Showing posts with label reproductive rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reproductive rights. Show all posts

Thursday, September 3, 2026

Alan J. Pakula's 'Paranoid Trilogy': Klute



            The first film in my analysis of Alan J. Pakula’s “Paranoid Trilogy” is the 1970’s sinister surveillance thriller, Klute. Fueled by the second wave feminist movement, Jane Fonda’s own activism at the time, and Pakula’s interest in Psychoanalysis, this is one of the first films of the period, certainly of the genre, to explore the interiority of women beyond their convention and utility to the story. In turn, this film both sparked and mirrored a general feeling of mistrust in the populace that permeated through the decade. This sense of ennui created by this film was not something Pakula manufactured and injected into the culture. Instead, because Pakula immaculately frames the story through Bree (Jane Fonda)’s perspective, it allows the viewers the opportunity to understand the experience of being a woman in public. Effectively transferring a woman’s fear, anxiety, unease and sense of powerlessness to the audience. Pakula wanted to emphasize that, in this film, the ‘Paranoia’ in question might just be the average Tuesday for a woman. A revelatory concept at the time. The following brief paper will engage how the burgeoning torrent of social change of the 1970’s became the backdrop of the films production pedestaled by a primordial second wave that dared to see women outside of the socialized gender roles assigned to them; while simultaneously ignoring the dangers brought on by institutional regulation and oversite.

 


PLOT

        Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) is an actor and model that is constantly struggling and trying to get out of a life of prostitution. Yet, the sense of power she gets when she’s with a “trick” is intoxicating, especially when it is so aggressively juxtaposed with the sense of powerlessness of being a woman in 1970’s New York. John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a private detective that is looking for a missing person who may or may not have been one of Bree’s former clients. As the mystery continues to unravel, Bree is sucked back into her old life completely; complicated by her former Pimp (Roy Scheider) and an unknown stalker. As she and Klute get closer (to solving the mystery and each other) Bree must confront her own feelings and the personal embodiment of misogyny that threatens her.

 


HISTOTRICAL CONTEXT

           Anomie is the social condition of normlessness that often occurs simultaneously or after periods of immense social change. It is identified and measured by a period of instability that illustrates the dynamism of the social structure as the volatility of social institutions and interaction strain between individuals are in a verdant and often perplexing state of flux after such a calamity (Durkheim 2014)        


The 1970’s was a period of transition. This was a time at the tail end of the second wave feminist movement; much of which was codified by the two most liberal Supreme Courts the United States has ever had to date. The Warren Court and The Berger Court were responsible for many of the landmark Civil Rights decisions in US History:

            Under the Warren Court (1953-1969)

·         Brown v. Board of Education (Struct down Jim Crow Segregation in Schools)

·         Loving v. Virginia (allowed marriage between races based on Privacy)

·         Miranda v. Arizona (Cops must make people aware of their rights)

·         Gideon v. Wainwright (Right to an appointed attorney if you cannot afford it)

·         Griswold v. Connecticut (Allows married couples to access contraceptives)

·         Cooper V. Aaron (Ruled States cannot delay desegregation)

·          New York Times v. Sullivan (limits public official’s ability to sue defamation)

·         Engel v. Vitale (outlawing prayer in schools)

·         While these were not court cases, this Court presided over the passage of landmark Civil Rights legislation in Congress: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 Civil Rights Act of 64 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

  

Under the Berger Court (1969-1986)

·         New York Times v. United States (allowed for the publishing of the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam)

·         Miller v. California (Obscene material was protected under the First Amendment)

·         Roe v. Wade (Women have federal protections for body autonomy (abortions))

·         US v. Nixon (Executive privilege does not extend to Presidential communication with advisers)  

·         Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (Upheld Affirmative Action in School admissions but disallowed racial quotas)

·         While these were not court cases, this Court did preside over the establishment of Title XI and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

These two liberal courts, in succession, transformed the social and political landscape for generations. This became a period for socialist principles, of a unity between marginalized groups.  This was a time of “Sisterhood” where women started to understand solidarity and similarities with all women, while recognizing their different experiences (Zeilinger 2012).

            One example of the “sisterhood” existence during this time was through The Jane Collective. This was a consortium of women who counseled women and referred them to underground abortions from 1969 until 1973 when the first legal clinic opened after the Roe decision (Kaplan 2019). As the demand grew over this time, and the ability to outsource the underground abortions safely became more tenuous, The Jane Collective became medically trained to perform the procedure themselves. They only charged cost (on the necessary medical supplies) and no one was ever turned away for their inability to pay (Kaplan 2019). They understood that women’s body autonomy was a moral right, regardless of the archaic laws that governed them.[1]   

