metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2014-05-25 03:16 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2014-05-25 03:16 pm
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driver roll up to the intersection please
Last weekend we got a babysitter (!) and went out to see a movie (!!!) and we saw Belle, which was pretty great and could totally have been entitled Awkward Turtle, because the entire movie was basically people going “I’m sorry, I…was not told that there would be a black woman in this Merchant Ivory film. Well. This is awkward. Ah…was Helena Bonham Carter busy, or…”
What I didn’t like about the movie: the way the dude playing John Davinier delivers every single line in the last 45 minutes of the movie as though he is just barely holding back his tears of manly passion.
What I did like about the movie: So many things. Let’s start with the way it explicitly lays out Dido’s - and Elizabeth’s - double bind with regards to marriage. Remember, in Emma, Emma telling Harriet:
Thanks, Groucho, you’re a terrible matchmaker. Dido and Elizabeth also see the consequences of not marrying. Emma waves off those consequences. The well-off, elderly spinster: Emma characterizes her as
I must note that Emma also passes pretty lightly over enforced celibacy and sterility. If you don’t want kids, more power to you, but Dido’s white uncle decreeing that Dido could never have children, whether she would or not, is an oppression with a particularly horrible resonance and relevance for a black woman.
And, unlike Emma, though Dido has money, what she doesn’t have is friends. Only her aunt and uncle, more than a generation older. Theoretically she has rank: in reality, she has no place in society. Who would support her rank, once her aunt and powerful uncle are gone? Who would befriend and protect the anomalous black lady?
And so Belle shows us how, in a system of inescapable oppression, the degree to which you have any choices becomes the degree to which your actions make you complicit in your own oppression. Should Dido, not a slave by the merest chance, as she is starkly aware throughout the entire film, deliberately give up her legal right to personhood by marrying - no, I don’t exaggerate, see William Blackstone: “By marriage, the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended, or at least incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband…”? Or should she deliberately accept an untenable social position? And does it even make sense to talk about this rich, free black woman as occupying an untenable social position when the movie confronts you with another black woman, Mabel, whose position is never made clear? Dido’s uncle says she is paid a good wage - he also says he lives “under the family’s protection”…? Mabel’s scenes with Dido are brief but intense: are they two black women meeting in an alien country? Are they mistress and servant with an unbridgeable gulf between them? Are they a knowledgeable woman, member of a community and perhaps a family, and a castaway girl who doesn’t even know how to comb her own hair? Can Mabel help Dido? Should she? Why should she?
The movie is just a beautiful illustration of the concept of kyriarchy. Belle fences with Davinier: is she punching up because she’s a woman and he’s a man? Punching down because she’s rich and he isn’t? Punching up because she’s black and he’s white? Punching down because she’s noble and he isn’t? Punching up because she’s illegitimate and he isn’t? Punching down because he needs the job working for her uncle? The answer is irrelevant, the point is to realize that they’re all caught in so many systems of inequality and stratified oppression that trying to separate out just one and say “Let’s attack just this one!” is doomed to failure. I can’t find the citation now, but someone wrote recently about remembering that intersectionality theory is not about self-consciously tallying up which of your identities are privileged and which aren’t: it’s about addressing the way that systems of power work to reinforce each other. Twitter is making it hard to pretend that garden variety societal misogyny isn’t the fertile ground in which the Isla Vista shooter’s hatred of women grew: but also keep in mind that one thing that enraged him was that a black guy talked about having sex with a blonde girl. Does this sound familiar? That Rodger saw women only as prizes, that he thought black men were defiling what he thought of as his prizes, that he thought black men were unworthy of prizes - it’s part of the same story. The hierarchies reinforce each other, and they are murderous.
What I didn’t like about the movie: the way the dude playing John Davinier delivers every single line in the last 45 minutes of the movie as though he is just barely holding back his tears of manly passion.
