When I was 15 years old, I watched this movie admiringly. I fell asleep halfway through watching it. I only remembered that the two seemed to be arguing secretly. When I was in Anthropology at UCD, the professor's research area was SM and historical events, such as the connection of Slavery. I mentioned this movie in the class, so I turned it out and watched it again. Some of the viewpoints and theories mentioned by the professor are corresponding one by one in the film. After reading it in a hurry, I shouted.
Play-within-a-play is not a very small way of shooting, but the theme of this film combined with such a shooting method is really exquisite. At the beginning of the film, the embarrassed actress meets the picky producer, and their positions are self-evident. However, the actress quickly took the initiative with her lines and lighting, and the plot began to become ups and downs. The two began to compete in and out of the play. In the play, Wanda signed a slavery agreement with the male protagonist. The sexist "God punished him and put him in the hands of a woman" got into a dispute with the screenwriter. Who is controlling who? Wanda in the play cried, "You let me enslave you, but you are controlling me." Wanda outside the play put on high heels, smeared red lips, and put on a fur symbolizing fetish to play Wanda. . In the play, Wanda is tied to the stage props that symbolize the male penis, while Wanda outside the play is dressed in animal skins and dances with a ghastly face, just like the priestess of Dionysus.
Dionysus, Dionysus, second-born god. Her mother was turned to ashes for wanting to see Zeus for what she was, and Hermes sewed him into Zeus' thigh, a demigod conceived by her mother and father. Dionysus symbolizes drama, wine and pleasure, and gender confusion. The most famous story about him is that when he returned to his hometown, he was disapproved by his cousins and aunts. In the end, the cousin was torn apart by his own mother as a tiger. This story explores the possibility and consequences of gender ambiguity.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, caused the few chaos in the new generation represented by Zeus. In this patriarchal theater, the statue of Aphrodite is replaced by a statue in the shape of a phallus, satirizing that Freud attributed all passions and impulses to the desire for a penis. At the suggestion of Wanda outside the play (this is also the beginning of the reversal of the relationship between the two), the two temporarily added a scene of Aphrodite coming. Aphrodite lay naked on the couch, the fur wrapping her body soothingly. She became angry because the hero rejected her, and turned into Wanda in the play, which made the hero fall in love like crazy. In the show Aphrodite's avatar is tied to a statue of a phallus, she is replaced by phallicism in contemporary society, and no one remembers her anymore (this reminds me of Aphrodite once mentioned to Parker, who said "Wow, I haven't heard that name for quite a while."). In Wanda outside the play, the director hints that she is the incarnation of Aphrodite, questioning this patriarchal society and the arrogant screenwriter. Armed with a whip, she warns us that we are all she, slaves of desire.
The movie mentions "an unknowable moment". In the play, it is the hero's arrogant aunt who puts the hero on the fur and beats him with birch branches. From then on, he is not in love with the thigh, but the thigh under the fur. When talking about fetishes, the professor mentioned that some contemporary theories on fetishes can be traced back to a certain time in childhood, and they have suffered some kind of trauma (trauma), and they are attracted to some specific objects or objectified human beings. Start to fall in love. When Wanda in the play asks "Did your mother wrap you in fur when you were a kid?" it is an exploration of this moment.
There are countless details and countless symbolic meanings in the film. Fur is just a tattered scarf in the film, invisible coffee and desire, modern SM collars and retro clothes, and Wanda's long leather boots. Is this a perversion? Wanda outside the play quarreled with the screenwriter, is Wanda in the play forced? The answer the film gives us is: this is the norm, everyone has a handful of hay in their hearts, and sometimes only a spark is needed.
These are just the common trauma from modernness. --Donham
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