Painting by numbers.

Painting by numbers.

I really love the movie Mona Lisa Smile, it is both beautiful, ugly, tragic and kind. But most of all I like it because it is challenging. Please don’t watch the trailer, it is horrible, and not indicative to the nuance of the movie. But if you must, here is a link www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqexVyd_ybI It is a movie I have watched more than just several times. I like it for many reasons. It became part of my collection of movies that I watched after 9 11. I started collecting movies as I gave up on watching TV for ten years once the mainstream media had sent us all to war, one way or another, with misinformation about weapons of mass destruction. After that point in journalistic history, there was no point in listening to them. As they the mainstream media then went on in a knee jerk reaction to surrender on behalf of all of us. Mark Twain had already told us all, and to my error on this topic, I decided to disregard his warning. His warning was “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.” Despite this, read on, and most likely be misinformed by me : ) This is kind of a movie review, fused with a diary entry, not a peer reviewed article, and, even if it was peer reviewed, it would probably be worth less because of it. Please note there are not too many spoilers in the writing, if you feel like digging it up for a watch, give it a go.

Viewed through a political lens with a questioning gaze of an Australian, someone who was raised both right and left wing, my review or open contemplation of Mona Lisa Smile should be noted as being in no way as a defense of the right, nor a put down of the left. To be a pain in the proverbial, I raise more questions than I ever intend to answer with questions like. Did Mona Lisa Smile end Julia Stiles’ career from its rising left-wing trajectory, or had she reached its pinnacle? Her role in it seemed to coincide with a decline from what some would call an A grade Hollywood career, to a more popular A grade independent career. So, what happened, what changed? How did this beautiful capable young woman vanish from the Australian cinematic billboard? What happened to her, how did she end up later in the back water of England, before it became the third world of the west, and did Greenwich village ban her from Broadway for playing a role too well? And I would love to ask her, could she see from the West end of London to the East end of London, as it was culturally cleansed of cockney. Would a New Yorker approve of the so-called gentrification or cultural cleansing of her hometown of its ethnic groups? Did she suffer an early form of cancel culture, that had as far as I can see, had ostracized her, for not making a fictional character ugly enough, when that character most certainly was not ugly. Was she discriminated against at the casting stage thereafter for doing too good a job, and honoring a very clever and introspective movie script? Yes, the script has issues. One being the painting of ethnics, or those stereotyped as ethnic, and not American as promiscuous. But even that is introspective, as it involves my ignorance of the US at that time. My ignorance revolves around the consideration, was it their lot handed to them, or was it a coping mechanism in the least. For if Betty was on my case, I most certainly would be after and natural endorphin rush. The other issue that I can identify is that the only likable males in the movie are both portrayed as being slightly effeminate. Joan’s characters young man is slightly childlike and Connie Baker’s young man super sensitive. Was the movie implying or saying that the woman would be raising not just their children but the men in their lives as well?

Where did Styles go after Mona Lisa smile? What did her agent think? Was it because of Style’s agent? Did her agent misread the room, did he or she not realize that Julia would be seen through the lens as an enabler of the rich and ruling classes? A defender of males or even worse a defender if the patriarchy? Would no one see she was defending children the whole way through the movie? Was what happened to her a pretext for what would happen for the rest of the west! A litmus test for the left’s policies for all to see. Had the shine of the New York Girl come woman, who was a native to the Big Apple warn off? Had the novelty of the New York girl with class, beauty and spunk, not been enough? Had Stiles honored F Scott Fitzgerald but backed the wrong horse of John J Fitzgerald? Was she such a radical that despite her superlative effort, she had cursed herself for having too good a work ethic? Had she done too good a job in the portrait of a culture that had suffered cultural genocide ever since the 60s? Was she the radical actress who did too good a job? Ending up the American James Bond, Bond girl. With her role in the Bourn ultimatum. If it was the stimulus for her blacklisting by the now McCarthyistic left, it could surely be argued that their agenda is far from prochoice, or freedom of choice, and now had become freedom from choice. Then going onto comply or die. As someone who came from the working class, and is a feminist I must ask, how could such a stellar beginning, move to where it did. As a feminist I am left asking what happened to prochoice when it came to her characters role as an apex female, who could choose anything she wanted in life, and in the end did? Was she blacklisted from leftist work because of her role? Or did the capitalist right see her as a highly skilled operative, kind of like a rebel American miss money penny without the 1970s Shtick.

It can be argued without question Stiles is a star, but a point of note. Those in the movie that accepted the staider roles of the old orthodoxy like her and Geniffer Goodwyn, performed roles which are now ridiculed. In the movie they are ridiculed to a point, that can be considered cringe worthy. So much so, they did not go onto the Hollywood A list. The portrayal of the stereotype of the trad wife as being pathetic, vacuous and lame is not philosophical about how our generations will be viewed in the future, especially with retrospect and hindsight as to when it comes to both our strengths and failings. How did their careers go? Did they fall on their constitutional sword? For with the pursuit of happiness comes the personal responsibility of your own outcome! The right to the pursuit of happiness comes with no guarantees, for in life there are none. Did the other leftists in the movie live happily ever after in the leftist utopia of Greenwich village? A leftist utopia that from my Australian knowledge of the arts seen is probably no less brutal, or capable of casting the non-usable, or non-conforming people, onto the trash heap.

