SPOILERS FOR:
Poor Things
Tár (partially)
A Clockwork Orange (Novel)
Content warning for references to suicide and CSEM as well as other sexual harms
Tár is a 2022 film (with its release generally over early 2023) directed by Todd Field. The film stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, a world famous composer at the precipice of one of the most important concerts of her life-plus a book launch-when secrets regarding her past come very uglily to light.
One of the most pivotal scenes in the movie involves Lydia at a classroom being confronted by a BIPOC queer student questioning the use of composers with problematic personal lives. This results in our eponymous lead dressing them down in front of their peers. The scene was picked up by right wing circles as a celebration of “anti-wokeness”.
However this take of it being a reactionary right wing love letter is not just shared by the likes of Fox News and its esteemed viewership. One of the takes that stuck out for me was that of Natalie Wynn, a well known nominally lefty YouTuber who runs the philosophy channel ContraPoints:
Now this isn’t to besmirch Natalie (and if you go after her for a nearly year old tweet thread you are the weirdest person alive), it’s more an example of how prominent this read of the film is especially for this scene. And to me it feels…I dunno, misguided?
“Media literacy” is a term thrown around pretty frequently online and it’s kind of eye rolling when I see it. Half the time it’s not really accusing someone of being media illiterate; someone’s just mad they have a differing take and want to rationalise why they are right. But I think it applies here-and to be clear in case I get called out for hypocrisy it’s fine if Natalie and others do not like this movie. A lot of her read is valid even if I personally disagree with her.
I just think this idea that Todd Field takes a political side and using this moment as an example not only ignores the rest of the film but his work in general. Field has made 3 movies including Tár: the other two being 2001’s In the Bedroom and 2006’s Little Children. In the Bedroom focuses on a married couple who have their sedentary lifestyle uprooted after a personal tragedy. Little Children looks at a peaceful suburban neighbourhood that faces ratcheted tensions when a convicted child sex offender moves back after being released from prison.
These films tend to look at the fragile façade morality can have when a perfectly arranged life on the surface comes crumbling down. The important thing for our purposes is that these characters and their moral fabrics are not depicted in a way that’s meant for them to be judged or condoned but observed. I think the closest comparison I can think for the way Field’s films are blocked and presented is Stanley Kubrick. He has a similar objective perspectivism in terms of his camera work and shot composition that gets him accused of being cold.
One of my favourite movies-A Clockwork Orange-famously had the ending of its source novel excised from the finished film. While this is largely said to be due to a publishing error as the US printing of the novel forgot the final chapter, Kubrick ended up deciding how the movie ended was better than Anthony Burgess’ book, which had Alex grow bored of his vile antics and decide to mend his ways and settle down.
I’d be inclined to agree with Kubrick here; the movie’s ending leaves that objective framework of what the narrative is trying to say. Whether you agree Alex’ actions-however vile-do not deserve the control and abuse he was put under and his removal of his free will, or whether you agree with the Ludovico method and look on with abject horror over them abandoning this way to control violent means, the movie is not telling you definitively how to feel. And that’s how Field views his characters.
Going back to that classroom scene, I think the important thing to take from it is not so much the argument or points being made but Lydia’s behaviour. She’s talking over her student, circumventing them discussing the composer they played in favour of Bach as she’s clearly not comfortable talking about someone’s work she doesn’t have a lot of experience with. She ignores their visible signs of discomfort, grabbing their thigh to stop their leg involuntarily shaking and getting really up close to their space. She also weaponises her own sexuality and gender against them as well as tries to turn the rest of the class against them. She’s not only an obvious bully she has either no awareness or care (or both) of her student’s boundaries and emotional wellbeing.
All of Field’s movies deal with a loss of something and how that alters a person’s mindset and lays bare how flexible their moral fabric truly is. In the Bedroom looks at a family unit, Little Children at a tight knit community. Tár looks at celebrity and power and is the most overt with this recurring motif. While Lydia has the perception of both moral standing and astute social intelligence, it’s all a wash and the second this becomes clear to the public she loses grip of the tight control she has over her surroundings being a successful powerful woman in an industry she’s likely had to brutally claw her way up due to her gender and sexuality.
