The Private Myths of Public Dreamers
I read a movie review of Million Dollar Baby in the newsletter of the UCSC Feminist Studies Department, my old alma mater, that reminded me of what I hate about feminism — or should I say, what I hate about some feminisms (oh how pretentious those plurals sound!). The reviewer, Carla Freccero, objected to many things in the movie: that the protagonist’s mother was panned as greedy white trash while the trainer (Clint Eastwood’s character) was portrayed as a supportive, surrogate father figure. The black janitor (Morgan Freeman) was maternal and all-knowing, whereas the evil boxing lady was a black German ex-prostitute, the only woman of color in the film (granted, she was a bit over the top — but what do I know about boxing anyway?). But above all, Freccero didn’t like that it was a powerful, gripping movie while apparently glorifying boxing, which she has all sorts of reasons to not like.
Myself, I did not have the same problems with the movie. It was an incredibly powerful movie I felt, largely because its portrayal of Clint Eastwood’s tortured character did not give any easy answers to the issue of medically assisted suicide. His anguish is what is real about the movie: it is deep, complex, and does not resolve neatly into (dare I say it?) political correctness.
I like when a film has some guts. I’m willing to forgive a lot of possibly unimportant details about which character is which race if they are portrayed as real people having real conflicts over real situations. I want emotional integrity, I want some paradox, I don’t want easy answers, even if they’re hard-won. For these reasons, I felt Million Dollar Baby was a completely successful movie. It knocked me out the evening I saw it (no pun intended), colored my dreams that night, and had me thinking about it all the next day.
There is another issue here that I’d like to touch on, though. As a dreamworker, my theory is that the cause of a lot of dreck that passes for mainstream movie fare these days is due to filmmakers being out of touch with their dreams. Joseph Campbell famously said, “A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth.” Filmmakers today are some of our most powerful myth-makers. I don’t think it’s the job of any public dreamers to make sure their creations espouse any given ideology, but I do think it’s their job to dig deep to portray the truth of life as they see it.
The best way I know how to do that is to examine our “private myths,” the nightly emanations from our unconscious that suggest so many amazing ways to look at our lives. I’m not saying that dreamwork would save Hollywood (why would I want to save Hollywood?), but I do think if I could get together a dream group comprised of six or seven influential filmmakers, and if we could keep going long enough for everyone to get comfortable working with our small private dreams, we would start to see a change in the public myths coming out, as well.
What would Carla Freccero say to that? Probably that I’ve been lulled by my own privilege into thinking that anything which perpetuates stereotypes can be considered worthwhile. Maybe that I should work on the dreams of women prisoners rather than affluent film industry types. Well, I’d love to work on the dreams of feminist studies professors, too! We all help perpetuate the myths floating around in our culture — it’s part of human nature. The question is, can we face all the things which live in our private dreams? And what happens to our art and our actions when we can’t?
August 16th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
I liked Million Dollar Baby. I think it struggled with important things - and chose not to struggle with what Carla Freccero objected to. Or perhaps the problem is that it did *not* choose to not struggle with those things - it just omitted them because of lack of consciousness.
My dreams lately… they’ve been interesting, to say the least. I’ve been thinking of them as the “hopes and fears” card in the Celtic Cross spread.
Kisses to you!
August 17th, 2005 at 8:53 am
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it — the movie chose certain fulcrums around which to spin the story, and left others alone. I think ultimately they made the best decision, because an emotionally riveting moral choice packs a lot of punch. I’ve seen several movies that build themselves around more the issues Ms. Freccero was highlighting, and unless there’s a damn good story going on, those movies just fall flat. Too self-conscious, not enough ways for the audience to engage with the material. Like some of the weaker John Sayles movies, for instance.