May West once said “Marriage is a wonderful establishment, but I am not yet ready to commit.” Apparently, more and more women seem to agree with her. The number of single women has doubled since the sixties.
Unlike Ms. West, many of us do dream about the day we get to finally walk down the isle in our white sparkling dress hoping that isle leads to eternal bliss. Our parents, our family, our friends and even the IRS – all expect us to marry.
Nowadays, single women do not hold their breath in expectation for love. Quite the contrary. They establish a full life for themselves with the intent to fit the man who may or may not come along into their well established life so that they will eventually have to make little or no sacrifice. On the off chance of a break up they can simply continue where they left off, living a full life on their own.
A book called “Bachelor Girls” written by Betty Israel was published a year ago in the USA. The author conducted a comprehensive study that focused on single women from the 19th century to the present day. Israel collected data from films, books and newspapers that were published during this period and concluded that society has always seen single women as a threat. These women took on many forms; the bohemians of the twenties or our 21st century Carry Bradshaws. In her book, Israel claims that society believes that a woman’s true vocation is to marry and bring children into the world therefore single women are still perceived as the rotten apple of the bunch. However, Israel also shows that during the Victorian era elderly middle class single women enjoyed a rather happy existence (Florence Nightingale, Louisa May Alcott author of “Little Women”). The book’s argument is that the rise of capitalism, the obliteration of social classes and the development of transport brought on an unexpected edge that benefited these single women. For instance, many women became single during World War II when their husbands were drafted and joined the fighting forces over seas. The single woman was consequently perceived as glamorous and patriotic and after having a taste of emancipation, many of these women had a hard time going back to the bond of married life. The modern day single girl got legitimate recognition through the media of the nineties that depicted her as having a full and interesting life. The single girl started to appear as a main character in books, films and TV series. Sitcoms such as “Who’s the Boss” and “Murphy Brown” where unusual in the conservative eighties and early nineties TV conventions since they depicted single women as strong careerists who were the main attraction of the series. The real interest in the modern single woman began when the show “Ally McCbeal” was first televised and magnified the life and choices of the single woman of the modern age. Bridget Jones (both book and film) was also a story of a successful young woman desperately seeking a man to share her life with. Through this search, she realises that the conception of relationships in the eyes of society and her own is actually crazy. Both women believed in finding love but it remains unclear whether they truly believed in marriage. The ultimate single gal is of course “Sex and the City’s” Carry Bradshaw who idealised the single way of life and turned many women into her groupies. Women related to her and what she stands for and although she also was on a relentless quest for love, she did not forget to live life to the fullest. She refused to give up her freedom to live her life the way she wanted to, nor did she intend on giving up the girlie activities she liked so much to do with her friends; lunch, museums and galleries and last but not least shopping – the apple of her eye. “Sex and the City” conveyed the image of the modern single woman as an individual who leads a full life and as a whole person is in search of that special someone not necessarily to complete but rather to complement. The real life, fun and love also happen in men’s lives. In this case, not only did the media reflect society’s view of the single modern woman but also affected it. Many women felt they could also lead a Carry Bradshaw lifestyle and spend time and money making themselves feel happy.
The equality between the sexes brought about many changes in society one of which being the fact that women are no longer waiting to be rescued from a life of loneliness. If a man can put in many hours at work and climb the corporate ladder, so can a woman. If a man can be a combat soldier, so can a woman. In addition, if a man can enjoy a single life, making money and spending it on himself, enjoying unrestricted sex that requires no commitment then surely a woman can too.
As a woman, I find I am forever torn between the career and relationship conflict. Having had both long term and short term relationships I can safely say that there is always that point in which a romantic relationship is growing and the man comes out with the following sincere statement: I threaten him. To which I always retaliate: “I refuse to be a dryer during the day and a blower during the night. This is who I am and it is not about to change.”
Well, maybe I will never be the good wife that has the rice neatly piled next to the chicken (I do not care for cooking at all), but rather get takeaways or open a bottle of red wine for my man or better yet drink just as much as him, let out bodily sounds after a big meal and he can definitely forget about mascara, lipstick and a nice pin in my hair come Sunday morning. I will always be true to myself, always say what is on my mind and I never want to change that.
He always says I am an unusual woman or in other words, I drive him crazy. This is who I am and I do not intend to apologise for it. When I am caught up with work, he can entertain himself elsewhere. If I want to go to the cinema, I can go by myself. Why would I need anyone to go with me, after all seeing a film is hardly a social activity. The fact that I want my freedom and can also bestow freedom scares him.
Why am I telling you all this?