Whether you like Lydia Tár and think she’s unfairly scrutinised is irrelevant (I personally think she’s awful and is very obviously guilty of what she’s accused of even if that’s never made 100% explicit). What matters here is looking at the way power influences a person’s behaviours and what happens the second that is challenged. If you take away that the film is somehow endorsing these worldview it’s missing the forest for the trees to act like this is the optimal intent of the filmmakers and it’s a bunch of people standing their grounds in the culture war.
So. I just ranted for 1000 words about a different film that’s not on the headline. Why is this? Well first off I planned to make an article last year talking about this controversy and never got round to it so this is my compromise. But I do think it relates in one aspect: people nowadays have a tendency to view any art in this black-or-white mentality that it’s endorsing some puffed up “culture war” or not. And people really turn on the blinkers when uncomfortable topics regarding sexual misconduct can be ascertained by the narrative.
And whatever I think about Tár-however I feel is a misguided, limited, and way too black and white view of a complex film-I can at least say the film wants you to draw your own conclusions so I can give somewhat of the benefit of the doubt for some of the wild takes that came out of the film. Poor Things could not be fucking clearer on its narrative goals and intent.
Poor Things is a 2023 film directed by Greek oddball (as I repeat myself) Yorgos Lanthimos. It ended up being a massive hit at awards season, with 11 Oscar nominations and 4 wins, including one for Best Actress for Emma Stone (which while she’s great in this I wouldn’t have given it to her but that’s an entirely different discourse). I saw the film earlier than most as it opened the Cork International Film Festival. I had two thoughts walking out:
“Man, what a delightfully weird experience.”
“People are going to make a big fucking deal out of this over the premise.”
And well I hate being right.
This film has been marred in controversy and received considerable backlash to the point where somebody labelled it, and I quote, “kiddie porn” (no I will not link that trash article). A less sensationalised, but still highly critical, take on the movie came from journalist Jess Philips for the Daily Star.
This again isn’t a condemnation of Philips entirely she just sums up the issue I want to address. And what issue is that you may ask? Well most people who complain about the sexual content of the film decide to just not factor at all the other elements of the film.
I guess I should put into more specific arguments: people have taken issue into the use of sexuality in Poor Things. Even ignoring how graphically it can be depicted, how much agency our protagonist Bella has is noted. The issues specifically focus on her relationship with Duncan Wedderburn and her work as a prostitute in Paris.
While I’m writing this with the presumption that you have actually watched the film, I will spell out why this is the problem with Bella by going over the plot. Bella Baxter is a creation of Godwin Baxter (who-usually humourously-is referred to as “God”). Happening upon the body of a woman named Victoria Blessington, who had recently killed herself, he discovers the foetus in her womb with still functioning brain activity. He proceeded to put this brain into Victoria’s body to reanimate it.
When the film opens, Bella basically has the cognitive ability and understanding of a toddler. fascinated by objects and phenomena around her and trying to understand it to get a gauge of this world strictly from the confines of Godwin’s home. As her spatial reasoning and social ability grows, she gets frustrated by Godwin’s unwillingness to let her out of the house for certain periods of time. While Godwin encourages an engagement with Max, a student God invites to his home to examine Bella and has fallen in love with her, she discovers her very adult body and the wonders of sexual stimulation. Godwin’s hires lawyer Duncan to tie up the nuptials to keep her curiousities of the outside world at bay, however this backfires as Bella runs off with the debauched lawyer for adventures and sexcapades with Godwin’s reluctant agreement.
Like. Already. There is some niggles around reading this out of context. I’m going to tackle this in parts, starting with talking about Bella’s agency as a character and her supposed infant mind (this is where the “kiddie porn” accusation comes from btw)
It needs be established what exactly the protagonist is as I’ve seen some confusion about this. Bella Baxter is not a resurrected Victoria Blesiington with the intention of making her some sex object or something (yes I’ve heard people make this argument). Nor, I would argue, is she Blessington’s infant who had their brain transplanted into her mother’s head. Which-admittedly-has a bit more of a basis in the text but is still not an entirely accurate assessment.
