as i dream about movies they won't make of me when i'm dead - Post a comment

Bottom line: No, I don’t care what movie he claims he made. This is the movie he DID make – a movie that says we should give abusive male auteurs infinite do-overs with an infinite number of women because the next try might be *it*, damn it! The next attempt might be true perfection! Who cares if she got burned? She liked it. She’s ok with it because she understands that she touched greatness, and we are all blessed for it. By the way, I wonder if Woody Allen and Polanski sent him a gift together or separately. What do you think? But I digress again.
AF: No, no! You’re not supposed to read her as a real woman. She’s a symbol. She’s an archetype. Mother Earth is not a person! You can’t *really* hurt a non-person! It’s different when a non-person gets almost raped, severely beaten, and then burned because it serves the film’s artistic vision. Don’t you see? Your reading is so surface-level. This is much deeper than that!
M: The artistic vision of almost raping, severely beating, and burning non-persons (colloquially known as women) as long as the successful realization of male genius is at stake? Yes indeed, I’m glad we finally agree.
AF: That’s not what I said! Think about what the Mother *represents* and stop obsessing over your narrow reading for a second. I understand you feel this way because you are a woman, but consider this: Aronofsky is clearly not OK with any of this. Yes, you could say this movie is autobiographical and that he, an auteur, had absolute creative control over all of it. I see that, but also it comes from a place of deep self-loathing. He is condemning Him(self). He obviously hates Him(self). He hates himself AND all of us for what we are doing to our Earth/nature/women/his girlfriend. This means the movie cannot be misogynistic.
M: Ok, this needs a two-part answer. Firstly: I’m not supposed to read her as a woman in a film literally called “mother!” ? In a film peddling antiquated nonsense about motherhood’s transformative powers? A film about a subservient younger housewife who just wants a baby in exchange for all her free labor? A film that’s nothing but glorified arthouse torture porn so utterly basic in its misogyny that it needs to add gendered insults to a scene of a woman being punched in the face, in case we missed the point? Nice try. If you bring gender stereotypes to a gunfight, you better fire them by the second act. See how I mixed in a pretentious reference together with a bastardized idiom? I went to Yale, but I don’t talk about it. Anyway, this movie does not fire any of its stereotypes. It embraces them fully. It roughly pushes them against a wall and fucks them silly until they start to *like it*.
Secondly: Aronofsky is condemning Bardem’s character and himself? Where? When? God is never harmed. God gets the magical heart crystal. God will get to write more poetry because God’s poetry is beautiful. It’s so beautiful that it makes JLaw cry and whisper, “it’s beautiful” in between rapturous tears. God might even get an Oscar. But ok, let’s assume Aronofsky is hating on himself. And? No movie in the history of cinema has simultaneously featured a self-hating male artist and heinous gendered tropes? For that matter, no self-hating male auteur is also capable of genuinely hating women? Heinous gendered tropes have never been a vehicle of male narcissism and self-affirmation masquerading as tortured soul-searching, both on screen and beyond? Hmmm, I guess not, you’re right. Sacrificing women repeatedly in the hopes of finally attaining ultimate redemption for the wicked God/man – finally making sure that we all know that his acts of violence were definitely *worth it* - is absolutely not misogyny. It’s art.