            The seeds of this intersectionality would come to embody the social justice movements in the future. While there was/is resistance to this change as these issues got codified into law during the 60’s and 70’s, people slowly started to adopt these more justice-minded principles publicly. It wasn’t that many of these people started to believe differently, they just did not want to be sanctioned for beliefs that have since become taboo at large. This contributed to the movement of discrimination and oppression from the overt language and institutional regulation into a more covert form of influence and control; while establishing reliable scapegoats regardless of their support for the policies behaviors and decisions of oppressors. This is because, regardless of truth, everyone tries to revise their morality publicly to always be on “the right side of history. We see this whenever a White Politician from a southern state invokes Martin Luther King Jr. by poorly paraphrasing the one quote that every Racist Republican leader references to elevate them beyond their racism in the eyes of the general-public[2]. A practice which uses Dr. King as a deflective prop rather than revered as a whole person.  To be clear, it’s not that these ideas have finally reached individuals that have been socialized to steep in various forms of vitriolic values and won them over. These individuals instead saw a culture shift and did not want to be ridiculed, ostracized or lose power. Therefore, they fain a social justice mindset.  As El Akkad (2025) astutely states: “One day everyone will have always been against this”     

The 1970’s was a decade chalk full of transitions; from civil rights the end of the Vietnam war, and a rash of serial killers to a string of high profile assassinations. The US was at a proverbial crossroads between becoming more democratically socialist or pivoting into greater authoritarian control through an embrace of Western Free market Capitalism. Nowhere was this existential intersection epitomized more than the 1980 Presidential election; in which President Jimmy Carter was challenged by Ronald Reagan. Carter, the democratic incumbent, was beset by an energy crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and falling poll numbers. Yet, in a series of speeches, he implored the American public to think beyond themselves. To think of the environment, about consumption and the morality of the nation.  This culminated in Carter’s famous/infamous speech about:

“The Crisis of Confidence”

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

 

Much like C. Wright Mills (1959), that saw that the personal is also political, pushing ourselves beyond our everyday understanding into something broader: a collective, interconnected symbiosis; so too does Carter beg his constituents to see beyond their Millsian “private orbits” of work, family, and their neighborhood. To look into the good of all people. Yet, this allowed his challenger Reagan to position himself to the exact opposite massage. Hence, Reagan promoted more spending, smaller government and an appeal to the “greatness” of the American people.

 Reagan’s message was attractive to the American voters; with the perfect blend of nationalist/egoistic pride and inaction. President Carter was painting a picture of America in the beginnings of a long uphill battle to get us back to where we were as a nation. Meanwhile, his challenger was saying “We can Make America Great Again” if we continue with the status quo without any reflection. These were two fundamentally and diametrically opposed views of our society. In the end, we took the easier, low road, believing that the American Experiment was thriving. Reagan, for his part, paved the way to our current (but not inevitable) ruin that culminated with Donald Trump and his bacchanal of bastards. After four decades of pro capitalist economic policies and anti-socialist deregulation Carter’s calls of “crisis” now seem prophetic in hindsight.




The Role of Hollywood and Klute’s Production

  This transition period of the 1970’s was fueled by a noticeable shift in culpability, causing a perspective shift from the personal to the institutional. After the Watergate Scandal and the Nixon pardon, people were wary about trusting their government and were more likely to believe in conspiracies. This distrust was capitalized on by Hollywood and furthered this mis/distrust through the decade. While the popularity of Pakula’s Trilogy was the anchor of this shaping of the public perception towards paranoia, it was furthered along by other films at the time: Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation, Network, The China Syndrome. Like Pakula’s 70’s work, these films continued to sew doubt and erode trust in government institutions. Cover-ups, conspiracies, propagandic brain washing, and mass surveillance all became popular storytelling devices that fed on the growing uncertainty of the time due to such rapid and drastic social changes. 

With Klute, Pakula not only created one of the seminal New York films of the 1970’s (representing perfectly the city as it was in the decade) but provided a glimpse into the interior life of women that no thriller up to that point had done before (Harris 2019). This was not the original intention of the film. Based on the conventions of the genre, Pakula originally wanted to explore the titular character more deeply. But as they were pairing down the film to shooting length, the story was found in the tidal pull between Bree’s internal struggles with her desires and the way the rest of society frames her.

The film challenged the popular perception of the depravity of sex work. There is a grace by which Pakula presents and depicts sex work that both is realist in the kinds of individuals surround such a profession, but at the same time, succeeds in not demonizing the practice or participants. It was one of first times that this humanization was seen on camera. While it does not come right out and state that “sex work is work” and should be legitimated, the centering of Bree in the narrative and her richly complex admissions and discussions with her therapist infer as much (Harris 2019).

Harris (2019): Continues:

“In ‘Klute’, therapy is used not to break Bree down, but to give her an opportunity to plumb her own mind, and as we watch her musing, reconsidering, overriding herself, always thinking, the movie dips into verité in ways in which there was very little precedent in a genre film.”    

