connielane (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
connielane) wrote2008-06-23 05:59 pm
connielane) wrote2008-06-23 05:59 pm
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What the Movies Have Taught Me About NYC, Chapter 5
What Rosemary's Baby has taught me about NYC.
Shelves in the closet - happy thought indeed!
Lesson learned: If it seems too good to be true, Satan is probably involved.
Rosemary's Baby is the prime example of something I call Pipe Dream New York Real Estate. Movies and television are an alternate universe in which college students, struggling artists, and people who live paycheck to paycheck can swing a huge apartment in Manhattan (Friends, that's you I'm pointedly looking at). I may not live there yet, but I've done a lo-ho-hot of research and looking at apartment listings, and the only thing I can say is "all evidence to the contrary." Rosemary doesn't work, and her husband is an actor who can't quite get his big break. Not exactly a landlord's dream. And yet they're able to score a HUGE apartment in a fictional building called the Bramford. Yeah, right. I'm not holding my breath for such a residential windfall.
The role of the Bramford, incidentally, is being played by the real-life Dakota building (pictured below) - possibly the most elite and difficult-to-get-into apartment building in Manhattan, which makes the idea of the young married couple in Rosemary's Baby being able to sign a lease there (even when it's subbing for a fictional building) even more amusing. Lauren Bacall used to live there. Billy Joel applied to live there, but was rejected. John Lennon lived there in the last years of his life, and in front of the building is the spot where he was killed. It's a gorgeous, gothic-looking building whose east windows look out onto Central Park, and it's definitely a New York landmark. I should add that only the exterior shots of the fictional Bramford were shot at the Dakota, because photography is not allowed inside the building, even if you're a bigshot film director.
So yeah, the chances in the real world of Rosemary and her struggling actor husband living in a building like that and having a nice, cushy life are slim to none, unless the devil is in it somewhere. Because that has to be literally one hell of a co-op board. *rim shot*
No really, here's the real lesson: The world (and perhaps New York in particular) can be a scary place and just might hand you your ass if you betray vulnerability.
This is one of those perspectives that will evolve over time, I'm sure, but it's certainly one of the main filters through which I'm looking at The Move (to say nothing of the journey to writerhood). I'm heading into this with the shields up, and I can't even count the number of times I've wondered if I can really cut it. It also strikes me that being a woman will (or at least could - oh, who are we kidding? - will) make it that much more of a struggle if I'm not somewhat made of stone. As any of you who know me well can attest, I definitely am not made of stone, and that is perhaps my chief concern regarding what I'm about to do. And with that context, I can't help thinking of Rosemary. Not that being a woman living in NYC would make my life even remotely comparable to her fictional one. But there's a connection in my mind, nonetheless.
There's a kind of backwards misogyny about Rosemary's Baby. Rosemary isn't a weak woman, but she's kind of beset on all sides by people who are using her in the most vile manner imaginable. I've never been a fan of Mia Farrow, but there's kind of an understated brilliance about her performance, which I sometimes find it easy to mistake for egregious aloofness. I may be showing my unmarriedness here, but I'm always appalled at the nonchalance with which Guy claims that he had his way with Rosemary while she was unconscious. It's a lie, of course, and what he really did was far worse. But the reality that he gives her - she wasn't feeling well, went to bed early, and he did his business with her while she was unconscious so that they wouldn't miss the window to conceive a child - is kind of sick to me. I mean, I know they're married, but that's still not consensual. And Rosemary, while she's clearly disturbed by it, is never quite as indignant as she should be, as I see it.
However, Rosemary is not the typical Strong Movie Woman. Farrow plays her as a real woman, who has weaknesses but is not at all weak. I think a lot of women can identify with the feeling of men who they perceive as being stronger kind of patronizing them and saying "Why don't you just lie down, honey." That may not be something we like to talk about, but I think it's something that many women deal with in their own way. Rosemary is in a very vulnerable position, but she holds her ground when she thinks it's important. And when she finally her Strong Movie Woman moment, it's actually rather impressive. More so, I think, than if she'd been stereotypically "strong" all along.
The role of the Bramford, incidentally, is being played by the real-life Dakota building (pictured below) - possibly the most elite and difficult-to-get-into apartment building in Manhattan, which makes the idea of the young married couple in Rosemary's Baby being able to sign a lease there (even when it's subbing for a fictional building) even more amusing. Lauren Bacall used to live there. Billy Joel applied to live there, but was rejected. John Lennon lived there in the last years of his life, and in front of the building is the spot where he was killed. It's a gorgeous, gothic-looking building whose east windows look out onto Central Park, and it's definitely a New York landmark. I should add that only the exterior shots of the fictional Bramford were shot at the Dakota, because photography is not allowed inside the building, even if you're a bigshot film director.
