Sunday, March 13, 2011
women, virginia, and mabel
As for A Woman Under the Influence and "A Room of One's Own": notes are now online. However, I want to encourage you to strike out on your own in terms of analysis, particularly connecting the two texts. Obviously they are both focused on "woman." How (as film specifically) deal with Mabel, her house, and her marriage? How does the camera function? What is the relationship between camera and its subject/object? Don't write merely about story here but about elements that are particular to cinema. How might the ideas that Woolf highlights be seen in the film? How does Woolf see history and the future for woman?
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The camera, in A Woman Under the Influence, seems to function in a way as to support the underlying theme of patriarchy inherent in the film. The camera does so by both it's location and distance in proportion to Mabel. In her many interactions with men in the film the camera shoots usually from the male perspective, usually behind the male foregrounding him in the shot, to Mabel. She always seems to be in the background of the shot even despite the fact that she is usually the focal point of the shot. Another way to say this would be to say that she is the object that the camera focuses on. I say object because the camera tends to paint her in this light by all the long takes where the camera watches her every move as she herself acts in a manner reinforcing her place as an object of male desire. One line of dialogue sums this up, in which Mabel tells her husband that "I can be anything, you tell me Nick."
ReplyDeleteOne of the places were I see a connection between Woolf's ideas and the film comes when Woolf states that it would have been impossible for a women in Shakespeare's time to write anything comparable to Shakespeare's work. I see a relation between the limitation of women in the Shakespearean age and the limitation of Mabel in her home. Both Woolf and the film clearly highlight the subordination of women under men. Woolf's character of Judith Shakespeare can be compared to Mabel, as William Shakespeare can be compared to Nick. Just as Shakespeare and Judith possess the same potential and skills, Nick and Mabel also appear to be on the same playing field. When Mabel is committed, Nick does not prove to be a better parent than her, and in fact seems to do a worse job in some ways. Though they are both unconventional and ill-equipped as parents, Mabel is the one that is viewed as inferior and mentally unstable, arguably due to her status as a woman. The fictional character of Judith encounters the same issues of being limited by her womanly status, while her brother flourishes due to the opportunities afforded to him. In both cases, men prevail over women due to unfair circumstances and biased opinions of the role of women in society.
ReplyDeleteVirginia Woolf's starts out trying to tackle the concept of women and fiction. Aptly, this was written during the beginning of the Great Depression Era where men were still considered the dominant sex in society. This view of society has been unfair since the beginning of time leading to this period. Thus, Woolf questions the role of men and women in society and how the latter is prevented from doing certain things by the former. So in trying to tackle the problems of the battle of the sexes, women are somehow implemented into fiction. Women are assigned by men as the human sex that cooks, clean, nurses, etc. Woolf implies that men simply cannot see past women for their stereotypical roles in society and ultimately, do nothing but treat them as the inferior sex.
ReplyDeleteConversely, Mabel from A Woman Under the Influence is definitely in "a room of her own." Her schizophrenic behavior seems to be doing the same thing as Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Just look at the way the camera fixates on her. It does close-ups and slow spinning effects, which almost automatically insists that something is wrong in her world. Even so, perhaps it was the world that made her the way she is-over-optimistic. By this comparison, I am not saying that Woolf's narrative style is at all schizophrenic. I simply mean that Mabel appears to be exploring the realm between women and reality-albeit her own. Mabel sees things the way she wants (or rather chooses) to see them. She is constantly taking things she sees as interesting in her life and trying to filter out the problematic. For instance, in the birthday party scene, the children are initially uninterested in doing any of the festivities until she pushes them. She says herself-I paraphrase here-that when children don't want to do things the adults do, you have to force them to see and or do things. However, in trying to turn the problematic into something positive, she digs a deeper hole for herself for those around her. This says nothing though about men and women they are both capable of taking what they see in society and seeing it how they choose to. Nevertheless, Virginia Woolf and Mabel act in their respective texts as rebels against women being portrayed as fictitious in society.
