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Sirk, Verhoeven and Fincher: Unflinching Reproduction as Satire

Sirk, Verhoeven and Fincher: Unflinching Reproduction as Satire

David Fincher’s most recent film, Gone Girl, has been the subject of intense criticism and analysis over the past few weeks. From claims of intense misogyny to stringent defenses on the other side, the film has evoked the most emotional critical response of any film in recent memory. However, my favourite part of the debate concerning Gone Girl has been the auteurist debate: which famous director is Fincher emulating in Gone Girl. Nick Pinkerton from Film Comment argues that Fincher is a derivative hack like Otto Preminger. Christy Lemire on the program What the Flick and Forrest Wickman from Slate make the obvious argument for Hitchcock. Richard Kelly (writer/director of Donnie Darko) draws the comparison to Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut. Matt Achity, also on What the Flick!, argues against the Hitchcock comparison to draw a link to Brian De Palma. Even here on the Sound on Sight podcast, our very own Simon Howell brought my favourite comparison by saying that Gone Girl is Fincher’s Verhoeven film.

That last one speaks to me in particular, not just because I love Paul Verhoeven, but because it then draws another comparison– that of Douglas Sirk. An odd choice I know, but by this triangle of comparison, from Gone Girl, to Verhoeven’s satires, to Sirk’s critiques of high society, is very telling both of the message in Fincher’s film and of the nature of effective satire in genre fiction.

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Douglas Sirk made melodramas that took place in the high society of the 1950s. His films were generally unconcerned with the dynamics of high society, simply presenting them as they were while letting the personal dynamics of his characters drive the story forward. All that Heaven Allows tells the story of a woman torn between her old life and the man she falls in love with because of family and class dynamics. Written on the Wind is a convoluted story of love, marriage, and inheritance featuring interweaving love triangles and family dynamics. Imitation of Life features racial tensions and family dynamics underpinning a sweeping romance. The list goes on and on and yet none of this is the reason Sirk has become a celebrated director recently. All of these films are socially critical of the lives they present but perform this critique under the guise of the sweeping melodramatic romance – presenting the normality of this genre type as the means of achieving the implied critique.

This is a complicated idea but that is where Verhoeven makes things clearer. Unlike Sirk who only achieved praise after a critical re-viewing of his work, Verhoeven was heavily debated through his years working in Hollywood. Making big genre films, critics debated whether his films were socially critical or not. RoboCop and Total Recall are big budget action films, Showgirls and Basic Instinct are erotically charged thrillers, and Starship Troopers is a war film. All of his films were seen as straddling the line between reproductions of established norms and critiquing those norms. Starship Troopers was seen as propaganda and pro-war by some critics and by others it was read as a deeply critical satire that used the reproduction of propaganda to describe its flaws. Basic Instinct is even better at this because of how it contrasts the use of its protagonist and antagonist into a socially critical reversal.

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Michael Douglas is set up as the film’s protagonist and yet makes ridiculously inept and emotionally unstable decisions time and time again through the film. He acts dangerously and vindictively, breaking all the rules a cop should follow. But this isn’t like Dirty Harry where breaking the rules is done for societal good, Douglas breaks the rules because he wants to gain personally. Sharon Stone on the other hand is set up as the antagonist who has done reprehensible things. Yet the entire film creates doubt in her guilt and establishes her as a calculating and stable individual in opposition to Douglas. Under this lens, the protagonist/antagonist divide can be flipped and Basic Instinct can be read as an indictment of Douglas’s masculinity rather than an indictment of female power as many critics at the time argued.

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Through the reproduction of the patriarchal erotic thriller that was popular in the 80s, Verhoeven was able to reverse the ideological aims of his film into an effective, if not entirely accessible social critique. Sirk did the same in the 50s. His melodrama’s operated similarly to other melodramas and even to the sex comedies of the day, but his reproduction was not an endorsement of the values of those films. Sirk was the progenitor of Verhoeven because both directors use the tropes and conventions of an established style to critique the ideologies of that style.

And now the connection to Gone Girl becomes clear. Flynn and Fincher use the same method as Sirk and Verhoeven to make their social critique. Gone Girl at first seems to be telling the story of the misunderstood husband and the vindictive wife. While the number of films this trope is seen in is not as numerous as those in the days of Sirk and Verhoeven, the point stands that there is a socially constructed narrative of men being misunderstood and women being conniving and manipulative. This narrative that we find across media in society is deeply problematic and misogynistic so it isn’t hard to see where critics have found evidence to call Gone Girl misogynistic. Flynn and Fincher provided that evidence deliberately.

But as the film progresses, we see something different start to arise. Amy’s vindictive streak and manipulative tendencies are not baseless. They are the result of her entire social development from childhood straight to marriage. Her parents wrote books about her ideal life as the Amazing Amy and she then constructed her own ideal life with Nick, saying they wouldn’t be like the couples they both despise. And yet the marriage comes and both Amy and Nick realize that the partnership they fostered in their marriage was not the egalitarian ideal that they, and so many other couples, wanted. Both Amy and Nick idealized not only themselves, but each other as a means of changing each other and making their relationship perfect, enacting the same flaws they wanted to avoid. This reading is critical of marriage and relationships in general and is clearly evident once the myth of the reproduction is dismissed. Gone Girl is only misogynistic if you think the reproduction of the misogyny is an endorsement thereof – which myself and many others have argued is not the case. Just as All that Heaven Allows was critical of high society’s views on relationships and Basic Instinct was critical of the 80s views on powerful women in relationships, Gone Girl is critical of modern marriage and gender expectations.

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The argument against my claims is that only academics who study the films will see these problems, however, that isn’t the point. In all of these debates, the argument does not rest on what is problematic, but if the film’s representation of problematic material is progressive or not. Whether or not the film succeeds at making it clear that its intent is to critique, the end effect of debate concerning the film is a synthesis from both sides of what makes a representation problematic. The social critique is maintained whether or not you think the film is successful in communicating its message because either the film is an example of problematic representation or an example of a critique of problematic representation. The definition of what is problematic remains constant and that to me confirms that the films are successful regardless of what you think of them. High society is still bad, patriarchy is still bad, relationships based on lies and unkeepable promises are still bad and that makes All That Heaven Allows, Basic Instinct, and Gone Girl awesome.

Part of our monthly theme: Hatchet for a Honeymoon: Marriage and the Screen

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