Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

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kidc
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#76 Post by kidc » Sun Oct 02, 2022 5:42 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Fri Sep 30, 2022 7:29 pm
Anyway, what is there to restate? You said fiction shouldn’t use real people or historical events except as background. I gave a list of works that not only do that very thing, but have such monumental stature in world literature that they cannot be denied.

That’s the position you’re in, either disclaim your silly demand or deny Shakespeare. But you couldn’t accept that apparently and chose to make an excuse to peace out, some weird implication that this is all unfair. But it’s not unfair. You made the hasty, overheated comment, not me. It’s not my fault you’ve slagged off 17 Shakespeare plays just to tepidly insult some movie. No one forced you to make a twitter hot take.
If somebody did call Shakespeare's history plays "unethical", that isn't a hot take is it?

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#77 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Oct 02, 2022 8:53 pm

Um...what?

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domino harvey
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#78 Post by domino harvey » Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:19 pm

Imagine being this uninteresting

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#79 Post by wattsup32 » Mon Oct 03, 2022 3:58 pm

Count me among the admirers. I was and still am floored by how deeply compelling the whole project was. I am even more intrigued by my own inability to take my eyes of the screen despite there not being even a hint of a whisper of a thread of a plot. Instead, its thematic compulsions stood in for plot in the most compelling ways.

TWBB's comment about subjectivity articulated what I was feeling, but couldn't identify for myself. I have a disdain for biopics because the viewer is almost always responsible for coming to the film with substantial knowledge of the subject or fact-checking the filmmaker afterwards. The unapologetic subjectivity here relieves me of both of those responsibilities and leaves me, instead, to contemplate the themes and form of the art. What a wonderful gift to a filmgoer; to take a fairly familiar subject and let me use my familiarity to think more deeply about the meaning of the film rather than burden me with shouldering responsibility for its veracity.

kidc
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#80 Post by kidc » Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:56 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Sun Oct 02, 2022 8:53 pm
Um...what?
Is it controversial to describe making a work that presumes to be presenting historical events but is highly propagandic or false in nature unethical? I'm aware that this is a widespread phenomenon, and that they are creative works, but when you portray real people in fictional works you always run the risk of people believing the fiction (e.g. as has happened with elements in Shakespeare's history plays). I'm struggling to see the outrage behind an appeal to ethics when fictional works deal with real people.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#81 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:16 pm

I think appeals to ethics are largely a way to lend weight to claims about art that are at bottom matters of taste.

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Computer Raheem
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#82 Post by Computer Raheem » Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:37 pm

kidc wrote:
Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:56 pm
Mr Sausage wrote:
Sun Oct 02, 2022 8:53 pm
Um...what?
Is it controversial to describe making a work that presumes to be presenting historical events but is highly propagandic or false in nature unethical? I'm aware that this is a widespread phenomenon, and that they are creative works, but when you portray real people in fictional works you always run the risk of people believing the fiction (e.g. as has happened with elements in Shakespeare's history plays). I'm struggling to see the outrage behind an appeal to ethics when fictional works deal with real people.
You're not wrong, but you're also attacking the wrong texts. No one is going into a Shakespeare play expecting it to be uber-historically accurate, because most people are aware that his plays are fiction. No one is reading/watching the Henriad thinking that they're accurate to the real events of English history - in all honesty, most people probably think Shakespeare made it all up from the jump. To presume that all works that fictionalize real people is inherently unethical is a absurd take, in my opinion.

To keep on the topic of cinema, by your logic, a movie like The Favourite is unethical because it presents Queen Anne as a senile lesbian; ditto something like The Elephant Man, a movie whose opening and closing sequences, surrealistic as they are designed, are unethical by your metric of critique. "Joesph Merrick's mother wasn't raped by a angry elephant! This movie is unethical to the core!" A movie like Spencer is also unethical, not just to the memory of Princess Diana, but to all of the modern English monarchy, all of the crime of being historical fiction. I could keep giving examples, but I've made my point. Never mind that none of these films purport themselves to be historically accurate or biographically sound, these films are now (allegedly) propagandistic and unethical to the historical fact. This doesn't even get to the idea that most biographical cinema, both due to the nature of cinema and the time constraights of making commerical cinema, often make things up and condense and remove historical detail for a more compelling cinematic narrative. Doesn't that make those films unethical as well?