Pakula and Fonda independently discussed the difficulty of shooting the therapy scenes. There was always a discussion of what Bree would share with her therapist and how much the therapist would both know and be willing to push back against her in those sessions. In one take, Fonda as Bree, met the hostility of the Therapist with cool, emotionless control. Because, according to Fonda, “Overt hostility is the easiest thing in the world for Bree Daniels to deal with. She deals with it every day of her life. It makes her relax, because she knows where she is at.” (Milne 1972:23). Because Pakula always encouraged actors to share their ideas, he recognized Fonda’s complete embodiment and went a different direction to make Bree more vulnerable in that moment. Instead of meeting Bree with hostility, Pakula had the character of the Therapist catch her off guard with a question “Do you feel I failed you?” she asks. Instinctually, Fonda responded with “No, I feel I’ve failed you.” Giving us the first glimpse of the internalization of female gender norms, that women define themselves by their value to other people in their lives (more on this in Social Analysis).

               The film’s cinematography, photographed by legend and frequent Pakula collaborator, Gordon Willis. Willis focused on creating a sense of imbalance and claustrophobia. To achieve this, he refused to shoot many establishing shots and almost no wide shots; often cutting into the middle of scenes from other scenes to add to the ratcheting tension, purposefully not letting the audience breathe, to fully put them in Bree experience. While general wide shots exist in the film, one singular use of them stands out at the beginning of the film. When we are first introduced to Bree it is in a wide shot. She is sitting in a waiting area at a model agency to possibly be selected for a commercial. Wills decided to photograph this scene widely with a long lens; making Bree almost faceless among the other exclusively white female models. Even though the scene is interspersed with close-ups of the models, we never see the face of the director or producers that are critiquing them; furthering that sense of alienation. We watch the models sense of hope rise and fall as they are passed over with increasing apathy through disaffected comments like “Too Pretty” and “Seen her Before”. When we get to Bree, they dismiss her with “Funny Hands.” Once they get to the end of the row, Willis goes back to a wide shot. The producer thanks them and they all stand up, shuffle out to the right of the screen (their left) and behind them comes in a difference crop of now Black female models. The illustration of powerlessness in this scene sets the tone for the film and solidifies it as one of the major themes of the picture.  

 


SOCIAL ANALYSIS

            As Klute positioned itself as a mirror and cultural reproduction of the 1970’s, it also embodied a lot of social themes that were impossible to disentangle from the decade itself. Chiefly, the “Second Wave” Feminist movement, that saw independence in terms of access to abortion, birth control, contraceptives and job opportunities leading to a higher rate of divorce as more women achieved independent economic stability. White women specifically believing that there was something beyond the gender roles in which they had been conscripted. Meanwhile,  Black women carved out space for themselves that wasn’t provided to them by the movement. The language of the movement was only inclusive to white women, and affirmative action policies disproportionally benefit white women in practice (Kendall 2020).

            Gender Socialization and the legitimacy of sex work.

While Bree is portrayed by a white woman in Klute, her penchant for sex work taints her whiteness through the Madonna/Whore complex. The Madonna /Whore Complex is a feminist analysis of gender socialization directed at girls and women regarding sexual identity and expression. In this binary, women are required to be the (biblical) Madonna- chaste, pure. Thereby, under this archaic notion, women’s morality is tied to her virginity; and if the woman does have sex, even in committed relationships, there is a likelihood that she will be labeled a “whore” which defined as a fallen, defiled, and impure woman. This clear Christian supremacy is the lens through which women and their bodies are being controlled. Yet, whereas white women have the opportunity of the assumption of outright purity until it is “lost” through what is perceived and projected to be immoral acts, women of color have never given the same “benefit”. They have always been associated negatively through this religious lens as temptations and the work of “The devil”. The thematic through line being the overall fear of female sexual agency.

  The paradox of female gender socialization lies in its overall hypocrisy. Women are given the message since they were girls that their value is in their bodies; both as a sexual object to be possessed by men, or as a vessel for the next generation. Their bodies become currency. However, if women trade on that currency for their own financial or social gain, they are oppressed and ostracized either as a part of the Madonna/Whore binary or something equally reprehensible. This illustrates that the issue is not about the value of women’s bodies per se, but women’s agency to control those bodies. Independence of women scares the patriarchy because of the way it threatens the fundamental functions of its operation. They have conditioned men to be dependent on women that society has socially supplied them through these socialization processes. If women are allowed to be removed from that economic and social equation, Patriarchy’s power begins to crumble.

Klute was one of the first films to not villainize the sex worker as a hedonistically hell-bound harlot. Pakula’s direction and Fonda’s performance provide Bree with humanity beyond her profession. This was a giant leap forward and speaks to the feminist revolutionary spirit in the culture with which the film was made. Similarly, the film uses Bree to make a commentary about power. Bree is threatening to the Patriarchy because she knows how to commodify and weaponize her body (as society has taught her) for her own social and financial gain. In one of the first therapy sessions, the audience hears Bree confess the rush of power she feels when she is on a “trick”. That she has agency and control over her body, her time, and the situation. The film makes clear that this is a feeling of power through autonomy making that more difficult to give up than just the act of sex alone.

