Popular Film and a Work of Art?

¶ … 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 friends and family. However, Mona, the protagonist of Vagabond leaves her job and her family entirely, and sets out upon the road. Mona has interesting experiences as she wanders, and meets people with whom she has a transient connection. But the encounters are always fleeting, and she never finds a family or a lover with whom she can feel at home.

The idea that women must be connected to a place, or naturally seek human connections more than males is challenged by Vagabond. Women too, it suggests, have a yearning for absolute freedom. This freedom comes at a price -- the young woman at the center of the film freezes to death, out in the open. The people who remember her do not seem to fully understand her quest to wander. The film uses a familiar figure in myth and legend -- the placeless person -- and challenges gender norms by using a woman to embody this figure: a woman with no home, no apparent family, no friends, and no apparent desire to have those things.