November 24th, 2008
by
Ide Cyan
Maybe I expected too much from Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In in English, Morse en français — I saw it with English subtitles; and I have not read the novel that the film is based on). It’s not exactly overhyped, but it had been highly praised, and the screening room was two-thirds full at the matinee I attended. It was certainly very well-done and semi-unusual, as takes on vampire myths go, but, narratively, it kept to the foregone conclusion of its premise, and didn’t offer much in the way of character development. Some of that could obviously be due to a lack of familiarity with Swedish narrative conventions on my part, but, still. It gave me the feeling of a mainstream filmmaker’s take on genre, in the category of those who make the choice of integrating the supernatural between the lines rather than of self-importantly playing a game they think they’ve invented. Sure, it’s lovingly shot and poetic, but the result is predictable (in the ways in which it’s predicated on mainstream narrative conventions, rather than genre ones) and a bit underwhelming, ultimately unsatisfying. Too much little boy blighted by bullies, not enough insight into the vampire next door. She seems interesting, but the movie doesn’t pass the DTWOF test. They also elide some explanatory moments that leave the world-building begging the question, at times, in the process of painting a picture in a snowy nightscape, one of which omissions comes across as a deus requisite ex machina.
There were, all that said, some very worthy fantastic elements in the movie, including the scene that I found the most genuinely affecting and pleasantly surprising, and in the overall matter-of-factness of the portrayal of vampirism, although the sideline with the cats was, um, kind of a dead end. Points for having a smooth transition to special effects there, however, which nearly achieved seamlessness with the verisimilitude of the film’s look, sticking out only a second too long in the editing. The plot detour also makes me think of an extra loop sewn on something: tying into the more integral one-piece of the suit, but not leading anywhere.
The children’s acting and direction was particularly good, managing understated scenes with flat affect without coming off as wooden, subtle emotions without seeming stunted, although the story limited the leads’ modes of expression rather strictly to fit its themes, whereas the extras felt to me more liberated. The adults, excepting one, were pretty much animated cardboard backgrounds, some painted in louder colours than others.
It’s worth seeing, and it might serve as a gateway for your mainstream friends who are afraid of horror’s bogeys but like foreign highbrow and embrace subtitles (or who speak Swedish; if you are Swedish you’ll probably know more about the movie than I do and have a perspective on it that I am unlikely to realign), if you translate the horror codes for them, once they come up, and you can both enjoy it.
While it’s a subtler movie than I first appreciated as I left the theatre, I would also like to avoid overselling it. In the second half of my entry I will write more about the gendered aspects of the movie in relation to another vampire film. Because I have not read the book, I will not elaborate on aspects of the story that weren’t entirely clear for me in the film, but which I have gathered since, from reading about it online. Those among my readers, if any, who have seen it and/or read the book should please keep unspoiled future viewers in mind if you choose to correct me. I would definitely like to rewatch it at least once, though perhaps not until after I read the book, which may not possible be any time soon.
***
Let the Right One In is one of two vampire films coincidentally opening in theatres here (dans la région de Montréal) at the same time, both of which have young leads, both of which are based on best-selling novels, though in this one they are not quite teenagers, and the Swedish book’s sales do no match the American’s. I hardly need to introduce the other. I have not seen Twilight yet. I didn’t get very far in reading the book before returning it to the library to be lent out to more appreciative borrowers, but I haven’t avoided hearing about it and about the film’s faults and unhealthy attractiveness; however, I can engage with films more easily than with books on some levels, and I am considering going to see it and retaining the hope of being entertained, and not merely for its sociological or parody value. I am going to make some tentative comparisons between the two works now, since I don’t know when I’ll be able to see Twilight, and because my conclusions will be less about the particular works than about the way they are culturally positioned and can be related to each other.
There are some very overt inversions going on in terms of gender at the production level for Let the Right One In and Twilight. The former was directed by a man, and written for the screen by a man, John Ajvide Lindqvist, adapting his own best-selling 2004 novel. The latter was directed by a woman, and written for the screen by a woman, adapting Stephenie Meyer, another woman’s best-selling 2005 novel. The former shows a commonplace triumvirate of roles. The latter is much rarer for uniting three women, even where films are based on works by women with high visibility: none of the Harry Potter adaptations were written or directed by women, for example.
The former is getting high praise which could perhaps be quantified as inversely proportional to its obscurity as a film outside of limited circles. (I am writing from a North American forced perspective.) The latter is immensely popular but receiving negative criticism which could perhaps be quantified as inversely proportional to its popularity. And the opinions of its fans are easily minimised by critics, who may bow to the pressure of the work’s popularity (because of the in-built fanbase from the books and the resulting public anticipation for the movie) and temper their reviews by conceding that the film should please the fans (…is this perhaps the soft bigotry of low expectations?). The former is a limited release in the wake of its tour of film festivals; the latter is arriving as a gigantic, highly mediatised phenomenon.