However, the film does couch the fullness of this identity by showing that Bree is also the victim of abuse (both as a child and an adult); implying that it was this damage that contributed to the decision to engage in prostitution (another tired trope). Thereby implying, but close to directly stating, that if she were well adjusted, she would not have chosen to sell her body. This is also fueled by the presence of John Klute (Donald Sutherland) that represents a way out of this life; stability and normalcy that Bree should desire. The dialogue toward the end of the film, and its ambiguous ending, suggest that Bree will self-sabotage her relationship with Klute, and thus be perceived as a failure.     

As women have achieved more agency, since the 1970’s, the patriarchal system has had to get creative. The taboo and critique of women through the Madonna/Whore binary is still in place. But in the 2020’s, women are expected to be both simultaneously. Pressured to have desired aspects of both categories while still performing these aspects in the service of men and the general patriarchy. While it is more widely accepted that sex work is work, today, there is still the commodification of women’s bodies for profit in which women are both being exploited and being active participants in that exploitation’s reproduction. Thus, more agency women have achieved over their bodies, the more the patriarchal system monetizes it for its own consumeristic benefit. Through that objectification, women are stripped of the value of that agency.

The Catharisis and Containment of Female Rage

An undercurrent in the film that is only indirectly addressed. Is Bree’s justifiable rage for being swept up in Klute’s investigation. Both the “hero” and “villain” of the story surveillance her, become emotionally compromised by her, and obsess over her. They also make Bree feel powerless in similarly distinct ways, albeit with the opposite intent. Cable achieves this through direct threats, intimidation, and fear; Klute through emotional intimacy. Regardless of the ladder’s positive context, it is a form surrendering; a relinquishing of power that makes Bree uncomfortable, and ultimately full of rage.

According to Rebecca Traister (2018), female rage is a revolutionary act. But recognizes that anger is socialized to be an asset for men and an albatross for women. If women’s anger is legitimized, which it is often not, it must be deployed sparingly and with precision, lest they summarily dismissed at best or dehumanized, violenced and violated at worst. Unfortunately, the validation of women’s anger usually comes at the cost of their silencing through victimization. And even then, it often plays out that male advocates speak on women’s behalf; embodying the role of anger translator for the masses while effectively stealing their voices rather than giving them space to speak for themselves. Yet, more women are willing to speak determined to not be distracted or deflected from their duty. Their rage can be a catalyst; even if they must shape their anger into a form that is more plateable than the direct form of rage that men benefit from.

As Traister (2018) Concludes:

            “Being mad is correct. Being mad is American; being mad can be joyful and productive and connective [Women] don’t ever let them talk you out of being mad again.       

 

 Unfortunately, Klute does not frame this rage as a healthy expression of Bree’s loss of power. Instead, it has Bree move from the powerlessness of victimhood (with Cable) to the powerlessness of gender bound heterosexual monogamy (with Klute). The film posits that she is too broken to be able to sustain a “normal” relationship with Klute which is reinforced by its ambiguous ending. We are left unsure where Bree will end up, but it is implied that if she does return to that doctor’s office, we are supposed to feel like it is a failure. That Bree, retaining agency and anger, while not being swept up and rescued from her life, like a damsel, is wrong. A cautionary tale. For all the ways that the film inches toward progressive themes, there is still this lingering thread of when a woman chooses anger and empowerment, it is perceived as a character flaw. This is another example of the way that women’s anger is dismissed, discouraged and discounted (Traister 2018).    

  Seeding a Critique of Surveillance

 Surveillance is the process by which individuals are consistently tracked and observed through various physical or non-physical means by individuals, organizations, companies, and institutions, often for the creation and maintenance of social control. The assumption of permanent visibility is important for the automatic functioning of power. Therefore, the knowledge of being watched leads to self-regulation. We see this any time we see police parked near a freeway, or black domes in convenience stores. We don’t know if anyone is in there or if they are watching but the possibility causes us to self-regulate. However, this is just the feeling, or perception of being watched rather than always being watched. In this example, the threat of force is always more effective than the actual force (Foucault 1977).

According to Foucault (1977)

 Penopticism [as] a disciplinary mechanism…must improve the mechanism of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for the society to come… [Therefore] the spread of disciplinary institutions…testifies to this.” (p 209)

What Foucault means here, is that the way that our social structure is organized, allows for a subtle form of social control through the assumption of constant surveillance we assume we are being watched therefore we follow the rules…However, due to technology, that threat is even more plausible.

The Data mining process has increased exponentially. Programs like Upstream, Prism and XKeyscore and the growing dependence on algorithmic software (AI) allow companies to data-mine from fiber cables and infrastructure (as the data flows past) (Upstream) and by collecting directly from the servers of US internet providers and social media companies (Prism) Keyscore is international.  This is what is called Dragnet Surveillance looking at all of the data to find suspected criminals/terrorists without a warrant

Corporations and Governments begin colluding to compile and Profit from “Metadata” beginning Surveillance Capitalism – where the Users, and info about them, are the product. (Zuboff 2019)

Also, due to the way that we use and consume social media, much of this data mining is very easy to do. Our tweets, Facebook posts, Snapchat swipes, Instagram pins, can all be subject to search by the government, and since the program they use is connected to private sector companies (Palantir), that information is then sold to other companies. Along with this, private companies work in conjunction with law enforcement agencies to violate sovereign privacy laws (especially those of women).

