Supplimentary Reading: Poor Things

This movie is basically Elf for grown up art girls, and the book is amazing too!

Introduction and Context

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Honestly, I want as many people as possible to read this entry, but it also contains spoilers for both the film and the book. Most of what I write will not actually be related to specific plot points and I don’t intend to tell the story of the film for this as, it is not marketing, but ofc in some ways it’s unavoidable! I’ve been yearning for chat about this so please, comment, share, message me about it- my ideas and opinions may change with conversation!

Poor Things (2023) Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos is basically Elf for grown up art girls!!! (Child in adult body with magical, complicated multi parent scenario encounters ‘The Real World’, sensory seeking, lust, and comedy ensue- maybe we should also watch Poor Things every christmas, just for balance?)
Based on part of a thoughtful, political book set in my hometown, I feel like the movie was an aesthetic, sensory, pleasure-adventure-romp dark tale. I hear and see many valid criticisms of the film, and I won’t try at any point to undermine anyone’s experience, but for me the film, followed by the book, has been an overwhelmingly positive thing.

I LOVED it (which apparently is controversial?) and I LOVED the book, but looking at them in comparison is even more intriguing and layered and exciting. I love picking apart stories, even ones I love, and how digging in on a critique can improve our cultural literacy and even add excitement!

Since watching this movie, my brain has been BUZZING. I got the book on Libby via my local library and read it as fast as possible and gosh, I almost can’t contain the pure bubbling inspiration, thought, theories, criticism endless brain pings that have ensued. There are infinite directions this could take, and I could write about this forever. Of course this article won't be perfect, I’ll have to cut down significantly, and I’ll miss important points, but I think it's my new special interest and I really have to get some words out!

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Male Gaze, Framing, and Comparisons with the Book

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By my interpretation, this story (as intended by Alisdair Gray) is about a critique of the male gaze- not feminism, not privilege, not ableism (though all these elements are at play.)
Of course, a male director and writer and cinematographer, no matter how hard they try will not be able to make this critique as well as they try to, and the central flaw of the film as opposed to the book is trying to tell the story from the main character, Bella Baxter’s perspective, whilst also seemingly trying to maintain the male gaze that is intrinsic to the horror of the story they tell. I think this is why many folks have disliked and misunderstood Lanthimos’s interpretation.

In the book, Alisdair Gray finds himself in possesion of an envelope containing a book written by a man - Max Mccandles- about the life of a woman - Bella Baxter. The envelope ALSO contains a letter containing Bella’s own account of the events of the book! The film only covers the content of the book, and therein - I think- is the discomfort felt by many audience members.

The story in the book is SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable, creepy, biased by male gaze and lust and patronising sentiment, filled with magic and madness as an attempt to define and explain the life of a woman who is sexual, alternative, political, and strange. In setting up a premise around 2 separate and wholly different accounts of the same events, Gray created a really inspired premise: Poor Things is very openly an exploration of ‘he said, she said’, and how we will judge the weight of stories told by men and women differently, especially stories about women.

The book section- whose contents are encompassed by the film- is SO intriguing, exciting, and lush. As a standalone story, by narrative alone, it is wonderful and as a reader you are really swept into it and believe it- despite a well of subtle discomfort and criticism of their portrayals building up under the surface. When the letter section (supposedly written by Bella) arrives, all of this is suddenly shifted into doubt!

Gray shakes up the entire world he has just created with a straightforward, slightly condescending, far less magical tale of Bella’s own perception of a life plagued by pitiful, abusive, convenient men on her path to freedom, community care, and a political voice. This really challenges you as a reader, and challenges all the previous sections of the book! How much of it is the perspective of Mccandles? Is this how the men in her life saw her? How can it be possible she’s really just a normal, slightly judgey, clever, boring and fallible as the next, real life woman? It really subverts the manic pixie dream girl narrative for me, and not having this in the movie takes away one off the most successful, jarring, powerful critiques of the male gaze I’ve ever seen.

The film is supposed to be from Bella’s perspective. In this adaptation, I choose to take the baby-brain-in-a-woman’s-body story at face value, that is the story he is choosing to tell, though maybe it reduces the impact somewhat. Starting with black and white, wide angle, strong, forced depth of field, and slowly evolving throughout into colour and different shots- I believe the cinematography was designed to reflect the visual processing progression that happens for children. Her pursuit of the sensory and sensual is exactly what I would expect of a baby in a body with adult hormones, maybe this is overly generous. Telling this story from Bella’s perspective, however, is inherently flawed. I believe this is the root of a lot of the creepy vibes people got from the film and what would frustrate Gray endlessly- Bella is never supposed to have seen herself this way.

In many ways, I think the team working on the film struggled with this as well, because they ALSO wanted to tell the story that critiques the male gaze. One of the things I felt during my watching, was a bit of a sense of self disgust. They so masterfully manipulate you into watching with the male gaze, and then holding up the mirror. There are scenes where you can’t help but marvel at how beautiful Emma Stone is, scenes where you as an audience, in step with Mccandles, steal a look at her uncovered chest as she sleeps, scenes where you join Wedderburn in a voyeuristic gaze at her pleasuring herself. These scenes are followed by moments where these men are portrayed starkly as pitiful, personalityless, creeps, stalwart reminders that their gaze is as inappropriate as it is pathetic. As the babes of the Polyester Podcast said (written as I remember it), I don’t think anyone is meant to be going away from this movie thinking ‘I gotta get me a baby woman’, and if they are it seems like a blatant misunderstanding.

