film studies
I’m not really sure why I wrote this, or why I’m posting it. But I found myself watching clips of one of my favorite movies, La dolce vita, the other day, and thinking about this article from New York magazine that I read (and that had been blogged about a bit), and where the ideas intersect. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I started writing it down. I don’t know, maybe I’m trying to figure out something about myself. I boiled it down to a question on twitter:
In the past 50 years, have women truly become liberated, empowered? Or have we just become completely neurotic about everything?
Watching old Fellini movies now, thinking about where we are today, it makes me wonder. The films are filled with women, in constant succession, types or stereotypes I guess you could say, revolving around the male protagonist (Marcello — not a bad gig for him, eh?). But each female character is still treated with a sense of dignity, a certain sort of freedom in it, in the certainty of those sexual roles, even those that are defined as a dichotomy in which you can never win. At the time, these were torn characters, just at the beginning of a moment of flux, starting to change but being praised and condemned for it at the same time. There’s a socialite (Maddalena) who in a way does have it all, lives it all, but she’s conflicted, calls herself a whore, seems to consider herself unlovable; a Swedish actress (Sylvia – Anita Ekberg) with gorgeous blond hair and a sexy black dress who goes cavorting in fountains in the middle of the night, carried away by romance and sexuality, as if she’s in a fantasy world; and the socially liberal aristocrats, “progressive” to the degree of breaking taboos just for the sake of it, seemingly completely crazy and upside down. (But, as Maddalena puts it: “What? You think we are any better? At least there are some things that they do with a certain elegance.”) Then there’s Marcello’s wife, who coos over a baby at a party and starts trying to nudge him in that direction, while he tries to avoid eye contact and duck out early.
Now, we want to be everything. Equally as strong as men at work, super-moms, good cooks, stylish and in shape, defining our own sexuality but still romantic in nature, wanting those “sweet gestures” done for us at the same time that we adamantly want to say we “don’t need men.” It’s become its own cliché that now women want to be perfect at everything, and feel stretched way too thin. (Not to ignore that men have faced changes too, a desire to be more engaged and involved in parenting and domestic life, but also an undeniable uncertainty about their role now in society. But that’s sort of a different can of worms.) Obviously I’m not against women’s liberation but I’m not sure we’re going completely in the right direction. We still haven’t found a way to be in control of our own lives because now expectation just takes over from every side. Society’s expectations that we internalize, and our own expectations of how happy we should be and how immediately fulfilling we should find our new choices.
Yet in a way Fellinian characters like Maddalena do have control, even in their desperation. The film is full of men (namely Marcello) trying it on with every woman they meet, but only with a half-assed feigned affection, nothing truly deceptive. The kind of thing you fall for only if you’re looking to fall for it, and the women are given the intelligence (that they often aren’t in movies today) to see it for what it is. It is based in some kernel of something real, admiration or appreciation maybe. But it’s up to the woman to put on the breaks, to not get wrapped up in the overdone romance of it; to value the playful experience of meeting, flirtation, those priceless moments when you don’t know where things will go – rather than actually getting anywhere. Maddalena, and Sylvia in the famous Trevi fountain scene, they’re playing into the romance, but for their own benefit; they don’t really believe it, or if they do it isn’t really hinged on Marcello. He is a symbol as much as they are, in those moments. And that fact isn’t judged either way. (But then one of the things I find Italy does so much better than America even today is objectifying men, almost as much as it objectifies women.)
The only declaration of love in the film is between two people who are drunk, joking around, wanting to love something and be loved rather than the genuine emotion. And it’s from far away, unseen, blind — just whispers in the dark through an echo between two rooms of the house — two people perhaps talking more to themselves than to eachother. Marcello is praising her, dedicating himself to her, as he says, not knowing if she’s kidding or serious, it doesn’t matter either way; but before he’s even finished, she’s off with someone else, and he soon is too. The most pure romantic exchange is the one that’s just words, that goes unfulfilled. Somehow it means more than the real thing.
And I think this independence, this attachment to the abstract idea of love rather than the person, is what attracts Marcello to her — compared to his wife, who seems to us unknowable, because she’s just like everyone else, wanting those banal things that don’t interest him. It’s the difference between wanting things like marriage and a baby for the sake of it, for those ideas in themselves, or because you find the right person finally, who makes you want it all as an extension of wanting them, of not being able to imagine being without them.
Now, we still have this “fairy tale” that many if not most women believe in, it’s just a slightly altered version of the fairy tale, the walls pushed out a little bit, but a lot more demanded of us once we’re there. We’re still not really defining it for ourselves, most of us. Whereas I guess the call that Fellini is making is for individuality, what Marcello is looking for in changing times, without putting a name to it. Even if in the end he runs the risk of seeming Peter-Pan-ish, never content and never adult.
