¶ … popular film and a work of art? It is often said that popular films simply recycle cliches while works of art show audiences new ways of looking at the world. This is particularly true in regards to gender. Popular films recycle conventional narratives about women pining for love, about the sexually voracious men who cannot commit, and women who patiently bear their husband's or lover's adultery. However, three groundbreaking films -- She's Gotta Have It (1986) directed by Spike Lee, Vagabond (1985) directed by Agnes Varda, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) directed by Pedro Almodovar -- invert rather than restate such cinematic stereotypes.
Spike Lee's film She's Gotta Have It has often been called a feminist film. The central protagonist, Nola Darling, wants a sexually independent lifestyle despite the pressures to commit from the men in her life. Nola is pursued by three men: the gentle and kind Jamie Overstreet, the handsome Greer Childs, and the childish Mars Blackmon. Each man represents a different need, a different side of Nola's character....
Nola refuses to choose between the three of them because she wants sensitivity, a man who can please her sexually, and also wants to have fun.
Nola wants 'the whole package' of the perfect man, and will not confine herself to a single boyfriend until she can find her ideal. Instead of the conventional positioning of the commitment-phobic man who is pursued by several women, Lee depicts a woman who wants to own her
sexuality and refuses to allow her
identity to be contained. Her sexuality is not shown as voracious, rather it is normal. It makes the men in her life insecure because they wish to possess her and secretly suspect that they may be more emotionally as well as sexually needy than the confident Nola.
However, Vagabond shows the darker side of female independence and a refusal to be connected to a community. Of course, Nola, despite her
determination to 'have it' from three men is still part of an extended network of…
