Monday, April 9, 2012
Please Do Eat the Daisies
The two main characters in Daisies are constantly eating or at least playing with food. They have lavish dinners at restaurants, bathe in milk and playfully slice bananas and sausage. This trend culminates in the scene in which they sneak into a feast, indulge their palettes, and engage in a food fight. What is the point of all this food, glorious food? Can you make sense of the use of food in at least some of these scenes?
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Food is definitively a major theme at play in the film as the two main characters are seen eating some kind of food in what seems like every scene. The girls do not seem to ever get full as they are seen stuffing their faces with every eatable substance in sight in any setting. The most surprising aspect of this film in my eyes is that the girls are both in good physical shape even with eating large amounts of food on a regular basis. They are never seen to be gaining weight or feeling sick after their feasts and that magnifies the idea that beautiful girls do not have to eat minimally. Sadly for the girls, they are killed after their largest feast yet when a chandelier falls on them in the dining hall they sneak into. This plays directly into the message this film has for the communist regime in the Czech Republic at the time of this film. These girls are by no means average. This is portrayed through their obsession with food and eating which is not normal for most well shaped women. The fact that the women are killed immediately after their largest feast, shows that if you differ or speak out against the communist government, you will be punished, in their case by death.
ReplyDeleteI find it funny that a female director would make a movie like Daisies, since it portrays women the way it does. They appear disgusting and despicable - like Alec said, "stuffing their faces with every eatable substance in sight." I would find this trait repulsive in any person, and no men in the film do it. What's more, the two women in the film engage in equally off-putting behavior outside of the ingestion sphere, leading on the loving young man while not even remembering his name. This abhorrent behavior upsets me because it undermines some of the more challenging and admirable aspects of the film. For example, the women turn the tables on older men who just want to use them for sex, getting them to fund their eating sprees while giving them nothing in return. They also systematically emasculate a number of phallic pieces of food in one scene, an anti-establishment act that stands out as a particularly hard jab at society. The fact that these same women have "gone bad," and demonstrate this tendency through their behavior and eating style, undoes some of what the challenges to society accomplish. It's as if the director's saying, "Good people don't undermine men's authority. That's just for the bad."
ReplyDeleteIt's challenging to really make sense of anything in the film "Daisies," considering that it comes across as such an erratic and insane film to viewers. However, food may just be the one aspect of this film that can be analyzed as a sort of symbol for the tendencies of human beings. The main goal of a human is to satisfy his or her own wants and needs and he or she will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal, no matter how selfish or greedy it may seem. We tend to indulge ourselves in luxuries without thinking of the costs that our decisions may have. In the case of the two women in "Daisies," they have a disgusting and astonishing craving for food. In fact, they don't just crave food, they're obsessed with it. They are so obsessed with food that they behave like animals whenever they see or come in contact with food. This is the one key fact of life that many people forget so easily: there are limits in life. And if one chooses not to stay within these limits, the consequences can be severe. Unfortunately for these two women, their obsession with food lead them to act carelessly and selfishly, and the consequence for their actions just happened to be death. True, death probably was too harsh of a consequence, but it sure didn't seem like they were going to stop anytime soon. Sometimes people just have to learn the hard way if they can't control themselves.
ReplyDeleteFood in this film is a major symbolism of men, especially the scene where the two girls are playing with the bananas and the sausages while talking to a wooer on the phone. The bananas and sausages resemble male genitalia, and this was a deliberate choice by the director, who by the way, is female. In this scene, the girls toy with the man's emotions and playfully cut the bananas and sausages. This appears like an anti-male sentiment. The fact that they did not attempt to eat the food makes it seem like they did not have any particular use for it. Just like the man on the phone, they have no use for him; all they want is to use him for their selfish and playful desires.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the fact that this film is shot in a communist setting, it is highly inferred that the girls motivations are a result of being exasperated by the oppressive nature of the ruling men. The same scene portrays them chopping these implied genitalia with knives and scissors. This is an indirect act of aggression and the purpose of the cutting is to express their angst towards men. It is as if cutting their cutting and chopping relieves from past and on-going oppressive experiences with men.
One of the really interesting things about how food is portrayed in this film, is how it all starts being presented in an appealing manner and then later destroyed. Again, this is a communist setting. The providers of the food are men. These women need men to feed them, but, they despise men. We see this the movie when they ditch their dates after they use them for expensive dinners. Damaging the food is a way to show the antipathy that these women have towards their providers. Their intentions with food are very clear: they need it but they hate the providers.
Personally, I do not think I would be happy if the food I was working for was being spoiled or misused in such a manner. These women’s aggression towards food can almost be called a proxy war with men and if so, they are winning alright!