which is at once bizarre and extraordinary.

  

Calatrava Bridge, Barcelona. Creative Commons, Zio Fabio.

Stylistic distinctions between the two films reflect their unique historical contexts. Salt of the Earth was produced under tremendous political pressures. Actual workers participated in the production process, lending a greater degree of authenticity and making  Salt slightly more astonishing than if it had relied purely on professional actors. In some ways, Salt of the Earth and Biutiful represent polar opposites; in terms of scale, stylization, casting, sound, and complexity of the mise-en-scene, the films could hardly be more different. Yet, both films convey a particular experience of Mexican transplants, engaging issues of male anxiety, gender equality and inequality, and the adverse consequences of free-market capitalism. They occupy separate parts of the temporal and geographic spectrum (1950s United States, and present-day Spain), yet the films address a number of related cultural questions. A full comparative analysis is beyond the scope of this entry. Instead, I will outline the construction and experience of women in the Mexican émigré culture.

 

Salt of the Earth may be considered groundbreaking for its apparent foray into feminist activism. It subverts, or at least challenges, an established gender order in post-War America, and does so rather obliquely. When Esperanza articulates her condition, it is without flourish or euphemism. Early in the film, she shies away from politics and tacitly accepts her domestic identity. For instance, she asserts her ambivalence about entering the union meeting with the other women. Moreover, it is Consuela (Angela Sanchez) who proposes the women’s auxiliary branch for the miners’ union. In the wake of the meeting, Ramón brusquely acknowledges, “At least you didn’t make a fool out of yourself like Consuela.”

The formation of the auxiliary, and its ultimate effectiveness in maintaining the picket line after a court injunction prohibits future miners’ strikes, reflects a morality in the filmic universe of Salt, which contends that men and women are essentially the same. Although tensions exist between husbands and their wives, a mutually beneficial partnership gradually emerges in the film. Ramón even invokes unity between “brothers and sisters” in the aftermath of the attempted eviction. Still, feminine acquisition of a labor relations discourse, and the subjection of women to physical violence (in the form of strikes and imprisonment), runs contrary to many of the entrenched gender norms espoused by the men.

In one of the most memorable dialogues in the film, Esperanza asserts Ramon’s total reliance on her involvement in the negotiations: “You can’t win this strike without me. You can’t win anything without me.” He responds with a threatening gesture, but it elicits no spasm of fear; rather, it spawns her complete renunciation of “the old way.” Esperanza’s final instructions, “Sleep where you like, but not with me,” convey the transformative potential of her political engagement in realigning power dynamics within the home.

Interestingly, Biutiful presents a far more ambivalent picture of the Mexican female. In Salt of the Earth, men occasionally adopt a feminine perspective, as when Ramón hangs the wash to dry and wonders why indoor plumbing had not been a major union demand from the beginning. But masculine and feminine perspectives in Biutiful seem nearly irreconcilable. Uxbal’s wife Marambra is presented as rather wretched and manipulative, even if these traits are beyond her control and likely symptomatic of her mental illness. Whereas Esperanza is indispensible to Ramon, Marambra seems only to sap Uxbal’s energy: her alcoholism and apparent bipolarity, her incessant need for sex, and her total economic dependence add up to a woman who resembles a child more than a spouse. Marambra also actively undermines Uxbal’s attempts to create and maintain order in the household. His exertion of control is not coercive, but rather intended to establish much-needed boundaries for his children, Ana and Mateo.

Nowhere is the fissure between male and female perspectives exemplified more clearly than in a late sequence in Uxbal’s brother’s strip club. Whether Iñáarritu intends to communicate something about Mexican, Spanish or European attitudes towards women is not entirely clear. What is evident, however, is that objectification of the female is rampant, and the audience’s limited exposure to such imagery prior to this scene merely reflects Uxbal’s relative dignity within the film’s dubious moral spectrum. Perhaps what is more shocking than the seedy costumes, inflatable decorative flesh, incessant pounding music, and seizure-inducing lights, is the exchange that occurs between Uxbal and a young woman (whom his brother boasts he has slept with). Their physical proximity only amplifies the sense that she and Uxbal are separated by a lifetime of experiences. Her youth underscores his impending death, seemingly accelerated by his drug and alcohol-induced intoxication. When she asks why he isn’t dancing, he responds, “Because I’m dying.” It is unclear why he is doing what he is doing – perhaps it is a defensive strategy in this grotesque and demeaning atmosphere. A profound sense of isolation and male anxiety settles around Uxbal at that moment. It is a loneliness that no female presence can attenuate.

