Fatal attraction
JANE WELLS YOU KNOW that Alex Forrest getting pretty serious in her Gallagher (Michael Douglas) when she douses his car in acid and in the process nearly gasses the pet rabbit he's just Gallagher, she follows him to his family's country retreat.
True to horror film form, watching the chocolate box scene unfold inside as daddy, with long-suffering wife Beth by his side, gives the rabbit to darling daughter in front of the hore fire (still burning). Alex Forrest then promptly throws
I know how she felt. By that point in the film I was getting pretty sick of all the hard sell on the happy family too. Not, Forrest - because she is very definitely the baddy in all this. you along the thread of its logic morality, which is the main substance of the film, hung on a flimsy — basic at best ... frame of a story line. But there's plenty of drama, action and emotional pitch to compensate for any lack in complexity or subtlety - and the film doesn't leave you in any doubt about who's side you're supposed to be on. 40 Two New York professionals
ANL gets just one line — albeit of approval — despite its great success in fighting the fascists. The ANL deserved support from the left, but there were problems with its strategy which need to be debated. • Despite its limitations in focussing on a strategy for fighting fascism, Hill's book makes compelling, and at times moving, reading o The National Front marches, (right to left) Patrick Harrington, lan Anderson, Joe Pearce: grossly inflated self-esteem, back-biting, petty rivalries and faction fighting characterise leading fascist circles have a brief designer affair, complete with stylish sex in fully co-ordinated sets. He's married and wants to leave it at that. Fair enough. She's single and doesn't - also fair enough (at first), even though she knew the score when she made her first move. Forrest is treated fairly, and fairly positively up to this point in the film.
Besides doing the pulling, she also gets to make a reasonable case against men's use and abuse of women in sexual relationships, describing with some accuracy some of the immature emotional devices many men employ. So
But she isn't allowed too much rope before she's very character weaknesses usually ascribed to sexually assertive women: loneliness, insecurity, neuroses. She's also pregnant,
There then follows pursuit by telephone, car, cassette, a suicide bid, a kidnapping, and other generally unwelcome
And there's worse too. When Forrest finally catches up with Gallagher and his wife (by which time he's had to let her in on the reason why bunny, who as far as we know never hurt anybody, had to end up in a pot on the stove), she turns murderous.
The moral of the story -delivered in a crescendo of dramatic tension which apparently had US audiences screaming 'kill the bitch' (and British audiences expressing the same sentiments only perhaps with a bit more reserve) — couldn't be more clear.
Gallagher strayed from the happy home, lived a bit dangerously — certainly didn't use a condom — and got well and truly punished (though interestingly not morally censured). He is saved in the end by his family.
The ultimate punishment, and condemnation is meted out to Forrest. Not only does she have to live in a warehouse in the middle of what looks like a mobile abbattoir (while the perfect couple get a clean house in the country, she is made into the ultimate threat — not just to Gallagher, or his family — but symbolically to the nuclear family.
In the end the threat is seen off by the re-assertion of family values — to the relief, I presume, of those US audiences and of those US women who, it is reported, take their husbands along for a lesson in what happens to men who fool around
Alex Forrest has been described as 'the AIDS virus with a carving knive'. There is a level at which the symbolism of the film invited such a reading - despite the fact that (or even because) the disease itself is never referred to. But there is a more direct - and even more reactionary message in the film.
Woven into the characterisation of Alex Forrest is what amounts to a final warning on feminism. By mixing a superficially plausible ferninism with an irrational, pathological violence, Fatal Attraction gives a 'cesspit of their own making' verdict on feminism, on modern women, and even on modest sexual licence.
It has to be said in fairness, that one of the most interesting and annoying things about the film is how enjoyable it is.
Some marxist critics argue that the form - horror, thriller - (in fact almost anything with a story and characters) is itself inherently and inevitably reactionary.
They argue for a more wholesome form of 'cultural production' where the reader is a more 'active' participant; constructing meaning, and even the story and the characters her/himself.
