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Jun. 15th, 2019 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alwaysalreadyHere's my analysis of the 2003 film Down With Love, cross-posted from my Letterboxd:
I saw this when it was first out in cinemas, but that was more than half my life ago. I saw it on DVD at some point between now and then, but my memory was hazy. I knew it looked great. I knew it was silly and satirical.
I didn't know how gay it was! Even though I remembered Sarah Paulson and David Hyde Pierce! I had forgotten about the dynamic between them - how Vicki wants to marry Peter even though she thinks he's a homosexual and in love with his best friend. The way both of these actors say the word "homosexual", by the way. True camp beauty.
There's more to the queerness than the camp styling and the knowing performances of Paulson and Pierce, although that's all pretty key. Their secondary plot functions as a commentary on how queer this kind of romcom is, full of artifice in styling but also in plot.
The leads are kept apart by strange machinations, and by their own layers of deception. Even when they're together, they're not really together. They have other motives. They're not operating under their real identity. If you were a real person inside the world of this film, you'd observe a character playing out this sort of scenario and think: they're gay and in love with the person they spend all their time with, whose stuff is strewn all over their apartment. Not the person they never see, who they are avoiding with all of their might. Even if they claim that their avoidance, their plotting, is a sign of the true depth of their (heterosexual) love.
So the battle of the sexes idea is about making a big show of all of the work and thought and energy you're putting into your heterosexual romance - while really, you're stripping off around your best friend, dancing with them, always being extremely close, intimate.
So, the film makes great use of both queer subtext *and* text. The main plot, with Barbara Novak (Zellweger) and Catcher Block (McGregor), is the big subtextual show, made up of various ludicrous machinations which involve them holding each other at arms' length until the very end of the film. Their kisses aren't just kisses, they're arguments, they're parts of a multi-layered fight. Professions of love drive them apart, not together. Their apartments are beautiful, their clothes are sumptuous - everything is artificial and wonderful, and nothing is intimate or lived in or deep.
Where does the text come in? Vicki (Sarah Paulson) has observed what she can of the world Peter (David Hyde Pierce), her counterpart, and Catcher Block live in. The deception Catcher and Barbara are involved in mutually enacting on each other has led to Peter living in Catcher’s apartment, and vice-versa. This switch happened in the middle of a meal Peter was cooking - originally meant for Vicki, but it ended up being given to Peter as soon as Peter required it. And as a result of this switch, Peter has been trying to convince her that Catcher’s apartment is his - but when she asks if a photo on display is of his own parents, he says no, they're Catcher’s parents. He isn’t committing to the lie’s full extent. He’s revealing what the lie means. That he is in Catcher’s thrall.
Are you following? It’s hard to write about this because of how pointedly ludicrous the plot is. Because of the ways in which Catcher has to lie to Barbara for his plan to work, Peter is shown to be obsessed with Catcher - to be living a life which is dependent on him, full of him, even when he's not around. These machinations hold Barbara off, and they hold Peter deeper. He hits the wrong button, and knocks Vicki over with Catcher’s bed. It’s a metaphor, but it’s also a real thing that happens in this film.
So, Vicki looks at all of this, and decides what any reasonable person would: Peter is in love with Catcher. And she wants to marry him anyway. It doesn't matter to her! She just wants the stability that marriage can bring. If she can’t be a career woman, a new woman, this is the other option she sees available to her. And... in many ways, this is the relief image, the other side of the coin of the "Down With Love girls" created by Novak, new women who want sex and careers without being tied down by marriage. Now that marriage and love have been revealed to be structures which hold women down with invocations of love and sentimental obligations, what about women who want marriage without love or sex, just to give them stability and freedom from anxieties about looking for love and sex? Women who will now be free from being bound by love and sentiment that they don’t feel and don’t have to feel?
Vicki understands homosexuality as being encoded, and both revealed and covered by artifice. And she also understands ways in which it can intersect with and subvert normative ways of living.
There is also something interesting in how Vicki is furious when she discovers that Peter has lied to her about Catcher’s plot to expose Barbara:
The first of these she understood, sympathised with. And it had kind of... revealed to her a subversive way of living, outside of the oppressive structures of heteronormativity. But now she’s discovered Peter’s allegiances really do lie with Catcher, that he’s not her ally above all? That despite what she perceives to be his homosexuality, he’s just like every other man? She’s furious. How to get out of this labyrinth of deception? How to be free?
On hearing himself described as just like every other man, Peter immediately changes. “I’m just like every other man!” he cries. The thought has never occurred to him before. And he suddenly embodies what she means; he does a strong impression of virulent heterosexual masculinity, and kisses Vicki forcefully, before inviting her back into the apartment (Catcher’s aprtment) for ten minutes - the ten minutes that has been used as a code-word for MIND-BLOWING SEX in Catcher’s SEXY APARTMENT for the whole film.
This is supposedly their happy ending - Peter has finally won Vicki over with his display of straightness. But... he was mimicking Catcher the whole time. “Just like every other man”, means “like Catcher, aligned with Catcher”. He copies his mannerisms. He does as he think Catcher would do.
Vicki’s happy with it. She wants the appearance, the artifice. She’s not bothered about the rest. She has a telling throwaway line about Catcher, when he turns up at Now magazine’s new offices to interview for the job of Barbara’s assistant:
She’s not after a grand heterosexual passion: get it over with, and then the real fun can begin.
This secondary plot and its misunderstandings/coy discussions of homosexuality and what it means in this 1962 setting undoubtedly subverts, exposes, undermines the main plot. They rub up against each other; they speak to each other; they dance with each other. Just like Peter and Catcher do, in the pretense of discussing some Good Heterosexual Fun.
