Female Suffering as Spectacle

The Idol and Blonde have the same problem

As a teenager I wrote the following string of sentences in my diary “The world loves a beautiful woman. The world loves a beautiful dead woman. The world loves a dead woman.” from my ripe adolescent years I knew my place; to be a beautiful creature who suffers. Leslie Jamison wrote in her essay Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain “The moment we start talking about wounded women, we risk transforming their suffering from an aspect of the female experience into an element of the female constitution-perhaps its finest, frailest consummation. The ancient Greek Menander once said: "Woman is a pain that never goes away." He probably just meant women were trouble, but his words hold a more sinister suggestion: the possibility that being a woman requires being in pain, that pain is the unending glue and prerequisite of female consciousness.” In the same essay Jamison also quotes Susan Sontag from her book Illness as Metaphor “The melancholy character was a superior one: sensitive, creative, a being apart,” she writes. Sickness was “a becoming frailty … symbolized an appealing vulnerability, a superior sensitivity, [and] became more and more the ideal look for women.” In Theory of the Young-Girl, it was written “The Young-Girl is optimistic, thrilled, positive, happy, enthusiastic, joyful in other words, she suffers.” The suffering of women has long been perceived as that of something innate to the female experience, and likewise as that of spectacle. 

I’ll be honest, I’m not incredibly interested in dissecting everything right or wrong about The Idol, especially when it’s already been talked about to death. Though to give you my brief review, I don’t think The Idol is as terribly offensive as some online are making it out to seem, but I also don't think it’s nearly as dark, erotic, and controversial as The Weekend would like to believe it to be. In The Weeknd's interview with GQ he was asked how he was feeling to the response thus far, to which he responded “I’m loving it. It’s definitely shaken up the culture for sure [laughs]. We knew we were making something dark and controversial but true to what we want to say.” I find The Weeknd's response rather comical, as I do believe the culture has remained… unshaken. And this inflated sense of impact further highlights his and Sam Levinson’s delusion that led to this story being the way it is in the first place. Stories about fame, drugs, sex, and abuse are nothing new to Hollywood, and are not inherently revolutionary or interesting. I truly don’t believe there to be anything controversial or dark about The Idol. When I think of controversial dark films that explore gritty subject matter my mind wanders sooner to films such as Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny (2003) or Larry Clark’s Kids (1995). It seems as though Sam Levinson and The Weeknd were under the impression that they were creating this deeply erotic and daring work. But after watching this show I am reminded of the essay by RS Benedict “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny: Modern Action and Superhero Films Fetishize the Body, Even as They Desexualize It” in which Benedict explores the way in the which bodies, especially in modern cinema, have become curated vessels of perceived arousal, rather than vessels for pleasure. Benedict writes “Everyone is beautiful. And yet, no one is horny. Even when they have sex, no one is horny. No one is attracted to anyone else. No one is hungry for anyone else.” The Idol is certainly sexual. The show lingers on uncomfortable sex scenes that carry on for far too long. The show sexualizes and fetishizes, as we will discuss. But it is not horny. It is not erotic. Eroticism is created in the space between sex. And the space between sex in the idol is largely dry and stale. The Idol awkwardly teeters the line between satirizing itself, and taking itself too seriously. What The Idol suffers from more than anything is mediocrity. It’s a half baked idea that would have worked better as a 3 minute music video. 

The Idol (2023)

But what I would like to dissect further is a frustrating pattern within cinema and television that The Idol has fallen victim to; and that is female suffering as spectacle. Cinema has a long history of subjecting women to on screen suffering for the sake of spectacle and eroticism. In a 2018 critique of BladeRunner: 2049, Anita Slater wrote “Female suffering is evidently fetishized, romanticized and used only to beautify and dramatize an otherwise undeveloped film.” which is a sentiment I find to be deeply relatable to not only BladeRunner: 2049, but also many other films. Just in the past year Blonde and The Idol are perfect examples of the use of the fetishization of female suffering used to distract from an otherwise underdeveloped film. In recent years I have specifically noticed a peculiar trend of male directors portraying a sexualized suffering woman, and when female audiences feel unrepresented by this portrayal the male directors knee-jerk response is to say “Well.. it’s actually a commentary on the sexualization and objectification of women”. Which I find to be incredibly frustrating. Because, the thing is, depicting something doesn’t immediately make it a commentary on what you’re depicting. Additionally, making a commentary on an issue doesn’t mean that you did it well. When Denis Villeneuve faced criticism for his portrayal of women in BladeRunner: 2049 he stated “Cinema is a mirror on society. Blade Runner is not about tomorrow; it’s about today. And I’m sorry, but the world is not kind on women.” I actually do believe Villenueve to be well-intentioned, and I really do enjoy a lot of his work, but I find this response to be slightly shallow. If the intention of these directors is actually to make a commentary on the suffering of women, and then when women say “Hey I actually think there could have been more done here” and your response is “You just don’t understand, it's a commentary on your suffering” I think perhaps you should take more time and reflect on your intentions with your work as an artist. If your intentions are to make a piece of art depicting and commenting on the suffering of a group that you’re not a part of, the first thing that you should do is consult that group and ensure that the way in which you depict their struggle is accurate and respectful, or at the very least be open and receptive to criticism when you don’t. And in the case of The Idol maybe not fire the female director for having too much of a female perspective… 