If you could give counter-examples to your argument, please do, because I am deeply fascinated by what your "solution" to this would be. From the looks of Mr. Sausage's and Domino's posts as well, I'm not the only person confused by what you're trying to get across.

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#83 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:57 pm

It feels deeply ironic that in a thread for a film detailing so many unethical assaults victimizing a woman by forces that don't care, we're sidestepping that unethical experience from a safe distance to discuss the more important topic: ethics behind giving that person a voice at all, because that person is given a real name who can't speak for herself (she's dead, perhaps in part because of these alienating dismissals?) Is the movie touching on how the cyclical pattern of removing voices and devaluing experience is being perpetuated, and is this thread exhibit A? Tune into Netflix to find out!

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furbicide
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#84 Post by furbicide » Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:05 pm

Is it fair to assume that Dominik and Netflix would be thrilled with the amount of opprobrium this film has generated? Obviously there's nothing remotely new about filmmakers aiming for maximum shock/bombast in full knowledge that it will divide critics and audiences, but a film like Blonde seems to be a roughly annual event nowadays. And from what I've seen of reviews and critical commentary, at least, it seems fair to conclude that most people dislike it.

Personally, I can say that I only ended up buying a ticket for Joker – a film that I couldn't have been less interested in when it was announced – because of the "discourse" surrounding it, and I'm sure I was far from the only one. Phillips and Warner would have surely predicted at least some of that outrage and the media cycle it would generate. So I guess what I'm wondering is ... is this ever anything other than a winning formula, and is there really no such thing as bad publicity?

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#85 Post by Finch » Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:13 pm

I guess for Netflix it'll end up being a glass half full thing because the controversy gives them extra clicks and viewers but as twwb said the other day, apparently a lot of those curious also end up quitting before the half hour mark. It'd be funny and ironic though if this film gets them more viewers in the first week than The Gray Man did at a presumably much lower cost (bearing in mind that Netflix seems to count it as a viewing even if you only watched bits instead of the entire film).

edit: Well, so much for that. Tom Bruggemann reports that Blonde was top for three days and then fell to third.

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#86 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:19 pm

furbicide wrote:
Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:05 pm
Personally, I can say that I only ended up buying a ticket for Joker – a film that I couldn't have been less interested in when it was announced – because of the "discourse" surrounding it, and I'm sure I was far from the only one. Phillips and Warner would have surely predicted at least some of that outrage and the media cycle it would generate. So I guess what I'm wondering is ... is this ever anything other than a winning formula, and is there really no such thing as bad publicity?
That's an interesting point, and one that I thought only made Joker better because it seemed to address the charges in its themes inadvertently. I have yet to read anything that champions Dominik for giving a voice to the voiceless with unhinged subjectivity though, only pitchforks on the other side of that argument and some people who liked de Armas and the film's aesthetics. But I also can't comprehend how a film that is taking such a humanistic approach to the dignity and worth of a person is being diagnosed as reductive and pathological and dishonoring- maybe I'll come across a piece that drafts a thorough argument worth engaging with at some point

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#87 Post by kidc » Tue Oct 04, 2022 10:32 am

I've been sloppy on a couple of key points, apologies.

I generally stand by my comments on Shakespeare although I do want to make it clear that I'm not interested in cancelling the History plays: I have an issue with how he uses history but that doesn't eliminate everything good about them. Computer Raheem, I think part of our disagreement would be to the level of sophistication in audiences, and the idea that fiction can be more pervasive than facts: I'd suggest Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard III is likely stronger in many people's minds to this day than what would be considered the 'truth' (as far as we can ascertain it), and this was one of the intents of the play.

