Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

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

Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#101 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:10 pm

knives wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 8:04 pm
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As for Burnham’s culpability as I understand it he was videotaped watching the sex act which is an extreme for me.
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Well of course it's extreme, but I think this speaks to the issue when you mention that him being videotaped is what makes it extreme. Obviously what you mean is that him being present is extreme, and it's an emphasized placeholder for a range of bystander moments we forget/have forgotten (a similarly accentuated expression of culpability to how Greenfield and Lowell rationalize the final kill much faster than they would in reality yet still using the same methodology thereby exposing its problematic nature), but your phrasing is notable: the fact that Burnham's presence was filmed and objectively forced into our awareness is what causes us to process the dehumanization of his character or binary categorization of good/bad.

I hope this example isn't misperceived in bad taste, but I was reminded how many people I know who rationalized police interventions against their problematic video footage (specifically, refusing to believe Eric Garner's death as wrongful) because the videos were "incomplete" (not covering every angle of omnipotent ground) or there were some arguable elisions, but the video of George Floyd's death convinced all the normal deniers I know because it was so completely captured and inarguable in its objectivity. The fact that we need something to be produced to snap us from the fog of comfort and doubt and demand action is itself a problematic device, and so the videotape evidence both elicits our extreme reaction, and Cassie's, but also- for me- brings up... well, what about all the shit I, you, or others have maybe been passive to that wasn't videotaped? Does that make it less extreme, if we and Bo Burnham all equally forgot these things happened? Is the variable that we have become forcibly conscious to compelling us to anxiously assess his character's worth in binary terms? Obviously it's important to have evidence, but I think the presence of lucid exhibits that deprive us of complacency are related to the outcome of our judgments in a really uncomfortable way- much like how Connie Britton only begins to care when she is also shaken from her safe bubble.

I don't have any examples from my personal life, and this is hypothetical- which I 'get' makes this perhaps moot. But I also think that in the omissions of our consciousness lies toned-down examples, but maybe not less-impactful to some Nina's life, of on-the-fence bystander complicity, that could be seen as such in some Cassie's eyes, and I shudder to think of how my privilege (as well as drug/alcohol use) could place me in a similar position as Burnham- partly because of egocentric reasons as he identifies in his actions, and partly because of how hard it is to think about contributing to another's harm. I won't beat myself up for non-evidence, but that character reveal and this conversation gets me thinking in a way that I think the film is intending.
As an adjacent aside, Bo Burnham's new film (not really a comedy special, so much more), Inside, touches on this conflict of self-pity/selfish drives and apologia/genuine empathy in a fascinating (and much lighter!) way, and I strongly encourage everyone who has Netflix to go watch it now

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#102 Post by knives » Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:25 pm

I think you’re reading a bit more into my phrasing than reflects reality. I just mentioned the video because that’s what informed us of his actions. Obviously my claim of extremity is on the act, or rather lack thereof, and not the medium by which it was delivered to us. That said I appreciate your statement for showing why having this be the delivery device is affecting for our relationship with the characters.

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

Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#103 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:35 pm

Yeah, apologies if it seemed like I was trying to connect your statement to my point so stringently (I tried to avoid this by saying obviously you meant the act trumps the method!) but I do think the phrasing reveals a very honest (and valid) mechanism by which we measure worth. The fact that it's valid isn't the problem, but the tendency for it to be the only way we know to access validity in comfort begs the question of all the valid problems left out in the peripheries. The film shines a spotlight on what's there in such a manner that makes us wonder what isn't- and that's what transforms this from exaggerated satire into sober horror. The elisions are emphasized as ostensibly jampacked with stuff we can't, won't, and don't want to face.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#104 Post by knives » Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:41 pm

True. And I like how consistently the film doesn’t actually show us anything. Which puts another feather in the pinwheel.