Bella is a new being entirely; a Frankenstein-esque creation constituted by the barely decayed corpse of a woman and the viable brain of her foetus. To argue she’d have the same mental maturity process of an infant while inhabiting the sexually mature body of an adult is ridiculous and goes against the text of the film entirely (Bella intellectually doesn’t mature the same way a toddler would either).
Is this accurate to how it would be in real life? I mean…no, but it’s a macabre Victorian-based fantasy. It’s almost fairytale with a lot of riding…it’s a fairytale. You need to train yourself not to look at fiction so literally.
The closest you could say as a real world parallel to Bella is someone with an intellectual disability or a neurodivergence like autism. Which-if you’re implying the same puritanical standards to adults of this cognitive state you are pulling a lot of broad strokes and are being deeply condescending regarding their ability to consent. It’s obviously complicated, but we can dismiss this argument on hand.
Given Bella’s unusual creation and advanced cognitive development it’s easy to ascertain here that yes she is fully culpable of consenting to the sexual encounters she finds herself in the film. Either via Duncan or the men who solicit her. She clearly does not enjoy all of them, but that’s the reality of sex work. You may disagree with me on this point, but I’m meeting the movie on its level based on the information it parsed to me. I guess when we find a real world parallel where a woman’s brain was replaced with that of a foetus we can talk.
Another facet is the way the men surrounding Bella are depicted-a lot of people saying the film is misogynist and the way her relationships are handled favours these creepy predatory men in her life. There are four in particular that stand out in this regard: Max, Godwin, Victoria’s husband Alfie and Duncan. I think we can dismiss Alfie offhand because it’s extremely difficult to argue the film sees him favourably. While Max’ attraction to Bella when she acts like a toddler is a…little odd, he eventually learns to respect her boundaries and doesn’t push their engagement due to her maturation and presumption that she has moved on until Bella suggests it. This leaves God and Duncan.
God and Bella…I mean I’d be lying if I said their relationship isn’t pretty complicated. You can’t really pretend Godwin had noble intentions in Bella’s creation and while it’s reasonable to a point that he lied to her about her creation it certainly goes on too long and he’s controlling and elusive in ways that definitely feel like a power trip (I mean jest or not he gets her and others to call him “God”). Yet his affection for Bella that feels pure, he’s patient with her and is willing to expand his boundaries with her when he deems appropriate. Essentially, well, he’s a parent. Vivian Strange did a video that goes into more discussion on their relationship I feel better than I can:
That leaves Duncan and-gotta say-I do not understand how you can view this film and think he comes out in any way on top or gets the upper hand in how he treats Bella or how the movie treats him? Duncan Wedderburn is an extremely pathetic man-he takes advantage of what he believes is Bella’s naivety and she basically turns that around on him. It’s super obvious from the get go that she knows he’s only interested in her body but uses it for sexual gratification and to explore the world and expand her horizons.
There’s a trope brought up regarding this film called Born Sexy Yesterday. It’s a term coined by Jonathan Macintosh for his Pop Culture Detective series that denotes women who are naïve and ignorant to the world around them and need a man to teach them the ways (usually because of genre shenanigans). They usually give off a vibe of being completely sexually inexperienced, but are also adults or in adult bodies to give an out for this. Some examples of this trope include Leeloo from The Fifth Element or Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And yeah-Bella fits this pretty comfortably in many areas. Especially with how her relationship with Duncan starts out. Here’s the thing though-she is very clearly and obviously a lot smarter and intuitive than Duncan gives her credit for and his underestimating her continues to blow up in his face. He gets socially humiliated by her antics but she faces 0 consequences for this because she knows how attracted he is to her and enjoys sleeping with him anyway so it’s win-win. He goes on a cruise in a desperate attempt to keep her interested which only causes to further isolate herself from him and expand her mind with new friends. She gives away his money in an act of contrition for the poor masses, gets them stranded in Paris, takes up prostitution against his wishes and after he becomes too clingy and pathetic she dumps him. He is never at any point of this in control and him thinking with his dick ruins his life-and its all well deserved!