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[1] Esteve Riambau and Casimiro Torreiro,“This Film is Going to Make History,” Cineaste 19 (1992): 50.

Killer of Sheep (Shauna)

In his commentary on Killer of Sheep (1977), Charles Burnett habitually downplays his own role. He seems to construe his sublime compositions and vignettes merely as true-to-life portrayals, or fictitious constructions derived from real people and real spaces. He sees himself in terms of documentation, though the film is not a documentary in the formal sense. Deft attention to environment, dialect, “invisible” characters, and the integration of improvised moments and staged scenes, illuminate Burnett’s tendency to incorporate documentary-style realism into his film texts. He speaks of lighting, framing, and collaboration with actors in terms that are pared down and frank. Perhaps the cinematic and narrative elements had always existed, and Burnett merely had the audacity to cull and splice the pieces together. There is nothing exploitative about the picture. And there is no pompous pretense to his language. Unencumbered by a monolithic artistic vision, Killer strives towards honest portraits that elicit a spectrum of potent emotions: jarring, rousing, titillating, and tragic.

Unique framing, candid blocking, and precise dialogue reflect Burnett’s discerning eye — and his ability to distill from fragmented, contradictory, disordered moments of a day or year, a coherent and lasting impression of the local world and its inhabitants. That Burnett’s work substantiates and gives voice to a group that has been historically ostracized, undermined, oversexed, or undersexed by Hollywood, represents an accomplishment independent of its artistry. Yet, even if we view Killer in a social-cultural vacuum, divested from the disparities, segregation, and inherently unequal parameters of life in the United States, the result is a stunning aesthetic achievement. Killer of Sheep plays out an urban space, interspersed with great expanses, massive trains, open lots, and construction sites resembling war zones. It incorporates elements of the Western, and of the metropolis, yet Killer transcends both of these locales, establishing a potent temporal and spatial coherence. The circumstances of this particular universe in Watts, Los Angeles, vacillate between melancholy and dark comedy. Nuclear families, neighbors, and floaters proceed through life, seemingly unencumbered by the objective eye of the camera. And it is this ambiguous balance between the despondent and the droll, which resonates with the human psyche.

The flexible, agile bodies of the children in Killer navigate their neighborhoods, forming a dynamic pattern against steeply inclined streets, construction lots, and freight trains. Their figures elicit in the viewer a sense of exuberance and compassion, interest and astonishment. We are transfixed.

Nor can the audience help but to indulge in watching the incoherent freeloader rub his face, tug at his bandage, and lick his lips. There is something fascinating about his impenetrable torpor, and the slow dolly back that reveals the car motor beside him. A woman in the same room massages lotion into her decidedly un-Hollywood legs and thighs, rippling, yet oddly enticing, nonetheless. The two figures, each surpassing the bounds of the frame, are united by an ephemeral and disconcerting jump cut that is visual shorthand for her physical blow to his bandaged head, following her comment, “You ‘bout tasteless as a carrot.” It is the odd balance between pleasure and pain that imparts such gravity to the scene. First, there is the electric thrill of her verbal quip (which, incidentally, seems both a trite cliché and a unique turn of poetry). Then, there is the visceral recoil as she delivers the blow, which is abstracted by the violent cut and Stan’s appearance at the side of the groaning, damaged, contorted body that twitches like a squashed insect. All the while, the flamboyantly dressed “uncle,” tugging at a jerrycurl and fawning over his reflection, lends ambivalent comic relief.

Bishetta Merritt has emphasized the juxtaposition of imagery from the slaughterhouse and shots of the children, who are “oblivious to the squalor and poverty around them” (2008: 113). Neither the sheep nor the children, she asserts, are cognizant of their impending demise. But such an assertion fails to convey the full richness of Burnett's visual metaphor. Moreover, the film seems to challenge such didactic principles.