I went to see the former first in the expectation that its stay in theatres will be short and that the act of going to see it would be significant, but that the latter will stay in theatres a long time and that the act of going to see it would place me, as a female viewer, in a nameless demographic, from the which I may have to dissociate myself by justifying my choices, in order to be considered as an individual person.
The obscurity of Let the Right One In relative to Twilight needs to be considered as more than a question of gender. Language, country of origin, genre, and economics play into it. Twilight has a modest budget, for a Hollywoodian production. Let the Right One In‘s budget is much smaller, but I would guess, no less important relative to the size of the film industry behind it. However, it is an import here, sold to specialised markets, subtitled, whereas Twilight is entering a continental-sized market of majority native English speakers (with simultaneous release dubbed in French in Québec). The obscurity of Let the Right One In is not due to it being centered around a male character, or coming from a masculine creative team. The popularity of Twilight, however, is heavily inflected by its gendered femininity.
Gender, to reiterate the definition of the concept as I use it, is a system of hierarchical division based on sex that creates two social classes by opposition to each other, which can be said to be complementary in that there is no oppressed class without a class of oppressors.
And love stories are powerfully impressed on the class of women, in a way that differs from the stories of love impressed on the class of men, because scenarios are not the same for the oppressed and for the oppressor, although the contigency of the coexistence of both classes requires heterosexual normativity in individual behaviour for the institutionalisation of the union of individuals across classes.
***
There are less overt gender inversions in the content of Let the Right One In and Twilight, but it strikes me that both films are premised on a form of wish-fulfilment, the shapes of which are molded by gender and circumstance. Roughly: Let the Right One In has at its center a boy who meets a girl who is a vampire, whereas Twilight has at its center a girl who meets boy who is a vampire. They are both love stories, albeit that Let the Right One In tells a more ambiguous one, and its wish-fulfilment is not predicated on romance. The wish-fulfilment in Let the Right One In is couched in a male character’s wish to do violence. Oskar, the 12-year-old protagonist, is an isolated, bullied boy, who dreams of avenging himself against his male bullies, when Eli, a child vampire, moves into the apartment next to his.
Twilight‘s popularity is intimately tied into the gendering of romance. Love stories do impress women with the importance of finding a lover of the opposite sex, to fortify the institutions that are at the basis of a patriarchal society. Because we live in a patriarchal society, it is with individuals from the class of their oppressors that women are encouraged to find romance. The mystification of oppression consequently blurs the distinction between the ideal lover and the lover as he represents a source of oppression for a woman. There is a convergence between relations of domination and eroticism. There are, of course, myriad responses to that situation, among which are a wide variety of further mystifications of the roles of women and men in romance. Twilight plays on the assimilation of the lovers to prey and predator, and derives a great deal of tension from the impossibility of consummation when love is interchangeable with predation. The story posits Bella, the teenage heroine and narrator of the book, as the prey with whom Edward, the leading man, a vampire in high school, falls in love.
The wish-fulfilment in this scenario works on several levels, as it does in other romance narratives, with various implications. The heroine’s lover is a supreme predator, but, because he loves her, she will be safe from his predation. A woman in love with a man is in love with a member of the class of her oppressors, but, in entering into relationships with men, women wager that a man’s love for a woman will keep her safe from him, as the same time as it makes her more vulnerable by proximity. Women’s personal relationships with men are also a form of protection against other men: in Twilight, Bella’s relationship with Edward and his family gives her protection against other vampires. Etc.
Aside from all considerations of quality, manner, and outrageousness, the derision aimed at the romantic wish-fulfilment in Twilight is a mockery that targets the hopes of a member of an oppressed class, assimilated to a prey, as they are invested in a member of the class of her oppressors, assimilated to a predator, for being unrealistic, unhealthy, or even dangerous. It’s blaming the victims for aspiring to exceptionality within the confines of their status as victims. No, these are not the healthiest of hopes and dreams, but they are not at the root of the situation that makes them unhealthy.
Vampires are mythical creatures, but patriarchal societies hinging on institutionalised heterosexuality depend on those hopes and dreams of exceptional love to sublimate and appease rebellion against their established power structures, and the capitalist industries that thrive alongside patriarchal institutions stand to make a tidy profit from the expressions of those hopes and dreams that manage to reach and move a wide audience of women to embrace them.
