Poor Things and Elon Musk's Dream
February 12, 2024
The new movie "Poor Things" by the renown director Yorgos Lanthimos might just be Elon Musk's dream.
But let me explain.
The frankensteinesque story unfolds in a steam punky futuristic world, where old-school bloody anatomy mixed with a little bit of high-tech know-how help a heavily traumatised genius/crazy surgeon played by Willem Dafoe to conserve life and create a strange female creature named Bella Baxter. This main character enchants by her rawness and naiveté which might portray somebody without a super-ego, no societal morals that restrain her freedom. She brutally cuts up bodies as a past time like her loving creator, whom she calls God; she masturbates openly at the breakfast table because it feels good and then she leaves her home to have some fun on a cruise with a man she barely knows just after engaging to a different man. When this fun relationship begins to get complicated and entrapping ("toxic"), she emancipates herself again and leaves the overly masculine man to his pathetic broken heart. I felt a gratificatory rush in the audience when the protagonist turns this male partner into a poor dependant crushed creature. We feel that he deserves it for all the girls he himself has used and discarded in the past. Then, the main character decides she does not need a relationship but she does need money and she becomes the most sought-after sex worker in Paris. We might feel empowerment when the protagonist claims her sexuality in the midst of prostitution. Identification with the Bella comes easily, as we all wish to be free from conflict and just follow our curiosity, speak openly what is on our mind, live sex without restraints and complicated feelings, and on top of it, be admired and loved and fought for by so many men and women alike. Everybody loves the protagonist and wants a piece of her: her God, her affair, her fiancé, her pimp, her sex worker friends, her ex-husband, ... So it is a narcissistic dream sparkling with revenge since Bella shines over all the other characters. A Dream that may slumber in many of us. This is the stuff that fairy tales are made of these days.
Taking a closer look, I was deeply concerned with the dark side of this movie which is not shown but implicit in the story: in the end, the protagonist becomes her father. I would say she is the "Urvater" from Freud's Totem and Taboo, as was God and by hints about his past, God's father also had had this position. There can only be one Urvater, one God. It is plain obvious but it is also scary. Bella Baxter is not castrated in the sense that she is outside all rules and laws and has her own reign in that house she inherited from her late God. She gathers her objects of desire around her: Her faithful but probably boring husband; a black friend and sex worker she probably "rescued" from prostitution and who will be likely to entertain her with the best cunnilingus as this exceptional skill of hers had been shown in previous scenes; an ex-husband whom she mutilated as a punishment and for her amusement and who has to live as a freak goat on Bella's garden; and many a (cruel) idea that she can realize and enjoy on the operating table because during her time in the sex industry she had also became a surgeon.
This fuses the old Madonna/Whore complex into one perfect (male?) fantasy of a female: Bella is naive and maybe even a little retarded, but then she is also a reckless medical practitioner (who does not need authorisation by an Other), she is beautiful and not inhibited, fun, and does not ask anything of the man but sex. She has survived her own suicide and is her own child as we come to learn that God rescued a pregnant woman who committed suicide by jumping in a river. He amputated her brain and inserted her infant's resetting her self and apparently successfully erasing her depression. There is nothing she lacks, she just goes after what she lusts for. So yeah, it is a fairy tale of modern times. Pure narcissistic heaven!
In comparison to Mars Shelley's Frankenstein, the creature has no question about the desire of her creator. She does not ask why humanity is the way it is, what purpose she has in life. She does not experience sorrow - it was as if it was left behind in her old brain. As if sexuality was ever possible without conflict, as if a career was ever just plucked from a tree, as if outbursts were always received lovingly by others, as if sex work was just something that you can freely embrace and step out of when you get bored. It's all as shiny and fake as the special effects of the movie. I would consider the pompous and over-the top style of the move as a critique on our capitalist society but the "Buddha moment" when the protagonist leaves the cruise ship and visits the poor is just as shiny and fake. Bella has a teeny tiny brush with the limits of her narcissistic powers in the face of hungry and sick human beeings and her vision of helping them bitterly fails. She does not even notice it. This scene gives us the following message: don't bother with that poor, sick and conflicted part of the world, stick to what you "are" and like, realize your own potential, and of course, oblige to the superego imperative of enjoy! If you try to safe the world, you will be either corrupted yourself, or robbed of everything and raped. They explicitly say this.
So, not being one for expensive special effects and baroque maximalism, I have to say I did enjoy the film. The cast is amazing and Hannah Schygulla's appearance was one of the happiest surprises for me. There were also a lot Fassbinder-Themes like sex and power relationships in this story, so having her as a part of the cast fits nicely. The dialogues are crunchy and entertaining and also fun. Yes, Emma Stone's performance and actually that of all the actors was impressive and really well done. Chapeau!
But I am actually really concerned with the message of this movie. I feel like the world is running towards each owns heaven of simulated reality, be it via technology or drugs, everyone running after their own satisfaction without actually engaging in social discourse, in the sexual non-relation, in all the beautiful impossibilities that make us grow and step out of our illusions. Also I find it so much more interesting to have a protagonist being a real adult woman that lacks, that is insecure and maybe even hysterical, not a child-like, perverted and idealised creature that amazes everybody and is dictated by enjoyment. Yeah, it's just like Barbie but worse, because it comes in revolutionary clothing with nothing of substance. Poor Things indeed who live in the sparkle world where signifiers are the thing and no unconscious desires exist.
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