Deep South v.1 n.2 (May, 1995)
Released in 1993, Malice is Harold Becker's film about the failure of a woman to "sell" her ovaries through an intricate medical and legal conspiracy. The film offers several interesting observation of gender roles and sexuality identity in relation to birth and abortion. These observations may benefit, however, from a brief plot summary: Tracy (Nicole Kidman) is a hospital volunteer who, together with the surgeon, Doctor Jed Hill (Alec Baldwin), plans the following scheme: Tracy undergoes an unnecessary ovariectomy that Dr. Hill performs. She then sues the hospital, leaves her husband, and plans to share the money with Jed Hill. Her husband, Andy (Bill Pullman), is the dean of a women college and is occupied with a series of rapes and murders on campus. He is at first baffled by the rapes and murders, as well as by his wife's operation and her decision to leave him. But finally, he triumphs. He apprehends the killer, and, after discovering his wife's plot, he entraps her and delivers her to the hands of the authorities.
In some of the reviews that follow Malice, the expression: 'a red herring' is mentioned in reference to the sub plot of a psychopath killer who murders Andy's female students for their red hair. The sub plot, claim the reviewers, has no bearing on the main plot of Tracy's ovariectomy.[1] But the red hair murders are not entirely a red herring. Whether Aaron Sorkin and Scott Frank, the writers of Malice, intended the sub plot as a diversion or not, it restates the message that the film endorses: that women are vulnerable. In the same way that the female students need the protection of their male dean, Andy, it is the same male, in his supposedly authoritative position as Tracy's husband, that curbs the "Malice" of a woman who willingly foregoes her reproductive organs.
Moreover, Andy's single handed exposure and violent apprehension of the killer asserts, not only a construction of vulnerable and dependent femininity, but also a construction of masculinity that is essentially violent and domineering. Andy's regained self-confidence, that somehow follows his confrontation with the killer, enables him to question Tracy's morals and to dispel her plot to defraud the insurance company. Simultaneously, Andy asserts his moral superiority by exposing his wife as an adulteress, and -- by some strange connection -- as an attempted thief and murderer. To the male viewer, the lesson is clear: the ways of the "liberal" husband, Andy, who loves and respects his wife, are proven inadequate. It is only when Andy adopts the behavior of the despicable Jed Hill that he triumphs. But Andy's triumph is also his defeat. The alternate masculinity that he practices at the beginning is presented as naive and illusionary, as the "liberal" Andy is incapable of dealing with the world. Therefore, much in the same way that women are presented in the film as incapable of transcending the stereotypical construction of femininity, men are presented as incapable of transcending a competitive, argumentative, insensitive, incredulous and, most importantly, violent construction of masculinity. And although such masculinity does seem to guarantee a triumph, at least within the film, over the evil forces of murderers, corrupt surgeons, and unfaithful wives, it is a triumph that is achieved in a world of endless mischief and infinite malice. As both Tracy and Andy are forced to learn their lessons of a dominant fiction of gender, the same lesson is taught to the viewer by a film that is oppressive to women and men alike. It is important to observe, of course, that the oppression of women in the film is by far greater than that of men. After all, it is women who are represented as incapable of gaining control over their bodies, and while men in the film are constructed within a limited role of domination, it is women who are meant, after all, to be dominated by the construction of an essentially patriarchal family structure. Nevertheless, Andy's character does represent the failure of the male to negotiate his role within a construction of gender that demands a mimesis of cultural practices at the expense of the individual. As Judith Butler writes in "Imitations and Gender Insubordination": "To claim that this [my sexual identity] is what I am is to suggest a provisional totalization of this "I".[2] The rest of this discussion will try to observe the objectification of women through the story of Tracy in the film, and to examine gender constructions with a particular interest in Becker's dominant fiction of masculinity.
