Women

Woody Allen is never a provocateur. This production, however, is a satire turned into a polemic. And if I should make an audacious presumption here, it is more by Cate Blanchett's explosive theatrical interpretation than by Woody Allen's fit-for-decent-company mindset.

If somehow this film was viewed on its own, I do not suppose it would have enough dramatic strength to propel me to write this review. Its viewing was, however, preceded by another going-for-the-jugular film on woman, surprisingly from a seemingly always placid leading man, Don Jon by Gordon-Levitt.

Both Blue Jasmine and Don Jon are about, if I may, the things about women so distasteful that would make man never have the stomach to warm to the idea of woman again, packaged in females that would draw them nevertheless. Or more picturesquely, females that would draw males like honey draws bees, or in our own culture's parlance, like rice draws mice. Despite the rice being the kind that is poisoned and kills.

The first poison, in the case of Blue Jasmine, is a woman who refuses to have, and seems incapable of having, an identity of her own. She could and only desires to live her life through a man she attaches herself to. The identity of the man, or more accurately the wealth and the social standing of the man, is latched onto, infused into the empty embryo that is her idea of herself, and then projected out as a persona she feels comfortably secure either showing to other people or viewed by herself.

In short, it may be said that the character of Jasmine is a feminist's worst nightmare come true - a woman with no independent identity, no independent income, no ability to make a living, extremely insecure, and incessantly judgmental of both herself and others made only through the lens of money and social position. And when her social standing is threatened, and her privilege of judging others and her safety from being judged is lost, she snapped, blaming it not on her own vanity and her hypocritically dignified yet in fact abject and servile dependence on man, but on the man's, admittedly cruel, making clear the fact that she is a woman dependent on him in absolute terms.

Her destruction of the man she attaches herself to, and thus ultimately her own identity and herself, as Woody Allen intends, is more out of her own shame of contently being an accessory, doing all that she could preventing herself from being discarded but discarded nonetheless in the end, thus being forced to confront head-on with her own parasiticity, servility, and disposablity, than driven by the fickleness of her man that she had always known but refused to discover.

In destroying him, she is merely running away from the shame, and it is only because it was forcibly exposed to her. As the film would later make clear, she never blames her shame on its true cause, the shameful way that she chooses to live her life, and her conception of her own identity that is no more than the succubus of the man that gives her a living and social standing, but only on the shame's unfortunate but inevitable exposure itself.

Contrary to Blanchett's hurricane-like mercilessness, Allen is more magnanimous toward his heroine in the sense that he allows the blame on the male-dominated society be assigned. Jasmine is no more a victim of her own making than by the structure, and more by the prodding and the brainwashing, of a society controlled by man, constantly telling the opposite sex that they should be dependent on him. It is ironic that this arrangement that gives more or less absolute power of man over woman is cheered and embraced more earnestly by women themselves than by man. Woman seems to think it a good deal that they should be treated like commodity, with only a veneer of dignity and no power over their own destiny, as long as their material needs are taken care of. To the credit of the success of this brainwashing effort by man, woman even deems this demeaning and one-sided deal a privilege, an "entitlement" that they are fiercely protective of and extremely fearful of losing, on its wrongly perceived and falsely conceived only virtue that such a deal would make them "secure".

Women, wake up. "Security" cannot be given or gifted or granted or doled out like charity; "security" can only be earned by your own struggle for your own resources, or else, you would only be subjected to the power, or even worse, the whims, of man. It is as a testament to man's brainwashing prowess and woman's willful receptiveness, that the character of Jasmine is in reality less a caricature but more of an epitome of the female race at large.

On to Don Jon.

I had a hell of a time watching Scarlett Johansson. Not because of her figure, which I admit is pleasant, but more because her depiction of the character is so deeeeeeeeead-on.

I met a girl that basically IS the character. Only that she is more like a dime a dozen, but who, somehow, by whatever persuasion that I could not possibly conceive of, thought herself a dollar.

Aside from this minor incongruity of facts from the movie, the manipulation, the selfishness, the self-righteousness, and the self-importance are all right there and so dead on.

As Gordon-Levitt's sister said in the denouement, this kind of girl does not care the least bit about you, she does not even know the least about you, she only cares about herself, she only wants you to do her bidding, to do things for her, to do what she wants you to do. And that certainly does not get very far, either for you or for her.

Like Johansson in the movie, the girl I met also talked about marriage, constantly and urgently. At first, I was a little overwhelmed by the eagerness, thinking to myself, hey, you do not know the first about me, and I do not know the first about you, and you want to get married? Neither of us would be behaving responsibly to the other if we did. Heck, we did not even know if we would be compatible living together at least without gouging each other's eyes out or tearing the other's throat open.

Then I tried my best to get her to know me, which she brushed aside, and I tried most herculeanly to get to know her. But to every pertinent question that I asked of her, her only answer was "I want to keep this a secret". Are you kidding me? How am I to supposed to get MARRIED to you if you would not even answer the least bit of history about yourself?!! At least the pretty psychotic Jasmine had the sense to lie.

I had to give up. The project of making this relationship work with this woman incapable of honest and frank communication is way beyond my humble capability of rising to the occaion as nothing more than an honest and honorable man.

Then I broke off with her, and I got time to reflect on it. In retrospect, it was all too obvious. Like Jasmine, the woman only thought you would provide her with things that she thought would give her a sense of "security", which not the least means the one thing without which she would feel judged unfavorably by her social peers, marriage. And by her eagerness to marry you which preceded her having any intimate knowledge about you, it was apparent that she did not care the least bit about the person you are, or your feelings, or how, and even if, your marriage with her would work out, either for you or for her. She only cared about her own desire feeling the security from getting married.

So selfish. So astoundingly selfish. So impossibly stupidly selfish. Such unbelievably deranged selfishness. It really is beyond me how I could even suffer the conversations that this woman had had with me trying baiting me, or how she could even conceive and entertain her misguided idea of such a, for the lack of a better term, blind marriage, that would work neither for me nor for her, which would only self-destruct in the end.

Such an astounding irresponsibility for herself and others, no doubt arisen out of her false belief that only thus could she fulfill her sense of selfishness indoctrinated no less from her earliest childhood growing up, that only by getting other people doing her bidding, only by getting what she wants, even if it is something that only she wants, and which would even harm her own self-interest along with that of other people's in the process, is she considered doing "the right thing" and might even conceivably gain "happiness".

Did she really think for a moment that she would be able to draw another person in with the shabby scheme she pulled? Only a deranged megalomaniac would ever take another human being for such imbecility, which, ironically, only befits herself if she harbored such an unflattering perception of her fellowmen.

At least Don Jon had a sister to rely on when the truth needs spoken among hotter heads. Could only wish I had such luck if it ever had come to this.

I have no doubt in my mind that, just as the Johanssen character believes until the end that she was the victim of an "unfaithful" boyfriend, I would only be considered and remembered an unserious and flirtatious suitor who trifled a "lady"'s "serious" and "finer" feelings.

I just wish that maybe she, or anyone on her side for that matter, could look at things objectively, not just so self-righteously only from her angle, and see that seriousness is not never telling the least bit of history about yourself, seriousness is not never even considering if you would be able to live with the other person in "peaceful co-existence", seriousness is not rushing to marriage without intimate knowledge about each other, and "finer feelings" is certainly not the coarse and callous rejection and refusal of ever seeing things from another person's standpoint.