As a medievalist, I have been trained to accept a work on its own terms. I don’t like to imagine what a work could have been, criticize it for what it is not. I take the work as it is given to me and think about what it is, its advantages and its limitations.
“Solitary Man” is Hollywood’s version of an aging playboy confronted with reality. Only in Hollywood can a man in his mid-sixties (actually the film pretends that Ben Kalmen is in his late fifties, but we are not blind) hit on an 18-year-old and be successful. We all know that in Hollywood or the entertainment industry more generally very young women really do sleep with old men whom they have reason to believe have some connection to the business. We have seen the Girls of the Playboy Mansion. But in New York, an aging failed car salesman simply cannot have any teenager he wants. And he certainly cannot show up at a university party with a beer in his hand and start propositioning the students. Security would be on to him before he knew what was happening.
What we have, then, is a film whose premise, that a broke guy in his mid-sixties who used to be a car salesman can have pretty much any woman he wants no matter what her age, is, on the surface, ludicrous. We can either accept the film as a displaced story of the Hollywood version of aging, in which case we wonder why the directors bothered to set the film in New York instead of just letting it be what it was meant to be, or we can puzzle over what the premise really means, figure out a way to make the incredible credible.
How to explain Ben Kalmen’s success with every woman he hits on? I am going to opt for this: the film is actually meant to depict the interior fantasy life of Ben Kalmen, who is in REALITY just an ordinary failed car salesman – probably undone by the recession – who would really enjoy slutting around, if he could ever find any takers. In his fantasy he becomes the most successful car salesman in New York history, wildly rich, sought after by women. He re-imagines his current situation as a the result of a spectacular fall from money and power due to his own fraud, dreaming himself up a fantasy version of going out of business (after all, we all incorporate realistic detail in our fantasies – we don’t reinvent ourselves wholesale). In his dreams he accompanies his girlfriend’s beautiful daughter to a university interview where he gets invited to a dorm party and sleeps with the daughter. Then we follow Ben's meandering fantasy through other women, growing money problems, all excuses for his real-life failure.
One of the most astonishing elements of the film - if one takes it as a straightforward story of aging - is the information given by Ben’s wife in the last few minutes: that Ben’s sexual escapades only began about six years ago when he discovered that he had some unspecified heart condition. In addition to being asked to believe that this sagging ordinary man before us is a sexual god of infinite charisma we are now asked to believe that he suddenly transformed from a family man into a ho overnight and has been working women only since his late fifties? But let’s imagine this bombshell as part of Ben’s fantasy – it gives him a justification for his guilty daydreams.
This film received generally very positive reviews, praised as authentic, etc. Those reviews were written by men. It seems that men have an emotional investment in this fantasy, the fantasy that 18-year-olds are ready to sleep with really old guys. Maybe the same need that drove the films’ directors to spin this tale out fuels the male film-going audience in general. But as a female I have to say that I am getting a little tired of this narrative, of sexually potent old guys with nice aging wives successfully putting the moves on gorgeous young women.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Red-Headed Woman (1932)
I had always believed, naively, that the Hays Code came about because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of film: Hollywood censors, stupidly assuming that film’s purpose was to entertain the masses, failed to accord the medium the liberty accorded to art. In fact, the issue was never about art at all. It was much simpler and stupider – instigated by a movie company, Mutual Film Corporation, that sued the state of Ohio for its censorship which the company felt kept it from making the kind of sexy movies that would make serious money. The 1915 Supreme Court decision, Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, was based on whether movies were a “business” UNLIKE the press, which was free under the first amendment. Yes, movies were a mere business and therefor not entitled to the protection that the media enjoyed: “the exhibition of moving pictures is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit … not to be regarded, nor intended to be regarded by the Ohio Constitution, we think, as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion.” This decision forced Hollywood to pursue the lesser of two evils and create its own code to keep the serious oppressor at bay.
On what planet are newspapers not also businesses? The truly sinister thing, of course, is that this early collusion of filmmakers and the courts by pretending that film was a business and therefore not new media quietly made the industry into a political arm, a silent purveyor of perverted values (racist, sexist, classist). The Motion Picture Commission created a code in 1921, but it was fairly ineffectual – Hollywood, after all, had a lot to lose. However, in June, 1934, supported by the “Catholic Legion of Decency,” invented just for the occasion, an amendment to the Code required all films released after July 1, 1934 to be approved. This time the Code was applied with the brutal precision under the direction of Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration (PCA). Benjamin had not yet alerted the world to the dangers of the aestheticized politics – not that America would have listened! The ludicrous state of affairs continued until 1952, when in Joseph Burstyn, Inc., versus Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled its 1915 decision. Film was now entitled to First Amendment protection, and the New York State Board of Regents was not permitted to ban The Miracle.
So I have been watching films that slipped in before the code went brutal, wondering what Hollywood might have been. The answer is violent earlier on with bad gangsters coming out on top. And bizarrely obsessively interested in prostitution.