Indeed, children constitute the only truly resilient force in the film's universe. Although they are not immune to suffering, they surely are not doomed. In contrast, the living sheep are inseparable from their limp, shaved counterparts hanging on prongs, or the gelatinous ovine bodies moving weirdly with the spray of the hose. The sheep connote monotony, angst, and suffering. Such qualities are evocative of the lives of adults in the film, but rarely those of children. While Stan's crisis seems uniquely “existential," most adults execute day-to-day rituals of work and family with alternatively dark and humorous perspectives.

Stylistically, the film exemplifies Burnett’s interest in capturing and conveying life in an unadulterated, unspoiled form. These lives transpire in a tactile, emotional, and architectural environment irrefutably linked to his own childhood.

Parallels between the open environments of the Italian neorealists and Burnett’s Watts emerge early in the film and constitute a sustained motif. Burnett, like the neorealists, delights in gritty, naturalistic landscapes. Indeed, part of what makes Killer of Sheep so intriguing is the constant interchange of locations. Although there is a degree of continuity (the camera never ventures beyond a particular cultural and social universe), there is a surprising multiplicity of spaces. Burnett acknowledges that his familiarity with the neighborhoods afforded him a variety of locations for shooting. Although he is ostensibly the master of this realm, he never overtly directs us in how we should judge the space and the individuals who inhabit it. We empathize with Stan, yet never fully understand the social or clinical origins of his depression. Likewise, we identify with the old man who witnesses a burglary across the alley, yet his departure from the yard to contact law enforcement does not seem exactly heroic.

We are complicit in the crime insofar as we recognize it would be a shame to disrupt what Burnett has orchestrated: the balanced composition, with the thieves running down the street, heavy T.V. in tow. Why sacrifice this robbery-dance to bureaucracy and justice? Anyway, the police would likely spawn new problems for the neighborhood.

 

 

The Myth of Economic Opportunities for Women in Osaka Elegy and Flowing (Katie)

Kenji Mizoguchi's Naniwa Ereji (Osaka Elegy) and Mikio Naruse's film, Nagareru (Flowing), are films that seem to speak to each other across the divide of time. Osaka Elegy came out in 1936, while Flowing came out in 1956, and so the films sit in history on either side of World War II. While the films were made nearly exactly twenty years apart from each other, and by different directors, both star the actress Isuzu Yamada, and both are deeply invested in exploring the condition of life for the women in their respective eras. Elegy and Flowing are inherently different films – they differ in their frames of reference, their directors, and subject matter. Yet both films provide commentary on the pre-war and post-war economic and social opportunities for women.

In Osaka Elegy, Isuzu Yamada plays Ayako Murai, a young working class girl who embodies the popular idea of a modern girl, or moga, that was Japan's answer to the flappers in American youth culture. Modern girls were presented as sexually promiscuous, financially independent working girls who were uninterested in politics or social concerns, and only in themselves and their affairs. Ayako is Mizoguchi's answer to the popular image of the modern girl – but he simultaneously subverts the image as he creates it.

By the end of the film, Ayako does become the image of the modern girl – finely coiffed hair, stylish accessories, western clothing – but she is styled in other images first. She is first dressed very simply, in Japanese style robes with her hair pulled into a modest bun. Ayako is the picture perfect obedient daughter. When her father is about to be arrested for embezzlement, she becomes the mistress of her boss – donning a more expensive kimono and the elaborate hairstyle of a bride. When she finds that the only way of supporting herself and her family is to continue to be the mistress of older men, Ayako dons the western look of the “modern girl.” In her patriarchal society, this modern girl is viewed as a threat because of her ability to provide for herself and choose her her sexual partners. But for Ayako, its just a costume for a roll she must play in order to survive.

When her former coworker, Susumu, who also had proposed marriage to her previously, comes to visit her at her own apartment, the dramatic nature of Ayako's costume is acted out. She greets him in one half of the room, and they sit down to a western style table and chairs, and she seems the master of this lavishly decorated apartment. Yet as she confesses to Susumu what she has done, becoming a mistress to support her family, she moves into the other half of the apartment – which is decorated in a very traditionally Japanese style. She becomes more defeated as the scene goes on, retreating further into the room – the illusion is revealed, and the audience and the actors have all been brought backstage. The illusion of the modern girl is destroyed, and economic mobility is confirmed to still be under the rule of patriarchal authority.