And to clarify something else: I do not believe that all instances of using real-life figures in fiction are inherently unethical, and acknowledge the power and importance of story-telling to communicate and explore the lives of real people and of the need for degrees of artistic license (my "false in nature" comment was far too generalised as I had more extreme examples in mind, not e.g. a general condensing of events). I also appreciate Mr S' comment on using the word 'ethics' when arguably 'distaste' is meant, and I should have been more careful when I was using it. CR, to pick one of your examples: if a filmmaker were to make a movie depicting your mother being raped by an elephant, I would find that distasteful and implore them to find a different metaphor.

For Blonde, twbb I note your point about the film giving her a voice, when she was so often denied one during her life, but when the voice is specifically not Norma Jean's, my concern would be how do we know that she would consider it empowering? The approach of 'NJ cannot speak for herself, so I shall' feels dangerously close to what the film is purporting to decry. I wonder how much would have been lost if Oates and Dominik came up with an amalgamation of the numerous female stars who were dehumanised by the Hollywood system in similar ways, instead of explicitly using Marilyn Monroe? Especially considering so much of it is openly fictionalised. (But I acknowledge this question is not too far from pointlessly asking "what if they made a completely different film".)

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#88 Post by aox » Tue Oct 04, 2022 12:45 pm

How do you feel about Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood?

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#89 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 04, 2022 1:11 pm

We could also ask Fincher and Sorkin why they didn't use an amalgamation of tech pioneers in The Social Network to tell a thematic tale of social isolation and the yearning to connect, but who cares? That would be missing the point. I think there's something a bit unsettling about how many critics are rushing in to apologize for an oppressed woman in an attempt to erase or diminish the value of the film, rather than engaging with the subjectivity of oppression that the film is validating; or, if doing both, the reaction that is motivated to separate is prioritized over the one to join its subject. Is it partly more comfortable to distance oneself from this experience via condescension than to endure it and see it for what it is: an invitation to be placed in a position that is condescended to, and worse? Are these gripes actually trivial when made right-sized, in comparison to the hellish narrative some women endure, and what gets in the way of acknowledging that without inserting an asterisk that detracts from stewing in that dysphoric space? When these kinds of movies receive such aggressive backlash, I can't help but wonder how much of that repulsion is triggered by defensive responses to disengage from a film that is courageous enough to coerce its audience into feeling persecuted with its subject.

I really do mean that as 'wondering' and those questions as rhetorical ones that are important to ask ourselves but that I don't pretend to know definitive answers for, because they certainly don't apply to every audience member who doesn't like the film. I realize that to lob this evaluative endpoint as a prescriptive blanket-truth births its own set of problems- creating a no-win scenario to critique the film, which is not my intention. I've criticized films for how they engage with subjectivity before as well -usually when the filmmaker's approach feels at-odds with the supposed ethos (i.e. Swallow) and I appreciate that some might be seeing this film that way too. I just don't believe the thin, surface-level rationales being issued are fair ones to start and stop at in measuring the merits of Blonde, especially when their function seems desperate to keep things on the exterior and deters criticizing the vulnerable content brewing underneath, which I may disagree with but would be more willing to engage with, since those criticisms would at least meet the film on its playing field. As I said in my original post, dismissing a film as exploitative for going full-tilt into exploitation reads as a trump card played in bad faith, and accusing a film of usurping Monroe's voice seems to be hypocritically doing the same, speaking on her behalf, perhaps at times as an ethical disguise for the accuser's emotional discomfort. If someone has come across a critique of the film that recognizes the heightened role of our own subjectivity when evaluating a film like this, and proceeds to eviscerate it, please post it- I'm very interested in reading a hate-piece on Blonde that doesn't feel riddled with dismissive superiority at a distance from the thematic core.
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Tue Oct 04, 2022 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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swo17
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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#90 Post by swo17 » Tue Oct 04, 2022 1:20 pm