This activity, goes the theory, is supposed to be more 'pleasurable' than passive consumption.
Now that kind of DIy entertainment sounds a bit like hard work to me - and I'd defend the rights of even marxists to access to an armchair and a bit of escapist fiction.
It might be a bit basic and reductionist, but I'd just appreciate the chance to watch a film from time to time when the baddies weren't always mad women/black/low-life/ communists • SOCIALIST OUTLOOK noó March/April 1988
2r434 vermor value stuck shirt
VOL. IIi NO.95
CHIEFS OF STAFF
IN DASCOSSIONS WITH
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
NOTUNS OF STERFUTYPING IN
QUESTION BY STATUESQUE BRUNETTE
GROM TAL
NANCYREAGAN AND
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DISAGREE ON BASIC
PRINCIPLES of COLOUR
AND COMPOSTTION
Pentagon turns down strategic defence initiative by Velasquez
Baselitz and Reagan find substantial areas of agrecment on fiscal policy,
Grotto complains that the meaninglessness of the constractión of meaning; ell sionifiers are wild - both men
Like MaDonald's Cheeseburgers of commercial crease sale - ungodly.
*
- Botha acts.
IBM and third world represantatives discuss the complexity et meaning in the inverted figures of Baselitz
Superpower Summit declares agfeement on cultural accora- art and policies do Mot my andare in see clonet pos
Conrad Atkinson,
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
MICHELANGELO QUESTIONS
UN. PRIORITIES ON FAMINE
RELIEF AND CASH CROPPING IN
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PICASSO LASHES
THATCHER PROPOSALS
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Braufi
Nudity
* * *
George Bush condemns the politics of culture as outlines by Titian
**
Sistine chapch feiling project has azficit funding insplications in period of cut backs and high unempleyment cruise missiles aesthetically pleasing says head of art school
Reagan tax plan at odds with the
Divine Spirit alleges William Blake
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TO RECOGNISE
Artscribe magagine descritts
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Grotto's stance as 'simplistr!
Fra Angelico utterly opposed to star wars defines the plan as unethical, unworkable,
*
ART OR CRAFT? -— Benin challenges Western
Forinary restleone and interdaise
AT&T aspects cultural pentatien car from lie frie the if te second hast if this
Let's get personal
Wall Street Journal, hand-coloured screen print - reproduced from and, journal of art and art education, 10 Swanfield Street, London E2 7DS.
REMBRANDT in call for trade sanctions against
South Africa.
L'S.
Shipments art
RAUSCHENBERG AND REAGAN
CLASH OVER TRADE DEFICIT
Kierkegaarde lays down the law on proqmat ism and polities to Thatcher Cabinet
DA VINCI HUSTLES
N.A.S.A. ON GENERAL
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PRINCIPLES-
MARKET STATISTICS
Dow Jones Industrial Average
N.Y.S.E. culture
LIn manors
15"" 10
"Call me a sentimental aesthetic old formalist if you like but I like to see a nicely painted missile ender boneless chicken chief argues national heritage enhanced br beautiful missiles
PRESERVATION ORDER PLACED ON CLASSICALLY PROPORTIOED
POLARIS MISSILE - iNTELLECTUALS FAIL TO GIVE LEAT
ON BEAUTY SAYS DEFENCE SECKETARY HESELTINE
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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Gorbarher in discushions with stitch sistery with the (unlamental con.
by implication
1935043 Frang hi wore wait sapart
KINNOCK AND
RAPHAEL IN
VERMEER TO
BUST-UP ABOUT
ATTEND SALT
THE MEANING
OF BEAUTY
TALKS.
Veronese argues that Brunelleschi desten for new pentagon is prime example of
Petter cultural appropration
Pentagon Plans
To Boost Beauty,
Reduce Clearances
ANDY WARHOL PRICE
RISE CAUSES CHAOS AS
KOREA LIBERALIZES LAWS
Rodin to sculpt missile silo
GOYA to appear before grand jury
Wainburger meets Coniad Atkinson service in Vienna Telks. Seeks advice on disarmament
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