In Mikio Naruse's Flowing, Isuzu Yamada now plays Otsuta, the head geisha of a struggling geisha house. Here, the post-war outlook on economic authority for women is even more bleak. In Flowing there is barely even the illusion that it is glamorous or an option for the women to be the masters of their own money and destiny. The life as a geisha is not shown as an existence floating above the world, a sequence of delightful parties and merriment - but one of debt and duty, resentment and resignation. The world of the geisha is collapsing in around Otsuta, who strives to keep her house together, as being a geisha is what she is most suited to.

The Tsuta house seems to be a place of dead ends for the women who live in it. Otsuta is a middle aged woman long separated from her husband and father of her grown up daughter, Katsuyo. Once a renowned geisha, Otsuta has fallen on difficult times and has few junior geisha to support her house. Katsuyo, although brought up within a geisha house, never had skills for the arts, and feels unsuitable to ever be married. Someko is a senior geisha buried in debt, who is later abandoned by her much younger boyfriend. At the start of the film, the house takes on a new maid, Oharu, a widower who has been rejected from other households for being considered too old to do maid's work. For each of them, they have nowhere to go but the Tsuta house, and depend on its functions for their livelihood - even as the geisha profession is becoming less profitable. Their confinement to this lifestyle is absolute, unless they marry out of it – an option each of them has found is not for them. The film even rarely strays from the setting of the house, only occasionally going to the neighboring streets and stores. Economic and social mobility is not even an illusion for Otsuta anymore.

Even with the bleak outlooks portrayed in both films, their endings show that neither Ayako or Otsuta are defeated by their social confinement. The last sequence in Osaka Elegy shows Ayako in profile striding down a dark street – and then instead of just fading out, the camera swings around to see a closeup of Ayako walking straight towards us. The audience is forced to look at her, and on her face is not a look of resignation. She is walking straight ahead into the future.

Likewise, the women in Flowing do not give up on the geisha house. In the last sequence, Otsuta is singing and training young geisha students along with Someka. Katsuyo is practicing sewing in a room above the shamisen rehearsal. Outisde, the river continues flowing, and life continues on.

 

A Night with Charles Burnett (Josh)

For the longest time, I had been unaware of a great filmmaker.  As a child, I had unwittingly seen, and enjoyed, one of his early Disney collaborations: a TV-movies entitled Selma, Lord, Selma.  Then, about a year ago, I was re-introduced to Charles Burnett through his seminal feature film Killer of Sheep.  The film is one that can be considered a truly American Independent film.  Burnett's work has always evoked connections to the Italian neorealists for his open portrayal of characters and documentary-like approach to filmmaking.  His use of natural light, naturalistic (many times improvised) dialogue, and location shooting added to this "independent" style of cinema.  

In Killer of Sheep, his use of sound is incredible.  The music choices, which caused many problems upon the release of the film as the producers could not secure the rights to many of the songs, give life and set mood in a piece that has no real specific narrative direction.  The use of diegetic sound also enhances the state of wandering in and out of people's lives.  

                         (Image Courtesy of Creative Commons)

I was excited to receive the news that Charles Burnett would be speaking on the Hopkins campus en route to his speaking engagement at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.  Instead of showing Killer of Sheep (which was shown at the National Gallery along with When It Rains, a short film that Burnett mentioned was one of his favorite works he's done), he screened Nightjohn, another Disney-commissioned made-for-TV movie.  

Here is  Burnett introducing his film:

 

 

Although the film can be very Disney-esque, there are moments of brilliance that allow Burnett's style to shine through.  One of these moments comes early on in the film when Sarny's mother is sold.  The young Sarny stands motionless as the wagon toting her mother pulls away.  The camera is mounted on the
 wagon and rattles along, giving a perfect point of view shot.  While much of the film follows a sleek, Hollywood style, this raw aesthetic sneaks its way into the film and harkens back to Burnett's earlier work.  Burnett also respects the locations in which the characters live.  This is another tell-tale of his creative sensibilities. 

                                (Image Courtesy of Creative Commons)

For a film that is pretty predictable – save for its brutal portrayal of slave life in the South - with its
 sweetness, moments of horror, and little bits of humor, it is engaging enough to sit through for its 92 minute runtime. 