 The crux of Pakula’s Paranoid Trilogy is the danger and abuse of surveillance. In Klute, it is at its most intimately focused; looking at one person’s experience with the stalking obsession of others. This surveillance is a constant in Bree’s life for just being a woman in public. Like the millions of women before and after her, the general street harassment of women is commonplace; perceived as part of the female tax for their existence. The price that women pay to live in a society. However, Bree’s experience is more defined than the general misogyny inherent in the ideal of a public’s ownership of women’s bodies. As mentioned above, Bree gets surveilanced without her consent by both the protagonist hero (Klute) and by the antagonist (Cable). Yet, in a very patriarchal framing, Klute’s surveillance is justified through tired gender scripts that are structured to absolve him. His is a benevolent surveillance under the auspices of paternalistic protectionism.  Pointedly, Cable’s surveillance is not criminalized because of a lack of Bree’s agency, it is only in the overall violence and unease that he creates while engaging in it. The act of surveillance itself is framed as benign- which becomes a tacit endorsement of the practice.

 


CONCLUSION

            The first film in the “Paranoid Trilogy” is a film that embodies the torrential spirit of the 1970’s social change. Making Bree the center of a political thriller without her being relegated to a secondary character who is damseled was unique at the time. Pakula’s interest in Psychology also allowed for Bree to have an interiority that gave the audience a window into the mind and experiences of women. Bree’s treatise on the reclamation of power through sex work: that it acts as a buffer from the sense of powerlessness brough on by cultural womanhood, is an important sex positive feminist message that was just starting to crystalize in the culture; even if the film makes Bree feel powerless through parts of it for the purpose of (unearned) punishment[3].  Pakula also falls into some gender and class tropes reinforcing the objectification of women and an obfuscation of women’s anger. This provides an overall mixed message as to the value of women and their ability to have agency and autonomy over their own lives.  

 

REFERENCES

Durheim, Emile 2014. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press   

El Akkad, Omar 2025. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Toronto. Knopf

Foucault, Michel 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison New York: Vintage Books

Harris, Mark 2019. “Klute: Trying to See Her.” In Current. Retrieved on 9/3/26 Retrieved at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6492-klute-trying-to-see-her?srsltid=AfmBOop10WWTISoYIudCsH868T8q8_wam2vAjZ0PtgOVBx2Z8QSQs-81

Kaplan, Laura 2019. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service New York: Vintage Books  

Kendall, Mikki 2020.  Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women a Movement Forgot New York: Viking

Milne, Tom 1972. “She’s Nowhere: A Conversation with Alan J. Pakula” in Sight and Sound  Retrieved on: 9/3/26 Retrieved at: http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Mi-Pe/Pakula-Alan-J.html

Traister, Rebecca 2018. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger New York: Simon and Schuster

Zeilinger, Julie 2012. A Little F’DUP: Why Feminism is not a Dirty Word New York: Seal Press

Zuboff, Shoshana 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Human Future at the New Frontier of Power New York: Public Affairs

 



[1] After the Dobbs decision removing federal protections for the body rights of women. The Documentary “The Janes”  and the feature  film “ Call Jane” opened to critical acclaim no doubt due to cultural relevance and likely resurgence of the need of safe underground abortions again.

[2] “ To judge a man not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” MLK

[3] A pop culture Tax for being a prostitute.


Sunday, November 6, 2022

The Films of Karyn Kusama: Aeon Flux



                The second film in my Analysis of The Films of Karyn Kusama is the dystopian dialectical sci fi flop Aeon Flux.  Adapted from the series of the same name, this film version was a chance for Kusama to prove her grit by successfully helming a big budget studio film of a beloved property, while showing that such adaptations can be developed with an arthouse flair, years before the concept was a known commodity. Unfortunately, the film was not created nor received in the spirit of the original film pitch, nor its source material. This paper seeks to understand the historical context in which these decisions were made, while looking at the sociological concepts of the film, and the consequences of the film’s fallout, which impacted Kusama longer than her fellow male directors.

 


PLOT

In 2415, a soldier in a rebel faction against its Orwellian government attempts to assassinate their dictator. Finding that she is uncharacteristically unwilling and unable to complete the mission, Aeon Flux (Theron), searches for answers and uncovers the truth about life and death; a secret that threatens to shake the last human city of Bregna down to its core.  Alienated from both the Government and the rebels, Aeon Flux must make unlikely allies in hopes for survival for herself and the rest of humanity.

 


HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            Source Material

            The original Aeon Flux was a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adult animation created and directed by Peter Chung. The plot centered around the warring factions of the last two human cities: Monica and Bregna. Where Bregna was a totalitarian nightmare of rigid order, Monica was based on anarchistic hedonism. The series follows Aeon through various missions to ultimately kill the sovereign leader, Trevor Goodchild. Not only were Aeon and Trevor constructed as the typical protagonists and antagonists, but also their opposite, the exception to their identity and skill set. Aeon, a master assassin, and warrior can do anything, except kill Treavor. Treavor, a Brilliant Scientist, and military tactician, can have anything he wants, except the thing he wants the most, which is Aeon.  Each encounter between them played on this tension leading to sex, betrayal, and violence, often all three at the same time. Throughout the shorts and the series, the audience vacillates their allegiances from Aeon to Treavor and back again; highlighting that they are both despicable people in pursuit of their own goal(s).  