Personally, I don't think it is wrong to show vile acts on film. I do think this movie should come with a trigger warning around sexual assault and controlling relationships and ableist exploitation though. When I think about the number of films with terrifying ways of glamourising assault, stalking, and creepy male behaviour, I simply can’t put this movie in that category.
I think there is a lot of value in a film that really honestly delves into the depths of how bad the normalised behaviour of men is, and has a fairly no holds barred approach at showing truly just how pathetic, embarrassing, and laughable it is. (SO many films portray these same behaviours as funny, sexy, and strong, so this is important.)

I loved watching Bella’s journey with sex and pleasure. She has an inability to be kept in check by the men in her life. There is a true joy in seeing a man try to seduce a vulnerable woman, and for her eager sexuality and pleasure to instead break and wear him down beyond repair, leaving her still excited for more and new things. In many ways this is the opposite of a lot of stories we see about women and their bodies and minds.

Something I did find interesting and challenging in the book was wondering whether Gray himself was susceptible to his own gaze, wanted to place him self as a fallible narrator, or couldn’t resist retaining some of the magic. In the supplementary materials at the end of Poor Things he finds additional information and accounts of certain things that do cast Bella’s account of herself into doubt, which I do think takes away a little of the power it had at the end of the letter- but I suppose that’s down to a personal reading and opinion.

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Women of Poor Things: Age, Ability, and Women’s Politics

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I took the perspective that Lanthimos and Stone were acting in good faith when they designed the character of Bella Baxter, that she is actually a baby at first. But her being a baby doesn’t really remove the disability politics of the movie- disabled people experience infantilisation every day, and the move was VERY uncomfortable in this lense. I am a MASSIVE fan of claiming characters as autistic and adhd representation (as an audhd person myself) and my friends and family can attest that I do this all the time haha, but to be honest I don’t see Bella as an autistic person as some people are suggesting- and in some ways I think that could be a harmful take.

Ok firstly I just took it literally that we know why she behaves unusually- yes many of her behaviours mirror those of people with autism, but she grows and changes! I think for me the framing of her as autistic by some folks I spoke to about this film was really uncomfortable, most of us will not grow out of struggles with incontinence, verbal processing, unusual social behaviours, and sensory seeking or risk taking behaviours, they are simply part of us. I think for those who want to claim her as autistic that’s totally grand if it feels empowering but I thought I’d explain another reason why I didn’t relate to that perspective and prefer the more literal rapidly aging baby premise. Which again adds even more detestable disgust to the male characters who KNOW this, and still choose to be with her! I really think it’s intentional and supposed to be shown as awful! But of course SO hard and triggering for many folks!

That all said, both the film and the book have a distincly weird relationship with disability, especially the use of the r slur in both. But for me a lot more of it came into play with Godwin Baxter, the Dr Frankenstein of the piece. I do feel he fell into a really unhelpful trope of monstrosity defined by facial and physical difference and disability alone.

I do think that some of the movie can be broken down into a discussion of privilege that feeds into disability discourse. Have you heard of 'the ‘Aubrey Plaza Effect’? It’s a bit of a viral theory on tiktok where autistic women talk about desirability politics and how conventionally attractive, rich autistic women are generally allowed to behave however they want and- like many rich, white autistic men- are allowed to unmask in ways you can’t access without being rich, white, or conforming to the beauty standard. It’s just intersectionality and male gaze theory meeting in the way we discuss or applaud autistic women.

I think the Polyester podcast and others were right in asserting that Poor Things was about privilege (though I do think the main theme is the male gaze.) In the film, Bella really is so rich and so desirable to straight, white men. So much of her experience (for better and worse) in the film is controlled by this, and of course its hard not to notice how much of the film would not have happened and how much more cruel her fate would be if she were neither of the above. In the novel it is more overtly about class and politics, and I think the soft nods to that in the film didn’t really live up to that.

The book is in many ways quite loudly a book about birth control, abortion, family planning, and women’s desire- portrayed in a frank and (I think) mostly non-creepy way. In both accounts Bella is horny and queer and open with her desire- even into her old age, sexual liberation and indulgence with proper family planning remains literally central in her politics and career as a doctor teaching working class women about birth control and safe sex. I think the movie loses a little of that, and I have to say it really lost me in its portrayal of older women.

Both older women portrayed in the movie are sexless- overtly so! It is mentioned within 2 mins of meeting the older woman on the boat how sad it is that she hasnt had sex in like 20 years, and the older woman who owns the brothel also attests that people won’t even pay her for sex now. I felt quite let down by this, and I understand maybe it was a decision to talk about layers of privilege or the fleetingness of the power found in men’s attraction(?) but it fell flat for me. I want to see more horny as fuck older women living full lives in cinema okkk???! And I feel like that’s more in the spirit of the book maybe?

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Finishing Up (For Now)

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Okay lolll this is so so long and I have more in my brain but I can’t reasonably make you read any more, and I STILL haven’t had any real chats with folks who have seen the movie AND read the book so this is all literally first thoughts with next to zero research lollll! Please don’t hate me if anything I said was ignorant, and honestly if you disagree with me on this stuff I will only be more hyped about diving deeper hahaha. Comment, share, rip me to shreds- FEED THE BEAST!

I just finished watching The Favourite and now I am starting to see the threads from Dogtooth through most of the other Lanthimos films through to Poor Things which I ALSO want to write about, but I don’t think it’ll be interesting unless it’s also your current special interest maybe? Someone hire me as a culture critic ASAP- I’ll even edit my work properly ;)

OMG I DIDN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT THE AESTHETICS OF THE FILM- SOME OF MY FAVE *EVER* but there’s no time!! Later maybe.

Love
From
Lydia

Ps omg also I launched a pattern today but it’s not as important as this lol