The lengthy Q&A came to a close with Burnett trying to encourage the filmmakers in the audience to go out there and make films – this after an extensive discussion of how independent cinema is in decline and money is scarce.  But Burnett’s encouragement comes not from his words, but from his works, leaving a legacy of inspiring films for young filmmakers. 

 

Ex-Con Romance: Sur me levres (Read My Lips) and A History of Violence (Glennis)

     Midway through Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips, ex-con Paul (Vincent Cassel) tries to convince secretary Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) to help him pull off a major theft. When the woman resists the idea, Paul snaps: “Let’s cut the crap – just tell me what you want.” Carla tells Paul she won’t participate in his plan unless he comes back to the office and continues to be her assistant. “Take it or leave it,” she says defiantly.

      An equally aggressive interaction occurs in the second half of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. After discovering that her husband lived a life of crime in Philly and changed his name before marrying her, Edie (Maria Bello) asks him: “What are you?! Like some multiple personality schizoid?!” Her husband, Tom (Viggo Mortensen), says he assumed his dark past and former name (Joey Cusack) were behind him. He replies helplessly: “I never expected to see Joey again.”  

     The tough words Carla and Edie use during these moments reveal critical turning points in both Read My Lips and A History of Violence. Both films feature a significant exchange of values between a former criminal and a woman on the right side of the law. Carla and Edie start out as trusting and kind; exposure to their partners’ threatening ways inspires the women to become assertive, outspoken and even violent. Although Paul and Tom resort to violence frequently throughout the films, the men ultimately become more sensitive and aware of their actions than ever before. A variety of filmic techniques reveal the considerable behavioral shifts that occur between the lovers in both films.

      Dialogue exposes the great divide between Paul and Carla early on in Read My Lips. During their first meeting after Paul has been hired at the office, Carla asks Paul why he hasn’t worked for two years. Paul admits: “I was in Fleury. Doing time.” Natural lighting makes Carla look especially innocent as she asks: “What kind of time?” Baffled by her question, Paul responds contemptuously: “Time Magazine. I was in jail! Are you shitting me?”

      Multiple point-of-view shots from Carla’s perspective as she stares at Paul making copies showcase the nearly-deaf woman’s growing fascination with her co-worker. Tight framing during two-shots of the characters suggests that their lives are becoming more and more intertwined. After Carla provides Paul with living quarters and an advance on his paycheck, the ex-con makes a move that permanently alters their relationship.

      In a medium long shot with natural light streaming through Paul’s apartment, the man gropes and kisses Carla. Startled and scared, Carla tries to defend herself as Paul forces her onto a countertop. Her girlish hair clip and modest clothing convey how inappropriate Paul’s advances are. Carla breaks free before Paul can harm her. She may be attracted to Paul, but her reaction suggests Carla wants their relationship to blossom on her terms.

      Paul’s violent move has surprising consequences. Carla forces Paul to steal files that will ensure her upward mobility at the firm. Paul, in turn, makes Carla read the lips of thugs he intends to steal from. Partners in crime, Paul and Carla are increasingly featured in two shots. A birthday party scene exposes the sexual chemistry between the couple. Soft, Latin music in the background hints that romance is in the air. The camera zooms in to position the pair in a close-up, emphasizing the growing connection between the two. “Can you take my hand?” she asks him. He pulls her to his chest, asking softly: “Do we get to smooch?” That he asks the question instead of simply planting a kiss stresses his emerging respect for and tenderness toward Carla.

      A club scene in the film showcases Carla’s ability to make Paul jealous. A point-of-view shot from Paul’s perspective of Carla wearing a fashionable outfit and flirting with two guys proves that the ex-con wants the woman to himself. “Are you done?” Paul asks her. Carla pretends she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Paul’s protective side is soon revealed as he beats up a guy who has tried to rape Carla in the club’s parking lot. Positioned in a two-shot with his arm around her, Paul says: “It’s okay. It’s over.” The club sequence summarizes the exchange of values that occurs during the film – Carla has become more confident and Paul has become both caring and considerate.

       The behavioral shifts that occur between Edie and Tom in A History of Violence take place under very different circumstances. Frequently positioned in two-shots with romantic, tranquil music playing, the spouses appear to be very much in love. Edie’s high school cheerleader outfit during the couple’s first intimate scene reveals the passionate, surprise-filled nature of the couple’s sex life. “You’re naughty,” Tom says playfully. Long takes during the scene emphasize the couple’s incredibly strong bond.