Why all the interest in the murky boundary between legitimate relationships and prostitution? The 1932 Jean Harlow vehicle Red-Headed Woman (where her hair looks like Barbie doll hair) has Lil pimping herself to move ever higher on the income scale. First she steals an incredibly stolid rich young guy away from his wife, then after they get married, she bags the guy’s father-in-law. Much humiliation for poor Lil from the New Yorkers who won’t accept her as part of their crowd, then the whole things ends in Paris where we are given to know that she has nabbed an even richer guy.
Irving Thalberg, apparently worried that the screenplay as originally written by F. Scott Fitzgerald (what??) was too ponderous, had Anita Loos re-do the thing into a punchier, more playful version. One assumes that this accounts for the insane careens of tone – are we meant to laugh or cry at Lil’s ability to snap her fingers and make men grovel? Is her sexual power a joke or the product of male phantasmagoria? An effort to contain the danger of female sexuality through ridicule or demystification? Apparently the censoring powers were nervous that Lil got away with her astonishing social climb, and the film led directly to greater control even though it was a big box office success because of the controversy that it generated.
Watching this and a series of other films from before the big crackdown makes one wonder if we really missed anything, anyway? How much musing over the immediate and uncontrollable male attraction to prostitutes do we need? And if we slip over to consider what the women in the audience were watching, how many times do we need be told that it’s a tough life – the only way up is to sell yourself? The themes continued just slightly less obviously (it is after all the big Hollywood story that a beautiful young woman snags a big rich guy). As far as I can see, pre-censorship Hollywood was not producing serious meditations on these issues – or any other social issues – anyway. Had Hollywood remained uncensored we would have seen more beautiful young women lying around in obvious post-coital positions, but their stories would have been no more probing than they turned out to be in post-code Hollywood.
On what planet are newspapers not also businesses? The truly sinister thing, of course, is that this early collusion of filmmakers and the courts by pretending that film was a business and therefore not new media quietly made the industry into a political arm, a silent purveyor of perverted values (racist, sexist, classist). The Motion Picture Commission created a code in 1921, but it was fairly ineffectual – Hollywood, after all, had a lot to lose. However, in June, 1934, supported by the “Catholic Legion of Decency,” invented just for the occasion, an amendment to the Code required all films released after July 1, 1934 to be approved. This time the Code was applied with the brutal precision under the direction of Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration (PCA). Benjamin had not yet alerted the world to the dangers of the aestheticized politics – not that America would have listened! The ludicrous state of affairs continued until 1952, when in Joseph Burstyn, Inc., versus Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled its 1915 decision. Film was now entitled to First Amendment protection, and the New York State Board of Regents was not permitted to ban The Miracle.
So I have been watching films that slipped in before the code went brutal, wondering what Hollywood might have been. The answer is violent earlier on with bad gangsters coming out on top. And bizarrely obsessively interested in prostitution.
Why all the interest in the murky boundary between legitimate relationships and prostitution? The 1932 Jean Harlow vehicle Red-Headed Woman (where her hair looks like Barbie doll hair) has Lil pimping herself to move ever higher on the income scale. First she steals an incredibly stolid rich young guy away from his wife, then after they get married, she bags the guy’s father-in-law. Much humiliation for poor Lil from the New Yorkers who won’t accept her as part of their crowd, then the whole things ends in Paris where we are given to know that she has nabbed an even richer guy.
Irving Thalberg, apparently worried that the screenplay as originally written by F. Scott Fitzgerald (what??) was too ponderous, had Anita Loos re-do the thing into a punchier, more playful version. One assumes that this accounts for the insane careens of tone – are we meant to laugh or cry at Lil’s ability to snap her fingers and make men grovel? Is her sexual power a joke or the product of male phantasmagoria? An effort to contain the danger of female sexuality through ridicule or demystification? Apparently the censoring powers were nervous that Lil got away with her astonishing social climb, and the film led directly to greater control even though it was a big box office success because of the controversy that it generated.
Watching this and a series of other films from before the big crackdown makes one wonder if we really missed anything, anyway? How much musing over the immediate and uncontrollable male attraction to prostitutes do we need? And if we slip over to consider what the women in the audience were watching, how many times do we need be told that it’s a tough life – the only way up is to sell yourself? The themes continued just slightly less obviously (it is after all the big Hollywood story that a beautiful young woman snags a big rich guy). As far as I can see, pre-censorship Hollywood was not producing serious meditations on these issues – or any other social issues – anyway. Had Hollywood remained uncensored we would have seen more beautiful young women lying around in obvious post-coital positions, but their stories would have been no more probing than they turned out to be in post-code Hollywood.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Godfather (1972)
The most startling scene in movie history, I believe, is the final shot of "The Godfather," part I. Michael Corleone, separated from us by the doorframe of his office, is having his hand kissed by his apostles. Perverted version of the Pope (or is it perverted? Maybe just a straightforward analogue), he takes our breath away: we are completely seduced and absolutely terrified by his immense power. He can do anything; he is our black Father.