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ReplyDeleteI also wanted to comment specifically on the way Woolf narrates her piece. I found it interesting that she would describe the rules of fiction while she was narrating herself. I particularly noticed this when she described her time at Oxbridge. While describing the accepted rules of fiction she notes that it was a fall day and then goes on to state that she is looking at gardens in spring twilight; soon after that she corrects herself by saying it was actually an evening in October. I get the sense that she is playing with the idea of fiction and narrative here by pointing out the expectations we've grown accustomed to as readers. She comments on the fact that she dares not "forfeit your respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season." I think this brings to light the trust that readers place into their narrators to remain consistent with their stories. There are several places where Woolf narrates fluidly and then describes and exposes the conventions surrounding narration. This section comes to mind: "It is part of the novelist’s convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine. Here, however, I shall take the liberty to defy that convention." These examples don't really comment on the narration of women, but I think Woolf makes an interesting spectacle of narration that is worth noting.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Emmett, I too agree that there is a connection in the style of writing in essay and the Schizophrenic episodes of Mable. Although the major theme in the essay has to do with women in history and roles in society; the compositions use of women and fiction gives the essay a feeling of randomness and shifted thoughts. It appears that the narrator is narrating her own thoughts. Not only does she state the points of her essay but she also seeks reassurance of her thoughts. To me it’s as is Virginia Wolfe is Mable and the words in the essay are Mable’s thoughts.
ReplyDeleteEmmett makes a profound observation: Mabel's madness is the 'room' she has made for herself. Though she is often left alone, Mabel does not have a physical space that is her own. Even her shared space is compromised - as revealed in the film's final moments, her sleeping space is also the dining room.
ReplyDeleteThe film goes to great lengths to define Mabel as relational to those around her rather than as an individual; her expressions of individuality are considered aberrant behavior. Her actions reach such a crescendo of irrationality that she is committed - a cruelly ironic room of one's own.
I like the way Chuck goes more into the idea that Mabel is in a room that she has made for herself, the idea that this 'room' is her mind. Something about that though, I don't feel like the movie portrays it as her making that room for herself, this symbolic room of hers...I feel like she is stuck there. The movie never gives an explanation for why, or what may have caused her to be carved into this person. Sometimes there are things that trigger schizophrenia that is portrayed in movies, but i can't recall that this happens in the film.
ReplyDeleteIf relating this idea to that of Woolf and the room of one's own that she says one needs, would we then be also arguing that there is some underlying madness to women that can not be controlled but is just apart of woman? When talking about the room of one's own, I feel as though it should always be portrayed as a symbolic place, the way in which i think Woolf find's it as. These rooms not actually being rooms but more of a space, a space in society or the world so to speak.
Woolf certainly does jump around, sporatically with her narrative essay, but does so in a way that is cognitive and relevant to the flow of concsiousness that she is trying to portray, the way in which she came, or the process of coming to a conclusion about the ideas of Women and Fiction, and what those ideas might mean to her.
The way she describes her thoughts, and reasons for things is so cool though. After having discovered that all the while thinking about something, after finding readings and trying to figure out why this male author wrote the way he did about something, she finds that she was drawing instead of taking notes. She says that she ended up drawing what she imagined to be this author, and describes him as,
"His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation remained."
She's not only trying to explain how she saw this man, but I think how she felt about all men in general. They got off on tarnishing the name of women, and would keep on doing so because they didn't know any better from their instinct.
The camera plays several roles in this film. A lot of times it seems to invade Mabel's personal space, while at others we are seeing from Mabel's POV. In using both of these almost equally, we are able to feel both the connection to reality as well as the isolation and suffocation felt when reality is too much. We are able to see how the world looks through the eyes of someone being tortured by it and we are sympathetic. Throughout the film, I only felt sympathetic for Nick a couple of times and this is because we see him so often from Mabel's POV. When he is yelling and ranting, he is sometimes looking directly at the camera, aka Mabel, and therefore we have the same aversion to him that she feels. They are both pitiful characters, but Nick definitely has antagonistic qualities that do not cause us to side with him. I thought a couple of times that he would come around, but even the last scene, while the credits are rolling, he is only concerned with doing what needs to be done in order to get on with life.
ReplyDelete