      However, Edie’s discovery of Tom’s dark past significantly changes the way the couple communicates with one another. Edie’s firsthand view of Tom’s violent behavior makes the woman both frightened and repulsed by her husband. The partners are increasingly positioned in separate shots; morose, slightly haunting music plays during the couple’s heated arguments. As Edie becomes more and more disgusted by her husband, the woman also becomes more verbally assertive with him. The normally composed and respectful Edie uses profanity and raises her voice.

      The couple’s violent sex on their staircase reveals the increasingly disturbing nature of their relationship. Quick cuts exaggerate the pain the partners experience as they shift around on the steps. Close-ups of different parts of their bodies reveal the wild, animalistic nature of their rough sex. The unnerving music that plays during the scene is a far cry from the peaceful score that accompanied the couple’s morning car rides together. However, that Edie pushes her husband off of her at the end of their act suggests that the woman may still have some control in the relationship.

      The rest of Tom’s violent actions in the film are geared toward protecting his family and himself. However, the former criminal still experiences a reawakening that may finally put an end to his violent impulses. Having killed off everyone tied to his former life, Tom washes his face and upper body in the lake by his brother’s mansion. Natural lighting and the high angle shot long shot of Tom kneeling as he washes himself suggest that the man understands he has hit rock bottom. By purifying himself, Tom clearly hopes his family will accept him again.

      During the dinner table scene as Tom returns to his home, the lengthy shots of his family members staring in his direction reveal their genuine desire to be close with him again. The tears running down Tom’s face reveal the man’s shame and vulnerability. The shot/reverse/shot pattern between Edie and her husband suggests that the spouses believe their relationship is worth repairing.

Black Swan and the Hazards of Female Autonomy (Yelena)

In many ways, Aronfsky’s award-winning Black Swan is a film about femininity and repressed womanhood. Following the struggles of Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, to master the lead role in Swan Lake, Black Swan focuses on the pressure on women not only to reach perfection but to be perfect. In this respect the film’s message is clear. This pressure is destructive, leading to the main character’s breakdown and ostensible suicide.

When it comes to more nuanced notions of gender and repression, however, Black Swan becomes much more thematically murky. For purposes of this post, I will focus on the issues of female adulthood, independence, and sexuality in our protagonist, Nina. Through its depiction of her journey to self-destruction, Black Swan delivers the clear message that a free woman is a dangerous woman, perhaps less miserable than the trapped girl but certainly more devastating.

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The primary female influence on Nina is her mother, Erica Sayers, played by Barbara Hershey. A failed ballerina who gave up her career for her daughter, Erica lives vicariously through Nina. At the same time, Erica keeps her daughter in a consistently infantile state. Nina’s room is pink and filled with stuffed animals, and her bedroom door is perpetually open. When Nina gets the lead role in Swan Lake, her mother buys her a cake and, after Nina refuses a large piece, almost throws the whole thing out. The proper balance is restored only when Nina relents, if only a little, and Erica feeds Nina some frosting off the tip of her finger as one might to a baby or a pet. Even Nina’s sexuality is strictly corralled. Erica sometimes spends the night in her daughter’s room, explicitly preventing Nina from exploring that part of herself. This mother-daughter relationship, clearly, is not a healthy one, and it is one that explicitly keeps Nina from entering into adulthood, much less taking control of it.

This is the Nina we have at the start of Black Swan, a young woman trapped in a child trapped in a woman’s body, and this is the Nina who is perfect for the innocent White Swan but not so for the dark and sensual Black Swan. This is the woman the head of the ballet company, Vincent Cassel’s Thomas Leroy, casts as the Swan Queen.

When we first meet Thomas, he is stalking through a room of ballerinas, appraising them, touching them as a mark of who gets to audition for the Swan Queen and who does not. This scene oozes male dominance, male ownership, over the female, and this impression is affirmed when Nina visits his office in order to ask for the role. She knows to do her hair and put on lipstick, to put on a sexualized feminine presentation. And Thomas notices, Thomas points it out, and Thomas grabs her and kisses her.

To the film’s credit, this scene is portrayed as the assault it is, and when she bites him and runs away we see his behavior as horrifying, sexist, and unfair. Nina’s talent should win her this role, not Thomas’s decision to take sexual advantage of an employee.

