I hate women?

A couple of years ago, I flinched all through Lars Von Trier's Dogville, the opening item in his would-be trilogy which also includes the more recent Manderlay. Last I read, there were no plans to make the third movie. I'm not sure if it even got written. But anyway, I had really no inclination to put myself through a viewing of Manderlay because Dogville was so uncomfortable. In theory, these movies are interesting, with their minimalist style-- the set it basically a black stage with taped-off lines that delineate various buildings and structures. But Von Trier has this thing about putting a woman, the best intentioned, most innocent, good-hearted sort of woman, in a situation in which she is bludgeoned psychologically and physically, in which she is raped, beaten, abused, demoralized-- until the very end, that is, when she is given an opportunity to exact her revenge. And she takes it. With a great show of pyrotechnics and gleeful cruelty. And so, I rented Dancer in the Dark hoping it wouldn't be so much of the same scenario, hoping to avoid when I knew awaited me in Manderlay. Now, I know this movie is old news, in many ways-- but,I mean, it's a musical with a hanging in it? A musical starring Bjork? But, true enough, it's been out already for 6 years already.

But, really, I think it's just like Dogville without the revenge sequence at the end. I mean, Bjork plays this woman who is just about the sweetest, most cherubic, most sympathetic woman ever written-- she's an immigrant factory worker who is going blind and trying to save money for her son to have an operation that will prevent him from going blind too. And she occupies Bjork's little body, in all her subversively cute glory. And she sings and dances to the rhythm of the factory machines... but then Von Trier decides he needs to destroy her so he has her landlord steal all her savings, accuse her of stealing from him, and then frame her for his own suicide. She is sentenced to death, but is still singing away when the floor drops out from under her.

Now, I know part of what Von Trier is getting at in this movie as well as Dogville and Manderlay is that he's issuing forth an indictment on American greed and the way America treats innocents and "the good." In Dogville, a woman who desires to flagellate herself for leading a sexually,um, shall we say, exploratory life gets her wish-- and then some. I gather from reviews that Manderlay regards a white woman who is trying to break down the only remaining American town in which blacks are still enslaved-- but winds up being enslaved herself-- and here's Dancer in the Dark in which an immigrant woman gets beaten down, and her image of -- what?-- the American Dream? gets shot down and trampled upon in a distinctly unpleasant manner. So, I get that part-- all the American idealism gets corrupted by puritanicalism, by greed and revenge, by simple hubris... and everyone loves a scapegoat. I got it. All very interesting swampy stuff in which I could muck around for some time.

However, I think there's something else that bothers me about the stories Von Trier insists on telling-- or, rather, the aspects of the story on which he insists upon dwelling. The larger portion of Dogville is spent explicating and relishing a very long, drawn-out drawing-and-quartering and ritualistic raping of Nicole Kidman (who Jen tells me she saw in Wild Oats buying sushi yesterday afternoon, by the way). And, yeah, I sat through the whole thing-- though barely-- with a deepening furrow in my brow. I couldn't help but feel like Von Trier was exacting a queer sadistic joy from watching-- and, in fact, being the one calling the shots-- while this beautiful woman was, at long length, sent to her ruin. And...I couldn't help but feel that me, the viewer, was meant to partake in this kinky voyeuristic joy. In reality, I got bored first and then, as it dragged on and out, I got depressed. And yet I kept watching? I mean, I suppose sticking it out 'til the end has its payoff in that I was glad when Kidman's character obliterated the entire population of the town of Dogville-- or at least I was in theory. Were it less stylized and allegorical, I'm pretty sure I would have been horrified at such an ending. But does the fact that I didn't turn this DVD off make me feel complicit in Von Trier's obsessions and games? You bet! And I don't much care for that feeling, in this context.

And, I think Dancer in the Dark pulls a lot of the same tricks. I mean, how deep are the depths to which we'll follow this complete victim of a woman until we lose sympathy for her? Is that, perhaps, what Von Trier is attempting to test? And why can't I get it out of my head that, in this instance too, he's getting some off-kilter thrill out of setting up situations in which he gets to torture some chick? And then that he brushes off the fact that that's what he's doing by positing his audience's sympathies WITH her-- by making her so infallibly angelic?

What's most interesting to me the implications of the gut reactions I'm having with regard to his treatment of these girls is that his choices really undermine all that more obvious symbology that I talked about in the paragraph before the last one. I mean, if he's going to offer a critique of American culture in which he portrays all the wrongs perpetrated unto victims, why take such glee in showing us those very anti-Geneva-Convention maneuverings?

Oh, delicious, delicious, messes of the subconscious, perhaps? Something more calculated? I just don't know.