Although the political connotations of their stories differ because of their gendering, and the forms because of their circumstances, the survival of the protagonists of Let the Right One In and Twilight hinge on both of them having the good fortune to meet a superior predator whose violence will not be directed at them.
The subversive potential of Twilight, and the reason that its writers and its director being women matters, and that their agency should not be impinged while their work can fall under criticism and to mockery (deserved or underserved), is that there is still the potential for revolution against patriarchy when women, rather than men, control the stories that are told.
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Filed under TV & Film, gender in marketing, women writers | Comments (15)
That was a very interesting read. I have a love/hate relationship with Twilight but I’ll see it when it’ll be released here.I find the director interesting. I liked how she portrayed teenagers in 13 and Lords of Dogtown. I will probably go see Let The Right One In as well although I haven’t read the book.
The popularity of Twilight, however, is heavily inflected by its gendered femininity.
This. I’ve always found it odd that the anti-woman thrust of current mainstream film-making exists in the face of the fact that, of the (inflation-adjusted) 10 most popular films ever, four were specifically aimed at a female audience. Making films for women & girls is a great way to get shittonnes of money and lasting fame; this is one of many situations where sexism has a significant financial cost, but people practise it anyway because they can’t bear not to.
Partly because of that, I don’t accept the role you ascribe to capitalism in this situation; capitalism is damaged by patriarchy even as it feeds off it.
I think you’ve pegged the role of predation in heterosexist mythos perfectly, but that leads to another question; how did homoeroticism become such an integral part of the whole vampire schtick in the 80s/90s, and why has it disappeared now?
I can’t say much for the analysis, which was cool, because I haven’t read/seen any of these books/movies, but I’m gonna give you my view as a Swedish; it all hinges on our movie/book industry. MOST things here are about regular, everyday things.
Trying to find made-here, genre books/movies? Forget it. As far as I know, there’s TWO Swedish vampire movies; Let the Right One In, and Frostbitten. Two.
And it doesn’t surprise me that LtROI takes a “supernatural between the lines” route, because that’s very much in keeping with the “slice of life” movie industry we’ve got here. So that that movie/book would order slice of life/bullied boy getting revenge above the supernatural, isn’t strange at all, in a Swedish-film way.
I can come up with one Swedish kinda sci-fi, kinda demonic-angelic conflict movie, Storm. This is what can be found. Genre movies are simply not DONE here. Hollywood/North America is, in comparison overflowing with genre movies. My sister and I were amazed and delighted when Storm and Frostbitten came out, for however mediocre, they were *Swedish genre-movies*. It was seriously amazing.
A number of interesting comments to respond to, yay! :-)
Okay, let’s start with a doozy: what makes capitalists shoot themselves in the foot by scorning female audiences? I think you’re thinking about this too narrowly, Thene, so in answering I will attempt to contextualise.
Capitalism is not the only or even necessarily the most prevalent form of exploitation, though it is monstrous and tentacular in post-industrialisation economies and through the imperialistic powers of those economies, and credit as a basis for innumerable transactions has allowed for refinements of capitalism impossible when it operates using material currency. But, and this is too often overlooked, and unfortunately so even by feminists when looking at economics, non-capitalist forms of exploitation also mold society, and can steer entire economies no more gently than capitalism does. The showiness of capitalism as an economic model and its unavoidable impact on society can mask those other forms of exploitation as much as their particular mystifications do, but there is also often a synergy of mystification that allows those distinct systems to operate together in spite of those apparent paradoxes you refer to. Heteronormativity and the idealisation of the nuclear family as a social unit have been imposed as models on society in no small part thanks to capitalism; in turn, the division of society into such units has fostered capitalist consumption by forcing people away from communal use and ownership of tools and resources. Within that “unit” itself, members of a family fill different roles, and the family is in itself a system where forms of exploitation, that are most often not capitalist in nature, take place, and those roles are not predicated on the capitalist system for their existence, although they can and do interact with it. Patriarchy did not spring into existence with the advent of mass-production. In pre-industrial rural homes, the labour of women/wives is already appropriate unreciprocally by other family members; children’s labour is appropriated by adults. In a feudal system the labour of serfs and servants is appropriated by lords, and in economies based on slavery, the work and persons of enslaved people are appropriated by slave-owners. The members of dominant classes interact with each other on the basis of their common socioeconomic superiority the same way that capital holders do: heads of families meet, slave-owners trade, lords recognise each other, adults decide the fate of children. Patriarchy permeates all of those systems and perpetuates itself through maniform oppressions within them, because it continues to reward one social class through the exploitation of another. This is also far from an exhaustive sampling of forms of exploitation.
