I've been randomly picking things off my Netflix instant queue, added at some time or another because it was on a list or some blog I read commented on it. It is an odd assortment of films that don't really seem to follow any rhyme or reason. Hence, in the middle of this beautiful almost fall day, I ended up watching Blue Velvet.
My fiction class last semester, Monsieur Woody Jones, and this random dart Netflixing have somehow added up to a recent introduction to film noire, a genre I really haven't enjoyed previously. I'm not sure I'd say I enjoy it now, but I have been intrigued by the portrayal of women in these films. Blue Velvet was released in 1986, and I'll admit I don't know much about the film history of that period. Older classics and modern films I'm pretty familiar with, but in general I seemed to have skipped over much of the 80s.
Because I don't know much about film from the 80s, I don't know much about how women were commonly portrayed during this time, but a quick IMDB search shows that of the 10 top films from that year, three of them had leading female characters who I would consider positive or strong (Aliens, Pretty in Pink, Labyrinth), and two had characters with more redeeming qualities than those in Blue Velvet (Top Gun, Nine 1/2 Weeks). Sigourney Weaver kicks serious ass throughout the Aliens series, Molly Ringwald is her own person even if she makes the wrong choice (What can I say? I love Duckie), and Jennifer Connelly conquers even imaginary creatures in Labyrinth. In Top Gun, Kelly McGillis has got more smarts than anyone else in the movie, and even though I hate Kim Basinger's character in Nine 1/2 Weeks, at least she walks away in the end. The women in Blue Velvet stand out here. Is this because film noire doesn't have room for female characters other than the Virgin and the Whore? I haven't seen enough yet to know, but I'm curious.
Isabella Rossellini manages to be sexy and sensual here, despite the awful gigantic 80s hair she's forced to sport throughout the film. She's older, more experienced. She seduces Jeffrey (played by a young Kyle MacLachlan), even as she's being brutally victimized by Frank and is worried about her kidnapped husband and son. In fact, she forces her sexuality onto Jeffrey - when she catches him spying on her from the closet, she makes him undress at knife point. This takes place in her entirely pink apartment, from the walls to the leather sofa. It's like a giant vulva in there. Her hair is black and she wears a lot of make-up, not always while working at the nightclub where she's a singer, although not a very good one. In case you missed all this symbolism, we see her naked twice in the film, once after having been raped and beaten. Laura Dern's character never shows so much as cleavage. We get it, she's a Whore. Even while being victimized, her role is to provoke the downfall and temptation of our lead (always male) character.
Alternatively, we have the Virgin. Laura Dern plays the detective's daughter, a high school senior (!), a blonde haired, blue eyed girl who dresses like the 80s teenage version of a schoolmarm. She does get to wear a strapless dress once, but it's got a floral print, so it probably doesn't count. She has almost no sexuality at all. When Jeffrey tries to kiss her in the diner, she asks him not to, and when they kiss again at the dance, it's sanctioned by their just-moments-before declarations of love. They have known each other for about a week, but it's love, so I guess kissing's okay. In contrast with Rossellini's apartment, we see Dern's bedroom once, and while there is the obligatory pink, it is present as an accent, a ruffled accent. Her sexuality is childlike, couched in innocence and love.
Jeffrey has a choice to make here. When he finds an ear in the field behind his neighborhood, his curiosity sets him down a path on which he discovers a dark hidden world he never knew existed all around him. At first, Dern is complicit in the investigation, but then she begins to encourage Jeffrey to give it up when she feels he is getting in too deeply and wants him to turn over what he's found to her father, the representation of authority and the keeper of the status quo. She does this, even though Jeffrey is hiding quite a bit from her, protecting her from the seedier details of his new knowledge as well as his own involvement in what's playing out. He refuses to quit his investigation, returning to the seductive embrace of Rossellini and it's only once he gets the crap kicked out of him that he feels any kind of inclination to follow Dern's advice.
Rossellini represents the dark, the tarnished, the damaged, the hidden. If you head down that path, you end up like Frank (a terrifying Dennis Hopper) or Ben (an eerie Dean Stockwell), crazy and dangerous. Dern represents the light, the clean, and the new. If you choose what she represents instead, you get a house and a family, as evidenced by the closing scene where he and Dern are having lunch with both their families.
(I find it interesting that the whole reason Jeffrey came home in the first place was because his father had a near-fatal stroke. Frank ends up dead in the movie, but perhaps Lynch is trying to say that it all turns out that way no matter what choice you make?)
