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Alejandra Pizarnik, tr. by Yvette Siegert, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

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Gone Girl: Is it Feminist?

Hello! Been a while since I posted.

So after watching this movie for the fifth time, I’ve decided to do a brief analysis on the movie…

Gone Girl (2014)

…especially on Miss Amy Elliot Dunne right here.

I know this movie’s hype has been long gone but I somehow can’t help but randomly think about it. So without further ado, let’s talk about Gone Girl (dir. David Fincher) and why it’s so phenomenal.

Let’s start with the plot.

This movie is about a woman who meticulously frame her husband for her own murder because of his infidelity and laziness. This is no spoiler guys, the movie is basically about that.

But in more details, here goes (spoiler alert!): From the beginning of the movie, all that is shown is that Amy Elliot Dunne was missing on the day of her wedding anniversary with Nick Dunne. Nick was very confused, but all suspicion was on him. We follow Nick along with the investigation. As the investigation goes on, flashback scenes from Amy’s diary was shown, from how she met Nick, how they had the best sex, how they were laid off of their jobs, until how they found themselves in the suburbs of Missouri and their marriage going to perils.

In the middle of the movie, it was revealed that Amy was the mastermind of the plotted crime. She explained her motive behind framing Nick into murdering her, along with how she could get away with such a well-planned staged crime.

The story ends with Amy returning home covered in blood, saying she had to kill her ‘kidnapper’, that is her ex (he didn’t kidnap her). Did she and Nick end up separating? Of course… Not! They stayed together as an infamous All-American couple because if Nick filed a divorce, he will be seen as the bad guy!

Amazing right? I know.

So, this movie was a huge, HUGE topic in the 2010s. One side said that this movie favors to the ‘female fantasy’. Women feel awesome that a character such as Amy Elliot was able to overpower the man who had mistreated her. Not with physicality, but with her wit and intelligence. Some women felt empower by this movie in an unconventional way, that is why it became so popular.

On the other hand, Amy is still a villain. She manipulated others to hurt his lying, lazy, cheating husband. Heartbreak was the motivation of her crime. She is emotional, she wants vengeance. How can this movie be empowering for women?

So... Is this movie feminist or not?

Answering that question is not as easy as I thought.

First of all, yes, Gone Girl was a novel written by a female: Gillian Flynn. Therefore Amy Elliot Dunne is written by someone who really understand how women think, what motivates them, how they react to crisis, and their strengths and weaknesses.

The crime that Amy did was an extremely well-planned one. She drained her own blood, faked her own pregnancy, wrote a false diary with at least 300 entries only to half-burned it, bought a getaway car, even almost killing herself. Her goal was to humiliate her husband, she'd die to see Nick in prison because of her.

To achieve her goal, she manipulates people The way men can't: appealing to her female qualities. Let's explore some of the female tropes (mostly written by men) that she exploited:

Drinking wine and crying to other suburban moms about her exaggerated problem: emotionally unstable husband.

Faking pregnancy because “America loves pregnant women.”

Planning everything very thoroughly due to her free to me being a stay-at-home wife.

Wrote in her fake diary that she wanted a child, but her husband doesn't.

Even after putting her husband through such hell (almost getting arrested, being the prime suspect of a murder, being hated by women from the whole country), Amy returned and got pregnant for real so Nick cannot leave him. Unless he wanted to be seen as the bad guy, of course.

Is she really that sweet, trophy wife type of girl though? No. She only used those acts for her own advantage. The way she acted in front of others vs. when she's alone is drastically different. Her fake smile quickly shifted when other characters walk out of the room. She is the perfect example of misleading narrator (a trope I dearly admire). Even I’m not sure which of the stories in her fake diary is real or not real.

The coolest thing about Amy Elliot Dunne is that she used female stereotypes (the cool girl, the trophy wife, the mad woman, the a type with a perfect degree), to achieve the goal nobody else could ever pull off so perfectly. In short, Gone Girl is a story written by a woman who uses the stereotypes men create for women to narrate a flawless criminal mastermind who uses said stereotypes for her own advantage.

But even with such a well-crafted plan, Amy still found herself in a bind and obstacle (she lost all of her money during her getaway due to someone she thought she could trust). Even so, she quickly found an alternative that didn’t only save her life, but allowed her to create a more convincing and sensational story for the media to fight over. That’s what make this story so phenomenal: It’s not ideal, but people can’t help but remember it.

