{"id":4738,"date":"2014-04-04T00:00:33","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T04:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=4738"},"modified":"2014-04-14T15:48:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T19:48:30","slug":"phenomena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/phenomena\/","title":{"rendered":"Phenomena: Being a Girl is Fucking Metal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"phenomena\"
\n

\nPhenomena<\/a> (1985)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/b>Directed by Dario Argento
\nWritten by Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini
\n110 min.<\/p>\n

Very mild spoilers.<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable that independent, assertive, intelligent women might have trouble identifying with most female characters, because these traits are traditionally seen as \u2018masculine\u2018, and as such, given to men.\u00a0 For this reason, I more often identify with male characters than female ones. Aside from Ana in Cria Cuervos<\/a>, it\u2019s usually pretty hard for me to think of any on the spot\u2014but now that I\u2019ve seen Dario Argento\u2019s Phenomena, I have another.
\n
\nI saw it in a theater with a large group of friends, which provided me not only the focus and intimacy of a big screen and darkness, but the ability to see, and judge, the reactions of others. Despite the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of Argento films, I usually take them pretty seriously, because they\u2019re so danged beautiful to look at\u2014chiaroscuro lighting<\/a>, contrasts of pinks and blues, timelessly gorgeous scenery\u2014and I hoped the others would too.\u00a0 For the most part, they were respectfully quiet, except for the fact that, during the parts where heavy metal would play, everyone would laugh and ironically headbang and make devil horns with their hands.\u00a0 They got so into it that, during the third metal scene, the row in front of me created one huge devil horn using the fists of about six people and the pinkies of the people on either end.<\/p>\n

I wish I had a picture of that\u2014it was a rare sight to see such a hilarious silhouette over the backdrop of a painterly-lit girl walking around slowly, because that\u2019s a screen image that, if silent, one wouldn\u2019t expect to see people rocking out to.\u00a0 The reason they reacted this way is because it amused them that metal was being played during parts where no fast action was occurring.\u00a0 For instance, one \u2018metal scene\u2019 was of a girl walking through an empty house with a candle; another was of the main character sleepwalking; another of her following a firefly to find a murder victim\u2019s glove; another of her locked in a room, and instead of fighting her way out, using a long object to try to reach a telephone in the other room and call for help.\u00a0 The unconventionality of this may seem arbitrary and silly to some, but I found it quite moving.<\/p>\n

By making the protagonist female, and utilizing metal, Argento calls attention to the inherent metalness of what she is doing. Had it been a male protagonist, the soundtrack wouldn\u2019t carry the same weight\u2014it\u2019d be seen as cheesy, sure, but not out of the ordinary. Here, we are forced to either try and understand what it is about what she is doing that is metal, or simply turn off our brain and giggle. (Either way, we of course have a good time.)<\/p>\n

Rather than facing a situation by fighting (like a male trope) or running away screaming (like a female trope), this character often takes a more realistic and reasoned course of action.\u00a0 Almost every scene with metal as a soundtrack is of her exploring or problem solving\u2014carefully, intently, curiously, instinctively, and above all else, rationally.<\/i>\u00a0 While the things she\u2019s doing may seem slow and not very \u2018metal\u2019 at first, she\u2019s actually very tough, because it takes serious willpower to keep your wits and morals about you in a dangerous situation rather than just blindly do what would get most movie characters killed (and deservedly so).<\/p>\n

This theme gets carried into a few of the more quiet parts of the movie too, such as when when she\u2019s hooked up to an IV and needs to escape. Unlike in most movies where they\u2019d just show a split second shot of her taking it out, here we see her carefully remove it as fluid and blood dribbles onto her arm.\u00a0 The painful-yet-necessary tediousness of this shows not only how reasonable she is, but that she treats flesh as something that\u2019s serious and not to be taken for granted.\u00a0 She\u2019s even a vegetarian, which, like being a woman, is a noble thing that can be seen as a weakness in dire situations because it\u2019s not the easiest way to live.<\/p>\n

This character\u2019s uncompromising nature is admirable. We see her at her most afraid, but she does the right thing despite her fear, which gives her self-esteem\u2014when no threats are present, she\u2019s composed and confident, not afraid to point it out when others are wrong. She is a true badass, and deserves every note of metal she is given.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"phenomena\"
\n

\nPhenomena<\/a> (1985)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/b>Directed by Dario Argento
\nWritten by Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini
\n110 min.<\/p>\n

Very mild spoilers.<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable that independent, assertive, intelligent women might have trouble identifying with most female characters, because these traits are traditionally seen as \u2018masculine\u2018, and as such, given to men.\u00a0 For this reason, I more often identify with male characters than female ones. Aside from Ana in Cria Cuervos<\/a>, it\u2019s usually pretty hard for me to think of any on the spot\u2014but now that I\u2019ve seen Dario Argento\u2019s Phenomena, I have another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3606],"tags":[3789,3788,3272,3682,3631,3742,3787,3681,3792,3790,3791,104,185],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-chloes-essays","tag-chiaroscuro","tag-chiaroscuro-lighting","tag-chloe-pelletier","tag-creepers","tag-cria-cuervos","tag-dario-argento","tag-franco-ferrini","tag-phenomena","tag-phenomena-essay","tag-phenomena-movie","tag-phenomena-review","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4746,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions\/4746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}