I decided to write a script based on this issue. My script is nothing like conventional scripts and has no schematic diagrams as such. I decided to write a short script for my finals. This script conveys the feelings of love that arise through the meeting of the heroine (Hennessy) and her love object (Richard). The film is a combination of a video clip, an artistic display, a collage that all come together as a short film. There are several flashbacks to events that either did or did not take place between Richard and Hennessy. It is not important whether these events actually took place or whether they are fragments of Hennessy’s imagination. What is important is the tension between them, the tension of love, that craziness it makes us feel. The emotional anxiety. The film does not deal with a conflict the heroine feels about her love, it communicates the feelings we sense as we fall in love. The film itself is decadent and rather sterile in appearance in order for it to better communicate the inner world of the characters. They live in a decadent and degenerated world that revolves around brand names and trademarks, it is a clean catalogue like world, lushes like a long wealthy lifestyle commercial which make the characters emotionshighlighted and extremely clear. The two characters that are in the midst of a power struggle speak of love but do not act on it. The conversations between them are like choosing to masturbate instead of actually have sex, they have naively forgotten the existence of the realisation of love. They are motivated by fear of losing something, fear of finding out their world is phoney for there is no chance of drama on the lifestyle channel.
Hennessy is a modern woman. She is a career girl who is “threatened” by the love of the millionaire lawyer (Richard) for her.
Since the invention of birth control in the fifties, women have been able to take control over their future. Suddenly women could go out and have sex with several men without having to be married. This enabled women to “control” their reproductive abilities, which consequently contributed to career development and or spouse selection.
I believe that in our modern world somehow everything got mixed up. Women have the final say, they turn to men, the fluctuation of roles between the sexes is apparent and suddenly we cannot find ourselves. Once there were clear cut rules for courtship and seduction. Nowadays sex is so accessible that pick up lines must be extremely witty, original and interesting which means so many men are at a loss that they no longer know what is required of them! It is turmoil. The market is full of magazines for men and women, teaching them what brand to wear, which cosmetic product to buy all for the sake of making them more attractive to the opposite sex. Articles on “how to”, step by step guidelines and advice columns all to get us to do just what our most basic instinct tells us to = make love. “102 positions to make him stay in bed”, “how many types of orgasms are you familiar with?”
It is crazy! I cannot imagine that the Neanderthals ever gave their mates’ G spot a thought. Surely, Adam never thought of flipping Eve on her back after 20 minutes for the missionary position. I think people have forgotten what it is all about. You must feel your partner and flow with him/her regardless of foolish articles on blow jobs.
I wanted to make a statement through my film and convey my point of view regarding our world today. It is this modern world that alienates us from nature, the freedom to communicate freely and make love. It brainwashes our mind with magazines and TV programs that make us all think alike and act in accordance to some general standard making us lose our individuality. We must be genuine, natural and not aligned with some fashion statement that is currently popular or a certain weight that is said to be ideal, a certain look, a certain colour, or ware high heals that make your spine ache. After all no one has ever published an article on “how to go to the toilet properly!”
I decide to communicate the rich world of “Vogue” through the two characters who are opposites but also complete each other. They share the same social and financial status.
There are two more supporting roles that intensify the antagonism between the two main characters. I will elaborate on them later.
‘White Title’
Hennessy is a 30 year old executive who owns a prestigious fashion magazine (Vogue). She is part of the elite society, very well respected, and admired. She is a powerful woman until it comes to love. Richard is a wealthy 40 year old lawyer who works with her (no financial threat). As soon as he steps into the picture and talks to Hennessy about love she turns into a femme fatale who shows no signs of letting her guard down or losing control. Why should such a strong woman be afraid of love? Perhaps it is because being powerful women means that we are afraid of losing ourselves in a relationship because we totally commit ourselves to our partner, which is powerful and daunting.
I emphasized the threat issue by using animals in the film:
Hennessy meets Richard for the first time in the pub scene. She is dressed like a black widow spider; her black lacy dress and pearls are like a spider’s cobweb. She is drinking whisky as Richard’s equal. He is a ladies’ man, masculine, ideal, a John Wayne type of man.
The pool scene is the seduction scene. It is very surreal and there is no dialogue. It is like a video clip that tries to communicate emotion and sexual tension through the expressive acting. As the Director, I decided to use a red apple as a symbol of the biblical seduction scene between Eve and the snake. As soon as Hennessy takes a bite from the apple, Richard comes out of the pool. Instead of going on to love making, he has marked the situation as check just before the checkmate. Taking a bite from the apple that stands for seduction means knowledge. Hennessy is dressed in a colourful bathing suite and looks like a swan in the water.
