Sunday, February 21, 2010
Kiss of the Spider Woman- John Hicks
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” gives binaries between fantasy and reality. What Valentine sees as reality is not actually what is happening. Paulina makes up stories and makes comments to put Valentine in a vulnerable place. He begins telling the story with Lenny and Vernon. In this story Vernon, the liberator, represents Valentine who is a political liberator. Lenny represents Valentine’s wife, who he misses dearly. When Lenny dies in the story it represents the when Valentine lost his wife (Marta) earlier in his life, which causes him to become vulnerable and reveal answers about the revolution.. After Paulina tells the story of the spider women, it is believed the spider woman is a beautiful female creature. Once Paulina and Valentine kiss, it is known that Paulina is the spider woman. This develops the binary between reality and fantasy. When Paulina is telling the story, the film is in black and white portraying the spider woman as a female, but when reality strikes back in, Paulina becomes be the spider woman. It seems Paulina actually saved Valentine with the kiss they had. Every time Paulina would tell a story it would show the story on the film in black and white (fantasy) and when he was done telling the story the film would be in color and in the jail cell (reality). The film ends in black and white which gives the impression that it is fantasy and not reality. Valentine gets back together with his wife, and they sale off into the sunset. Valentine claimed every time when he was about to give up Marta would come into his head and save him, except this time her saving him was more of a dream than reality.
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(Correction) **Paulina= Molina
ReplyDelete(Addition) The entire story revolves around Molina and Valentine in the jail cell together. There is a binary between reality and fantasy. The reality is the actual jail cell, whereas, the fantasy is the story Molina is telling. Every time Molina tells a story, the scene switches to black and white confirming that it is fantasy and not reality. Valentine was a political activist who strongly prided himself on his manliness, which made it difficult for him to see eye to eye with the flamboyant Molina, but over time they grew on each other. In the story Molina tells, Leni falls in love with a high ranked German soldier, who has also fallen in love with her. The other character, Michelle, is supposed to be undercover for the French but she falls in love with a German soldier too. Michelle proclaims, “Love has no country,” which turns out to be an important part of the story. At the end of the story, the macho man, Valentine, ends up having feelings for Molina, and Molina in turn actually falls in love with Valentine. When it comes time for Molina to try and get answers out of Valentine he can’t do it. It is just like in the story, Michelle betrays her country to be with the love of her life, and Molina betrays the government officials to be with Valentine. The saying, “Love has no country” is important because Valentine and Molina both love each other but Valentine is not gay. In this reference country would be referring to sexuality. Valentine does not have to be gay to love Molina.