But it is this scene—or, more accurately, her willingness to fight in a sexually aggressive situation—that lands Nina the part.

Repeatedly, what can be described most accurately as sexual harassment or all-out assault from Thomas is depicted as disturbing but overwhelmingly necessary or justified, not only to get ahead in the ballet industry but also for Nina’s personal growth. Intrusive questions about Nina’s sexual habits, an order to masturbate, and even a physical seduction are Thomas’s methods for teaching Nina to become the Black Swan, and this harassment sparks Nina’s sexual awakening. Nina even develops feelings for Thomas. Repeatedly the film tells us that Nina is repressed, infantilized, shut in by herself and her surroundings, and while Thomas is certainly not the good guy for what he does, his role as sexual gatekeeper blurs what should be a morally clear-cut issue. It’s no coincidence that the director states, “That whole scene with Natalie when he tells her to go touch herself, it's really not that out of line” (Source). For the director and for the film it isn’t, because the end product is justified by the means.

The product here being a woman crafted into the perfect Swan Queen, the means an aggressive male authority figure forcing his sexuality on a female employee, something the rest of us might call a crime.

One must be careful, however, to note that Nina’s sexuality is not depicted as a particularly good thing. In keeping with tradition, the dark and even the murderous are sexual in Black Swan. Perhaps because that which is repressed must be released in an equally violent manner, Nina’s sexuality is destructive and a marker of her own moral degradation. Her growing independence is treated in a similar manner, and develops alongside this sexuality.

Take Mila Kunis’s Lily, the embodiment of everything Nina has buried deep inside her. Free in her dance, in her consumption, in her speech, in her manners, in her sex, Lily acts as Nina’s foil, both for the character and for the audience. She is also the one to lead Nina into autonomy, especially sexual autonomy, first by a visit to a club and then through oral sex. Lily literally takes Nina away from the controlled environment of her mother’s apartment, but even then, she spikes Nina’s drink. This free spirit is deceitful and dangerously so, and as Nina becomes more and more confident and sexually aggressive, performing a mind-blowing performance as the Black Swan and kissing Thomas in front of the other dancers, she becomes more violent and morally questionable, killing “Lily”/herself and attempting to cover up the crime.

Also notable is that, during their sex scene, Nina is not actually with Lily but with the dark version of herself, Lily simply a hallucination. (I could go into the theme of female homosexuality as something dark, forbidden, wrong, and tantalizing here, but that’s a topic for another post.) After reaching orgasm, Nina is literally smothered by her own doppelganger, this sexual release leading to a sort of breakdown and death.

By repressing all of these aspects of her adulthood and womanhood, what could be healthy is blown up to unhealthy extremes—one can’t help but wonder, though, just what would healthy extremes be? In Black Swan we only see unhealthy femininity, unhealthy sexuality, unhealthy womanhood. Healthy limits are never defined, and it is in fact left questionable whether these even exist, especially for women.

By the end of the film, Nina can be considered an independent actor. She has broken away from her mother and calmly convinced Thomas to give her the role of the Swan Queen. She has even gained control of her own sexuality, as seen in her kiss of Thomas. At the same time, however, we have actually seen her physical metamorphosis into the Black Swan—a hallucination or delusion, perhaps, but no less a symbol of transformation into something dark and unnatural. After all, escaping her mother involved breaking her mother’s hand. The relationship with Thomas was never a healthy one, and so even this expression of her desires is darkened. Perhaps most importantly, reaching this stage in her adulthood has literally cost Nina her moral and physical life. In order to keep the part of the Swan Queen Nina has committed murder, if only in her mind, and in actuality she has stabbed herself.

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In Black Swan, we follow what is in many ways a coming of age tale. Nina, a sexually innocent young woman, is infantilized by her mother and surrounded by figures of an aggressive and developed sexuality, and in order to play the role of the Black Swan, she must force herself to grow up, and she must do so quickly. At every stage of this process, however, she is either revictimized or must victimize others, including herself, in order to reach any sort of autonomy. It is tempting to read this negative portrayal as a scathing criticism of a sexist culture, but there is scarce evidence for such a reading; not in a world where even Lily, the closest thing Nina has to a friend and the film to a positive portrayal of female sexual independence, is cruel enough to spike Nina’s drink in a club. If this is how friends help friends, I’d hate to see how they hurt each other.

