"Solaris" and "I Am Love"

Solaris:

Solaris had a very interesting concept of desire. When the movie first began, I thought it was going to be a horror flick. The way that the people on the spaceship described the phenomenon made it seem as if there was some type of monster on the ship terrorizing them. I was even more convinced of this when George Clooney’s character, Chris, arrives on the ship only to find dead bodies and the only two people left acting strangely.

I was amused to find that the people on the ship were actually being terrorized by their own desires. The oddest part of the entire situation, in my opinion, was not that the people that they desired most to see were being physically manifested, but the fact that when they were finally able to see these people, they couldn’t handle it.

My favorite line in the movie comes at the beginning when Chris is asked to go to the ship to help. The man in the video says “the obvious solution would be to leave, but none of us want to.” I think that this line speaks to a lot of what we have read about desire in our class. People don’t know what they actually want, and when they think they do, they resort to masochistic measures to obtain it. Even with his wife telling him that she was not human, Chris wanted to be with her. He practically made himself sick trying to keep her alive, and at the end he sacrificed his own life because he didn’t want to leave her. And because he was being told that he couldn't have her, he wanted her more.

On a less dramatic scale, at a party I attended the other day, my friend was talking about her boyfriend, which she does often. She said that for the first time in her life, a boyfriend had denied her sex. My other friend responded, “And that only made you want him more, right?” and she said “Absolutely!” They had immediately started joking that he had denied her with the purpose of making her want him more, but it stuck me how the actions of the people that we desire, even if the actions are insignificant to person doing them, affect us so much. So I guess it is understandable how the significant actions, such as Chris’ wife’s suicide, would change his psyche completely.

I Am Love:
I am going to start off by saying that I love Tilda Swinton. Aside from being an incredibly intelligent person, she has this amazing talent to express more with a simple glance into the camera than most actors can with hundreds of lines. You know exactly who the woman she is portraying is within the first couple of minutes of the movie, as if you had known her beforehand, which works to engross you even more when her character begins a transformation.
I really enjoyed I Am Love because, unlike many books and movies about desire, the desire expressed by Tilda Swinton’s character, Emma, seemed to be more empowering than damning. I think that "I Am Love" is similar to Madame Bovary in that the story is not so much about the act of adultery as it is about the female pursuit of happiness in a patriarchal society. It is not about Emma being a bad person or a good person, but a person; capable of evolution and revolution, restlessness and desire.

In her interview with Charlie Rose, Tilda Swinton mentions that prior to the film Emma is happy, but when Emma sees that her children are changing and transforming into adulthood, she beings to change as well. I think that her change came when she found the letter from her daughter. The letter expresses this deep infatuation that her daughter has with another woman and I think that this impacted Emma greatly. There were hints of her impending change when she was introduced to her son’s girlfriend, but I think that her daughter’s love captivated her more because it was non-traditional, adventurous, and recklessly steadfast. I think that she wanted to emulate the type of love that her daughter had developed. She wanted a love that she could actively participate in, a love that wasn't so stagnant. Antonio offers her this type of love. She is able to express all of the different sides of her personality and culture that she was forced to hide away before.

At one point in the movie, Emma says “‘Happy’ is a word that makes me sad.” But I think she is referring to the facade of happiness that she had become accustomed to wearing, in the same way that she had become accustomed to the name “Emma”. When Edoardo dies, Emma no longer has a reason to keep up the facade or hesitate. His death is all the more reason to enjoy life and chase her desires.

Madame Bovary (Week Two)

Rodolphe’s box called to mind images of Law & Order. Of course Rodolphe isn’t exactly killing anyone, but his box of bloodied handkerchiefs, love letters, garters, masks and hair isn’t exactly dissimilar to what you might find in a serial killer’s house. Well, I suppose he is a serial adulterer. He keeps mementos or souvenirs of the previous women that he has had affairs with and uses the objects to recall memories of them; to reminisce. That also shows how much each women meant to him. To him, their worth equals a little piece of paper that they sent him, or a piece of hair they gave him. When they are all reduced to objects, no one woman stands out from the other.

Rodolphe is a sexual egoist and a narcissist. He prides himself on the fact that when he sets his sights on a woman, like he did Emma, he can have her and that when he is done with her, he can break-off the relationship easily while knowing that she is crying for him. He is also so full of himself that he is convinced that he can control and manipulate every aspect of the relationship to the very end. He even goes so far as to drip water onto the letter he is going to send to Emma to make it seem as if he were crying. He is taking joy in playing his role in a play that he has created for himself. Everything besides the sex (well, maybe even the sex, who knows) was an act and he kept all of these objects as a symbol of a job well done, just like a stage actor might keep a bouquet of roses given to him after a performance.