Capitalism is only damaged by patriarchy inasmuch as patriarchy prevents the existence of a “pure”, ideal form of capitalism, but that particular form is, well, unrealistic, to say the least, given the number of others factors (from government control to worker revolts and human frailty) that also mitigate the idealised purity of capitalist function. I think you’re severely underestimating the importance of these other factors and interests in your view of capitalism. Furthermore, I wouldn’t place my feminist hopes in the hands of capitalism, no matter how much women can gain through capitalist means: not merely because capitalist ideology is intrinsically contaminated by patriarchal ideology, because it is the product of a patriarchal society, but because I don’t think that capitalism freed from gender bias would very much promote the well-being of people, either.
“there is still the potential for revolution against patriarchy when women, rather than men, control the stories that are told.”
And when women make stuff like Twiliight I think the revolution takes three steps back. I’ve got nothing against romance but it is a pretty crappy vampire story.
[...] READ THE INTERNETZ HuffPo: Twilight and abstinence-only ed (sp) FeministSF: Ide Cyan is somewhat more generous than I’m willing to be regarding the film Feministing: Kristen Stewart responds to feminists, and links to other Feministing posts on [...]
Women can be just as rigid in perpetuating the patriarchy as men. It is, after all, mothers who enforce the social norms on their daughters. I find Twilight to advocate for the worst aspects of this culture in describing the female character (the point of view character) as essentially submissive, clumsy, unthinking, but beautiful. And the description of true love and romance to hinge on a man who controls the woman’s actions completely.
Violet Lotus: the situation you describe in Sweden seems similar to the one in Québec. Your country has a population of a similar size to my province (Sweden has about 1.5 million more people than Québec), and our being francophone also restricts our ability to export film and literature. (While there are other French-speaking population groups, there are different obstacles to cultural exchanges with them, and we trade much more with our anglophone neighbours, being surrounded by them and their considerable influence.) There are also few genre film productions here, and most of them are only recent, and can elicit ambivalent reactions. One particularity of the successful genre productions made in Québec is that they haved tended to pre-empt the risks in attempting to be taken seriously by using humour a lot. The biggest genre successes we’ve had were comedic vampire movies (Karmina), and very broad sci-fi farces aimed at children and teenagers (Dans une galaxie près de chez vous, which was based on a low-budget TV sitcom, and has spaceship CGI deliberately modelled to look like tin cans).
Yeah, it seems the situation is pretty much the same; especially concerning genre-literature/movies made with comedy (Frostbitten was pretty much this, except kinda not… It was simply necessary to not take it seriously, but the special effects were beyond cool!). Though, funnily enough, programs made for children during the summer holidays (broadcast during the morning), and as an advent calendar thing during December loves to take various fantastic/sci-fi turns…
Obviously, as long as it’s for children, it’s somewhat safe to be “fantastic” about your material.
Thank you for including the film industry’s mythology in your commentary on these movies.
It is notable that on Twilight’s opening weekend it turned a profit, meaning there is significant revenue left over, after paying for the production, post-production and marketing costs. This, on its first weekend.
Twilight significantly outgrossed at the box office the runnerup opener, the new James Bond movie (which has won the most ridiculous title award), Quantum of Solace.
Both movies have a targeted audience, which are on opposite sides of the audience spectrum.
Hollywood still insists that the young male demographic is the most important, and thus Twilight could not do well, because it was targeted at young girls, and boys will not go see it.
Yet, no matter how often the box office dogmas of Hollywood are proven wrong, the ruling patriarchy of filmdom, continue to propagate these false facts of the financial side of their industry. You explain why:
Love, C.
I really enjoyed your post. Very well-written and thought provoking. I referenced it in Videoblog film review.
http://www.shamelessmag.com/blog/2008/12/twilight-and-feminism-can-they-be-friends/
[...] The first of Cleolinda’s many Livejournal posts. Ide Cyan at the Feminist SF blog talks about the cultural positioning of Twilight. A feminist takes on Twilight’s abstinence message. Liz Henry is enjoying it so far [...]
The interesting thing while reading your review and remark on gender inversions is that the vampire In Let the Right One In is a boy who was castrated.
NB: preceeding comment contains a spoiler. (For those clicking through via Recent Comments.)
That’s one of the aspects of the story that’s not particularly clear in the film (possibly obscured by dialogue data loss in the English subtitles vs. the spoken Swedish), though I gather the book goes into Eli’s backstory more extensively. Another (guest) blogger had heard about that and was interested in it from a genderqueer perspective.
How can you make a comparison of two films when you haven’t seen one of them?