Black Swan is a fairy tale of broken womanhood. It is a world where mothers are wicked and little girls might be unhappy at home but at least they’re not stabbing themselves with broken glass. Black Swan is a world where women can’t win and not necessarily because of their circumstances, a world where men hurt women and this is bad, yes, but to some extent justified because it seems there is something fundamentally twisted about female sexuality anyway.

It is a world where, the moment you let the women free, they’re more than capable of destroying themselves.

And Introduction to Mikio Naruse with When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Katie)

    Amongst film directors from Japan, there are three that are the most internationally recognized: Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi. Each of them has a certain claim to fame. Kurosawa, for his sweeping epics of samurai and sword play. Ozu, for his immaculte depictions of every day life for the common family, and the delights and dissapointments that are brought on with the passage of time. Mizoguchi, both for his vivid period films and stirring contemporary films focused on the difficulties of women in society. 

    Outside of Japan, Mikio Naruse is relatively unknown compared to these three, although he is often considered as just below them in prestige. Naruse was a contemporary of them, and directed around 80 films in his lifetime. Naruse even was trained at the same studio along with Ozu, and the two are often compared together for their thematic focus on the Japanese family in transition as the culture was rapidly becoming urbanized. Yet Naruse's films have a much bleaker viewpoint, with none of the transcendence or light comedy of Ozu's. His filming is less stylized and not as recognizably "Japanese" as his contemporaries, although the content and heart of his films were completely relevant to the society. These features may be why Naruse has been long overlooked in international film studies. Naruse's storytelling, however, is just as finely crafted as those of his contemporaries. With films centering around strong female characters, Naruse's stories are rich with emotional depth and clarity. The strengths that lie at the heart of his films are exemplified in his 1960 film, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. 

    When a Woman Ascends the Stairs follows the story of Keiko Yashiro, played by Hideko Takamine, an aging widow working as a bar hostess in the glittering nightlife district of Ginza in Tokyo. She was married at a very young age to her true love - who died in a truck accident, leaving her with nothing. Now, after turning to hostessing to support herself, Keiko is too old for her line of work and finds her future prospects closing in around her. 

    In the first ten minutes of the film the audience is shown how Keiko can escape her life as a hostess. In the opening scene, the other hostesses from her bar are celebrating the marriage of one of their former co-workers. Marriage is one way out. After being scolded for poor sales by the owner of the bar, Keiko wishes she could open up her own bar and be her own boss. Investing and becoming a self-employed entrepreneur is another way out. Naruse then presents the darkest, and most extreme alternative - as Keiko returns to the bar, a crowd of hostesses gather around a stretcher being rushed into an ambulance. A hostess from another bar has committed suicide. Death is another way out. These are the options available to Keiko, each confining in a different way. Marriage would permanently make her dependant on a man, and owning a bar would commit her to a business that she despises. Death would be completely giving up, proving that she was unable to handle the difficulties forced upon her. 

    Keiko's obstinence, and her absolute refusal to humiliate herself for anyone else's gain, demonstrates Naruse's attention to the emotional realities of women. The entire world of the Ginza bar is not seen from the customer's perspective - an entitled male perspective - but from the worker's behind-the-scenes viewpoint. The film shows how they approach their work, and is not the narrow portrait of the giggling and charming hostess only there to serve her patron. Even if the other hostesses are not as emotionally burdened as Keiko, they each have their own emotional core and physical reality that their actions stem from. For each of them lies the struggle of earning a profit, maintaining self respect, and preserving the outward image of a woman who is self-reliant. Yuki, the owner of Keiko's rival bar, buys a car even as she struggles to cover her dept. Keiko struggles with debt as well, as she can barely  
afford her appartment and a new kimono. For these women, the physical demands of reality are 
innescapable. The glitz and glam of Ginza nightlife is not the reality for them, it is the image they are bound to uphold for their customers. Keiko's reality is one of dissapointments, debts, and self compromise. 

    Naruse's outlook is bleak, but the attention he gives to telling the lives of his characters is absolute. His insight to the struggles of women is as illuminating as it is grim. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is an excellent introduction to the richness of Naruse's storytelling, and a film that can hopefully draw more viewers into Naruse's world of strong female characters.