Morgan Rowland, mjr182@uakron.edu
This movie is very self-centered, which makes sense considering our main character poisons herself with anti-depressants leading to variety of symptoms including a disfiguring rash, headaches, vomiting blood and seizures. There are very few scenes in this film that do not feature our main character Signe, the few that do are people finding out she's ill (in a nightmare) or we the audience finding out her boyfriend's a thief. Almost every shot centers Signe, tracks her with a camera or zooms in on her, we never take our eyes off of her.
The two things I find most interesting about this film are the wardrobe and its exploration of how people treat disability. Signs dresses relatively modest and "frump" from the very beginning of the film with the only deviations being at Thomas' gallery opening where she's wearing flashy silver and during the interview where she attempts to dress "sexy" (this is after the rash has appeared) and if immediately put in something covering like what she usually wears. This plays into the role of disability because it speaks to how people hate when disabilities are disabling or "in your face."
The owner of the talent agent claims to care about inclusivity but won't do something as simple as not move the water so that her blind assistant can find it or not hire a woman who's coughing up blood during her interview, all she has Signe do is say she's not responsible for her health and then it's off to the photo shoots. She also makes to know that Signe's disability only affects her appearance not because she'll try to accommodate her in any way but simply because it might make finding her jobs harder.
Disabilities are such a "taboo" in society, you can be disable but not "too" disabled and they can't affect your abilities or make you to conventionally unattractive and those around you shouldn't have to change in anyway to accommodate you and that's not the part Signe wants. She wants the pity and the attention she think that people with disabilities get without out the actual pain or oppression of being disabled and like many a cishet well off white girl she learns absolutely nothing from a situation she caused most people wouldn't even being to fathom creating.
Comments