The female characters as written are played to perfection by these actresses, but what's with these roles in the first place? I return to my previous question - is there a place in film noire for more three-dimensional women? Any good examples out there? Are their equivalent male roles?
My fiction class last semester, Monsieur Woody Jones, and this random dart Netflixing have somehow added up to a recent introduction to film noire, a genre I really haven't enjoyed previously. I'm not sure I'd say I enjoy it now, but I have been intrigued by the portrayal of women in these films. Blue Velvet was released in 1986, and I'll admit I don't know much about the film history of that period. Older classics and modern films I'm pretty familiar with, but in general I seemed to have skipped over much of the 80s.
Because I don't know much about film from the 80s, I don't know much about how women were commonly portrayed during this time, but a quick IMDB search shows that of the 10 top films from that year, three of them had leading female characters who I would consider positive or strong (Aliens, Pretty in Pink, Labyrinth), and two had characters with more redeeming qualities than those in Blue Velvet (Top Gun, Nine 1/2 Weeks). Sigourney Weaver kicks serious ass throughout the Aliens series, Molly Ringwald is her own person even if she makes the wrong choice (What can I say? I love Duckie), and Jennifer Connelly conquers even imaginary creatures in Labyrinth. In Top Gun, Kelly McGillis has got more smarts than anyone else in the movie, and even though I hate Kim Basinger's character in Nine 1/2 Weeks, at least she walks away in the end. The women in Blue Velvet stand out here. Is this because film noire doesn't have room for female characters other than the Virgin and the Whore? I haven't seen enough yet to know, but I'm curious.
Isabella Rossellini manages to be sexy and sensual here, despite the awful gigantic 80s hair she's forced to sport throughout the film. She's older, more experienced. She seduces Jeffrey (played by a young Kyle MacLachlan), even as she's being brutally victimized by Frank and is worried about her kidnapped husband and son. In fact, she forces her sexuality onto Jeffrey - when she catches him spying on her from the closet, she makes him undress at knife point. This takes place in her entirely pink apartment, from the walls to the leather sofa. It's like a giant vulva in there. Her hair is black and she wears a lot of make-up, not always while working at the nightclub where she's a singer, although not a very good one. In case you missed all this symbolism, we see her naked twice in the film, once after having been raped and beaten. Laura Dern's character never shows so much as cleavage. We get it, she's a Whore. Even while being victimized, her role is to provoke the downfall and temptation of our lead (always male) character.
Alternatively, we have the Virgin. Laura Dern plays the detective's daughter, a high school senior (!), a blonde haired, blue eyed girl who dresses like the 80s teenage version of a schoolmarm. She does get to wear a strapless dress once, but it's got a floral print, so it probably doesn't count. She has almost no sexuality at all. When Jeffrey tries to kiss her in the diner, she asks him not to, and when they kiss again at the dance, it's sanctioned by their just-moments-before declarations of love. They have known each other for about a week, but it's love, so I guess kissing's okay. In contrast with Rossellini's apartment, we see Dern's bedroom once, and while there is the obligatory pink, it is present as an accent, a ruffled accent. Her sexuality is childlike, couched in innocence and love.
Jeffrey has a choice to make here. When he finds an ear in the field behind his neighborhood, his curiosity sets him down a path on which he discovers a dark hidden world he never knew existed all around him. At first, Dern is complicit in the investigation, but then she begins to encourage Jeffrey to give it up when she feels he is getting in too deeply and wants him to turn over what he's found to her father, the representation of authority and the keeper of the status quo. She does this, even though Jeffrey is hiding quite a bit from her, protecting her from the seedier details of his new knowledge as well as his own involvement in what's playing out. He refuses to quit his investigation, returning to the seductive embrace of Rossellini and it's only once he gets the crap kicked out of him that he feels any kind of inclination to follow Dern's advice.
Rossellini represents the dark, the tarnished, the damaged, the hidden. If you head down that path, you end up like Frank (a terrifying Dennis Hopper) or Ben (an eerie Dean Stockwell), crazy and dangerous. Dern represents the light, the clean, and the new. If you choose what she represents instead, you get a house and a family, as evidenced by the closing scene where he and Dern are having lunch with both their families.
(I find it interesting that the whole reason Jeffrey came home in the first place was because his father had a near-fatal stroke. Frank ends up dead in the movie, but perhaps Lynch is trying to say that it all turns out that way no matter what choice you make?)
The female characters as written are played to perfection by these actresses, but what's with these roles in the first place? I return to my previous question - is there a place in film noire for more three-dimensional women? Any good examples out there? Are their equivalent male roles?
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