Yet, I don’t think I dislike Rodolphe as much as I probably should because Flaubert has forced me to really dislike Charles. Part two, chapter eleven was the icing on the cake when it came to Charles’ failures. The entire chapter was dedicated to highlighting the inadequacies of Charles. The fact that he choose to do the surgery knowing full well of his own limitations simply because he was blinded, yet again, by his ignorant love for Emma, is no longer him just being eager to please, but completely negligible. It’s not a very charming quality anymore. His idiocy furthers when he assumes that Emma is upset because of a “nervous illness”.

Now, I no longer feel pity for him because his wife refused to love him. And I no longer feel the slight animosity I felt towards Emma before for being so unhappy. Sure, Rodolphe was insincere towards Emma and used her, but he had those intentions from the very beginning. I think it’s almost worse that Charles is oblivious to how much of a putz he is.

Not only was Charles the only one who didn’t suspect that Emma was having an affair, he allowed her to ruin him financially. Even when he is given chances to take control- for example, when he found out that the piano teacher didn’t know Emma, or when his mother tried to get him to take back power of attorney over the finances, or even when he finds the letter from Rodolphe- he still manages to do nothing. He even lets her stay behind with Leon! At this point he’s not just a pushover anymore. He is laying on the ground and begging people to walk all over him. And when he finally comes to terms with the fact that Emma was unfaithful (which he refuses to do until after she dies), he choses not to blame Emma or Rodolphe, but fate. FATE!

And still, Flaubert took it a step further by making Charles’ death a beautiful scene in the garden. There were rays of light and jasmine perfumed air and shadows cast by vine leaves. It was picturesque. Death was the only thing that he did successfully.

Madame Bovary (Week One)

At the beginning of Flaubert's “Madame Bovary”, I had mistaken the story as being Charles Bovary’s. The reader is introduced to his upbringing, his brief debauchery in early adulthood, and, most importantly, his first marriage.
In the Zizek video we watched in class (“Why be happy when you can be interesting?”), Zizek uses the classic example of a man who dreams of what it would be like if his wife were to disappear or die and he was able to live happily with his mistress. This happens to Charles. He starts to fall in love with Emma and when he really starts to feel the weight of his marriage to a wife he doesn’t really love- POOF- she dies and he is able to propose to Emma. The very same things happens in Nabokov’s Lolita. Humbert Humbert is thinking of ways to get rid of his wife (lolita’s mother) so that he can live happily with Lolita and voilà, she's hit by a car and dies instantly. Zizek says that if the wife actually does leave the picture, there is no such happy ending, which is the case for Humbert, who tells the entire story from death row. But it seems, for the time being, that Charles is happy in his ignorance...
Emma Bovary is suffering from continual doses of reality. She is so caught up in the fictional stories that she had come accustomed to that she doesn’t know how to be content with her life. She had thought, at first, that Charles would be to her what gallant knights were in her stories. But Charles is just a gentle country doctor. He is easy to please and quick to give compliments, which, of course, is not what she wants. Almost as if she were a child, she slips into an excessively long tantrum.
Then Emma thinks that she’s in love with Léon. She uses him to emotionally torture herself. Even Léon has tricked himself into thinking that he doesn’t just want her for her body. But then Léon leaves and she slips back into her perpetual angst which had been momentarily quelled by her delusions about Léon. He leaves town without having had sex with Emma, and then another guy comes around and does have sex with her and she forgets all about Léon, proving that she didn't really love Léon to being with.
Which leads us to Rodolphe. He, for a time, was my favorite character simply because his honesty was a breath of fresh air. After he had met Emma, he was thinking of ways to have sex with her, and then get rid of her. He’s despicable, no doubt, but it was the first time a character didn’t delude themselves into thinking they were in love or make excuses to stay in an unhappy relationship other than the fact that it created a much needed barrier to their desire.
After having had sex with Rodolphe, Emma, ironically, started to appreciate her marriage a bit more. She thought that she wanted to live happily with her lover, but now that she has a lover, she can’t remember why she wasn’t happy with her marriage in the first place. Yet, it’s clear that Emma’s life will take a turn for the worse. She isn’t being very diligent at hiding her secret trysts with Rodolphe, and if we are to follow the pattern of every other story of passion, lust, and adultery, she’s probably going to die. Soon.

Celestina (Week Two)

The death of Celestina perturbed me a bit. She was the harbinger of death and disaster simply by definition of what she stood for, but it never even occurred to me to think about what might happen without this walking allegory for desire.  

