"Cinematic Inspirations" by Sophia
Lisa Rowe -Girl Interrupted | Angelina Jolie |
I both admire and resemble Lisa. Sure, she's insane-- but she reminds me of a "more intense" version of myself. For example, she plays my "turn on a random stranger and make him embarrassed" game-- and I grew up playing that game. In the film, Lisa and the others go on an "outing" to the ice cream store. The other women giggle and are nervous at this rare chance to be outside the walls of the asylum. Lisa, however, is unphased, and she revels in the chance to unleash her powers on the unsuspecting members of the outside world. She saunters up to the young man running the ice cream store, confidently addresses him by name, and begins her order. Does he have any "hot" fudge, she asks him-- accentuating the word hot. She sucks playfully on a cherry as she completes her order, and laughs at his nervousness. Sure, she's locked up in a mental institution, but she can instantly put him his place. I love that. I know it's cliche to say that guys are so easy-- but it's true. As Lisa says,"You know, there's too many buttons in the world. There's way too many just begging to be pressed".
So once I admit that I admire a psychopath, what does that say about me? Am I too a psychopath for admiring Lisa? Am I a sociopath because I can use people to get what I want? Am I mentally ill because I lack remorse for hurting the males who are dumb enough to fall madly in love with a woman who will never love them back? Do I have a personality disorder because it turns me on to know men are so attracted to me, they'll hurt themselves until they cry, just for a chance to be with me? Do I have "Antisocial Personality Disorder" just because I lack remorse over the people I've hurt? Am I "Histrionic" just because I am "provocatively seductive"?
And then there's the biggest question of all: Do I even care if the answer to these questions is yes? Or are these 'illnesses' just the musings of terrified old men who feel threatened by the idea that a woman would dare use her sexuality to her own advantage? After all, when people from my parents' generation were in their 20s, homosexuality was on the list too. Being gay was classified as a "Sexual Deviancy Disorder". What would the finest minds in all of Psychiatry say about me if they knew what I like to do to my boys? And what will psychiatrists in 30 years say about the same thing?
The crux of the matter is this: in the end-- I don't care what anyone says. Granted, I leave open the possibility that the losers who take my abuse might qualify as mentally ill-- for in the end, they are hurt and destroyed by their interactions with me. So perhaps they could use a trip to a shrink. As for me-- I'm not mentally ill, I'm just strong. Guys always show up, desperate to do ANYTHING to make me happy. When you have the power to do the things I can do, I think you'd be crazy to not indulge yourself.
I have a juicy confession that is similar to a scene in this film. In the film, Lisa and her friend escape from the asylum, are on the run, and they need money. Lisa decides to stop off and see Daisy-- who used to be in the same asylum, but was recently released. And when normally-passive Daisy dares to challenge Lisa, Lisa decides to kill her, using nothing but words.
DAISY: "You're just jealous, Lisa, because I got better, I was released. I have a chance at a life."
LISA: "They didn't release you cause you're better, Daisy. They just gave up. You call this a life, hmm? Taking Daddy's money, buying your dollies and your knick-knacks and eating his fucking chicken, fattening up like a prize fuckin' heifer? And everybody knows. Everybody knows that he fucks you. What they don't know-- is that you like it."
Daisy climbs the stairs, goes into her room, and hangs herself. When they find the body, Lisa is utterly remorseless. She calmly takes money from the pocket of the deceased Daisy. Lisa isn't surprised-- she planned this all along.
So here is my sick confession. I think it would be quite.. erotic to make someone kill themselves. I'm not saying I'd ever do it-- but the thought turns me on to no end. A guy who just can't have me, so he offs himself as a way to prove his love. A woman so crushed when her man betrays her just for a chance to be abused by me, and so she takes a bottle of Xanax. I'm not sure I would actually enjoy doing that-- but I am sure I would enjoy knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I had the power to do it, if I so chose. Maybe this is why men enjoy owning guns so much-- just KNOWING that you hold another person's life in your hands, and you could take it from them instantly if you decided to. It's a jolt.
So that's my dark Girl Interrupted-inspired fantasy. It's brought me LOTS of joy.
Benita -Love and Human Remains | Mia Kirshner |
I love Benita. In some ways, she is the most "me" professional dominatrix I've ever seen. Film portrayals of professional dominatrixes fall into two categories: comical visual jokes where the audience can laugh at "freakish" alternative sexualities, or objectified sex objects who exist only to be desired by a male protagonist. Love and Human Remains features a rare third type: the dominatrix as a human being.
Benita isn't just a dominatrix, she's also a psychic-- she sees things in people, can look into their soul and see who they really are. She can sense desire, and that gives her total power over the men she meets. I can really identify with that.
