// literary & arts //
|
Gone Girl
|
A scheming woman, wearing nothing but a revealing silk nightgown, pulled the man closer to the bed. The man, a controlling, self-absorbed ex- boyfriend, willingly moved in. The woman began to pull his clothes off, and let him take off hers. She pulled him onto her, and he began to insert himself into her. She was taking advantage of him, and he was taking advantage of her. Until she grabbed a box cutter from under the pillow, and slit his throat. There was blood everywhere.
This scene was no real life tale of abuse. The calculated sex and ensuing bloodbath were not staged to be a chilling reminder of the dangers of domination and control, a lesson about how rape can be manipulated, or even a graphic portrayal of the horrors of sexual assault. That was not what this was. This was entertainment—the scene, perhaps at the climax, of the recent critically acclaimed film Gone Girl.
The film started off on saner ground. Nick, a writer, comes home to find that his wife, Amy, has disappeared. The police come by, the community hosts a vigil, and the murder mystery is set. But then, everything begins to unravel (warning: nightmarish spoilers ensue). The worried husband is revealed to have been involved in a yearlong affair, and the pure, innocent missing wife, Amy, is revealed to have faked her own kidnapping— and is planning on eventually faking her own murder—to frame Nick and punish him for his unfaithfulness.
The “missing wife” plot, which, at the film’s beginning, was the most haunting element of the story, quickly becomes the most normal aspect of what unfolds onscreen. Nick loses our sympathy as he continues to have sex with his student lover despite his wife’s disappearance. But it gets worse: Amy, after faking her kidnapping, goes on to trick yet another man—her ex-boyfriend, described in the opening paragraph—into taking her in, only to once again find herself trapped and begin to plan his demise (Truth be told, Nick, who Amy hopes to land in jail for her “murder,” gets off easier than this ex, whose throat is slit mid-intercourse). In the context of Amy’s egregious and violent overreactions, Nick’s infidelity is made to look almost innocent. Gone Girl is the story of sociopaths and more sociopaths. The lesson: we are all crazy, but some of us are crazier.
Sure, David Fincher deserves credit for so stylistically adapting Gillian Flynn’s novel for the screen: the acting, attention to detail, music, and overall moodiness are superb. But that is precisely the problem. This is glamorized barbarism. Gone Girl was meant to attract audiences to think about serious issues: how the media frames a public conversation, how cries of rape must not be taken at face value, how we react to the struggles of our loved ones. It eggs “thoughtful” viewers on to consider these issues as they unfold onscreen. But by normalizing an affair, and forcing viewers to consider the “reasons” behind Amy’s sociopathic routine, Gone Girl tricks its audience into thinking about something lowbrow in a highbrow way.
It would be foolish to think that this ploy means that Gone Girl is actually quality art. What is rendered on screen is not intriguing; it is repulsive (and no, it is not intriguing because it is repulsive). Rather than argue that Gone Girl is fascinating in its brutal honesty, the perhaps prudish truth is this: a film that trivializes infidelity and revels in insanity deserves no praise. The best objective response to the goriness and madness of Gone Girl came from an audience member in the last row who, as if on cue at the rolling of the credits, screamed loudly: “what the fuck!” That man was not articulate, but he got it exactly right.
It would not be a stretch to say that this film, which showed, to borrow Hannah Arendt’s terminology, the banality of human savagery, was one of the more grotesque and—most importantly—pointless portrayals of insanity ever shown on screen. The question then becomes: where is the outrage? Why has the mainstream position on this film been one of “fascinatingly sickening,” as opposed to “sickeningly sickening?” What kind of society do we live in, where the animal savagery of plain human beings is considered quality entertainment? The Hunger Games have not had that much of a cultural impact on us, have they?
It is particularly worrisome that there are those in our society who rightly call out the indecency of anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and other indecencies, but are at the same time entertained by human savagery on such a primal level. Why, indeed, has Gone Girl received any critical acclaim—and such box office success—in a world where a homophobic epic would be universally sneered? Why, for all its artistic merit, is a film like this considered art?
The success of Gone Girl should serve as a wake up call. We, collectively, have become good at condemning certain social wrongs, but we have not yet become good at condemning what is at the root of them. It is not enough for a decent person to be accepting of all races, orientations, and genders. A decent person must be willing to call out savagery for what it is, whether this savagery is featured in a mainstream Hollywood film or in a desert in ISIL-controlled Syria. It is commonsensical, not naïve, to suggest that only when we condemn human cruelty in whatever medium it comes can we as a society rise above it.
It is telling that such ghastliness in and of itself is not enough to bring us all to condemn this film. There are those, to be sure, who will argue that this is, at its core, what cinema is about: challenging ourselves with the horrific from the comfort of our theater seats. But my point is more elemental. I challenge whoever enjoyed this film to argue exactly what about betrayal, abuse, hate, murder, and cruelty is entertaining. And then, to argue why are we better off with Gone Girl than we would have been without it.