It seems as though The Idols original intention was to make a commentary on the suffering of, and objectification of women through the lens of fame, though this original intention was lost with time, or rather with Levinson’s involvement. When The Rolling Stone interviewed crew members from The Idol one crew member stated “A major concern among the crew, according to four production sources, was Levinson chipping away at the show’s original messaging, creating a distorted and jarring story that lost its overall impact. It was a show about a woman who was finding herself sexually, turned into a show about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it." Through this chipping away, the show eventually became the very thing it sought to comment on. Now don’t get me wrong, I also don’t believe there is necessarily anything inherently wrong with raunchy, erotic, gritty cinema with no greater commentary, that's the thing. It doesn’t actually need to be a commentary on objectification. But it still just needs to be done well, and tell an interesting and compelling story, which The Idol does not. I don’t think everything needs to hold a profound message, but if you’re going to make raunchy erotic cinema (or attempt to), own it. Don’t backtrack as soon as people start having criticism and attempt to hide behind the guise of “commentary”. Because either way it’s still a badly written, half-baked concept. In their essay Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain (2014) Leslie Jamison writes “How do we represent female pain without producing a culture in which this pain has been fetishized to the point of fantasy or imperative? Fetishize: to be excessively or irrationally devoted to. Here is the danger of wounded womanhood: that its invocation will corroborate a pain cult that keeps legitimating, almost legislating, more of itself. The hard part is that underneath this obscene fascination with representations of women who hurt themselves and have bad sex and drink too much, there are actual women who hurt themselves and have bad sex and drink too much. Female pain is prior to its representation, even if its manifestations are shaped and bent by cultural models.” 

12 Years a Slave (2013)

And God forbid you experience other intersections of marginalized identity beyond just womanhood. Trans, Indigenous, and Black women to name a few are given crumbs of representation, and the representation that is given is often coated in a layer of on screen suffering. In their essay Existing Within Pain’s Gaze: Black Women and Suffering on Screen Robin Jennings reflects on their experience watching 12 Years a Slave in theaters, Jennings writes “12 Years a Slave is not Patsey’s story; as so often happens, she was a supporting character tasked with providing a source of comfort and support for a black man when society failed him. But the plight of Patsey was overwhelming, the brutality of her lashing demanded that the audience bear witness to her pain. The stark silence of the moment has haunted me in the years since. After leaving the theatre that evening, I asked myself, “is that the level of barbarism Black women must endure to be seen?” 

I find The Idol and Blonde to be very similar in a lot of ways. They are pieces of media that are so reliant on beautiful cinematography and an eroticized sad woman to carry an underdeveloped story. This is in many ways reflective of our culture, and carries on a long legacy of the sensationalization and eroticization of female suffering in cinema and art in general. This sustains the normalization of trauma porn where female suffering is glorified and sexualized rather than understood. In their essay Society’s Fascination With Woman’s Suffering (2022), Janelle Gunaratnam writes “The recent Netflix movie Blonde directed by Andrew Dominik is a two-hour and 46-minute horror flick that essentially reduces the life of Marylin Monroe into a fetishized porno of trauma and heartbreak. The film focuses only on the physical and emotional pain Monroe endured through many miscarriages, sexual assaults, and her exploitation in Hollywood, leaving viewers to question the intentions behind the movie. It superficially relays her trauma, consciously not acknowledging her psyche behind the experiences. The issue here isn’t that the film references her trauma, instead, it is that it reduces her life down to these moments, suggesting she wasn’t a strong and capable woman with interests outside of her abuse. The fictional nature of this movie furthers this misconception as it only works to diminish her real-life experiences and accomplishments, reducing her to a shell of a woman who is exploited beyond the grave to line the pockets of the men behind its production." In a similar way Jocelyn in The Idol is hardly given any character arch or personality outside of her sexuality and trauma. Which… Yes, I understand could be (and likely is) intentionally done as a way to reference the way in which pop stars such as Britney Spears are likewise given no personality by the media outside of their sexualization or trauma. It's just a lazy and ineffective way to write such a story, and make that point. 