             The series was originally presented as a combination of shorts and a limited series broadcasted by MTV as apart of their “Liquid Television” line up from 1991-1995.  This series, especially the original shorts, captivated the attention of viewers because of the animation’s fluid and BDSM influenced sexuality and violence.  Because Chung never desired an adaptation of his work, most of the shorts included the death of Aeon, which confused the audience as to how the stories were being told, for even though Aeon seemed to die, the story still progressed, sometimes continuing with Aeon, and sometimes with other soldiers. It was eventually revealed/retconned that both cities had invented and implemented cloning technology and used it against their enemy.

Marketed and chiefly consumed by Generation X, (1964-1980) Aeon Flux, the series, was one of the few at the time that had a broader perspective on war and violence that mirrored the anti-war, cold war despair felt by the latchkey kids of pro capitalist Boomers. In the first short, as Aeon Flux runs through a factory indiscriminately murdering all of the soldiers in her path, the story leaves her and makes the audience sit in the carnage that she created. In the aftermath, gravely wounded soldiers find each other and spend their last few moments together before dying of their injuries. The short continues following the crew tasked with cleaning up the massacre and return everything to Bregna’s pristine totalitarian order.  This is one of the first US animated series with a clear anti-authoritarian message, forcing the audience to sit in the inevitable collateral damage of war of which Gen X were so emboldened to resist. It was a perfect counter cultural moment for the quintessential dissonant generation.




Production.

First announced in 2003, the film was the brainchild of Shelly Lansing at Paramount Pictures. She brought on Karyn Kusama just after her brilliant debut in Girlfight. In the beginning, Kusama’s indie female focused sensibilities seem to be in lock step with the animated characterization of Aeon, and the characterization and tone Lansing was going for… and she was hoping to reteam Kusama with Michelle Rodriguez in the titular role. The role eventually went to Charlize Theron coming off of her Oscar win for Monster, adding even more indie drama credibility. Yet, regardless of executive enthusiasm, and the acquisition of award-winning director and star, the film became fraught with problems that plagued the film from all aspects of production.

The first hiccup came when Kusama began to scout locations for the bulk of the shoot.  Kusama’s initial choice of location was Brasilia, Brazil; believing it to fit the aesthetic of Bregna. This was summarily rejected by the studio citing both the expense and the unsubstantiated belief that the city could not sustain the budget and scope of the production. Given that this was Kusama’s second film, and first studio picture, she did not have the clout to make a final decision on the matter. Like many indie directors on their sophomore outing, they have to prove themselves to be “bankable” to a studio. Therefore, many directors in this position are ostensibly directors-for-hire because of how little impact and input they have on the film. This became apparent the deeper Aeon Flux went into production.

The next hiccup came during principal photography. After reading a copy of the script, Peter Chung, publicly denounced the adaptation, saying that “[He] did not see Aeon in this film.” To his point, the writers of Aeon Flux, Phill Hay and Matt Manfredi, were the same writers behind award winning hits like RIPD (the Ryan Reynolds Jeff Bridges travesty about a supernatural police force) and Ride Along (the buddy movie starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart). Yet, chagriningly, this is also the writing team for most of Kusama’s body of work (except Girlfight and Jennifer’s Body). Kusama met Hay during production and were married a year later. To square this cognitive dissonance, one must take into consideration their entire collaborative body of work. In that context, aside from this film, which Kusama had little control over, by far the best stuff that Hay and Manfredi have written, has been with Kusama.  This could be due to the chemistry and unlikely symmetry between Kusama and Hay, that they just understand each other so completely that it elevates their work. Or, more likely, it was less an equally collaborative affair, and more Kusama’s influence on their future writing partnership.

The third and final hiccup, and one that signaled the film’s asphyxiation, came during postproduction. During the editing of the film, producer Shelly Lansing, the biggest champion of Kusama’s vision for the film, left the company and was replaced by Donald Doline. After the first round of edits, Donald Doline left and was replaced by Brad Gray and Gayle Brenneman. Thus, because production companies are motivated by profits, each new producer took the film away from Kusama and heavily edited it. Of Kusama’s 105-minute R-Rated cut, Gray and Breneman eventually created a 71-minute PG-13 film to try and widen the market for the film’s release. After the producer cut got horribly reviewed at a preview screening, they brought Kusama back to re-cut the film, but exclusively NOT to her original vision. It was because of this experience that Kusama now demands final cut on all her projects, even if it means a pay cut.