Yeah, I'm by no means 100% on board with this movie but every negative review I've read so far has pushed the needle more in that direction than the other. Maybe Dominik should've made a better movie but its critics could do better work as well

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#91 Post by starmanof51 » Tue Oct 04, 2022 2:28 pm

furbicide wrote:
Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:05 pm
Personally, I can say that I only ended up buying a ticket for Joker – a film that I couldn't have been less interested in when it was announced – because of the "discourse" surrounding it, and I'm sure I was far from the only one. Phillips and Warner would have surely predicted at least some of that outrage and the media cycle it would generate. So I guess what I'm wondering is ... is this ever anything other than a winning formula, and is there really no such thing as bad publicity?
I don't know, I think it cuts both ways. In the abstract months ago, this was interesting: Dominik! Loved Jesse James! Monroe! I'm a fan! And now I've seen enough discourse to have the squicks and all interest in actually firing it up is gone. There's a ton of things I don't get around to watching, this seems destined for that pile.

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#92 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:35 pm

Right, but I guess part of my point is that gender seems to be playing a role here. I’m not keeping tabs, but I have doubts that there’s equity of critical outcry and ethical dismissal for creative liberties taken on behalf of male figures and female ones. I don’t recall public moralizing about Zuckerberg’s inaccuracies but everyone is swooping in to ‘defend’ Monroe, while refusing to touch the broader truth, about being exploited as a female, with a ten foot pole. That feels problematic and counterintuitive to the supposedly positive intentions of the outcries themselves; an unsolicited, anxious protection by rushing in from stage left to cover up an experience of raw female exploitation with a towel as if we’re still in the code era.

The same goes for portrayals of subjectivity in general: perverse male subjectivity is rarely questioned to the point of dismissing the film’s worth, but newer films that are boldly delving into a novel depth of subjectivity in female experience generally aren’t being approached with the same kind of openness or recognition of greater themes. This criticisms for Blonde feels a bit like those lobbed at Promising Young Woman, where the film’s uncomfortable demands on its audience are being avoided with outraged ethical stances of how Cassie is treated by the film, when the film is asking for unconditional curiosity about a female vigilante and to consider gender’s relationship to equality, including self-reflexively. I doubt our forum’s Taxi Driver thread is populated by as many posts dismissing its valuable qualities on the basis of either racism or sexism compared to Promising Young Woman’s number of dismissals on the grounds that people who like David Foster Wallace felt threatened by a perceived emasculating jab at them initiated by women. This film is doing something pretty similar to that one with its attention to an underexposed narrative of subjectivity and being expelled in a similar way too; swiftly, and rooted in a unidimensional philosophical argument turned away from the actual subject asking for a voice: not a specific woman, but women. Again, it’s not that these ethical concerns or criticisms aren’t worth raising at all, it’s that they’re coming at the expense of the merits of that deeper evaluation, keeping the conversation in a safe cognitive space when the film demands visceral engagement

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#93 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Wed Oct 05, 2022 5:16 am

I know that some of the arguments circulating around the internet about the film may feel superficial and sophomoric with their insistence on the fiction of the film vs what it draws from real life, but I've found much of the pro-Blonde arguing on this thread frankly insulting in the way it suggests that people aren't giving the film a chance or taking seriously its attempts to portray a 'female' 'subjectivity'. Plenty of women critics, as well as men, have taken the film very seriously and have come to the conclusion that it's a particularly stupid film – one that understands neither Marilyn nor women at large. Angelica Jade Bastien has written several articles about it, Richard Brody lambasted it, Adam Nayman, Justine Smith –– I do know both men and women who have enjoyed the film, have found its savagery appealing and interesting, but they are in the minority.