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Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 12:22 am

Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#105 Post by Never Cursed » Sat Jun 26, 2021 2:46 am

Hmm, I'm a little ashamed to come out in the middle for a film so interested both in exposing the most vile excess and generating hyperbolic reactions from an audience.
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I think the harshest criticisms expressed upthread are generally off-base. The film is a satire positing that everyone who engages in (Western) sexual dynamics is to some degree compromised and complicit in the routine exploitation of women, and it does so principally by creating a multifaceted main character who is compelled in contradictory directions towards both an amoral but internally "just" extrajudicial punishment of the worst sexual offenders and a "moral" understanding that such actions don't fix the problem. This is why Cassie has such a, ahem, aversion to completion in terms of her vigilante actions, but part of the irony and impossibility of her situation is that the morals that compel her to forgo such catharsis are themselves a product of the hollow norms that created and reinforce the issue in the first place. Given how uncompromising Cassie is and how consumed she is by this bifurcated ethos of hers, in a way martyrdom is the only path that was ever open to her (and the film certainly has no qualms earlier in depicting her with the visual connotations of a saint). One reading of the ending proffered earlier is that Fennell depicts Cassie as a martyr, that she dies to ameliorate the crime of the rapist existing freely in the world; another is that her death is the futile result of her own juvenile and inflexible worldview. I guess I don't see why both can't be true, in that she symptomatically chooses to sacrifices herself for a cause that she knows she can't broadly affect but still hopes to alter in her immediate vicinity. I think these are all fair courses of action for a satire, and credit is due to Fennell for making a bunch of choices that guide the film away from the lower-hanging cinematic fruits so that it can tackle the central target through a more complicated lens. In short, I can say pretty firmly that I do not buy the arguments that the film should have been girlboss Death Proof or that the film is only a lesson in Feminist Discourse or whatever.
All of that is interesting enough stuff (for my money, more so than any of the other big Oscar nominees that I've seen so far), but I wouldn't be wholly honest if I didn't communicate that the bitterness of the movie rubbed me the wrong way as well as the right.
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I think soundchaser's comments about the conclusion of Bo Burnham's character arc (which, to be clear, I did not read as a sort of #notallmen argument) are on the money; besides being a little cruel (how the lines in the break-up scene painted what was the most complex male character in the film as reacting to something really severe with a one-dimensional entitled anger that I don't buy as a genuine human reaction), it struck me as a curious validation of Cassie's perceptions that he would behave when confronted with this material in just such a facile way when so much of the material around it is a deconstruction and soft criticism of her interpretive behavior. Maybe this is the point, that even the supposedly decent (men) among us have within the willingness to shut down and cruelly defend oneself in the presence of even tangential criticism, but that strikes me as being a bit more scorched-earth than the film otherwise is.
I'd still go so far as to recommend the film, just with that (quite personal) asterisk. Mulligan is very good in a role that should have propelled her well over Frances McDormand to the Best Actress statue (though I still prefer Zendaya's stab at the award to anyone else's this year), but I honestly liked Burnham even more in his broad, submissive blend of reality and projection; by all rights he should have gotten more than, oh, one award nomination.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#106 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Jun 26, 2021 11:46 am

Great thoughts! It took me a second watch to come around on that same caustic reaction in the second spoilerbox'd box, but it works for me mostly because I think it's how Cassie's subjectivity is functioning there... it isn't so much that Fennell is scorching the earth of a complex character, but that Cassie is, disallowing him to be complex like so many of us do defensively- especially when complicated trauma is in the mix. Now you need to check out Bo Burnham: Inside to see him expand on, validate and confront, his own inner conflict- that which could be suited for his character here, his real self, or many of us out there. Promising Young Woman doesn't have room for that story, but Inside is that story

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swo17
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#107 Post by swo17 » Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:49 am


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therewillbeblus
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#108 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Nov 01, 2023 2:32 pm

swo17 wrote:
Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:49 am
A 4K UHD release is coming out next week
This has a reported audio issue, but Universal is apparently sending replacement discs with a 4-6 week timeline. The best bet seems to be to purchase the flawed UHD and then ask for a replacement, since it's doubtful they'll call back stock or put corrected discs out anytime soon

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