"The Godfather" pulls off an amazing feat. It shines a light on the violence that lies at the heart of the Mafia. It revels in introducing us to the sickening underworkings of the clan. Traitors are ruthlessly blown away, hunks of their brains spatter the sidewalk. The film kicks us in the face. But at the end we kiss Michael’s ring. We are willing accomplices in our own seduction.
It isn’t just the Mafia whose violence we collaborate in. It is an entire ideology of violence. At the top is the US government. But we are given to know that even though the Feds stride around with their big guns, they can’t control criminals. We are not safe from predatory males: the undertaker Amerigo Bonasera pours his heart out to Don Corleone, explaining that his daughter has been brutally raped by her boyfriend and his mates. But they are given suspended sentences. Justice fails.
Thus we turn to the “family.” Father will take care of us; all we have to do is subject ourselves, body and soul, to his way of life. No mention of Mafia or even "Cosa Nostra;" we are talking here about traditional family values and what it means that this social grouping lies at the foundation of all society. We try to create rules of law that supersede those of the family, but we can’t do it, because ultimately even the purveyors of justice in our supersystems are beholden to the family. The father is everywhere, everywhere,everywhere. There is no getting away from him.
How does he do it? Why don’t we run away? Ask Connie, the pathetic daughter of the Don. She screams around the house in a pink satin negligee, heavily pregnant, because her husband, sick of her, has taken a mistress. She throws plates, rips curtains, he beats her up. She tells her brothers on him. But when the family finally springs to action and rubs the joker out (although not because he beats their sister up, but because he betrayed the biggest brother – after all, this is a man’s world), she collapses, grief-stricken. She loved her tormentor! She craves that boot in the face. That’s how the family works. It gets us addicted to getting kicked.
Law, religion, and family - all collapsed into the figure of Michael, from whom we ask nothing but the chance to prostrate ourselves before him, naked, begging him to take our virginity, Michael, from whom we ask for reassurances and then smile with relief when he lies to us. “No, I did not have Connie’s son murdered,” he intones. Kay thinks, “Just let me bear your child, Michael – that’ all I ask. I degrade myself willingly to your slightest whim, just let me live in your light.”
In other words, the film hands us the reality of family and religious values, and we see only the beauty of Michael’s eyes, savor the timbre of his voice. He is Satan, perfectly beautiful, tempter, seducer, the Father, building his fallen empire on earth.
"The Godfather" pulls off an amazing feat. It shines a light on the violence that lies at the heart of the Mafia. It revels in introducing us to the sickening underworkings of the clan. Traitors are ruthlessly blown away, hunks of their brains spatter the sidewalk. The film kicks us in the face. But at the end we kiss Michael’s ring. We are willing accomplices in our own seduction.
It isn’t just the Mafia whose violence we collaborate in. It is an entire ideology of violence. At the top is the US government. But we are given to know that even though the Feds stride around with their big guns, they can’t control criminals. We are not safe from predatory males: the undertaker Amerigo Bonasera pours his heart out to Don Corleone, explaining that his daughter has been brutally raped by her boyfriend and his mates. But they are given suspended sentences. Justice fails.
Thus we turn to the “family.” Father will take care of us; all we have to do is subject ourselves, body and soul, to his way of life. No mention of Mafia or even "Cosa Nostra;" we are talking here about traditional family values and what it means that this social grouping lies at the foundation of all society. We try to create rules of law that supersede those of the family, but we can’t do it, because ultimately even the purveyors of justice in our supersystems are beholden to the family. The father is everywhere, everywhere,everywhere. There is no getting away from him.
How does he do it? Why don’t we run away? Ask Connie, the pathetic daughter of the Don. She screams around the house in a pink satin negligee, heavily pregnant, because her husband, sick of her, has taken a mistress. She throws plates, rips curtains, he beats her up. She tells her brothers on him. But when the family finally springs to action and rubs the joker out (although not because he beats their sister up, but because he betrayed the biggest brother – after all, this is a man’s world), she collapses, grief-stricken. She loved her tormentor! She craves that boot in the face. That’s how the family works. It gets us addicted to getting kicked.
Law, religion, and family - all collapsed into the figure of Michael, from whom we ask nothing but the chance to prostrate ourselves before him, naked, begging him to take our virginity, Michael, from whom we ask for reassurances and then smile with relief when he lies to us. “No, I did not have Connie’s son murdered,” he intones. Kay thinks, “Just let me bear your child, Michael – that’ all I ask. I degrade myself willingly to your slightest whim, just let me live in your light.”
In other words, the film hands us the reality of family and religious values, and we see only the beauty of Michael’s eyes, savor the timbre of his voice. He is Satan, perfectly beautiful, tempter, seducer, the Father, building his fallen empire on earth.
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