Pink Flamingos

I just don't know what's got into me lately. My choice of films is increasingly more transgressive. Perhaps it's a male monopause. Perhaps it's stress from work. Perhaps I overworked. Perhaps I'm bored of films that show the problems and complexity of middle-class people or those experimental films that want to appear more clever than they actually are. So yesterday I picked up John Waters' Pink Flamingos and it proved to be one of the most enjoyable films I've seen this year.

Of course I'm sure a lot of people who have heard of the film will probably think that I've gone out of my mind, choosing to watch this epitome of trash (which of of course has been banned in many countries) rather than a complex French film full of complex symbols, deep emotional subtlety, and multilayered plotlines. Somehow Pink Flamingos with its simple plot and the incredibly flat yet grotesque characterisation of Divine, Crackers, and the Marbles, turns out to be a breeze of fresh (well, quite stinking actually) air. It's purely irreverent and angry, and its prime target is (like Funny Games in my previous blog entry) the middle class. I really like the scene when Divine and her "son" go into the house of the Marbles and lick everything to put the curse on them. Of course a lot of people will certainly think this is bad taste. But it's precisely what John Waters sets out to do: to transgress what the bourgeois deems proper. If their identity project is to create a clean, proper human, Divine and her clans are simply the opposite, as they want to be 'the filthiest people in the world'. Her politics is simple: 'Kill everyone now. Condone first-degree murder. Advocate cannibalism. Eat shit.'

Of course, needless to say, this is not my personal politics. But this film is perhaps a good index of how middle-class lifestyle has entrapped people, becoming more like a norm that imprisons the public. Pink Flamingos in this case can be considered a carnivalesque play that enacts an imaginary, yet wistful scenario.

However, there's one scene that I don't like. It's the scene when Crackers and Cookie have sex and a couple of hens die in the process. Despite my liberal outlook, I personally don't condone violence, especially when it's done to people or animals who are unaware of what's going on. This is the same argument I would use in paedophilia and domestic violence, when the victims are underaged children who are not aware of what this might have damaged their mentality in the long run.

Funny Games

Are you bored of those slasher films in which annoying teenagers are victims like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer? Do you want to see 'normal' middle-class people being killed instead, not because they are loud and talk like American kids, but simply because they are just normal they should deserve to die? If you like this idea, I recommend you watch Funny Games. Directed by Michael Haneke in 1997, the film addresses the issues of bourgeois complacency and fragility -- complacency because they think that everybody should be like them, fragility because it's in fact so hard and difficult to uphold that facade of bourgeois perfection without realising that it's all just a game. Haneke did a perfect job in turning the whole thing around and surely making viewers feel ill at ease about their own bourgeois conditions.


The premise is simple: one family goes to their second home during a holiday and lets two guests in their house out of pure bourgeois courtesy. They are, however, unaware that these guests will invade their territories and play a series of violent games that lead to a tragedy. The invasion of these guests is significant: they are not robbers wanting to steal their money, but are purely there to take revenge on this family, simply because they are perfectly middle-class and seem to fit in so well with social rules. In fact, they are what the ideal family should be like: two loving parents, one pleasant boy, and a lovely dog. They seem to be well-off enough to have a second home and arrange to play golf with their neighbours. It's this complacent condition that is perhaps oppressive, especially as it sets a rule for other people who are 'different' to follow suit. Perhaps it's this reason why they should die ...


What is interesting about this film is that Haneke seems to be reticent in giving details of this family (who are they, what work does the father do, etc.) and the two guests. We don't know where they're from and what they say in the film should be taken with a pinch of salt. I guess these two guests function somehow like 'avenging angels' in the modern era who control our fate and serve as perpetrators of poetic justice. But what's chilling about all this violence is that the middle-class family deserves to be punished simply because they exist. The moral of this story is perhaps this: don't be too perfect because you just make people around you jealous and uncomfortable (as you set the rule where other people need to follow). Poetic justice has changed: it's not being good or evil in the traditional sense that counts, but being too perfect and becoming a stepford family are perhaps the evils of the twenty-first century.

The film uses surreal techniques at times (such as the actual rewinding to undo an event and the asides by one of the guests) to let us know that it's highly ironical and self-reflexive and this elevates the status of the two guests as 'God' or 'the director'. In this way, Funny Games is aware of its own status as a film and the audience is exposed as a group of conniving participant-cum-voyeurs, with whom one of the two guests occasionally talk. Of course it can't be denied that most of the viewers are quite likely to be middle-class and this film will function like a slap in the cheek of the audience themselves. Perhaps, when I come to think about it thoroughly, the whole film is one of Haneke's own funny games.