Sempronio and Parmeno were obviously fed up. They had known that she was a greedy opportunist but they had still trusted her enough to make a deal with her. They helped Celestina by introducing her a as this wise, sympathetic women in order to extract money from Calisto while knowing that she was calculating and distrustful. What were they so upset at if they had known what kind of woman she was from the start? Unless, they had been mad at themselves for trusting her.

This scene reminded me of a part of Zizek’s chapter “Courtly Love, or, Women as Thing” that we read a few weeks ago. Zizek explains that at a certain point, when the person is displeased with the other’s role in their “relationship”, they act out in irrational violence. Sempronio and Parmeno may not have desired Celestina, but they did desire the money that she had promised them. They had known from the beginning that they probably weren’t going to get the money, but they kept up the act and killed Celestina when she became a threat to the illusion, proving that the desire for riches can be just as dangerous as lust.  

Celestina died at a pivotal moment in the story. Calisto and Melibea were finally both aware of their mutual feelings for each other. Although, Calisto took some convincing. He was in complete disbelief that Melibea had feelings for him, almost as if he didn’t want to believe it. Which makes sense. He desires Melibea so much that she has become a goddess to him. She is high on a pedestal, untouchable. If his feelings were to become requited, the illusion ends. She is no longer this holy being that he can only drool over. She becomes tangible and ends his suffering, which destroys the idealistic prison of desire that Calisto had created for himself.  

It is almost as if the tight grip of what Calisto thought that he wanted had slowly dissipated with the death of Celestina. But, still, the cycle continued. Sosia was tricked by Areusa  into telling her where and when Calisto was going to meet with Melibea. He divulged all the information because he thought that Areusa fancied him, which he later came to realize was a mistake. Areusa had planned Calisto’s death, which only seemed to heightenher Melibea’s desire for him. So much so that she killed herself.  It was almost as if Areusa had taken Celestina’s place because desire never dies.

Celestina (Week One)

     After reading the first half of Celestina, with the ideas from last week's class still fresh in my mind, I switched on the television and began watching “Singin’ in the Rain”. I immediately felt a calculating and cynical cog start to turn in my mind, a feeling that I haven’t felt any of the numerous other times I’ve watched this movie. The handsome Don Lockwood, played by Gene Kelly, that I once found so charming and romantic suddenly became the stubborn, lovesick Calisto. And Kathy Selden, played by Debbie Reynolds, the illusive Melibea. The more Kathy insulted Don, the more he chased after her. The more he chased after her, the more she liked him. 
     Don takes Kathy to a movie set, sets up the lights and the wind and the sunset background. The perfect scene to his perfect illusion. He creates an atmosphere where Kathy- her hair blowing in the wind, standing above him on a latter- is the ideal goddess, beautiful and out of reach. Not unlike when Calisto first sees Melibea in a garden; in an eden, where she stood innocent and pure.
     This isn’t the only instance, obviously, where concepts and characters from Celestina could be compared to movies or stories of romance. Fortunately though, “Singin’ in the Rain” is devoid of prostitutes (or it would have been a completely different movie...)
     Celestina also introduces a different spectrum of problems that a delusional love causes. The story shows how an obsessive love affects not only the person in question, but also the ones around him. Pármeno, for example, is hurt when Calisto allows his passion to blind him to reason and he does not listen to Pármeno’s advice. Instead, he berates him for getting in the way. Similarly, Melibea’s servant is frustrated because, even though she is looking out for Melibea’s well being, she is ignored.
     Yet, Pármeno falls into a similar cycle with his love, Areusa. He is guilty of doing the same things that he warned Calisto not to do. He offers up whatever he has to Celestina if she can make Areusa take notice of him, which she does in an unnerving way. Celestina practically bullies them into having sex with each other. The biggest surprise was not that Celestina was pushing them to have sex with each other, but that they complied relatively easily. Celestina basically sold Areusa to Pármeno and, as is stated in the supplemental reading on desire (From Twilight Moments to Moral Panics), prostitutions was only considered a “minor sin”.
     The biggest question Celestina has left me with thus far is whether or not to detest the old woman, Celestina. She is, without a doubt, an opportunist. She manipulates men and sells young women without batting her eyes. She thinks only of the profit and uses whatever means to achieve her goal. But, is she completely at fault? She is simply utilizing the selfishness of a society set on fulfilling their desires with prostitution and money. The characters allow themselves to become so consumed by their desire for others that they leave themselves vulnerable to be taken advantage of by Celestina.