Titillate the monsters. Tame the masses.

"Poor Things" is a good movie that is disturbing in ways it doesn't want to be.

Back in the day, I ran a newspaper for people who work in theatre and film in Chicago. It was called PerformInk. I’ve written about it before - well, it’s demise. But I have never written about its purpose.

Its purpose was sort of opposite of my purpose. Its purpose was to help people get jobs. Mostly acting jobs, but other theatre and film jobs, too. We did that by running audition notices, job classifieds, career advice columns, profiles of theatres and people, arts business news, and “why art is important” issue pieces.

I just described the paper from back to front. And I was never under any illusion that it wasn’t read from back to front.

My purpose was that people would buy ads and subscribe so I could write about the deeper, “why art is important” issues.

And, so, my creation and I lived in harmony for 20 years.

The “why art is important” pieces, for me, were tied up in questions like, “Why did that theatre do that piece? What were they trying to say? How did this show contribute to the world of the audience? What did the playwright want from the piece?”

I’m not certain many theatre folk could answer that. They’re often too focused on the specifics of what they’re working on to look at the ecosystem in which it all exists. Sometimes, theatres have mission statements that give them a “why” for every play they choose. Timeline Theatre, for instance, does plays that feature history. About Face focuses on queer stories.

I still wonder, though, why the Goodman produced Hughie, starring Brian Dennehey, twice. And why anyone would do *Interminable* Days Journey Into Night.

But then I saw In the Company of Men, by Neil Labute. You may have seen the movie version in the 1990s. It’s about two guys who make a bet that they can seduce a deaf secretary in their office and then dump her.

It’s cruel. It’s misogynistic. It mocks disability. I had never heard of this Labute guy until I saw that play. Ironically - NO, it was absolutely not ironic! - the Chicago theatre that gave Labute an artistic home, was summarily shut down in 2016 because its artistic director was physically and emotionally abusive toward women.

You don’t say.

The entire PerformInk staff - who were all theatre professionals - had a discussion about this play, and other Labute works. “Why,” I asked, “would a theatre do this play? Why would they promote misogyny and cruelty?”

“You can’t censure the artist,” came the collective answer.

For context to this discussion, you must know two names: Robert Mapplethorpe and Jesse Helms.

Mapplethorpe was an amazing photographer who died in 1989 of AIDS. His work was sometimes disturbing, very homoerotic, and always arresting in its beauty. He had a cult following (and was friends with the singer Patti Smith), but wasn’t that famous until Jesse Helms saw his work.

Helms was a racist and homophobic Senator from North Carolina (I’m not calling names - that is how he is known), who decried the “revolting garbage produced by obviously sick minds” being called “art.”

Mapplethorpe was his number one target.

All of us at PerformInk came of age as artists during this time. And it undergirded our collective view that we shouldn’t question the “why” of art. When I and other theatre writers reviewed or talked about plays, we focused on the skill with which they were done.

But, as I was coming to understand more and more, art is powerful. We learn how to “be” by the culture we consume. It is insidious. We are watching a story. But, without realizing it, we are also being instructed on life.

My mother knew this instinctively.

My mother was not a feminist. At least not when I was growing up. She became pretty fierce as she entered old age. But in 1979, when Woody Allen’s Manhattan was released, she was livid.

“This is a story about a 42-year-old man who is dating a 17-year-old girl!” my mother fumed. “It’s promoting child abuse.”

We know now that my mother was pretty insightful. Manhattan - and most of Allen’s films - have aged badly in the last few decades. In the ‘70s, he was hailed - by the male film establishment - as the best filmmaker of all time. By the early 1990s, he had been accused by his daughter of molesting her, and had married his 20-year-old stepdaughter.

I know what Allen apologists will say about Manhattan. “Yes, he was dating a 17-year-old (played by Mariel Hemmingway, who really was 17 at the time), but he ends up falling in love with a woman his age (played by Diane Keaton, who is still one of Allen’s apologists). The whole point of the story is that the worship of youth is ephemeral.”

Except Hemmingway’s revelation that Allen tried to seduce her after filming was done tells us he didn’t really believe the point of his own story.

But Allen’s films were “art.” Labute’s plays and films were “art”. And we can’t question the why of “art,” or we’re stifling “art.”

Which is just so much bullshit.

Enter Yorgos Lanthimos

I had not really heard much about Poor Things until the Oscars. Then it won all of these design awards, and best actress for Emma Stone.

I found out it was directed by the same guy, Yorgos Lanthimos, who directed The Favourite, which won Olivia Colman an Oscar.

The Favourite was weird, but intriguing, and I’m glad I watched it.