The third scene is the pearls scene. Up in the suite, Hennessy is dressed in a minimal purple nighty. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she is wearing sharply pointed high heal shoes. The purple was chosen to draw attention to the venomous green curtains in the room (The Art Department changed the entire room). She walks towards Richard in a snaky manner and moves like a reptile trying to lure him into her den. The dialogue is like a chess game and Richard begins to lose his patience. Her answers are not seductive but rather off putting. He is not after a one night stand. He wants to make love to her. She is brutally sexual. Richard is pushed into yanking her pearl necklace. She says she hates what she does and that everyone is fake and Richard realises it is she who is the real phoney. She cannot be herself or discuss her emotions without mentioning everybody else. The tearing of the pearl necklace symbolises the tear in their relationship. She is incapable of dealing with anything that is real.
The fourth scene is the hunt scene. Hennessy is dishing out the food onto a plate for Richard but she is all intent on having a conversation with him. She is dressed like a tiger ready to leap on its prey. The meal is set in a large hall and there is a round romantic table between them. The camera revolves around them to intensify the hunt, the unresolved conversation. Suddenly a phone rings and the hunt is brought to an abrupt end. The relentless ringing of the phone symbolises that there is a vacuum around this couple. There is no one but themselves and their ego. The fact that the phone is never answered marks the annihilation of the outside world.
They are busy doing there own thing which brings us to the climax of the film – the minute Hennessy gets up she realises she is trapped in her love for Richard.
Hennessy’s breaking point begins with Richard’s powerful and honest words to her. He loves her. He breaks the wall. Things slowly start to seep into her comprehension and she sheds the Femme Fatale skin and becomes the true delicate woman that loves him, wants him and longs for his love.
The final scene shows them alone in a pub. The outside world does not exist as long as they are together. Honesty breaks through and truthfulness takes over. Hennessy admits that being honest is not easy and in a moment of truth loses her armour and becomes vulnerable. She speaks to Richard but the viewers can no longer hear her. The dolly falls back to intensify the scene. What is she saying to him? Why is he looking at her so attentively? What will happen next between them? We will not be able to hear her loving and honest words to him but we will be able to understand what has happened by the powerful kiss that binds them together at the end…
As the Director of the film, I knew that even if the place was swarming with people, the glance between Hennessy and Richard would give the impression that they are alone in the world and that their love won against all odds. They can face each other naked and no masks are needed, love has become everything to them. The solution becomes unimportant. The lesson learned is what counts. There is no need for money or decadence since they now have each other.
Hennessy smokes coloured cigarettes that symbolise the mood she is in. I analysed the meaning of colours and body chakras according to the ancient Chinese traditions. Again, we see the motif of fashion, wealth, and image verses natural.
The film was supposed to open with a perfume commercial as a sort of promotion trailer of the film.
The five senses – the bridge between past and present
Advanced beings such as us humans have five active senses each in control of a different area of our body. Each sense translates, clarifies, warns and helps make a decision that concludes in a certain action. Our lives would be much fuller if we nurture these five senses. The enrichment of the five senses will naturally lead to the option of using the host’s sixth sense, intuition that has yet to be scientifically proven. The sixth sense is referred to nowadays as a gut feeling which we can all enjoy the use of if only we stay attentive to our bodies and use it as we use the rest of our senses.
Eyesight: the world around us would look so much richer and diverse if looked at with a multitude of colour and movement. Seeing everything in black and white limits the possibility to do so. Blindness keeps us from experiencing the colourful beauty of nature. The compensation for that disability is the maximisation of the rest of the functioning senses. Our world is still incomplete. We learn to internalise our sight but that is also done in black and white. What should we do? We must go outdoors and enrich our lives with the colourful nature and not settle for dull greyness. We must enjoy all the colours of the rainbow supplied so generously by God. What happens when we do not expose ourselves to all the colours of the rainbow? We suffer from depression, our immune system eventually weakens, blood pressure rises, fertility is minimised and life expectancy shortens. Who ever can make use of this sense is asked to do so and as much as possible. God has blessed us with this precious gift and so we are obliged to use it and not let it go to waste.
Hearing: The numerous sounds around us stimulate the ear and reach the brain. Abundance of harmonious sounds, such as classical music, cultivates the area in the brain that is in charge of hearing. Deafness prevents us from hearing words being spoken, enjoy the sound of music, sounds of nature or listen to a story being told. Compensation for this is the enrichment of our remaining senses, listening to our inner voice. This is vastly important and is priceless, yet most of us were blessed with more than that. Unfortunately, our hearing is impaired due to environmental noises that damage our ears. Music playing at an indescribable volume damages our hearing. We do not sufficiently protect our hearing when working in surroundings that require protection. And what about the brain? We minimize the active part of the brain, which eventually becomes irreversible.