Madeinusa

Madeinusa is an interesting film from the Latin American continent that touches on native Peruvian Indians. When I say 'interesting' I mean that it chooses to portray the natives from a different vantage point: it does not show how these people are oppressed by the State but how they as well can be corrupt and fall prey to their own desire.

Madeinusa is a name of our female protagonist who grows up in Manayaycuna, a small town that is not even on the map. However, what perhaps distinguishes this film from other films of overt political nature is its choice to portray the village not as an idyllic place, but a rather underdeveloped space where the mayor manages to have his own daughter elected the Virgin in the annual Easter procession and where Christianity has made an indelible mark at its most superficial. We are led to believe that perhaps these Indians in the Andes do not really understand the true message of Christianity but practise it as a kind of superstition. In the film we see these interesting rituals and processions, such as Jesus being blinded, symbolising his temporary death, and Madeinusa herself dressed as the Virgin.

Perhaps this is why the director Claudia Llosa is under attack from various fronts, especially those who disagree with her biased representation of the Indian natives. But this criticism should not blind you to the film's merits, especially if we try not to see these people as oppressed Indian natives but as a human. They are victims of their own desire and this victimised state is clearly put on show during the carnivalesque three-day Festival where there is no sin as Jesus is dead. We see the corrupt Mayor who tries to rape her own daughter and the daughter herself, who is clearly desirous of leaving this small oppressive town and can't help but feeling excited when there's a man from Lima who happens to get in her way.

Taking this perspective, I think the dimension that the director chooses to tackle these village people is not only racial, but sexual and social. Madeinusa is not oppressed solely because she is a native Indian, but also because she is a female and because she is a daughter. Also worth pondering is that her desire to flee the village is perhaps 'made in USA', the country which supports the ideologies of freedom and individuality. The complexity of this representation is perhaps why we should consider that the film's merit actually outweight its criticism.

4 Bia สี่แพร่ง

Hey, do I need to tell you that there are some spoilers? But I know you want to read it anyway.

A horror film from GTH, also the producer of the critically acclaimed Shutter, 4 Bia (in my opinion quite an awkward pun on phobia) or 4 Praeng ('an intersection' in Thai) is fun to watch. There are four mini-stories that are barely connected, probably a good sign that we nowadays are beginning to suffer from short concentration span. A long, epic film is probably too tedious and we are too lazy to follow all the action and details. These mini-stories are better, like mini-cornettos or mini-kitkat, in that they are not too formidable but cute and approachable.

I am one of those 'mini' fans, preferring of late to watch The Simpsons or CSI rather than an epic film. 4 Praeng is also enjoyable in this sense too. I think that horror films should not be too long that the audience (who nowadays are very hard to please and become increasingly sophisticated and senile at the same time) start to get bored. However, 4 Praeng is still conventional in the sense that it uses ghosts to teach moral, and at times not even a good, acceptable one.

Let me transform myself into a feminist (something quite hard to imagine!) to give examples. In the first story centering around a young woman who is confined in her cramped apartment room socialising with an unknown man through text messages. She is killed at the end, presumably because that man is already dead and finally comes to take her to live with him in a ghost world. What has she done wrong? Perhaps the moral is: don't be a slut because you may be killed by an unknown man (who happens to be handsome). Also, another moral is: don't break a man's heart, because he can take his own life and become very vengeful. Pretending to be a feminist, I couldn't help but find this short film really misogynistic, as it functions as a didactic lesson for all women out there not to be a slut. But what's wrong with that? Women also have desire and living in such a bleak urban space one is bound to desire to have a friend of the opposite gender. Why don't you punish men who are real hunters out there?

This is exactly the point that leads to gender bias in the last short film, Flight 224, in which an air hostess is asked to take care of the corpse of a princess who has earlier died from food poisoning. It turns out that the air hostess has been seeing the princess's husband and the princess becomes a ghost who tries every means possible to scare the air hostess shitless. What I find about this film is that, despite its powerful suspense, the real culprit is not brought to justice. Yes, I'm talking about the prince, who is probably seeing another woman by now. Sadly I think the princess is punishing the wrong person, who turns out to be a victim just like her.