So yeah, the chances in the real world of Rosemary and her struggling actor husband living in a building like that and having a nice, cushy life are slim to none, unless the devil is in it somewhere. Because that has to be literally one hell of a co-op board. *rim shot*
No really, here's the real lesson: The world (and perhaps New York in particular) can be a scary place and just might hand you your ass if you betray vulnerability.
This is one of those perspectives that will evolve over time, I'm sure, but it's certainly one of the main filters through which I'm looking at The Move (to say nothing of the journey to writerhood). I'm heading into this with the shields up, and I can't even count the number of times I've wondered if I can really cut it. It also strikes me that being a woman will (or at least could - oh, who are we kidding? - will) make it that much more of a struggle if I'm not somewhat made of stone. As any of you who know me well can attest, I definitely am not made of stone, and that is perhaps my chief concern regarding what I'm about to do. And with that context, I can't help thinking of Rosemary. Not that being a woman living in NYC would make my life even remotely comparable to her fictional one. But there's a connection in my mind, nonetheless.
There's a kind of backwards misogyny about Rosemary's Baby. Rosemary isn't a weak woman, but she's kind of beset on all sides by people who are using her in the most vile manner imaginable. I've never been a fan of Mia Farrow, but there's kind of an understated brilliance about her performance, which I sometimes find it easy to mistake for egregious aloofness. I may be showing my unmarriedness here, but I'm always appalled at the nonchalance with which Guy claims that he had his way with Rosemary while she was unconscious. It's a lie, of course, and what he really did was far worse. But the reality that he gives her - she wasn't feeling well, went to bed early, and he did his business with her while she was unconscious so that they wouldn't miss the window to conceive a child - is kind of sick to me. I mean, I know they're married, but that's still not consensual. And Rosemary, while she's clearly disturbed by it, is never quite as indignant as she should be, as I see it.
However, Rosemary is not the typical Strong Movie Woman. Farrow plays her as a real woman, who has weaknesses but is not at all weak. I think a lot of women can identify with the feeling of men who they perceive as being stronger kind of patronizing them and saying "Why don't you just lie down, honey." That may not be something we like to talk about, but I think it's something that many women deal with in their own way. Rosemary is in a very vulnerable position, but she holds her ground when she thinks it's important. And when she finally her Strong Movie Woman moment, it's actually rather impressive. More so, I think, than if she'd been stereotypically "strong" all along.
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1) Awesome caption!
2) Whenever I hear about the Dakota, I think about the fact that Stacey's Best New York Friend (whose name I can't remember but I think it was a faintly masculine one) in The Baby-Sitter's Club lived there. How's that for a pop culture reference? :D
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Being appalled at rape has nothing to do with unmarriedness.
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I have always had a problem with Guy's lie as a plot point period. Obviously, he had to say something, but that should have fundamentally and very obviously changed his relationship with Rosemary (in my opinion), and it doesn't seem to that much. (I should mention that, IIRC, in the book, he simply tells her it was a bad dream.)
I mean, if it was me, I wouldn't think I'd be able to live with that person anymore, especially if he said it in such a casual way, like it wasn't that big a deal. Much less be all excited about having a baby. It's a serious flaw in the story, in my opinion, but it's obviously not Mia Farrow's fault it's written that way, and she plays it well, considering.
I just think there's something in me that kind of defaults my opinions about certain things as ignorant. It's in the story, and someone older and more experienced than I am came up with it, so there must be something I'm not getting. Combine that with the number of times I have felt an insinuation from a married person that I couldn't understand because I was not married myself, and my natural instinct is to give a disclaimer in case I'm saying something ignorant.
Anyway, that's way more explanation than may have been necessary, but I felt the need to clarify.
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I see where you're coming from. I think that probably the reason this isn't treated as a big deal in the film is because it's old enough that the view that a married woman is obliged to offer sex whenever her husband wants it and that marital rape can't happen still had mainstream currency. Not voiced in so many words, but as an attitude - well, they're married, she wants a baby, that's a tacit agreement to sex. And it's reproductive sex, not sex for pleasure, so that makes even more of a Duty. Hell, the idea that your husband can rape you is still seen as a radical feminist one by some people. And they'd probably say it's because it's a Married Person Thing that you have to be married to understand. But I think the concept that your body is yours and no-one else has the right to do things to it without your consent is pretty obvious all by itself.
Myself, I don't think there really are any big secrets that married people all understand and unmarried ones don't - I live with my fiance (and have done for a couple of years), and I'm not expecting to suddenly come into any big revelations after the actual wedding occurs. There's stuff about relationships and sex and living with people that you learn through doing it, but that stuff is neither predicated on marriage or totally mysterious if you don't do it. It might be hard to fully understand until you've gone through it, but like that ever stopped anyone commenting on anything.
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