On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 14:31:21 +0200, "MP Jakobsen" <eus@adr.dk> wrote:
>Nu har jeg gået og tænkt lidt over filmen... jeg er temmelig sikker på at
>elme-træerne har noget at gøre med sagen... Nogen bud?
>Jeg er lidt lost...
Well, Lisbon søstrene bliver afbilledet som smukke og perfekte
skabninger. Måske FOR perfekte til at leve i en verden der ikke er?
Denne artikel drager paralleller mellem deres død, og enden på den
traditionelle "American way of life" i midt 70'erne:
http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/v/virgin-suicides.html
"And yet this silencing of the Lisbon girls is also the movie's most
pointed critique (and thus its most difficult tension), as can be seen
by paying attention to the film's social and temporal backdrop.
Although the year in which the film takes place is never specified,
its repeated use of Heart's "Magic Man," from Dreamboat Annie, places
the film smack in the middle of the '70s, in 1976, not insignificantly
America's bicentennial birthday. The film takes place in Grosse
Pointe, Michigan, affluent Detroit suburb, and home to America's auto
industry executive elite. Grosse Pointe and 1976 mark the frenzied end
of one of the most turbulent eras in U.S. history, and the end of a
"traditional" American way of life and industry. As the narrator
remarks, neighbors saw in the Lisbon girls' tragedy the "wiped-out
elms, the harsh sunlight, and the continuing decline of our auto
industry." The year was also, for those of us who remember,
characterized by the "energy crisis" (which, of course, meant oil
crisis), and the increasing import of cheaper, more gas efficient
foreign cars, that would shortly lead to the demise of Flint, Michigan
and Detroit auto workers, one of the historical backbones of the US
economy. All these details — Grosse Pointe, the end of the '70s, and
the reference to the "demise of the auto industry" — make the Lisbons
representative of the decline of the normative characteristics of a
national community. The failure of the Lisbon family reflects the
failure of the American Dream and the conservative values that
underpinned it. Simultaneously, the national bicentennial denotes a
new beginning, the emergence of a new social order. After the social
and political upheavals of the '60s and '70s, after the Vietnam War,
the Civil Rights movement, the Brown Power movement, the Gay
Liberation Front, the women's movement and ERA, and after the sexual
revolution, 1976 also marks the end of the nationalist fantasy of a
unified citizenry and national interest."
--
Kasper Aae
E-mail: rbb at rocketmail.com