Women are also victims in the second short film too. One of them is presumably punished because she is a slut who kisses a friend in a library. Another is dead simply because she refuses to help or do anything. But the real victim is a young abused boy who is also killed simply because he seeks supernatural help. I couldn't help but wonder what's the message of this. Does this victimized boy deserve to be killed too? Perhaps long gone are old traditional horror films where evil people are punished and good people are rewarded. In their place is a new streak of horror films where everyone dies! For what sake? Or simply for the sake of its pure spectacles of violence?

The moral of this story is: do not fall into the role of a victim or a victimiser. Just run away from them all! But doesn't it also mean that we in contemporary Thai society should just avoid 'action' or refuse to join any political event because once you let your voice be heard, you take sides. And taking sides can be very dangerous ...

Another moral: violence sells.

Let me finish this review with the third story, which involves four young men camping in a forest. Perhaps for me it's the allegory of all four male directors who have done a great job in delivering good horror films that keep the audience in suspense all through (though I don't quite like the CG in some places). But does this third story also signal that these directors may not fully realise the deeper layers of the messages they convey that effectively serve the mainstream ideologies in both sexual and political dimensions. Perhaps what they have done unwittingly is carrying on the legacies of political inactivism and ruthless patriarchy through the disguise of pure violence.

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone เปลือยหัวใจเหงา

Another poetical film by Tsai Ming-Liang, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone touches on the issues of sexuality, desire, and loneliness in a Malaysian cityscape. Homosexuality features in the film as well, but only as a form of desire caused by loneliness. The three main characters, Hsiao-Kang, Rawang, and Chyi, are labour immigrants whose lives are limited in loitering in a loveless city or liminal spaces where they're allowed to live. In this sense, the film offers a sharp critique of how the authorities deal with the problem of immigration that may be in conflict with the issue of human rights.

But I think that the target of the film is also more general than that. City living, which makes people become strangers to one another, may perhaps be a reason why these people feel so alienated and lonely. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone in this light is not different from Help Me Eros or Bangkok Love Story, which portray the city as a breeding ground for such negative feelings. However, what distinguishes this film from Bangkok Love Story is a superb storytelling. Like Help Me Eros, by reducing the dialogue down to a minimum and letting the silent narrative tell the story, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone manages to make us feel uncomfortable, thus forcing us to look back at our own empty life. Cinematography may not be as good as in Bangkok Love Story, but the choice of angles and perspectives manages to convey the senses of discomfort, loneliness, and despair.

Symbolism plays a great part in the film. The smoke that is believed to have come from Indonesia makes the whole city look like a ghost town. The smoke actually impedes human intimacy, as can be seen in the scene whereby Chyi and Hsiao-Kang try to make love. A paralysed man whom Chyi needs to take care can denote how we urban people are left in a state of emotional indifference and become essentially unresponsive to what happens around them.

A mattress also functions to denote a form of both spiritual and physical sanctuary and it is moved more than once all around the city. The ending scene whereby the mattress is shown floating adrift in a pool in a construction site is perhaps a telling image of how these labourers are being cast adrift in the big city jungle. I think the director not only portrays the negative senses of despair and loneliness these people feel, but also manages to show how they survive all these obstacles. However, long gone is the recourse to natural imagery. The mattress itself is man-made and the lamp that Hsiao-Kang buys for Chyi is also very artificial. These artificial objects somehow tell us how far removed we are from nature in this comtemporary urban setting.

However, the use of such artificial settings as makeshift living areas, lonely roads and a neglected construction site does not mean that beautiful things do not exist. It is actually in the construction site that a butterfly (not a colourful one, but one that looks more like a moth) flies and perches on Hsiao-Kang's shoulder. If we take butterflies to mean love and desire, perhaps it means that in such a desolate space there is still desire and love and it can potentially turn this space into a magical land. From this point of view, we can still see that great things still exist. The fact that Rawang, out of his love and forgiveness, decides not to kill Hsiao-Kang and even let him have the mattress to sleep with Chyi, is worth mentioning here. We are however not told what happens to Rawang but understandably we can see how painful this may've caused, especially if we take into account that it's Rawang, who has helped Hsiao-Kang to recover from the beating. Rawang's unrequited love for Hsiao-Kang is sad but his forgiveness is heroic, especially when one thinks that he hasn't got much and the mattress seems to be his most precious object.

Some people may find this film sad and ugly, but I find it very beautiful and optimistic.