In conclusion: I’m pretty sure this movie wasn’t created to appeal to the female fantasy or to empower women by narrating a “strong female character”. However, the creation of the character Amy Elliot Dunne takes female tropes in movie to a whole new level: therefore the film’s success.

ESSAY BY : Raina Safira Fachri

INSPIRED BY : that one Youtube video that I cannot find anymore ffs

#movies #film #kekinean #movie review #gone girl #movie analysis #david fincher

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“Somehow what we meant to say to each other got lost over the years, time chipping away at our words and wearing them down like waves slapping against stone. With time they lost their meaning. It’s getting hard to recall the nights we were so close we could hardly tell where one body ended and where the other began. These moments don’t leave visible scars, but on some days I find myself wishing they did. I want to look at a scab on my hand and remember that this is where you touched me, once. This is where your fingertips burned me and the skin never stitched back together. You did not manage to scar me that way, but you left a mark on me all the same and still - what we had is so far gone that on most days I can’t even feel a trace of it. But sometimes, when I close my eyes and think of your smile, it’s like I hear your voice on the wind, carried over by a soft breeze that kisses my cheeks. I hear your laughter in the rustling of the leaves and in the rain hitting the pavement. That’s when I know that maybe we should have held on a little longer and it is then that it hits me hardest: how two people might change and adapt, smooth their once jagged edges to fit better together and how they fight to untangle these two pieces of a whole again once it’s over. We spent so many days learning our curves and edges and mistakes to understand the full picture and when it all crashes and burns, we do our best to unlearn it all again. The way you talk softly in your sleep, how your hands have to be occupied at all times, that you never knew what it is like to trust somebody. I know all these things now and have to live with them. And I wonder what the point is - why I’ve tried so hard to get to know you just to forget you again. It feels like I’ve been preparing myself to let you go from the very first time your fingers brushed mine.”

— letting go from the get-go / n.j. (via ninasdrafts)

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I am once again yearning for the sea

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“this mouth will destroy you the moment you mistake it for something soft, / for something that is yours.”

— Annie McQuade, from “When He Asks Me ‘What That Mouth Do?’,” published in Vagabond City

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damn shawty you are so kafkaesque

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me: i hate math

also me: *solves a difficult problem* i loVE MATH I LOVE MATH I L -

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• Details : The Flight into Egypt, 1609, by the German artist Adam Elsheimer.

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“I don’t believe in ‘best of’ books. It creates a hierarchy, and books are not hierarchy, books are medicine. We read what we need to heal us.”

— Sandra Cisneros (b. 20 December 1954)

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gets an adrenaline rush from contributing to class discussion

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Girl in Pieces — Kathleen Glasgow

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“To find, once again, all that I love: blue sky, sunshine, untrammeled thought, dignity, serenity, nature, poetry, friendship.”

— Victor Hugo, from a letter to Angelo Brofferio written c. February 1852 (via violentwavesofemotion)

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“There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.”

— (via amortizing)

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The Designated Sober Friend

Who am I when

it’s 2 a.m. and everyone was scattered on the floor

like fallen leaves in autumn?

I stood there, trying to hold back my hiccups

My stomach was full, not of alcohol

My mind was empty

Honestly, all I wanted to do is go home and be in the top rank in Quizup or whatever

This is way past my bedtime

But who cares anyway? It’s Saturday night

Or should I say Sunday morning?

I could feel the two figures in black and Gucci shoes are hooking up sooner or later

And my chemistry classmate lying on the floor with a galloon of water because he drank too much

I might have to bring him home later

Not that I mind, I just need to get out of here

Maybe my heart was right here

Or maybe it was elsewhere, clinging on something vague that I can’t reach

Merely because I don’t know what I want

What do I want?

How I hate existential crisis in the middle of the night

When a party is at its climax and the people are the craziest ever

Maybe I should not play that much pool

The way the white ball hits the numbered ones made my head spin

As if I was trying to get each of them back on their bed

And checking them all over again this afternoon

Maybe I’m just lonely

It leads to many things, you know?

—2-2-2020

#poem #original poem #college #college life #party #existential anxiety #existential crisis #existential thoughts #throwback #poetry

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never ending list of my favorite films : the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society  (2018, dir. mike newell)

Do you suppose it’s possible for us to already belong to someone before we’ve met them?

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Look at the little garden my 7 y/o brother made for his school project!

#garden #plantblr #plantcore #cottagecore #cottage garden #plants #plantlife #plantlove