But "the study of masculinities", as Thelma Fenster writes in her preface to Medieval Masculinities, entitled "Why Men?", "originates within feminism."[3] It is, therefore, only a feminist reading of gender relations in Malice that can facilitate an observation of male sexual constructions within the film. First, and foremost, it is in surprising affirmation of Adrienne Rich's notion in Of Woman Born, that women's control over their bodies stands as a key issue in Malice. It is Rich's belief that "repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers."[4] Harold Becker, in perfectly reversed agreement, presents male dominance over the female body as the solitary option for the maintenance of traditional heterosexual structures. Therefore, the human body is put in the midst of gender relations in Malice, relations which Hal Hinson of the Washington Post refers to as "the bedroom wars."[5] Andy, who at the beginning of the film lies passively on his back and is acted upon by Tracy's sexual initiative, begins to assert his domination over her in the bedroom. And when the all too manly Dr. Hill lifts Tracy in the air and dunks her into his bed with violent passion, she is penetrated by an hypodermic needle that Andy has purposely left on the mattress. The needle, a shrewd device to inform Tracy that Andy is aware of her plot, is also a symbol of Andy's gain of the Phallus, and of the sexual as well as the social initiative in his relations with his wife. The fact that neither Andy nor Tracy seem to enjoy this male initiative as much as their previous, female dominated, intercourse is perhaps one of the unpleasant manifestations of the triumphs of masculinity in the film. The epidermal phallus is coupled with the athletic love making of Dr. Jed Hill to create a masculinity that is conventionally Herculean, uncouth, and clumsy. Certainly, it will be one of the more difficult challenges of this discussion to hypothesize why Hollywood films insist on portraying sexual practices that are unresponsive, implausible, and to pass a very personal judgment: entirely undesirable.
The issue of birth, though, or rather of abortion, creates a conflict that is far greater than that of erotic initiative. When Andy meets Jed at the town's bar -- in an unavoidable scene of male solidarity -- Jed asks him whether he would be willing to amputate any part of his body in exchange for a large sum of money. Andy is unwilling to amputate his arm, the palm of his hand, and, after some thought, not even one single finger in exchange for all the money in the world. In accordance with what Kaja Silverman defines in Male Subjectivity at the Margins as "the overriding ideological metaphor", or, more bluntly: "the denial of castration",[6] Andy's physical integrity is coupled with moral integrity that upholds a dominant male fiction of wholesomeness. Naturally, Tracy's willingness to amputate her own organs, is a dispelling of such integrity which reveals Andy's social vulnerability and, at a later stage, the physical imperfection of Andy's own body, who discovers that he is impotent. Tracy's amputation of her organs is therefore grasped as a castration of Andy's own penis, and, consequently, of his social phallus. In order to uphold the dominant fiction in the film, it is necessary that Tracy's physical lack will be complemented with a moral lack that finally renders her attempt to take control over her body impossible. Thus, female independence, as it is embodied in Tracy's attempt to take possession of her own organs, appear in the movie as a mere illusion that can not exist without the protection of men, and which cannot be used to transcend male authority. Moreover, Tracy's attempt to realize the commodity value of her ovaries is facilitated through the help of the male surgeon, Jed Hill, and is intercepted by her husband as a result of her own overconfidence and disregard of Dr. Hill's advice. Like Christopher Marlowe's character of Dr. John Faustus, Tracy does not realize that her power is not her own, but that of the ovary removing devil, the abortionist Medical Doctor, Jed Hill. The power of good, represented by the children loving Professor Andy, naturally triumphs.
Tracy's story is, therefore, a modern tragedy in which a women, stereotyped as the ideal wife -- a beautiful hospital volunteer with no monetary income of her own -- is filled with a hubris that causes her to transcend her role and to abuse her privileges as a woman protected and cared for by male authority. Her act of 'malice' is clearly not her attempt to defraud the insurance company and the hospital by demanding huge compensation for her ovaries. The compensation is huge because women's reproductive ability is considered sacred, and the viewer is appalled by the moral character of a woman who foregoes this ability for monetary gain. Such act establishes Tracy's lack of moral character, and further evidence, such as her mother's testimony, or Tracy's final attempt to murder a young boy who may be a witness to her plot are unnecessary. The attempted murder is merely a Macbethian escalation from bad to worse that quickens Tracy's downfall. The fact that the young boy is, after all, blind, adds an Oedipus like quality of faith and disempowerment on the part of the heroine. Tracy is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, resourceful and overconfident woman who tries to defy Harold Becker's idea of female limitations and vulnerabilities. Dr. Jed Hill's condescending advice seems, therefore, to be directed to all women who think that they may take place before their ovaries, as he says: "Don't over estimate yourself, Tracy".
