Cinderella, Beauty, Objectification and Breakfast at Tiffany's

Recently, a blog I happened across pointed me to this fascinating article about Breakfast at Tiffany's (the movie, not the novella). The crux of the story was talking about how Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the main character, Holly Golightly, as she matched the Holly Golightly of the Novella far more closely than Audrey Hepburn did (as he so glibly put it, can you REALLY imagine Audrey being named Lula Mae, and chasing chickens in Appalachia?), but that if Monroe HAD been in it, the movie would not have worked in the way that it did. I have never read the novella (though, on that note, I'm adding it to my to-read list), so I won't comment much on this comparison. What struck me, and has been gnawing at me since, is the very deft description the author gives of what it is that makes the movie so beloved. As someone who LOVE B at T's, I have to admit the synopsis of it's appeal was a little disturbing. Maybe this post is my subtle way of equivocating, I don't know.

Let me begin this post, by stating the simple fact that I have never been a woman. Perhaps you were aware of this (though if you saw me on Halloween 1999 at this place you may be in some doubt. But no, probably not, even then. I didn't make a very convincing transvestite). Due to the relative location of my gonads I've never experienced how difficult it is to be a woman in a still, I'm afraid, very patriarchal world. So, I don't, unfortunately, know whereof I speak.

That being said, the idea of the Cinderella story has always been a disturbing one to me (and, I think, to many people). Let's take the basic outline of classic Cinderella:

1) Pretty girl is made to do ugly work
2) Deus Ex Machina reveals the true worth of the 'servant girl' (that is, she's totally hot, and nice and quiet. In the Disney version she can sing too, which I suppose is at least a talent)
3) Jealous women in girl's life try to hold her down
4) Girl identifies herself by dint of her helplessly dainty feet
5) Man saves girl, takes her to a castle to take care of her and buy her pretty dresses in exchange for marital duties. I mean... he falls in love, yeah.

This isn't exactly a Gloria Steinem bedtime story, is it? The heroic journey of Cinderella (and it does more or less follow the Campbell hero cycle) is basically a quest to learn how to be decorative. That sounds more like a parody, almost.

And really, in a lot of ways, I can see how Ms Golightly is that way, I won't deny that part of the appeal of the story is the same appeal that Cinderella has: a general bias towards pretty, harmless things. Everyone around Holly treats her like an object, and in the end, when Fred/Paul gives his speech, it's not about respect, it's about ownership:

"People do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance that anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing and you're terrified someone's going to stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage, you built it yourself..."

That's not an empowering speech: it's a speech that tells Cinderella that, in the end, she needs the prince.

But is that all that it says?

There are a lot of stories, now, that talk about objectification as an empowering thing, at times. How many 'girl power' type stories have the heroine defiantly go out shoe shopping with her friends after getting dumped? And defiant is usually just the word, as if buying sexy shoes was a way of showing the lost man that she is more than he would make her be. On the more 'literary' end of the spectrum, you see the same behaviour. Take this passage from 'A Handmaid's Tale':

The one with the mustache opens the small pedestrian gate for us... As we walk away, I know they're watching, these two men who aren't yet permitted to touch women. They touch with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little, feeling the full read skirt sway around me. It's like thumbing your nose from behind a fence... and I'm ashamed of myself for doing it because none of this is the fault of these men, they're too young.

Then, I find I'm not ashamed after all. I enjoye the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there. I hope they get hard at the sight of us...

Again, the woman here is defiant, in that she seizes her RIGHT to be an object, if she wants to, that she seizes the power and freedom of objectifying herself.

Sex, of course, is the easiest way to show this objectification, and arguably the most common way to make an object of one's self, but not the only one. In a sense, it is the same freedom that makes the horse in animal farm a hero, the freedom to be both more and less than human, when one wishes. It's the freedom of the nun, who renounces the world, and becomes seperate, different, something not quite the same as a woman - and most vitally, in a sense becomes something to many people, rather than someone. There is a power in being something, a very real and very beautiful power, in passivity, the power of renunciation, of knowing that one could have something that they choose not to have.

How does this relate to Miss Golightly? Well, there is an essential difference between Cinderella and Holly Golightly - Holly doesn't let herself win. Where Cinderella would have risen to be a movie star (the closest American's can be to a princess without marrying a Kennedy), Holly abandons OJ Berman to become what is, more or less, a glorified call girl. The glass slipper slips onto her foot, and she walks away. And in the end, when she leaps from the magic pumpkin, there is two interesting things to note: first, that she chooses to pursue the prince who has left her rather than waiting for him to save her, and second, she actually goes to look for Cat, not Fred. In fact, this brings up an interesting part of the story: Holly, in being objectified, does not sublimate (Cinderella in the end becomes a part of the prince, rather than her own person), but rather transforms the entire world into a world of objects, a world where Cat is just an anonymous cat, Paul is forced into the role of Fred, men are just rats, super-rats, or scared little mice, etc. 

But this still doesn't answer the niggling question at the end of the movie: if the world is made of objects, if Paul/Fred is an object, and Holly herself is an object, why does it matter to an object whether or not it is owned?

I don't know, I'll admit that right now. But here's the best answer I can come up with.

See, the thing is, objectification isn't the problem - enslavement is the problem. The problem with men looking at women as nothing more than a collection of feelable, ogleable parts is that men then view women as things to manipulated, used, collected, discarded. Empowering objectification is one in which the object maintains it's own autonomy - like I said, it is not to make oneself inert, but to make oneself simultaneously more and less than human. A God is both more or less than human (or, a Goddess), and in many ways this is what you see in objectification, a consignment of oneself into an archetype - Holly, for instance, refuses to be a sex object, and instead chooses to become Venus - the sex Goddess with all her weaknesses and strengths. The classical nun, in many ways, refused to become the wife-object of a man, and chose to become the divine consort, the Virgin Mary as it were - a role with power for her.