I personally see an irresolvable misogyny at the core of the project, both film and book. The fact is, both creators (Joyce Carol Oates and Dominik) have made clear they only have passing interest in Marilyn Monroe, and their use of the character is limited in this respect – Dominik has zero interest in her as an artist, and Oates's use for her as an artist is limited to the degree that she is struggling to make herself one in a world of misogyny. Their interest in her, I think, is much more to the degree that they can use her as a totem for womanhood, as a sort of example of how society really fucks over women. And "fucks" is the correct word, because they take a woman for whom there is limited verified sexual history especially insofar as rape is concerned – and fabricated sexual incidents and multiple rapes that are not supported by history. Which is to say, both Oates and Dominik see sexual oppression as best manifested as literal sexual exploitation and rape. They did not look for a figure who was raped – Natalie Wood, for instance, for whom her early rape was very well known – but they took a woman and where they found no rape, assumed it because, of course Marilyn Monroe was raped. She must have been. She was so clearly metaphorically raped by the world that she must have been so by the people in her life, whether a film producer or JFK. This is also why this film is different than, say, Mark Zuckerberg's film. The Zuckerberg film does not look at Mark, understand that he's a misogynistic asshole, and therefore make him a rapist. But Blonde looks at Marilyn, understands that she was a victim of misogyny, and therefore has her raped. Repeatedly.

I think it's deeply insulting to think women don't understand rape or its pathology and need its brutal, "subjective" depiction, especially by a man who has clearly no interest in his leading character, to further explore it. And I know that the people on here have tried to avoid confronting 'rape' as the primary piece of the film because it is only part of the whole but it's the part, aside from the absurd talking fetus, that women are very likely to be impacted by when viewing the film.

The film, and Oates's novel as well, also has a clear misunderstanding of the way that performance, artificiality, and recreating the self actually works, because – and many of the critics who have written about the film has made this clear – Bastien primarily – which is to say that the idea of "Marilyn" as a performance and "Norma Jeane" as a reality is a crude fiction, based on sexist ideas of female authenticity when it involves how we change ourselves whether it's makeup, hair dyeing, plastic surgery, etc. The real Norma Jeane decided to become Marilyn, changed her legal name to become her, did not feel a schizophrenia about it. These are, again, projections of what we imagine her to have felt – which is to explicitly say, Oates and Dominik may be interested in women, but they are not interested in the actual Marilyn Monroe.

And why should they be? Yes, it's true, you can play fast and loose with the stuff of history – but why do it? What do you get out of it? While it's true that you can do it just because, you can't act like others are wrong for challenging what the point was to begin with. So what is the point? Scandal, outrage, Marilyn's totemic reputation as one of The women of the 20th century, as the greatest sex icon in history even. As Dominik has said, "I want to see the NC-17 version of Marilyn Monroe" – but he's clearly not interested in her. He's interested in the idea of making Raging Bull but instead of Jake LaMotta being beaten in the ring, it's Marilyn being raped or emotionally abused, all to give lie to the glamorous picture of her that we even now continue to perpetuate. But to think that classical Hollywood cinema is all smoke and mirrors and that the illusion of art is nothing but a lie is to misunderstand what the fucking point of old Hollywood even was for many of the figures who worked in it, and for many of the people who loved it. And is of course also mirrors the sexist precept that a woman in makeup is hiding her authentic self, which is how the Norma Jeane/Marilyn dichotomy is often posed: here is the natural Norma Jeane, here is the artificial Marilyn Monroe.

I'm sure someone is going to point out how often I assume Dominik has no interest in Marilyn Monroe, and challenge me on that account. Let's skip it, frankly, because for me and many critics who share my point of view, the film's one-note emotional approach (pain, suffering, distress), its disinterest in her professional career, and the assumption of of gendered pain (abortion, rape) make it clear to me, if not to you, that Dominik isn't interested in this woman, or women, but "Woman".

