Elaine, Cary and Emmi 3 Women: Taboo Relationships in 3 films--Response Paper

What makes "The Graduate" (d. Mike Nichols), a radical romance, is not necessary in its tale, for essentially it is a rehash of the 50's Sex Comedy of a man's attempt to get the girl and the girl holding out for marriage. No, what makes the film radical is its satirical nature, mainly its take on the socially deem worthy ideals of marriage and relationships. The depiction of an affair between a quirky, young man, Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), and a much older attractive woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who later falls in love with the daughter, Elaine (Kathrine Ross). Much of the comedy derives from the situations Ben inadvertently falls into while trying to leave the mother for the daughter, what is needed to be concentrated upon is the consequences of pursuing such a relationship.
In each of the film chosen, the two main characters in the relationships face hardships and discrimination that is still a prominent and relevant discourse into today's society as seen in gay, generational age or inter-racial marriages. Each case involves the judgment of others that harks back to Foucault's argument of assumed and upheld credible arguments against certain relationships, though not completely perverse in nature, is still seen as taboo even in today's much more liberal political sex relationships.




Kay Scott: Personally, I've never subscribed to that old Egyptian custom.
Cary Scott: What Egyptian custom?
Kay Scott: Of walling up the widow alive in the funeral chambers of her dead husband along with his other possessions. The theory being that she was a possession too. She was supposed to journey into dead with him. The community saw to it. Of course it doesn't happen anymore.
Cary Scott: Doesn't it?

In Foucault's "The history of sexuality", he states that besides the opinions of the popular masses, there are three major codes governing sexuality, "canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law", which is all centered on the matrimonial relations. He says further, "the marriage relation was the most intense focus of constraints...It was under constant surveillance; if it was found to be lacking, it had to come forward and plead its case before a witness." While Foucault was more interested in analyzing the discrimination of dogmatic doctrines of society that limited and restrained more abnormal relationships, it also applies to any other form of intimate relationships that happens to fall outside the norm of a man and a woman, be it age, inter-personal relationships, race and religion.

In Douglas Sirk's classic film "All That Heaven Allows" (1955), a widow, Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), lonely and abandoned falls in love with a much younger man, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson). In beautifully shot scenes the two lovers plan to marry, but is met with opposition from Cary's greedy children and other family members. Straining their relationship to its break, the couple pulls through and stays together, but not before learning much about society's prejudice and discrimination against their affair.
While the treatment of the affair and the sexual content is done with hesitant sensibility and sentimentality, the film's essential view on love and abandonment is reverberated in later Romantic films.

"Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids"

Mrs. Robinson in a way represents Kinsey's "double standard" and the hypocrisy inherent in it. According to McDonald's sex comedy context on the three key events that lead to a more open sexual discourse in popular culture, Kinsey's report showed that women wanted the same sexual promiscuity and freedom that men had. As seen in the clip, after the dinner party, Mrs. Robinson suggests her husband's infidelity as she blatantly tries to seduce Ben. Later when she finds out at the hotel of Ben's virginity and inexperience, she smirks and grins like a cat with a mouse in its paw. However, her attitude changes when Ben questions her motives and or starts talking about her daughter, Elaine. To Mrs. Robinson, the relationship is just a interesting minor relationship, an example in the power dynamics of relationship and proving a woman can also have the same sexual hold her husband can. This goes back to the concept of the "double standard" and as McDonald explains, "this was an unwritten law implying that men were supposed to have pre-marital sexual experiences [and in marriage too] and women were not."




Furthermore, following the genre, it is not the sexually active mother, but the chaste and "good" daughter that steals Ben. Here, the hypocrisy in this odd situation is revealed between the sheets--to Mrs.Robinson, Ben is unworthy, because of his relationship with her, to be with her daughter. Now that's irony. Nevertheless, Ben's persistence and guile wins the girl ("It's too late, Elaine" yells the mother, retort "Not for me" says the daughter), as the genre would have it, but here Nichol's directorial brilliance shows the ambiguity of such impetuous actions, no happy ending here, the "newly weds " future is just as dark and foreboding as when Ben started out in the beginning of the film.





Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (German: Angst essen Seele auf) is a 1974 West German film written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder based loosely upon Sirk's "All that Heaven Allows". The film is the story of Emmi (Brigitte Mira), a 60 year old German cleaner who meets and falls in love with a black Muslim, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). After marriage, the couple faces ugly prejudice, discrimination and ridicule from practically everyone they know and associate with; the most horrible scenes involves Emmi's own children. A strange romantic tale, though not American, it acts as a possibility of the many issues of discourse in cultural similarities here in the state and most likely anywhere of modern society.
Hailed as Rainer's best film, it bravely tackles issues the two mentioned American films wouldn't or couldn't dare touch, (if not all at once), of race, religion, class and age in relation to "nice" societies view of a matrimonial relationship. "Ali" is a film to be experienced because it challenges the core values of a society, on a theoretical level and political social also.




These films for their time challenged the status quo in looking at familial relationships as a representation of society as a whole while pushing the boundaries, if not sexually, at least in respect of issues that were taboo for society. The idea and concept of the double standard, is shown actively in regard to the women it portrays, but also in the attitudes still held by the social political views still held of a standard, "norm" relationship and family. As seen in other films of later decades like "Guess whose coming to Dinner", "The Ice Storm" (d. Ang Lee) or "Far From Heaven" (d. Todd Haynes), these issues are still present into today's society and held in taboo.

Sexual Fantasies: A kind of Radical Romance

If RomCom is the fantasy of the beginning and early struggle of a relationship, then what is a core text for the inbetween of a relationship? If looked at historically, the genre of RomCom can be looked at as a fine line between the human need to be love (emotionally) and sex (physically), with the well being, a good or bad relationship, of the partners (psychology) within a comic framework. In the chapter on sex comedy, MacDonald states "I think there has always been a strand within romantic comedy where much of the pleasure and energy of the film is derived from the couple's efforts to resist being a couple, to deny their fitness for each other and the inevitability of their union." I would like to add that it is also vice versa, the couple's desire to be a couple and the comedy that derives from their attempt to stay as one. Recent films like "Knocked Up" and "Meet the Parents" and its sequel "Meet the Fockners", is essentially a reversal of the sex comedy genre, emphasis on unity of the partners through sex. Sex or the physical manifestation of their love, is only viable when both partners are honest about their needs and emotions or come upon the revelation of their need for one another as a result of it.

A real good example of this psychological well being of a relationship in a dichotomy of emotional and physical equilibrium is demonstrated in "When Harry Met Sally" (Meg Ryan's best romcom for me). In the film two best friends of opposite sex enlivens their relationship to that of couple status and the fear of loss in mutual respect and likability. Harry (Billy Crystal) states early in the story the film's essential question: "Can a man and a woman stay friends, without being lovers?" and the humor of the film derives from Harry's observation that men, when in the company of the opposite sex, can only think of Sex and not much else. Sally disproves this in the famous diner scene ("I'll have what she's having") and in the rest of the film with her talks/gossips with her female friends, showing that women are just as obsessed with sex as their counterpart. Sex to the film's characters, looks like it just complicates matters, but as a result can also deepen it and make it more enriching.

McDonald's definition of the Sex Comedy that "with women wanting sex after, and men before or without, marriage" might have applied to the mid 50s cinema of the RomCom, and like I'm sure McDonald will illustrate in following chapters, that the genre has evolved with the times and views of popular culture of the ideals and ideas of relationships, but the unity and or coming together of differing individuals is what keeps suckering us in.