If anything, this is a deconstruction of BSY-Bella is set up to be a perfect partner for a skeezy philanderer like Duncan and in the scenario she would teach him a better way. Instead her self-actualisation and affirmation brings out his pettiness, insecurities and desire for control and it eventually leads him to an asylum. The movie cares so little about him it abandons him until he becomes plot relevant really briefly near the end. Duncan sucks and is not worth it and the film knows this.
One final issue I’ll bring up is more the general depiction of sex in the film. It’s graphic and in your face-while this is relegated to two main sequences (Bella and Duncan’s holiday in Tuscany and the start of her career at the brothel) they’re pretty full on and feel done a lot of times for the titillation. And yeah? Maybe? Kinda? A lot of the framing and presentation appears way more comedic and for shock value than arousal, but I get it. Emma Stone is hot and you see her naked. That’s fine? She’s a producer on this and had a lot of control here? Also it’s fine for Bella to be really sexual even beyond the dubious consent debate (which as explained I’m in favour of the “she’s fully capable of consenting” team).
Like yeah when she solicits herself after arriving in Paris she’s a little taken aback by the aggressiveness or lack of interest a lot of the men have in her, but that’s probably the same for a lot of those who get into sex work and frankly the consensual dynamics of this are not really within the scope of me fervently defending a movie. But she makes this her own too and learns to controls people’s whims and ticks to get a favoured goal for herself-Bella is extremely good at reading people and that’s something that’s displayed throughout the film.
(I know people had an issue with the scene where the father hires her to teach his children about sex but like the actual child actors clearly saw nothing and this moment is funny and fits the movie’s attitude of skewing social norms so shut the fuck up. I like how Vivian broke down this scene as well).
Ultimately, what I think people miss about Bella (and by extension the movie) is that she’s a new being in a world that has decided a role for her. She didn’t grow up with the social expectations, mental conditioning and sexual neuroses placed onto women (in the time period and frankly now), and it’s a story about someone with an adult body taking her own charge and carving her own life without falling to said expectations. It’s why I think her going back to Victoria’s husband is so important. Here she is in the body of a woman who killed herself because the social pressures repressing her pushed her to that place. Now the person whose body this is completely stands intelligent, self-actualised and above society’s desires for what she should do with her body or her place in the world.
And this is why I love this film-it took the framing of a Frankenstein story and had our “Creature” triumph over the world that frames her’s bullshit. She becomes a scientist, a socialist, polyamorous and someone strong enough to be able to push her path in the world that rejected her “father” for his eccentricities and appearance. It’s why I don’t think she fits the Born Sexy Yesterday trope as that tends to be reserved for developing male character’s story and this is Bella’s tale. Nobody has more agency or learns more than her.
So why does this keep happening? It’s hard to say-a lot of it seems to be that these are two films that are a bit more challenging than usual Oscar fare starring beloved actors that got more eyes on them because of the Academy-but I dunno plenty of weird films like this don’t create this much discourse. The Shape of Water I don’t remember having this much flak and Sally Hawkins fucks an anatomically correct fish monster from The Creature of the Black Lagoon in that thing.
I think a lot of it has to do with its sexual content and hitting up with sexual misconduct. While Poor Things is more about how you interpret it (though men do act skeezy towards Bella, especially Duncan), Tár unquestionably explores this. And I think at this stage if you explore these topics not in a black and white way but with a grain of nuance people’s knee jerk reactions are to have the worst possible reads of this and the filmmakers’ feelings where they get accused of “making kiddie porn” or “siding with a groomer”.
If you’re turned off by the sexual content or still have an issue with the “baby brain in adult woman” thing with Bella’s depiction-that’s fine. I can’t coerce you to fight against your discomforts or the feeling the story may have stepped too far in what it was trying to say. I’m sure there is an interesting and nuanced take from that angle. But please-for the love of all that is holy-stop taking such a bad faith approach to this movie and acting like it’s on the side of the dude who’s a ranting pathetic mess by the end, or that it’s some wank material for gross men. Because the story could not spell out to you in any further way that it isn’t about how men find this (initially) childlike weirdo hot. It does not denote the larger themes the film is exploring.
Let women have hobbies. Like rampant fucking and socialism.
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