Savages Offers Little Resolution

A bit late to the party, I went to see Savages over the weekend, an uber-violent Oliver Stone film that intrigued me mostly because the primary romantic relationship in the movie was a menage. While I was pretty sure the menage was there for titillation, I was really interested to see how menage would be portrayed in a film currently out in mainstream release (obviously, there have been other films that included menage -- Doom Generation and Threesome spring to mind, and I'm sure there have been more). Though it's been done before, I wanted to see what I could glean about possible current societal attitudes toward sex. (Note: I'm going to talk freely about the movie, without regard to spoilers.)

The film definitely played the titillation. Though I don't find menage shocking, I suppose I was there for the titillation, too.

The reason the female narrator gives for the menage is that, between the two men, she nets one perfect man (summarized by lines like "Chon fucks. Ben makes love."). There are some cringe-inducing lines (such as, about war-veteran Chon: "I have orgasms. Chon has wargasms."). But overall, the premise seems to be these are three wounded people who need each other to be whole. They are all home for each other.

She acknowledges societal attitudes ("I know what you're thinking: Slut."), but then justifies her actions somewhat defensively with the argument about wholeness and home.

Soon, this female narrator is kidnapped by a drug cartel, and her two men are desperate to rescue her -- to the point that they get their hands dirty in ways that go far beyond any of their previous misbehavior.

The main problem I had with the movie was that it didn't really settle most of the questions it raised about the relationship. In a scene that I think was supposed to be significant, Salma Hayek's character, Elena Lopez, leader of the drug cartel, tells the narrator, "There's something wrong with your love story, baby." She goes on to say that the two men can't really love her as much as they love each other -- "or else they wouldn't share you." The way the scene was shot, I believed this raised questions for the narrator, maybe even shook her faith in her way of life. However, it's never spoken of again and never clearly resolved. To be clear, it's OK with me if the narrator ultimately decides to shake off the question. But the shot didn't read confidence to me. It read confusion, and then it was dropped.

The ending is even worse. What I first saw seemed like a classic punishment ending to me (where everyone dies in a sort of metaphorical and spiritual payback for their effort to live outside of society, sinning with respect to both sex and drugs). After Ben is mortally wounded in the process of trying to save the female narrator, the narrator and Chon kill themselves so they don't have to leave him. This happens amid carnage in which pretty much everyone else dies, too. I was a little annoyed by the punishment ending, largely because it seemed like a huge copout -- a way to not address, for example, the issues raised in the scene above (or raised by Ben's fall from innocence over the course of the movie, or raised by the female narrator's rape during her imprisonment, or any number of things).

But this proved to be a minor annoyance in the face of the utter copout to come -- because that wasn't the real ending. The narrator says that ending represents the way she imagined it would go down, and then the audience is presented with a fantasy ending -- one where everything works out fine, the three end up hidden away on an island somewhere, and everything rings equally false and is left equally unresolved.

This is one way to handle controversial material, I suppose -- use it for titillation, and then avoid making any sort of statement about it. I was pretty disappointed that the film pretended to engage with some sexual issues, but ultimately turned away from the debate. By providing two endings, Savages essentially provided no ending.

Stories of Loving Women

Becky Birtha wrote For Nights Like This One: Stories of Loving Women when I was a toddler. I read it as a fluke, seeing it recommended in an old book on the writing craft. The stories feel like they came from another world. "Lesbianism" -- the clinical-sounding word used in the book -- is a secret, a thing nobody does. The characters discover hidden realms of it.

"Marisa," one of my favorite stories in the book, describes a mysterious, fascinating woman. The narrator can't figure out what it is about this woman, why she doesn't hang out with the other people at work, and why she can't stop thinking about her. She doesn't understand why she's offended by certain comments people make at work. To my modern eye, it is obvious that Marisa is a lesbian, and the narrator might be a budding lesbian. But the big revelation of the story -- that Marisa is a lesbian -- works because this knowledge is so clearly forbidden in the context of the story.

But I don't want to make it sound like this book is dated, as in no longer relevant. In reading it, I felt I was connecting dots, understanding things I had felt but hadn't seen so clearly. In modern times, we like to talk about how enlightened we are, but I wasn't a toddler so very long ago. The fact that these stories could be written in my lifetime says a lot about the discomfort, confusion, and misinformation still flowing through our society.

The characters' struggles about whether they will have children, how they will deal with other people's opinions of them, or how to dress when they go out rang true for me and made me feel relief. We are not really past this, and it's nice to see this get treated without the complication of an author who feels like we ought to be. In "Next Saturday," the main character questions whether her desire to reach out to an obviously alienated young lesbian is motivated by a pure urge to help or by her own lust.

My favorite story, "We Used to Be Best Friends," hit me hard with its description of realizing you love someone you're not supposed to love:

And Francie found herself saying the words it had taken her so long to realize. "I do love you, Kelly. I never knew it before, but I love you." Then, as the impact of her own words was reflected in Kelly's face, she added, "It's only that I never thought I would be... or could be... a lesbian." Abruptly, she burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands, then buried her head in her arms on the table, shaking with sobs.

Through her tears, she heard Kelly's voice. "I know, Francie. I know -- it's scary, it's heavy. But it isn't bad. It isn't wrong. I know it's not -- not what I feel, what you feel. We can have something together that's really beautiful."

I'm so glad that I can casually decide to write a lesbian story, that many people are able to be open and out about their sexuality, and so many other changes. Progress is good. But this passage reminded me that all too often, even now, people despair at love rather than celebrating it because of shame or the hatred of others. Kelly's words in response to her lover are beautiful, and my hope is that one day all of us can feel this way about our loves, embracing their beauty whatever the sexuality of it might be.

Birtha's collection is moving and well worth reading. It has a powerful, poetic voice that soaked into me for several days after I read it. There are old copies floating around on Amazon, and I'd recommend tracking one down.