1/22/01: On the nature of female fulfillment
In case you missed it, this contains spoilers for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Either come to terms with that, or wait to read this once you've seen it. Your call. :) Also, I give away the ending to The Awakening, which you might have had to read in high school. Good book. Anyway, do the right thing.
So yeah, I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I thought it was beautiful and fun and all, but I was a little put off by the end. It's a little under-realized -- you don't really understand what's going on or why. Namely: our surprise hero, Jen, decides to throw herself off a bridge. The fact that she can fly (which makes this a strange and ineffectual suicide method) and the whole "is she granting a wish and if so for who?" thing aside.... What bugs me about this -- and no, it's not that it's not a happy ending -- is the implication that Jen did it because she wanted to be free. She had two options: live with Lo, who was a pretty cool guy and who really, really, loved her -- and who she seemed to love -- or kill herself. And she killed herself.
Just like our friend Edna in The Awakening. Edna realizes she can't really be with her lover, for various societal reasons; she will never really be happy, blah blah blah, and she just sort of... swims out to sea. It kind of makes sense in the book and all that, and it's an old book, but anyway.
I know these are two isolated incidents, but I'm still sick of it. What is up with this? So women can only find fulfillment by not being with men? There are plenty of stories like this, where the women decide that they just won't really be with anyone for a while. Oh, there are plenty where they fall in love and get married too but this isn't fulfillment, it's romance. When you want the personal growth thing, alone is the way to travel. Oh... So is this the secret to life? Women shouldn't hang out with men if they (the women) want to get up to the Next Level, Freedom? What about men?
Oh, there's the problem. If you look at "The Family Man" or "What Women Want" or a million other movies, you'll see: the only way men can really be happy is to settle down with a woman and a family and stuff.
Okay, I'm starting to get this. Men should go against their supposed nature and get married, and women should go against their supposed nature and not get married. Even death is preferable. If you want to get married, and you're a woman, you'll be sacrificing the best part of yourself. But if you want to get married, and you're a man, then you've ascended to that high level that is Settling Down and Growing Up and Stuff.
I am, in case you're wondering, a feminist. I'm all for women being independent. ::throw your hands up at me :: But the way people define feminism gets on my nerves. Why do you have to be a stolid soldier to be strong? I'm not saying that there isn't something to be gained by standing on one's own two feet and all that. I just think, why couldn't Jen just hang out at the dojo, learning more about how to fly and all that, maybe marry Lo or just run around with him, be happy and have fun? Lo or no Lo, she didn't have to throw herself off a bridge. And I defy you to find a movie where a man finds personal fulfillment by "just going it alone this time." It just seems to be a strange statement on the relationships between men and women.
So there.