Are these objectification healthy? Like meat and sunshine, the answer involves complex questions of individual needs, and a demand for moderation. I will say that it is, for both men AND women, necessary for survival in a hostile world (tell me, for instance, if you think that Walter in Rilla of Ingleside objectifies himself into Athena, the goddess of just war, any less than Holly objectifies herself into Venus?). It's a messy, ugly, destructive thing, but it's also a purifying, simplifying, and beautiful thing - WHEN it is empowering, instead of belittling, when it is willed instead of forced.

Now, I do want to say, that I don't think it's possible for such objectification NOT to be somewhat sexist and degenerative in our current society - after all, Paul's role as the whore of his 'decorator' doesn't make HIM Venus in any way, and it should. I'm not advocating more books about pretty girls winning because they look harmless. But, I suppose, I'm saying that the question is also too complex for us to be dogmatic.

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Writing in Pixels (Weekly Geek 2009-27)

(Image by Nallstar)

OK, so, I don't watch a lot of movies, and I don't read that many books, particularly new ones (which are more likely to have movies based on them, it seems), so this is a tough one for me. As such, when I revert to my childhood in the following essay, please, oh gentle readers, do not laugh. I could write something uninspired but solid, I guess, about something like the BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre (in which I loved the girl who played Jane), or Pride and Prejudice (which was lots of fun). That would uphold my nose-in-the-air credibility. But, I really don't mean to be a snob, and it kind of breaks my heart to look back at my blog and realize I sound like one sometime, so I'm going to go backward from these 'grownup' books, and talk about something else.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Now, having said that, I could get some counterculture credibility by talking about how great the old version with Gene Wilder was (it was, I won't deny it). OR I could go for the cool-kid credibility and talk about how hot Johnny Depp looks in pancake makeup and a page boy (he does, I admit it). OR, I could go psychological, and talk about how weird it is that we feel the need to defend our affection for Gene Wilder's singing, or how mildly disturbing it is to realize an affection for androgynous child-men. But, god forbid, my friends, I subject you to that.

The thing is, BOTH of the reproductions of Charlie are great fun. Comparing them and trying to pick the better is kind of silly - they're not even the same plot, really, when you look at it. It's like trying to decide who was smarter between Da Vinci and Goethe - judging them against each other entirely misses the point. Don't believe me? Try to imagine Gene Wilder's Wonka in that creepy scenette where they pass the pink sheep being sheared. Try to imagine Johnny Depp's Wonka singing "Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure imagination?" See how silly that sounds? They are totally different characters - and that's what's so great about them. Gene Wilder's whimsical slightly alien, vaguely drug-addled, distinctly grown-up Wonka feels like Gene Wilder, like the man who played in Mel Brooks comedies. Johnny Depp's eerily disturbed, larger than life, Peter Pan character feels like Johnny Depp, the man who played Captain Jack Sparrow and, dare I say, J.M. Barrie (not that it doesn't carry a tough or two of Tim Burton, too, but really, can you seperate the two in your mind? It's hard for me...).

The bigger question to me, having enjoyed both movies, is, why this book? Why Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the exception (twice mind you) to the popular maxim that the movie is never as good as the book? (I love the book, too, mind you) After all, I frankly hated both adaptations of Lord of the Rings, the old cartoon and the new movies. Though I didn't watch the last two of the latter, to be fair.

Charlie and the Chocolate factory has a few things going for it:

1) It is simple. The book is not intensely subtle or complex, it's rather straightforward. The characters are pretty stereotyped, in fact, if you think of it, mostly.

2) In that vein, there is one simple central theme to focus on: in the case of this book, Willy Wonka. Really, to be honest with yourself, can you imagine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being anything but dull without Willy Wonka? Everything else is window dressing (given, sometimes very fun window dressing) on that central theme.

And, both movie makers did something, in my mind, very clever - the made a movie less about the book and more about the reader. I mean, the Wonka in the book is actually a pretty straightforward tycoon type of fellow. The book is ALMOST a satire, really, with the jerky dryness of the characters. The movie? No. The Wonka in the old movie is the Wonka you REMEMBER from the book, not the one that's actually there. And the new movie? The Wonka of the book has no real history outside of the candy business. The Wonka and Charlie of the Burton version are not pieces of the author at all - they're pieces of the viewer - in fact, the movie is, in my mind more like a whimsical exploration of the same theme that's in 'Finding Neverland', the theme of childishness vs childlikeness, of growing up vs maturing. Of course, the book is useful in this search, because it's such a fable, and such a simple framework to work in - but that's just it, the book is a means to the movie's ends, instead of the movie being a means to tell the book. You want to know what's in the book? Read the book, right?

I'm not going to say ALL good movie adaptations are like this (Pride and Prejudice, mentioned above, has all the deviation of a doctoral thesis). But, it is to say that looking for movies that adapt books faithfully isn't always the way to find great adaptations.

Other examples of movies about readers instead of about books:

Return to Oz - based, kind of, on several of the first several Oz movies. A lot of people don't like this movie, but I haven't seen it since I was, maybe, 10, and it STILL sticks in my mind.

Dune - no, sci-fi geeks, not the new one that I'm told is good but I've actually never seen. The old one. Yeah, the really screwed up, weird one.

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