This scene was no real life tale of abuse. The calculated sex and ensuing bloodbath were not staged to be a chilling reminder of the dangers of domination and control, a lesson about how rape can be manipulated, or even a graphic portrayal of the horrors of sexual assault. That was not what this was. This was entertainment—the scene, perhaps at the climax, of the recent critically acclaimed film Gone Girl.
The film started off on saner ground. Nick, a writer, comes home to find that his wife, Amy, has disappeared. The police come by, the community hosts a vigil, and the murder mystery is set. But then, everything begins to unravel (warning: nightmarish spoilers ensue). The worried husband is revealed to have been involved in a yearlong affair, and the pure, innocent missing wife, Amy, is revealed to have faked her own kidnapping— and is planning on eventually faking her own murder—to frame Nick and punish him for his unfaithfulness.
The “missing wife” plot, which, at the film’s beginning, was the most haunting element of the story, quickly becomes the most normal aspect of what unfolds onscreen. Nick loses our sympathy as he continues to have sex with his student lover despite his wife’s disappearance. But it gets worse: Amy, after faking her kidnapping, goes on to trick yet another man—her ex-boyfriend, described in the opening paragraph—into taking her in, only to once again find herself trapped and begin to plan his demise (Truth be told, Nick, who Amy hopes to land in jail for her “murder,” gets off easier than this ex, whose throat is slit mid-intercourse). In the context of Amy’s egregious and violent overreactions, Nick’s infidelity is made to look almost innocent. Gone Girl is the story of sociopaths and more sociopaths. The lesson: we are all crazy, but some of us are crazier.
Sure, David Fincher deserves credit for so stylistically adapting Gillian Flynn’s novel for the screen: the acting, attention to detail, music, and overall moodiness are superb. But that is precisely the problem. This is glamorized barbarism. Gone Girl was meant to attract audiences to think about serious issues: how the media frames a public conversation, how cries of rape must not be taken at face value, how we react to the struggles of our loved ones. It eggs “thoughtful” viewers on to consider these issues as they unfold onscreen. But by normalizing an affair, and forcing viewers to consider the “reasons” behind Amy’s sociopathic routine, Gone Girl tricks its audience into thinking about something lowbrow in a highbrow way.
It would be foolish to think that this ploy means that Gone Girl is actually quality art. What is rendered on screen is not intriguing; it is repulsive (and no, it is not intriguing because it is repulsive). Rather than argue that Gone Girl is fascinating in its brutal honesty, the perhaps prudish truth is this: a film that trivializes infidelity and revels in insanity deserves no praise. The best objective response to the goriness and madness of Gone Girl came from an audience member in the last row who, as if on cue at the rolling of the credits, screamed loudly: “what the fuck!” That man was not articulate, but he got it exactly right.
It would not be a stretch to say that this film, which showed, to borrow Hannah Arendt’s terminology, the banality of human savagery, was one of the more grotesque and—most importantly—pointless portrayals of insanity ever shown on screen. The question then becomes: where is the outrage? Why has the mainstream position on this film been one of “fascinatingly sickening,” as opposed to “sickeningly sickening?” What kind of society do we live in, where the animal savagery of plain human beings is considered quality entertainment? The Hunger Games have not had that much of a cultural impact on us, have they?
It is particularly worrisome that there are those in our society who rightly call out the indecency of anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and other indecencies, but are at the same time entertained by human savagery on such a primal level. Why, indeed, has Gone Girl received any critical acclaim—and such box office success—in a world where a homophobic epic would be universally sneered? Why, for all its artistic merit, is a film like this considered art?
The success of Gone Girl should serve as a wake up call. We, collectively, have become good at condemning certain social wrongs, but we have not yet become good at condemning what is at the root of them. It is not enough for a decent person to be accepting of all races, orientations, and genders. A decent person must be willing to call out savagery for what it is, whether this savagery is featured in a mainstream Hollywood film or in a desert in ISIL-controlled Syria. It is commonsensical, not naïve, to suggest that only when we condemn human cruelty in whatever medium it comes can we as a society rise above it.
It is telling that such ghastliness in and of itself is not enough to bring us all to condemn this film. There are those, to be sure, who will argue that this is, at its core, what cinema is about: challenging ourselves with the horrific from the comfort of our theater seats. But my point is more elemental. I challenge whoever enjoyed this film to argue exactly what about betrayal, abuse, hate, murder, and cruelty is entertaining. And then, to argue why are we better off with Gone Girl than we would have been without it.
// JOSHUA FATTAL is a Senior at Columbia College and Editor in Chief of The Current. He can be reached at jrf2126@columbia.edu. Photo courtesy of www.insidemovies.ew.com.