I saw this when it was first out in cinemas, but that was more than half my life ago. I saw it on DVD at some point between now and then, but my memory was hazy. I knew it looked great. I knew it was silly and satirical.
I didn't know how gay it was! Even though I remembered Sarah Paulson and David Hyde Pierce! I had forgotten about the dynamic between them - how Vicki wants to marry Peter even though she thinks he's a homosexual and in love with his best friend. The way both of these actors say the word "homosexual", by the way. True camp beauty.
There's more to the queerness than the camp styling and the knowing performances of Paulson and Pierce, although that's all pretty key. Their secondary plot functions as a commentary on how queer this kind of romcom is, full of artifice in styling but also in plot.
The leads are kept apart by strange machinations, and by their own layers of deception. Even when they're together, they're not really together. They have other motives. They're not operating under their real identity. If you were a real person inside the world of this film, you'd observe a character playing out this sort of scenario and think: they're gay and in love with the person they spend all their time with, whose stuff is strewn all over their apartment. Not the person they never see, who they are avoiding with all of their might. Even if they claim that their avoidance, their plotting, is a sign of the true depth of their (heterosexual) love.
So the battle of the sexes idea is about making a big show of all of the work and thought and energy you're putting into your heterosexual romance - while really, you're stripping off around your best friend, dancing with them, always being extremely close, intimate.
So, the film makes great use of both queer subtext *and* text. The main plot, with Barbara Novak (Zellweger) and Catcher Block (McGregor), is the big subtextual show, made up of various ludicrous machinations which involve them holding each other at arms' length until the very end of the film. Their kisses aren't just kisses, they're arguments, they're parts of a multi-layered fight. Professions of love drive them apart, not together. Their apartments are beautiful, their clothes are sumptuous - everything is artificial and wonderful, and nothing is intimate or lived in or deep.
Where does the text come in? Vicki (Sarah Paulson) has observed what she can of the world Peter (David Hyde Pierce), her counterpart, and Catcher Block live in. The deception Catcher and Barbara are involved in mutually enacting on each other has led to Peter living in Catcher’s apartment, and vice-versa. This switch happened in the middle of a meal Peter was cooking - originally meant for Vicki, but it ended up being given to Peter as soon as Peter required it. And as a result of this switch, Peter has been trying to convince her that Catcher’s apartment is his - but when she asks if a photo on display is of his own parents, he says no, they're Catcher’s parents. He isn’t committing to the lie’s full extent. He’s revealing what the lie means. That he is in Catcher’s thrall.
Are you following? It’s hard to write about this because of how pointedly ludicrous the plot is. Because of the ways in which Catcher has to lie to Barbara for his plan to work, Peter is shown to be obsessed with Catcher - to be living a life which is dependent on him, full of him, even when he's not around. These machinations hold Barbara off, and they hold Peter deeper. He hits the wrong button, and knocks Vicki over with Catcher’s bed. It’s a metaphor, but it’s also a real thing that happens in this film.
So, Vicki looks at all of this, and decides what any reasonable person would: Peter is in love with Catcher. And she wants to marry him anyway. It doesn't matter to her! She just wants the stability that marriage can bring. If she can’t be a career woman, a new woman, this is the other option she sees available to her. And... in many ways, this is the relief image, the other side of the coin of the "Down With Love girls" created by Novak, new women who want sex and careers without being tied down by marriage. Now that marriage and love have been revealed to be structures which hold women down with invocations of love and sentimental obligations, what about women who want marriage without love or sex, just to give them stability and freedom from anxieties about looking for love and sex? Women who will now be free from being bound by love and sentiment that they don’t feel and don’t have to feel?
Vicki understands homosexuality as being encoded, and both revealed and covered by artifice. And she also understands ways in which it can intersect with and subvert normative ways of living.
There is also something interesting in how Vicki is furious when she discovers that Peter has lied to her about Catcher’s plot to expose Barbara:
Deceiving the girl you're going to marry about your homosexuality is one thing. Deceiving me in business is another. I thought you were different, but you're not. You're a rat, Peter MacMannus. You're just like every other man.
The first of these she understood, sympathised with. And it had kind of... revealed to her a subversive way of living, outside of the oppressive structures of heteronormativity. But now she’s discovered Peter’s allegiances really do lie with Catcher, that he’s not her ally above all? That despite what she perceives to be his homosexuality, he’s just like every other man? She’s furious. How to get out of this labyrinth of deception? How to be free?
On hearing himself described as just like every other man, Peter immediately changes. “I’m just like every other man!” he cries. The thought has never occurred to him before. And he suddenly embodies what she means; he does a strong impression of virulent heterosexual masculinity, and kisses Vicki forcefully, before inviting her back into the apartment (Catcher’s aprtment) for ten minutes - the ten minutes that has been used as a code-word for MIND-BLOWING SEX in Catcher’s SEXY APARTMENT for the whole film.
This is supposedly their happy ending - Peter has finally won Vicki over with his display of straightness. But... he was mimicking Catcher the whole time. “Just like every other man”, means “like Catcher, aligned with Catcher”. He copies his mannerisms. He does as he think Catcher would do.
Vicki’s happy with it. She wants the appearance, the artifice. She’s not bothered about the rest. She has a telling throwaway line about Catcher, when he turns up at Now magazine’s new offices to interview for the job of Barbara’s assistant:
At the risk of sounding like my mother: just stay perfectly still and let him get it over with.
She’s not after a grand heterosexual passion: get it over with, and then the real fun can begin.
This secondary plot and its misunderstandings/coy discussions of homosexuality and what it means in this 1962 setting undoubtedly subverts, exposes, undermines the main plot. They rub up against each other; they speak to each other; they dance with each other. Just like Peter and Catcher do, in the pretense of discussing some Good Heterosexual Fun.