Being me is like that-- being able to see into the minds of the other human beings around you and instantly sensing things even they don't know about themselves. People spend their whole lives building up walls-- for me those hard-built walls are as transparent as glass and as easily ripped as tissue paper. I can sense exactly what a victim has always desired, I can "become" everything they've ever dreamed of. I watch their reactions as they, like scared animals, are bewildered and amazed, completely unaware that I can consciously choose to use their dreams against them. They are completely blind to the fact that at every moment in time, they send out huge signals advertising, begging, for exactly what they want. And it's up to me to decide how best to take this power I hold and use it for my own pleasure.
I don't believe I'm literally psychic, but I often feel like I have a special sixth sense. Every day, just walking down the street, I can read thoughts and desires off the faces of people passing me. Men are often easier because for many of them, their thoughts are more primal and they're worse at hiding themselves. But it's not just men, I've always seemed to have an ability to easily see into people's minds. It's like I'm the only sighted person who exists in a world where everyone else is blind. I don't really know how I do it-- or more appropriately, I don't really know why everyone else seems unable to do it. But it's not a supernatural telepathy-- it's just being observant and intelligent and a lifetime of watching people. It's below the level of consciousness, but once you learn how to listen, it's plain as day. When I look someone in the eyes and talk to them, I know what they want from me, what they want from life, what their hopes are, what their fears are. A conversation, ANY conversation, is a dance-- and just below the level of words, there are emotions that are really powering the whole thing. And once you stop paying so much attention to the words and start actually noticing the the emotion, most people become as transparent as window panes.
Before the first time I saw Love and Human Remains, I'd never really noticed the connection between my interpersonal intuition and my eroticizing of having power and control over others. But the first time I saw this film, it really made me connect the dots between the emotional intuition and sexual manipulation. Benita is a psychic dominatrix because all dominant woman are "psychic" in a way-- the good ones anyway.
Dolores 'Lolita' Haze -Lolita | Dominique Swain |
I think we all have mixed feelings about Lolita. A film about a pedophile?-- how repulsive and disgusting. In particular, the 1997 film plays with this disgust and repulsion by deliberately going out of its way to eroticize Lolita. In the novel, for example, the reader can see that Lolita is simply a child, whose flirtations are the imagination of an unreliable and obsessed narrator. The 1997 film makes these delusions concrete-- it transforms her into an active participant, if not a mastermind, of the seduction. Lolita is made significantly older, and she is portrayed by a 17 year old. Her schoolgirl outfit is so cliched that it seems more like the costume of a porn star than the actual apparel of a girl. The 1997 film's title character bears no resemblance whatsoever to an actual girl who is the victim of molestation.
I like to think, instead, that director Adrian Lyne has sort of allowed us to slip into the delusion of Humbert, to "translate" what he sees and imagines into a form that the audience can perceive. It's a common technique in drama to have non-English speaking characters actually just speak their lines in English, rather than speaking in the character's actual language. The characters in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar speak English, not Latin-- but it is understood that they are "really" speaking Latin in the world of the play, it has just been translated into English for the audience. I think this is a good analogy for what is being done in the 1997 film-- the character of Lolita has been substantially "translated" into an adult form so that the typical viewer can find her irresistibly beautiful, which is how Humbert sees her.
But if I allow myself to suspend disbelief and to pretend that the Lolita I'm seeing really is the young adult she is portrayed as, with all the desires of a young adult she projects-- then I find I instantly admire her. The 1997 film's Lolita is so much like the person I was at 15 or so-- suddenly finding yourself with unbelievable power over people who are supposed to be the authority figures. After a lifetime of being a child and being pushed around by every adult you meet, suddenly in the teenage years, you find that you are something of a chimera. On paper, you're still a child-- teachers still demean you, you are continually ordered around. But as a teenager, an intelligent or attractive one anyway, you find that men everywhere are throwing themselves at you. You aren't a victim or a pawn or a serf anymore-- you have something they want more than life itself. Indeed, you ARE something that they want. My friends' parents, my teachers, business owners, the principal, the pastor, the neighbors-- a veritable parade of men suddenly show up, asking for the chance to please you. It's a little bit like waking up one day and finding out that you really are a goddess-- with all the powers to create and destroy that one would expect from a deity. It was amazing time in my life, and although I hadn't yet honed my skills, for the first time I began to understand just what joys await a beautiful, intelligent, and powerful woman in our society.
And so I can identify with 1997 Lolita. She's intentionally seductive and provocative. She's not a victim of abuse-- she's a perpetrator of abuse. She isn't being victimized-- if anything, Humbert is the victim of her charms and her powers over him. She greedily negotiates for allowance increase with her "foster father", using her sexual prowess to break his will and reduce him to shouting out ever-higher sums for a chance to earn her favor. One reviewer summed it up thusly: "[The 1997 Lolita] is an ill-mannered, manipulative attention-whore who knows the power she has over Humbert and uses it to her advantage for money, attention and just generally to hurt people." How could anyone not love that?