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#94 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Oct 05, 2022 10:18 am

Thanks for posting that, HDTS, I appreciated reading it. We actually agree on a fair amount of your argument, but the key difference is that I don't think the film is doing what you think it's doing (that doesn't make me objectively 'right' though!) My appreciation for the film is one divorced entirely from Monroe, where "the way that performance, artificiality, and recreating the self actually works" (emphasis mine) doesn't matter because it's all kaleidoscopically allegorical for struggles to grasp identity and formulate it without any reinforcements from the outside world. I saw almost nothing in the film as intended to be taken literally - where even a heightened traumatic incident in childhood has the opportunity to be skewed in memory, as all ours have, but makes it no less real to the one experiencing it in the present. You're right that attaching femininity to subjectivity in any kind of absolute terms was the wrong approach and one I was conscious of at various points but admittedly became lazy in lumping together. I don't know, I related to the film personally in this way, working as an olive branch offered to western audiences with identity issues who might be able to take that opportunity to delve further into another kind of experience.

The risky nonliner and chaotic technique operating in anti-patterns of flowing in and out of memory also worked well as an emblem of a mind stunted by trauma, where the effects of trauma on the brain don't leave the same amount of space to develop normally (which can include discovering and recreating the self, a later-stage phase of development) for everyone. I thought this film reflected that well, and I'd be interested in reading thoughts on it from other people with early childhood trauma too, and who specialize in that field. I wonder if the vehicle's unidimensionality is coming off as offensive and disempowering to some from a sociological vantage point, and as validating of internal obstacles in relation to the external, for others coming from a psychological one. It works as a canvas for me, but if assumed as literal, I can't imagine it working at all. I wonder if some other people living with certain traumas would be equally insulted by charges devaluing the film's worth at capturing their subjective experience. This film is evoking such strong all-or-nothing pronouncements from people that show little willingness to untether analysis from specific, personal triggers, and that's what makes most criticisms hard to engage with, since they're asking for a different film with (I believe) different aims altogether. Though when one's schematic interpretation of a film is insulting, it's fair to ask for a different one. I just think these rhetorical questions that ask us as audience members to recognize the baggage and vulnerabilities we bring to films like these in our evaluations are necessary to encourage productive discourse. Still, that abstract identification doesn't trump or devalue the specific markers you found problematic, and I appreciate you providing an argument why it feels insulting along those lines to you

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#95 Post by swo17 » Wed Oct 05, 2022 11:18 am

This is a better written critique but you're still taking a couple things for granted that I outright reject:

1. Does the film argue that Marilyn Monroe (or any women in general that she might be standing in for) deserved all of this abuse? If not, we're not going to see eye-to-eye on the film being misogynistic. (Which, incidentally, is a word like "racist" that barely means anything anymore because it's used so often as a presumed conversation ender that it more just comes across as its user saying "I'm not open to changing my mind.")

2. If the fetus was like a talking cartoon that moved its mouth and everything I would agree that it was absurd, but I gather you are more taking issue with the fact that it's in conversation with its mother in the first place, giving her a guilt trip about the direction her life has taken just like her absent father does? Obviously a lot of people agree with you, but that doesn't make it objectively the case, and frankly everything I've read on this point feels divorced from the film and more focused on current U.S. politics. To be clear, Dominik did not make this film as a show of solidarity with Clarence Thomas. And a hundred years from now, however this film is remembered, no one is going to recall if it came out just before or just after the first overturning of Roe v. Wade

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#96 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Wed Oct 05, 2022 12:20 pm

To be frank, while I intellectually understand where your counterarguments are coming from, Swo, they also remind me of a sort of rhetorically-based overly-formalist analysis I often have leaned towards. Yeah, art outlives its contexts, yeah, depiction is not endorsement –– but trying to sever the relation between reality and art, to me, is as patently unrewarding as trying to suggest they need reflect each other absolute. An art object lives in the world and reacts to the things around it and I don't believe that trying to hermetically seal things away so that you can consider them "entirely on its own merits" is right. You may, and that's fine, but trying to suggest someone else is wrong for not is ridiculous. As far as historical context goes, knowing this film was made around the repeal of Roe may prove as intellectually stimulating for some as Citizen Kane being made at the tail-end of the New Deal-era has proven for me –– it alters my perception of creative decisions made by its makers.