What I did like about the movie: So many things. Let’s start with the way it explicitly lays out Dido’s - and Elizabeth’s - double bind with regards to marriage. Remember, in Emma, Emma telling Harriet:
If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it."Well holy shit, she wasn’t wrong, you know. Dido is an heiress; rich in her own right. When she marries, control of all her money and property, like literally down to the change in her pocket, passes into the hands of her husband. He could starve her, beat her, rape her if he chooses, both by law and custom. Emma, single, sees how well off she is as she is. Dido and Elizabeth see that by marrying they are literally betting their lives on a man’s character. Elizabeth must marry anyway: she has no money and no way of earning any except at the altar. But Dido’s uncle decrees that she, with her independence, must not marry; because anyone noble enough for her to marry would refuse to marry a black woman, and anyone willing to marry a black woman would be so low in rank as to disgrace her.
"Dear me! it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!"
"I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house, as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father’s.”
Thanks, Groucho, you’re a terrible matchmaker. Dido and Elizabeth also see the consequences of not marrying. Emma waves off those consequences. The well-off, elderly spinster: Emma characterizes her as
an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's usual occupations of eye and hand and mind will be as open to me then, as they are now; or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in not marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much, to care about. There will be enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder.Dido however sees clearly how her spinster aunt is always a companion (never the Doctor;) not respected, not central, though she lives in a home it is not a home of her own. It’s a powerful scene when her uncle, who genuinely loves Dido, tries to physically put that role upon her. A role of relative independence and safety. She literally runs in horror.
I must note that Emma also passes pretty lightly over enforced celibacy and sterility. If you don’t want kids, more power to you, but Dido’s white uncle decreeing that Dido could never have children, whether she would or not, is an oppression with a particularly horrible resonance and relevance for a black woman.
And, unlike Emma, though Dido has money, what she doesn’t have is friends. Only her aunt and uncle, more than a generation older. Theoretically she has rank: in reality, she has no place in society. Who would support her rank, once her aunt and powerful uncle are gone? Who would befriend and protect the anomalous black lady?
And so Belle shows us how, in a system of inescapable oppression, the degree to which you have any choices becomes the degree to which your actions make you complicit in your own oppression. Should Dido, not a slave by the merest chance, as she is starkly aware throughout the entire film, deliberately give up her legal right to personhood by marrying - no, I don’t exaggerate, see William Blackstone: “By marriage, the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended, or at least incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband…”? Or should she deliberately accept an untenable social position? And does it even make sense to talk about this rich, free black woman as occupying an untenable social position when the movie confronts you with another black woman, Mabel, whose position is never made clear? Dido’s uncle says she is paid a good wage - he also says he lives “under the family’s protection”…? Mabel’s scenes with Dido are brief but intense: are they two black women meeting in an alien country? Are they mistress and servant with an unbridgeable gulf between them? Are they a knowledgeable woman, member of a community and perhaps a family, and a castaway girl who doesn’t even know how to comb her own hair? Can Mabel help Dido? Should she? Why should she?
The movie is just a beautiful illustration of the concept of kyriarchy. Belle fences with Davinier: is she punching up because she’s a woman and he’s a man? Punching down because she’s rich and he isn’t? Punching up because she’s black and he’s white? Punching down because she’s noble and he isn’t? Punching up because she’s illegitimate and he isn’t? Punching down because he needs the job working for her uncle? The answer is irrelevant, the point is to realize that they’re all caught in so many systems of inequality and stratified oppression that trying to separate out just one and say “Let’s attack just this one!” is doomed to failure. I can’t find the citation now, but someone wrote recently about remembering that intersectionality theory is not about self-consciously tallying up which of your identities are privileged and which aren’t: it’s about addressing the way that systems of power work to reinforce each other. Twitter is making it hard to pretend that garden variety societal misogyny isn’t the fertile ground in which the Isla Vista shooter’s hatred of women grew: but also keep in mind that one thing that enraged him was that a black guy talked about having sex with a blonde girl. Does this sound familiar? That Rodger saw women only as prizes, that he thought black men were defiling what he thought of as his prizes, that he thought black men were unworthy of prizes - it’s part of the same story. The hierarchies reinforce each other, and they are murderous.
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