Taste: This is an extremely important sense that encourages us to eat or avoid eating things that can be harmful. In this day an age, most of us suffer from a lack of sufficient taste buds. Each taste is channeled through a different frequency. What actually happens is that most of us settle for three or four main flavours and therefore miss out on so many others. We usually have food that is sweet, sour or savoury. Some people add the hot spices, but what about the rest? We all suffer from flavour malnutrition of one kind or another. We are all familiar with the type of food that makes us drool such as home cooked meals specially made for us by mum or Grandma. Food generates imagination, memories come to mind and both activate our glands that produce saliva and digestive juices that stimulate the process of digestion. The tummy rumbles and the soul yearns. Our biblical patriarch Isaac could only bless his son Jacob after consuming his meal. When hungry we are weak, our mental abilities are limited, and the soul deteriorates up to the point of melancholy and depression. What should we do? We must enrich our food with as many food groups and natural herbs as possible. Using unnatural taste additives means only supplying our body with extra salt we are well to do without since it affects our blood pressure, blocks the arteries and causes various diseases and death. Let us enjoy the myriad of flavours, thus supplying our body and soul with all they require.
Sense of touch: We use this sense naturally and unconsciously. We feel hot and cold, soft and comfy, prickly or coarse etc. It is a sense that is distributed throughout the body on the skin surface but is most sensitive in the hands area and less on the legs. With the use of this sense, we are aware of walking on the ground or floating in mid air. We can draw and imagine many objects with the help of this sense. Nevertheless, we do not use it enough. Some of us use gloves, others damage their skin by hard physical work or much walking which makes the skin coarse and numb. We wear synthetic cloths that leave our body full of static electricity, which disrupts our natural electromagnetic field. This causes major damage because our body is not just chemical but also electrical. Since our entire body is controlled by the brain, this type of damage hurts a critical part of it. Developmentally speaking, skin and brain come from the same ectoderm and therefore both need stimulants. The stimulation of the skin affects the brain and consequently all other organs as well as hormonal and enzymatic functions. The Chinese skilfully channelled the effect of skin stimulation on the brain into an established way of treatment and healing. They invented acupuncture and use it to treat and cure many ailments with fantastic results.
Smell: What do smells do to us? We either welcome food or reject it depending solely upon its smell rather than having to taste it. We are attracted to pleasant smells and repelled by bad smell. Smell stimulates our mind and reminds us both positive and negative experiences. Smell activates us in many ways. It encourages us to eat. It arouses us sexually or repels us to make sure there is no contact. Smell is a reminder of the beginning of life like the smell of a baby. It also brings to mind the end of life and the scary stench of death. Smell activates our glands that produce saliva and digestive juices, it also generates hormone discharge during a sexual encounter etc. Smell is unique to each one of us and derives from sweatiness in the armpit and groin area. Smell is used in nature to mark territories like in the cat and bear families. Smell insures mating when a bitch is on heat for example. Fear also activates the adrenal gland that discharges a unique scent dogs recognise as fear and consequently attack.
In this day and age, humans’ natural body odour is in remission. We bathe our bodies in chemically scented soaps that stick to our skin for a long period of time. We rid ourselves from natural secretions with unnatural aids that penetrate the skin surface. We nourish our skin with creams and lotions. Many women and men use perfume and deodorant that stops the body from producing its natural odour. These products irritate and damage the skin. They also irritate the eyes and nose mucus membranes to ill effect. We will no longer be able to identify the scent indicating sexual attraction or repulsion. We will fail to identify a hostile environment and so on. The perfume commercial was intended to be shot in a white sterile looking studio room with no indication as to where the actual location is. The white bed is covered in white satin linen and placed on a revolving stage as the camera rolls. The idea is extremely erotic as the black man enters a sexual situation with an albino woman and each one of the five senses is communicated in choreography.
For instance – the albino woman bites the black man’s ear etc….The idea is to promote the film by selling a product that does not really exist which emphasises how brands and trade marks have taken over the world. The sexual and erotic innuendoes are used to make a point of the boundaries that have been broken for it was not so long ago that any physical relationship between a black man an a white woman would have been severely frowned upon. Once again, the senses are cynically emphasised like the fact that the sense of smell is the only sense we can absolutely trust not to lie to us because it has no filters and channels data directly to the primitive brain. The neutral scent of our body is slowly fading with the ever growing perfume industry that produces scent as a mask. Each individual has his or her own genetic code defined by their scent and in this post modern world, we are busy living the image instead of living the essence. We are no longer unique individuals but have rather become a homogenous unit and scent is just added to the façade, to the lie. Nowadays, people are afraid of smell such as sweat and therefore scrub their bodies with soaps, use laundry detergents and perfumes to control their body. I will not go into the plastic surgery industry suffice it to say that many wear masks on their face in more ways than one.
I eventually decided to forgo the commercial feeling it would be redundant. I believe that the immensely powerful duo communicated the idea I was trying to get across and it is possible that the commercial would have caused some confusion and ultimately be more of a burden on the film as a whole than an asset.