Style’s portrait of a Wellesley girl led me to learn that Hillary Clinton was, or is, a Wellesley girl. Clinton ended up representing the woman of the world on the world stage, or at least should have given her parties posturing. But did Joan do it better? Which one had defended the constitution of the USA? Comparing Julia Styles to Hillary Clinton might seem like an odd thing to do, but both come from the east or there abouts. To even push the American association to the absurd, had styles suffered the metaphoric fate of Tupac? When it came to her left-wing leaning roles, had she suffered a character assassination of sorts by association with a fictitious character, by an ideology from the west? Was it a west coast versus east coast thing? Or was it her portrayal of old money that had turned so many against her. Had she defended the founding principle of America, that was not stated in the movie? The principle is the “inalienable right” for us all to pursue happiness, as defined by us the individual? Had Jaon Brandwyn, been the ultimate rebel by doing as exactly as she wanted with informed and not coerced consent, knowing full well as an adult she must take at least in part responsibilities for her outcome? In choosing her greatest priority, her children, and her husband for life, had she really sacrificed anything worth more? And it can be questioned why does our society even consider her choice as a sacrifice?

 

The juxtaposition of Betty Warren aka Daisy Buchanan on steroids is the university champaign socialists wet dream that the great Gatsby could not deliver. A stereotype employed to dog whistle the young of the rich. An emotive prompt as such. The example of the trad wife that the left most wanted to see. It is ridiculous to the nth degree, how many of these women dreamed of a washing machine, when they had a maid to do the washing? She was the example of corrupted money and power, duped by the patriarchy and by a real man no less, (to use the word slur), a woman who is a girl, not the realist real woman of Gyselle Levy. Betty is played as a fool, and for a fool, by the system of the old money patriarchy. Ironically in a universal way, she represents the abuse of power not exclusive to those with money. A type of abuse that we are all capable of, not just the rich. But that wouldn’t have aided the absolutist marxophiles, or those reading Marx and Engels. It wasn’t that the rich were the only ones capable of abuses of power. It was that all those in positions of power are not just prone to it, they are more importantly encouraged to do it, regardless of if they are old money, or not. It helps corruption of both the rich and the powerful.

The narrative of the rich capitalist abuser may be at times true and is quite easy to find based on my personal experience. But this movie would not have suited the ideal, or the indoctrination pushed on female university students. One that implies that the pursuit of a higher calling in education and service of other people’s children is more important than the education and service to your own. It seemed liked the education system was producing their version of Nuns, and not functioning fertile women. I noted firsthand while studying arts teachers, both of the fine arts, and of the arts at school and university, that they indoctrinate young people regardless of sex in the principle. The principle was hijacked when the social scientists saw that they could manipulate young female academics into a childless, marriage less future, with the assumption that the educated woman would have less children, in an overpopulated world. It worked, and does work, night and day for the social scientists. It is a process of indoctrination used for depopulation, and has been openly stated as such, if you cared to listen. The only problem was in the west we singled out our academically brightest women regardless of race or economic social status to have their genetics extinguished.

At 1 hour 7 minutes into the movie, Cathrine/ Julia Roberts loses her cool, then questions the value of children via her degradation of both herself and Betty Warrens defence of her own choices. Although not liking Betty Warren as a person at any time in the movie, (and it should be noted I do know she is a fictional character), she had an intuitive point that would later be reinforced by Joan Brandwyn/ Styles at the end of the movie. Although it might be seen that Cathrine knows the best for her students, because she has a higher education, she is self-serving in her ignorance. Validating her own position, even above the ideal, of true freedom. A freedom that was expressed by the young woman, on mass at Wellesley. Betty argues very poorly her point, but later Joan goes on to school Catherine/Roberts, or “give her an education” in a way Betty could not. Did Catherine get it? In the end Joan talks about true freedom, the freedom to choose, and her desire for Catherine/Roberts to be prochoice, and not anti-choice. Yes, I know of the social expectations of the time, but the movie was not made in that time. For when the movie was made, there had been a New York woman or a woman from the East in the American supreme court for approximately ten years.

Yes, Robert’s character Catherine paints by numbers, and produces nothing new of artistic significance, just clones of her artist critic self. As whom is to question the value a future mother would have of her own children, and the mode of her free will to make the decision, to raise them? Robert’s character misses the point, that the women are, and to paraphrase her, the …smartest woman in the country…, so why wouldn’t they want the brightest to raise their young children, i.e. themselves. Nature or nurture can be argued about the inhabitants of Wellesley and the movie does, but for my considerations this argument or contemplation, I only considered nurture. Who better to nurture their young children but some of the brightest woman in the country?

Was it a good movie, hell yeh, was it prochoice, hell yeh, but probably not in the way you would think.

 

PS. On a lighter side note. One area of non-contention is that I have more experience with Pollock’s than the Wellesley lecturer or teacher. As a child on a school camp, I went to the national gallery in Canberra, and was absolutely intrigued by Golf Whitlam’s most controversial purchase Blue Poles, here is a link to a picture of it, www.flickr.com/photos/lukemarkof/8984401720/ , it is of epic proportions for a painting. I was so interested as a child I reached out and touched it, the Islander guard said not to do that, but didn’t seem overly concerned so I touched it again and got a verbal warning. At that age I had no idea of the significance of what I had done. I had touched the same canvas that Pollock had, and unlike extinction rebellion’s appreciation of art, I was not making a political statement, it was, and, because of my love of art. : ) with a little rebellion thrown in for good measure, surely Catherine would be proud?

 

Have a great day or night wherever you find yourself.

 

 

 

Done