Also, I don't appreciate the lobbing of 'misogyny is a word devoid of meaning because of its overuse' when I clearly laid out, or at least tried to, two very clear misogynistic fallacies that I believe the film partakes in (its manifestation of sexual violence; its elision of artificiality/fakeness with makeup/performance –– or even the idea that artificiality is a negative thing, or a cover for the genuine –– artificiality, as art shows us, is an expression of the real as much as it's anything else). If you don't understand these things as reflective of real world phenomenon, then we are simply living in different worlds. And while art does not de facto have a responsibility to reality, I think anyone taking on these subjects should show a greater strength of intelligence and artistry than I believe Dominik, and Oates for that matter, have shown.

Why is this abuse present? Why did the creators decide to have it take the form of sexual exploitation? Why does the fetus guilt Marilyn? Why does the film spend time on 'abortion'? I've argued with enough people about enough films to know that the same thing can be taken two different ways, but what I find so insulting about the posts in this thread isn't that people liked it, that people find it empathetic to womanhood or Marilyn, but that the idea that others might differ and find it a brutal, unintelligent film that says nothing about anything except how much some people hate women –– that that perspective is facile and unsophisticated or whatever, hypocritical, small-minded, anti-art –– I've said enough I'm sure. If you patently don't agree with my perspective on art and life then that's that.

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Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#97 Post by swo17 » Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:02 pm

Of course this finally came out after the Dobbs ruling, but the source novel and production of the film predate any notion that it was on the horizon. (The film itself was in development since 2010, started filming in 2019, and wrapped mid-2021 after COVID delays. Meanwhile, Amy Coney Barrett was added to the Supreme Court in October of 2020. I don't think the end of Roe v. Wade was on anyone's radar before then, other than whatever sentiments against it have always been brewing.) Also, it's one thing to take contemporary events as context to enhance your appreciation of a film. It's another to call them the film's liability.

You laid out two things that you find to be fallacies of the film. That's fair. To you they are clearly misogynistic. To me they are not. I can recognize them as real world phenomena without taking umbrage at their depiction. Depiction is not endorsement, as you say. Depiction is also not necessarily not endorsement, of course. But there is going to be subjectivity involved in any assessment of this. Presumably when someone lobs the word "misogynistic" at something it's to say "this is really bad and shouldn't be happening." But that descriptor doesn't really achieve its purpose if the response on the other end is a dismissive shrug of the shoulders.

I can't answer why the film dwells on sexual abuse. Perhaps the G-rated version of this story would have made for a better movie. But that movie probably still would have had the talking fetus! It's not as though that's a non sequitur, given the real-life character's tragic history of miscarriages as well as the film's thematic concern with a lack of family connection. Lots of people feel like those closest to them are judging them, often unfairly so. This is merely a depiction of that.

At root here though is probably the thought that the film depicts abortion in a negative light, and that this is somehow irresponsible while the reproductive rights of millions of women are currently up in the air. Now here's another dive into semantics where everyone ascribes their own meanings to words (to be fair, this is true of every word in the English language--it's only a contentious issue for certain words because they relate to sensitive topics) but pro-choice is not synonymous with pro-abortion. Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I would think that most people are in fact anti-abortion, finding it an experience that ranges from at least unpleasant to potentially traumatic...but one that is nonetheless necessary in some cases. It's also not hard to imagine that some women who go through with it are not 100% (or even 75%, 50%, etc.) on board with that decision. I find nothing in this film that's inconsistent with any of that. But if the complaint is that, post-Dobbs, any depiction of abortion on-screen should be neutral or even positive, to help push for it to become legal again across the board, I have no interest in that approach to the formation of art. You say that this film says "nothing about anything" but I think it's actually saying something here that's just making a lot of people really uncomfortable, especially given the inadvertent timing: Yes, abortion can be horrific. Yes, the human fetus is...something < 100% but > 0% human. There is a big unknown there and always has been. It's not politically convenient to acknowledge this, but then, this film isn't running for office. Not that I think that saying this is the main reason Dominik wanted to make this film. But it is something he chose to include within his allotted time. Why did Tree of Life feature dinosaurs? Why did Mungiu make his (apparently) anti-abortion film about abortion instead of about two plucky roommates who don't let living under communism get them down? More questions with unknowable answers.