Because the thing is it's not as if media that comments on the predatory nature of fame as a young woman doesn’t exist. There is in fact media that depicts this struggle with trauma, fame, addiction, and insecurity, and depict it well. Helter Skelter and Perfect Blue are two films that immediately come to mind as brilliant portrayals of these same concepts. Helter Skelter’s protagonist Lilico, and The Idol’s Jocelyn specifically bear quite a few similarities. They are both beautiful young women who are at the top of their game, though as they are successful in fields that are inherently superficial, Lilico as a supermodel, and Jocelyn a popstar, the looming threat of falling from their pedestals haunt them. They both use their sexuality to get what they want, and they are both revealed to be manipulative people willing to do whatever it takes to attain their goals. Though where Helter Skelter managed to develop Lilico into a fully realized character in a fraction of the time, The Idol leaves Jocelyn as merely an echo of one. 

Helter Skelter (2012)

Perfect Blue is additionally a film that explores these themes, and does so incredibly well. In their essay "Torture the Women": A Gaze at the Misogynistic Machinery of Scary Cinema (2019) Sarah Hankins contrasts the work of Perfect Blue director Satoshi Kon and Vertigo director Alfred Hitchcock as both are men who utilize the male gaze, female suffering, and sexuality to serve their stories, though they do so differently. Hankins writes “Kon has often been compared to Hitchcock for their similar tastes in psychological, violent themes and representations. But, though both Vertigo and Perfect Blue enjoy similar visual styles and thematic elements, there is one factor of paramount importance that fundamentally differentiates them: while Hitchcock’s film revels almost unabashedly in the horror of the female, Kon’s work is critical and highly self-aware, condemning its filmic subject in real-time. Vertigo follows the male protagonists and appeals to a masculinized, patriarchal onlooker; the gaze is hegemonic and encourages the sexual, sumptuous consumption of a suffering female, to which the emotional evocation is pleasure. Perfect Blue, on the other hand, follows the terrified female fighting a losing battle against these odds, which purposefully critiques horror-thriller films by appropriating their methods to a different effect entirely. Perfect Blue encourages the viewer to watch Mima’s horror with repulsion and agony. The viewer is prompted to fear, with intention by Kon, left reeling in their seat, confronted with the horror of the horror-convention. This effect is antithetical to the ‘pleasure’ of a Hitchcock film, making Kon’s film a feminist critique of horror-thriller.” Levinson’s work with The Idol and Dominik’s work with Blonde are incredibly relevant to the criticisms presented here on Hitchcock’s work. Like Hitchcock, Levinson and Dominik both revel in the fetishized suffering of their female protagonists. Though Blonde and The Idol place the woman at the center of the story, we follow these women around not as if we are sympathetic viewers, but rather we take on the role of the predatory spectator like that of the stalker in Perfect Blue, peering through windows with lustful eyes as we relish in their eroticized suffering. And Jocelyn is of course not Levinson’s first character to experience such trauma-porn. Levinson came under a lot of criticism especially after the release of season 2 of Euphoria for his increasingly sexualized portrayal of high-school aged Cassie. Cassie experienced similar treatment to that of Levinson’s Jocelyn and Dominik’s Marilyn in which viewers are left feeling as though we are uncomfortably peering into the director’s own personal kinks and sexual fantasies. 

Perfect Blue (1997)

Overall, watching The Idol felt more similar to watching porn in the sense that it felt as though the story was awkwardly built and forced around the sex scenes, rather than using sex to enhance the story and push the narrative forward. A part of me wishes I could sit down with The Weekend and Sam Levinson and very earnestly ask them what their intentions were with this piece. Because it seems as though no matter what, they missed the mark, and their project remains floating in this awkward liminal space of mediocre ambiguity. But the unfortunate reality is that media in which trivializes and fetishizes female suffering has real life consequences. In her essay Leslie Jamison touches upon a 2001 study called “The Girl Who Cried Pain” a study that explores the fact that men are more likely than women to be given medication when they report pain to their doctors, whilst women are more likely to be given sedatives. Jamison writes “The study makes visible a disturbing set of assumptions: It’s not just that women are prone to hurting—​a pain that never goes away—​but also that they’re prone to making it up. The report finds that despite evidence that “women are biologically more sensitive to pain than men … [their] pain reports are taken less seriously.” Less seriously meaning, more specifically, “they are more likely to have their pain reports discounted as ‘emotional’ or ‘psychogenic’ and, therefore, ‘not real.’ ” Thus emphasizing the supposed performance inherent to the female experience of pain. Performance as in fictional. Performance as in sexual. Performance as in for the consumption of men, as seen in the media discussed. When I was 19 I had a friend in her late 20s who was going through a divorce, she reflected to me about how her ex-husband would tell her to stop crying in front of him because it aroused him. Even in our moments of pain we are trivialized, objectified, and sexualized. In our moments of pain is a performance to be consumed, our suffering is seen as that of spectacle.