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

M: Hold up. Mother Earth is not a Biblical concept. Google it. Anyway. Is JLaw Mother Earth or is she the Virgin Mary? Is this a Biblical allegory or an environmental allegory? Choose one, I don’t have all day. If the consumption of her baby is supposed to be the Eucharist, then the baby is Jesus, which would make her Mary. Mary =/= Mother Earth. For that matter, newborn baby being eaten =/= Eucharist. The Eucharist is meaningless without a grown-up Jesus who can make the choice to offer up his body in sacrifice. Also, going back to the Old Testament (even though we were just talking about the New Testament, but who cares, Bible!), Bardemofsky – the God – should be the one to start the flood and light the final match and punish all the sinners. But he doesn’t. JLaw does. So is she also God now? Finally, where does it say, “God created the Earth, kinda, but really it’s his wife who rebuilds it periodically while rocking Southern Gothic by H&M?” Where does it say, “and on the seventh day he decided that it all runs on female heart energy, crafted by Swarovski?” That’s a B-plot for a second-rate magical girl anime, not a Biblical reference.
AF: Ok fine, but you’re just nitpicking. It doesn’t work *perfectly,* but then again what allegory ever does?
M: I don’t know, a good one?
AF: You can’t deny that this film is thoroughly infused with both religious and environmental, and also just *deeply humanitarian* themes. So how can you claim that this piece of cinema, a cinema so deeply steeped in philosophical questions about the fallibility of man, is misogynistic?
M: How can I claim a film allegedly based on the Book of Genesis is misogynistic? Is this for real your honest to God question?
AF: Yes?
M: ....Anyway. This is not a movie. It’s a middle-aged artist’s (I use the term loosely) embarrassing sexual fantasy about his younger, obedient, worshipful muse – a muse ready to place body and soul at the altar of his divine genius (and, conveniently, to tell every interviewer about the injuries she sustained during filming in the name of *his art*).
AF: You are conflating Aronofsky and his character. That’s lazy analysis and is just silly.
M: What, I shouldn’t conflate Aronofsky, a middle-aged screenwriter twenty years JLaw’s senior, with his character, a middle-aged writer twenty years JLaw’s senior? I thought we were doing auteur theory here, my bad. Fine. Let’s take Aronofsky out of the picture. What do we have? A God with writer’s block. And a woman. She’s billed as Mother, but she’s also an architect, engineer, interior decorator, cook, and cleaning lady. She has no desires of her own, except to fulfill her role as object and enabler. She is part-time vehicle for his art, part-time punching bag. She is so devoted to his art that she rebuilt his childhood home from scratch. She is so devoted to his art that she lives in the middle of nowhere with no outside contacts. She is so devoted to his art that she lets him alternate between ignoring and abusing her. She is so devoted to his art that she lets him destroy the house she built. She is so devoted to his art that she lets him feed her baby to cannibals. She is so devoted to his art that, on her deathbed, burned, beaten, and disfigured, she lets him take her literal heart out of her ribcage so he can do this all over again to a different woman. If you don’t see this for the narcissistic wankfest, the smarmy delusional drivel that it is, I can’t help you, but stop going on about allegory. What is the allegory in the following scene: When JLaw finally lashes out against her God/abuser, he [trigger warning for those of you who aren’t here for this rapey garbage] responds by assaulting her and giving her what she has wanted all along (the D!). She has an orgasm almost immediately (who wouldn’t, amirite?) and marital bliss is restored. “Curing” a hysterical woman via orgasm (short-term) and then motherhood (long term) sounds like a familiar trope, but I just can’t put my finger on it. Perhaps it was in the Bible?

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