Unbeknownst to Kusama at the time, the unraveling of Aeon Flux was a symptom of Corporate Capitalism. In 2002-2005, the production time of the film, Viacom, the parent company of Paramount, was going through massive restructuring; splitting, and merging various parts of themselves to avoid repeating anti-trust litigation they once faced in 1948. Because of this, executives were moved around in a shell game of corporate responsibilities and profit consolidation.  Yet, in this profit driven system, many of these new executives, to show their value and worth to the company, came up with new ideas and edits for the films under their purview, while ignoring what their predecessors did; regardless of if the ideas were good or not. This reinforces the importance of context in pop culture criticism, lest we forget that the film is a product of the conditions under which it was made. Thus, it should be no surprise that a film like Aeon Flux was created at a time of greed and corporate malfeasance.   


 


SOCIAL ANALYSIS       

            Kusama being a “hired gun” on Aeon Flux resulted in a lot of the socially relevant and sociological themes that will be consistent across her later work, to be sparse here and muddled in their presentation.  A lot of the interesting ideas that this film touches on, are not well conceived or given much weight, even though they are the central foundation for the setting of the film. Thus, this film attempts to touch on fascism, totalitarianism, bodies and their biopower without conscientiously engaging with them.

 

            Totalitarian Dystopia

            Aeon Flux, like a lot of sci-fi films take the imagery and the rhetoric of Orwell’s 1984 as a shorthand for despotic futurism. Yet, these films often only use that imagery as window dressing rather than conducting a thorough interrogation. In this context, Orwell’s 1984 is dime store Max Weber with a sprinkling of C. Wright Mills.

According to Kelner (1984)[1]  The differences between Orwell and Weber are subtle, but present:

Unlike Max Weber, Orwell does not conceive of bureaucracy as containing its own dynamics, its own rationality, or its own contradictions. Consequently, especially in 1984, Orwell reinforces the predominantly conservative-individualist vision that the state and bureaucracy per se are repressive and serve to concentrate power in a bureaucratic caste. For Orwell, power and the will to power are depicted as the prime goal of a bureaucratic society and the primary motivation for party bureaucrats. Power is not a means but is an end in itself, the end or telos of at least the political elite's individual and societal behavior. Revolution, in this picture, is primarily a project of seizing power and establishing a new class of party bureaucrats whose primary goal is maintaining their own power.  For Max Weber, by contrast, bureaucracy contained a certain amount of logic and rationality and was part of a process of rationalization and modernization which produced at least some social benefits and progress (i.e. rational calculation, predictability, law, governance by rules rather than force, etc.)

Whereas Orwell narratively constructs a Bureaucracy as a conscious enemy of the people, and a focal point for revolution away from it, Weber understands that a lot of social control is the most effective through noninvasive coercion, rather than direct oppression. Weber (2019) knew that direct oppression would increase the likelihood of resistance. To curb resistance, the bureaucracy traps individuals into an endless cycle of routines and standardized behavior, the Weberian “Iron Cage”, to make the people more pliable (Weber 2019).  For Orwell, the bureaucracy is a mustache twirling villain with morose machinations. Instead, Weber (2019) realizes that the true terror of a bureaucratic composition is in its banality, and apathy towards its prisoners. Because it is not about the people trapped, it is about the continuation of the system.

            The crux of the difference between an Orwellian narrative and a Weberian Perspective is that between an individualist and collectivist perspective. Orwell assumes that individual people desiring power are the driving force of the domination and oppression of the system. Weber, on the other hand, understands that systems, once developed and implemented, do not emphasize individuals beyond just a resource to keep the system operating.  The domination and oppression in the Weberian system is an afterthought of the mechanisms of control implemented upon individuals, to make society operate with calculably efficient rationality (Weber 2019). Upon closer examination, the common system that Orwell describes seems to fit more with C. Wright Mills idea of The Power Elite; a predatory system that keeps power in the hands of a few, while actively oppressing others. Yet, because Mills (1956) is a student of Weber, he does not place too much value in the importance of the individuals in power because they can be cycled out. The position within the institution of power is more important than who holds the seat.         

Bodies, Reproduction and Bio Power

The film’s revelation that the consciousness of the citizens in Bregna are recycled into different bodies as they age and die, points to the execution of Foucauldian Biopower over the populace. Biopower is the ability for individuals, organizations, or systems to have control over how a person experiences and defines their body (Foucault 1977). In a very direct sense, this can be expressed through controlling when people eat, sleep, use the restroom etc. This usually takes place in Total Institutions.

According to Goffman (1961):

A Total Institution is a particular type of social institution within the social order. This is a hybrid between a residential community and formal organization

Components[2]:

1)      All aspects of social life are conducted in the same place and under the same single authority

2)      Each phase of the member’s daily activity is in the immediate company of a large batch of others

3)      All activities are tightly scheduled

4)      All forced activities are brought together in a single rational plan to fulfill the aims of the institution.

5)      Person is often excluded from knowledge and decision regarding their fate.