These are all just my opinions, of course.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#98 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:15 pm

HinkyDinkyTruesmith wrote:
Wed Oct 05, 2022 12:20 pm
what I find so insulting about the posts in this thread isn't that people liked it, that people find it empathetic to womanhood or Marilyn, but that the idea that others might differ and find it a brutal, unintelligent film that says nothing about anything except how much some people hate women –– that that perspective is facile and unsophisticated or whatever, hypocritical, small-minded, anti-art –– I've said enough I'm sure. If you patently don't agree with my perspective on art and life then that's that.
This feels like a bad faith ultimatum, sidestepping an attempt to lean in and acknowledge some problematic framings and recognize your perspective as inherently valid. I had hoped for something different, perhaps a response that seemed more willing to engage, but this reads like an emotionally reactive edict uninterested in giving rope to adjust the slate for conversation with those you felt insulted by, choosing to only reply to a challenge and ignore an invitation. That's your right, but I'd question why repeatedly express offense at posts in this thread and then choose to neglect responses attempting to engage with that expressed offense. Again, I'm sorry you interpreted past posts as you did, and I'll try to internalize that feedback to produce better arguments in the future, but you're not indicating that your side of this debate is approachable

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Walter Kurtz
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:03 pm

Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#99 Post by Walter Kurtz » Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:04 pm

HinkyDinkyTruesmith wrote:
Wed Oct 05, 2022 5:16 am
... Dominik isn't interested in this woman, or women, but "Woman".
HinkyDinkyTruesmith wrote:
Wed Oct 05, 2022 12:20 pm
...what I find so insulting about the posts in this thread isn't that people liked it, that people find it empathetic to womanhood or Marilyn, but that the idea that others might differ and find it a brutal, unintelligent film that says nothing about anything except how much some people hate women ––
Hat tip HDT. Fucking well said. My (film) tastes run to an art that is more subtle and doesn't underestimate my intelligence. Putting it a different way I'll use a metaphor that is fairly neutral... COWBOY MOVIES.

Version A: Clint Eastwood, wearing a long-coat, is standing over there with his back turned away from me. I am standing over here. He turns. He looks at me. His left eye narrows into a trace of stink-eye. I understand he's pissed at me. I get it.

Version B: Clint Eastwood is standing over there with his back turned away from me. I am standing over here. He turns. He pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and blasts my face off. I wake up in heaven. An angel leans over me, smiling, "I guess Clint was pissed at you." "Yup." "But we gotta send you back down there and he's gotta blast your face off a few more times 'cuz we wanna make sure you get it."

Some people might prefer Version B (especially if the scene is cut after the angel's opening line.) But many people prefer Version A. Because they get it. They get it quickly. Personally I've always preferred that my surgeon use - not an axe - but a scalpel.

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Walter Kurtz
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:03 pm

Re: Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

#100 Post by Walter Kurtz » Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:17 pm

Here's another way at looking at this. HDT summed up the whole issue here with "this woman" and "women" and Woman.

Some people wanted and expected a movie about "this woman" and were disappointed that the director instead provided a movie about WOMAN. Making a movie about WOMAN is using an axe to do surgery.

Your mileage may vary. That's okay. We probably pick out different ties when we shop at Hermes.

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