Disclaimer: This film has strong graphic sexual content and gory scenes, and I describe them in great detail in this post.
A few weeks ago, I decided to watch the movie Poor Things. My mom had checked it out at the library, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to sit through it due to the explicit content. I don’t watch a lot of movies with sex scenes, to be honest, and I am squeamish about gore, and the film’s MPAA rating is R for gore, disturbing images and graphic nudity. But when the trailer was released last year, I was pretty excited. I really like the other films from director Yorgos Lanthimos, who directed films like The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite. His most recent one is Kinds of Kindness, but I haven’t seen that one yet. I went ahead and watched the movie because I was curious what all the buzz was about. Also, I read an article that said Emily Stone (I read a few months ago that she prefers to go by her birth name, Emily, instead of Emma) had to actually eat a bunch of custard tarts for her role in the film, because her character, Bella Baxter, eats a bunch of pastries and gets sick afterwards. In reality, Emily really did feel sick after eating all those pastries. I’m sure I would, too. Even if they gave me vegan custard tarts, I would still only eat a couple. Eating too much sugar causes inflammation in my eyes, so I can’t eat a lot of sugar unfortunately. I thought I had to close my eyes during the scene where Bella vomits because I have emetophobia, a fear of vomiting, so I don’t watch a lot of movies with vomit scenes. But it wasn’t that bad, to be honest, and I knew the scene was coming because I had read for any triggers on DoestheDogDie.com.
The parts that freaked me out the most were the scenes where Dr. Godwin Baxter had to perform surgeries. I am squeamish about blood, even though I work in a field where I have to read about (oftentimes) horrific car accidents and look at (sometimes) graphic photos of people’s injuries. But what I think helped me was knowing that these people were actors and that these were all props that looked very realistic. I couldn’t watch the scene where Bella stabs that one corpse’s eyes, though. Bella has a really interesting view on life. Honestly, she made me think a little about Eve from the movie Life Size. Totally different story lines (and wayyyy different MPAA ratings) but like Eve, Bella is navigating life as a human being who has to start from scratch. Eve is a doll who turns into a human after a girl, trying to bring her mom back to life, ends up bringing the doll to life instead of her mom. Eve goes out into the world thinking everything is so bright and colorful, but she also sees the less joyful parts of human life, like people tossing garbage on the street, a lady wearing a real fur coat who gets offended when Eve tells her that “she should love animals and not wear them” and negative grumpy coworkers. In Poor Things, there is one scene where Bella is on a ship, and they pass through a place where people are living in poverty and people are dying. Bella cries and tells a fellow passenger, Harry, that they need to go and save those people. Harry is indifferent to the people’s suffering, however, and tells her that there’s no point in helping them. Bella decides to take Duncan’s money and gives it to a couple of crew members on the ship so they can give it to the people who are suffering, but of course, the crew members are lying when they promise to give the money to the poor. They’re like, “Oh, wow, this girl just gave us money! We can spend it however we want! Forget those poor suffering people!” It upsets Duncan when he finds out and he erupts in a rage, with Bella crying and not understanding why he is so upset.
The scene where Bella learns to masturbate reminded me of The Color Purple. In my sophomore year of college, we read The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and there is a scene where a character named Celie, who is a survivor of sexual abuse, meets a woman named Shug Avery. Shug is confident in her sexuality, and she teaches Celie how to masturbate. Bella explores her own body and discovers that she can give herself sexual pleasure, and to be perfectly honest it’s something I really resonated with. I’m going to get rather personal here (and if you think it’s gross, honestly, it’s okay. It is pretty uncomfortable and gross.) I enjoyed masturbation many times in my 20s. In college, I was really struggling with depression and exploring my sexuality felt like freedom, it felt like independence. I was also navigating my asexuality at the time and learning how to embrace not feeling sexual attraction to people. I discovered that my body was MAD powerful, and I literally began to love myself. However, when I read The Color Purple and read about Celie masturbating, I felt uncomfortable, probably because masturbation is an uncomfortable topic for many folks to bring up. When I watched Poor Things, I found myself again tensing up when I saw Bella masturbating, but I guess it’s because there is so much taboo and stigma around talking about or showing people masturbating on cinema. I don’t see a lot of people doing themselves onscreen, I mostly see partnered sex in movie sex scenes. In Poor Things, after Bella gives away Duncan’s gambling money to the crew members on the ship, she and Duncan end up penniless, and when they get to Paris, Bella meets a lady who owns a brothel and invites her to become a sex worker to make money. I admit, the scenes where Bella does sex work made me pretty uncomfortable, especially because the scenes show little to no emotion. The scenes where Bella has to have sex with her clients caused quite a bit of controversy because Bella has the brain of a baby, so she can’t technically provide consent even though she has the body of an adult. I haven’t read enough about the controversy to talk about it, but I thought it was an interesting thing to notice about the movie. Bella ends up making a lot of money from doing sex work, but Duncan wants her to stop because it’s ruining their relationship, and he wants control of her. But Bella is starting to realize her autonomy and that she doesn’t need to depend on Duncan for everything anymore.
There is another scene that stuck with me, and that was the scene where Bella is reading a book on the deck of the ship, and Duncan throws the book overboard. Duncan is very controlling and doesn’t want Bella to learn how to read because he wants her to still remain a naive child who doesn’t know anything other than how to adhere to these rigid norms that society expected for women to follow. Duncan throws the book overboard, but the old lady that Bella befriended on the ship gives her another book to read. Duncan is furious that the lady did this, and he throws that book overboard. If I was in Bella’s position, I would have thrown a fit if Duncan threw my book overboard. I would be upset because what else am I going to do on a ship to pass the time? I love reading and it keeps me entertained and also helps me with my critical thinking skills and writing, so I would be really sad if I was sitting on that lounge chair and Duncan was getting all angry with me about reading a book.
I’m fading and getting tired, but I will write more tomorrow. I’m still marinating some of my thoughts about the movie.
The Arts Are Life 