 

Total institution’s control allows them to be easily harnessed by would-be or established dictators. This is accounted for in the film when Trevor Goodchild, the scientist that created the cure for the genocidal virus, became the ruler for over 400 years. In that time, the biopower he administered was a moratorium on natural pregnancy with an over reliance on cloning. This overreliance on cloning led to the fraying of recycled psyches resulting in developing madness and eventual death. However, Goodchild’s brother (an original character for the film to which all of Trevor’s “bad” qualities from the series could be grafted), believing that the totalitarian system is perfect, ultimately sabotages the reemergence of natural births through the murder of expectant mothers.

            The film’s antagonist exercising of biopower, to maintain the population, is of the very real social problem of the rollback of reproductive rights for women in the US. Outside of the directness the act of murder represents in the film, the general denial of natural births can be interestingly paralleled with the birth enforcement enacted in ½ of US states[3] after the overturning of Roe. in June of 2022. Just as the people of Bregna were forced to relive their lives and have their consciousness recycled through cloning (while openly eliminating natural births), so too are US women in ½ the states in the country forced to carry a child to term: regardless of the effect on the health of the mother, even rape survivors as young as 10,  nor the quality of life for the child after birth.  This parallel is just one of many made between current US politics and various examples of misogynistically despotic pop culture[4]in recent years; all of which should be met with alarm. Unfortunately, rather than get outraged at such an apt comparison, the result of this widely consumed and eerily prophetic form of entertainment is one of normalized acceptance rather than indignation. And, so long as our real politics do not exclusively copy the imagery of pop culture, they will be used as an unfair comparison; minimizing the impact of these decisions and shrouding the failure of allowing Supreme Court Justices to legislate from the bench to circumvent the democratic process. We will say “Well, at least its not exactly like Handmaid’s Tale.” Or more likely: “Those women Protesting in Handmaid’s outfits are embellishing/ being overly dramatic.  The US constant consumption of content has not only eroded our imaginations, but for comparisons to be considered apt in our culture, they must also be literal. Otherwise, the analogy is left open for criticism, especially a dismissal as hyperbole.

 

 

Hollywood double standards…no surprise.

            After the release and subsequent implosion of Aeon Flux, Karyn Kusama languished in “director jail” for years. This is a state of limbo filmmakers get put into after a notable or typically horrendous film is poorly received by both audiences and critics. Incarcerated directors are given few offers to direct projects, and any personal or independent projects they have will not gain traction.  Unfortunately, but to no one’s surprise, female directors often are given longer sentences than male directors. Since the patriarchy tends to see women in occupations to be niche, and therefore both being too specific and too general at the same time, the industry is unwilling to “take a chance” on another “female director.” Meanwhile, if male directors get sent to “jail” they often do not stay long, constantly giving many of them another shot. However, there has been an increasing trend of male directors being allowed  to fail upwards. In these situations, male directors don’t go to jail, they’re given the industry equivalent of diplomatic immunity. No matter what these director’s make, and regardless of how well their film is received they are given bigger budgets, more control, and greater desired IP.

This double standard exists because of the patriarchy valuing men and their perspective over any other. Therefore, men are given ample opportunities to express themselves, or if they make a mistake, correct their behavior by the simple “virtue” of being men. We see this in every industry from business executives, teachers, authors etc. In film, men are given near unlimited chances to succeed, and when their projects or personal proclivities fall short, meaning they turn out to be rapists, abusers and assaulters, there is a  codified redemption model  that they can follow to make their comeback. Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jr. Aziz Ansari and Louis C. K. have all used it. Male directors are specifically lauded and exalted usually because at least one of their films are so revered that the director is later deified. Conversely, the reality for female directors is the opposite. If female directors make a well received well reviewed film, the industry automatically treats it like a fluke, and the female director will have to work twice as hard, and will be under greater scrutiny on their second, and any future projects.




CONCLUSION

Aeon Flux is not a good film. It has pacing issues, a thin story, regardless of the foundational source material, the action is full of wire work and edited quickly to hide poor choreography and the dialogue is atrocious. Sociologically, there are a lot of interesting things that this film touches on but does not delve into with any meaningful depth. None of the responsibility for this should have been laid at the feet of Karyn Kusama. It is not her fault, but she bared the brunt of the consequences; taking her another 4 years to be offered another film. Imagine if she was given another opportunity sooner than that, and what if she was encouraged to keep writing and directing her own work? It is another common story of Hollywood dispossessing another female Hollywood auteur in favor of the fraternal order of fragile filmmakers.       

 

REFERENCES

Foucault, Michel 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison new York: Vintage Books

Goffman, Erving 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books

Kelner, Douglas 1984. “From 1984 to One-Dimensional Man: Critical Reflections on Orwell and Marcuse” Retrieved at https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell13.htm Retrieved on 11/5/2022

Mills, C. Wright 2000. The Power Elite New York: Oxford University Press

Weber, Max 2019. Economy and Society: A New Translation Massachusetts, Harvard University Press

 

 



[2] Goffman (1961) Asylums

[3] (12 states Abortion is illegal, and in an additional 13 states, laws are openly hostile to abortion access) 

[4] The Handmaid’s Tale being the common example, and used often in protests