Poor Things is also weird. And intriguing. The sets and costumes were astonishing. I can’t believe it didn’t win for cinematography. And Emma Stone was amazing as the child in a woman’s body whose brain matured faster than a baby’s brain normally would.

Though we have no idea why.

At this point, I am going to give spoilers. If you have not seen Poor Things and don’t want spoilers, well, then, it’s been nice having you here this week. Come back next week for a totally different topic. And bookmark this to read after you’ve seen the film.

You might just want to read to the bottom, though, because this will give you a primer to watching the film. And you won’t have to - like I did - watch it twice in order to get your thoughts together.

So, if you want a primer, or if you have seen it, or you don’t mind spoilers, scroll down.

Keep scrolling.

Scroll some more.

Nope, not enough space yet to keep those who don’t want spoilers from accidentally seeing them.

Dashes, dashes, dots, dots. Lines, lines.

Ah yes…. plenty of space.

As I said before I left off… we have no idea why Bella’s brain matured faster than normal. There was no rhyme or reason for why she suddenly knew a word, or could name a feeling or identify a complex emotion, like, “Bella nowhere girl,” as she talks about death with her “father,” a Frankensteinian character played with surprising nuance by Willem Dafoe, as he’s laying in bed with her reading her a bedtime story. And talking about death.

When we got to the scene in which she found her clitoris, I estimated she was now a pre- or young teen, brain-wise. But we were somehow made to believe that she was still a child with no boundaries or sense of restraint.

OK.

And then she was whisked away to Portugal. By a man who climbed up the outside of her house to get to her.

And she had the emotional and brain maturity of a pre-teen.

Then, the film shows us HIS anguish and fall into darkness when she shows no sexual restraint with other men. After she gives away all his money, she becomes a prostitute, in order to satisfy her love of sex and need for money.

I really love the idea that Bella is so practical - but also filled with lust - that she does not become the stereotypical poor, suffering waif dying of syphilis and societal execration.

And… this film most definitely has a “why.” It’s kind of an empowering “why.”

But it’s also a troubling “why.”

It’s definitely about how women can empower themselves by throwing off norms and expectations.

Except the entire film caters to the norms and expectations of men who watch porn.

This is not a film about a woman comfortably and ignorantly owning her sexuality as it is a film about a woman who - without any knowledge of shame - becomes the sexual being that men always dream of.

I learned nothing about women in this film, which is, ostensibly, about a woman.

The message seems to be that if only women could throw off “polite society” then they wouldn’t be victims. See, it’s their own faults. They should just love sex and then break men’s hearts.

Age of Innocence

That’s not even the most troubling aspect for me. Bella is a child in a woman’s body. She is taken away to Portugal by a man who is 20-30 years older than her body, and 40-50 years older than her mind.

Her “father” admits early in the film that he wanted to have sex with her, but he was built a eunuch, and it would kill him to even try.

Because if he wasn’t built a eunuch? Those bedtime stories would have been different?

I think what my mother would have said was, “This movie is a depiction of child abuse!”

Which I would agree with. The main character is a child in a woman’s body, who just happens to have an insatiable libido and a “sense of adventure” and is easily talked into going off with men who are twice her age.

Holy shit!

That the film had a higher, empowering purpose is not the point. Because there are a lot of horrible men out there who will not see the film as “art.” They will simply see a woman with the sexual appetite of women they see in porn, and the innocence that will allow men to do whatever they want.

And, if they get the larger purpose of the film, they will twist it to explain to the young girls they rape that this is all for their own self-enrichment.

There are also people out there who don’t have such proclivities, but who consume pop culture unquestioningly and will subsume the lesson that “this is just how the world works.”

Titillate the monsters. Tame the masses. That is the purpose of pop culture media.

It was no surprise to me, in October of 2017, that half the men who were called out in the #MeToo moment were artists - playwrights, filmmakers, musicians.* They were used to being worshipped for their talent. They were used to having unmitigated power, salted with a bit of a “rebel” reputation.

Lanthimos addresses this in Poor Things by having his characters talk about “polite society,” which, of course, the viewer also rejects, as we are groomed by the storytelling to accept his definition of “adventure,” which, he tells us, is the opposite of “polite society.”

Labute has reveled in his status as “the misogynistic playwright,” though I haven’t heard much about his reveling since the MCC Theater cut ties with him in early 2018.

And the intersection of Woody Allen’s life and films has been picked over by those better than me.

Like my mom.

That said, if you see Poor Things with this knowledge in mind, and enjoy the imaginative pictures that won all those design Oscars, it’s a good film. It belongs in a canon of good films addressing societal issues in unique ways.

But, we also need to have a robust discussion about why it’s a dangerous film.

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*The other half, of course, were journalists, which makes me wonder at my career choices.

Let’s discuss.

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