The assertion of family values in Malice is coupled with essentializing women's role as wives and mothers, presenting their attempt to gain control over their bodies and life choices as misguided as well as immoral. But the presentation of gender in the film is offensive to men as well as to women. Certainly, to the male viewer, Becker is presenting a view of masculinity that is extremely disturbing. Relations between men and women are presented as an ongoing struggle, and Andy, the "liberal" husband is finally taught to live up to a stereotype of violence and domination in order to overcome his clinical impotency as well as his social one. At the beginning of the film Andy stands helpless in face of the rapes and the murders that take place on campus. He looks up to the local police officer, a woman, for help, but she is incapable of solving the problem. When she finally points to Andy as a possible suspect, he is drawn into action and single-handedly apprehends the murderer in a scene of unspeakable violence. This significant -- though highly implausible -- triumph somehow enables Andy to triumph in his relationship with his wife as well. He confronts her at a restaurant and establishes his advantage over her with ease. Tracy, who nonchalantly holds a glass of wine in her hand becomes hostile and tense, and the delicate glass breaks within her tightening hand.
Perhaps it is Andy's impressive triumph over his wife that causes Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune to name Andy, and not Tracy, the hero of Malice.[7] Certainly, for Hal Hinson of the Washington Post, Andy's re-education as a brutal male, as well as his triumph in discovering and destroying Tracy's scheme, render him an undisputed hero in the popular sense of that word. Under the title of " 'Malice': Men in Danger ", he introduces the film in the following manner:
What with Lorena Bobbit and now "Malice," the '90s are shaping up to be a rather bad time for husbands. The bedroom wars are raging, and "Malice" is an-up-to-the-minute report from that increasingly brutal front.[8]
Hinson doesn't explain, however, what danger the men in the film are faced with. His association of the movie with the 1993 Bobbit case, implies that the danger is of castration, performed by an angry wife on her husband. But the male characters who are hurt in the film are the "bad guys," the psychopath killer, and Dr. Jed hill, who is finally shot to death by Tracy. However, Binson claims that the 90s are a "bad time for husbands," implying that it is Andy who suffers a Bobbit-like castration by his wife. It is important to notice, then, that the only physical castration in the film is Tracy's ovariectomy which deprives her of her reproductive capabilities. Andy is not harmed, nor is he in danger of being harmed, in his testicles. He is in danger of being harmed by the psychotic murderer when he finally apprehends him. But by the time that the film turns to Andy's confrontation with the killer, it is rather certain that he is destined to have the upper hand. The characters in the film that are made to suffer the physical pains of castration, rape and murder, are, in fact, the women who surround Andy: his wife and his students. It is therefore an entirely different danger that Andy faces in the film, and the "brutal front" that Hinson refers to is by for more theoretical than the purely physical danger of penis slashing that Lorena Bobbit may represent. Since most of the reviews of Malice seem to depict Andy as the victim in the film,[9] it is necessary to conclude that his victimization is one that exists on the social and political level of masculine images. It is, as Klaus Theweleit writes in Male Fantasies, the endless danger that women represent for men: "of exposing their repressed desire for maternal love."[10] This, so called, danger, is even intensified, according to Theweleit, by the reproductive capabilities of women. However, the choice of women to either have children or not represents an even greater threat: the threat of equal opportunity for women who are not bound by notions of mandatory reproduction, or of the unshared responsibility of child bearing. And while birth threatens to reveal the corporeal inferiority of men who cannot bear children, the release of women from mandatory child bearing threatens to dispel the fiction of male superiority in the social realm. Therefore:
While on the one hand, the child bearing capacity of women attracts the hatred and vengeance of the not yet fully born, on the other, they impose child-bearing on women.[11]
From a feminist point of view, one can observe the same paradox in Alice E. Adams' book, Reproducing the Womb:
Feminist writers of speculative fiction were hard at work in the 1970s imagining what kind of society might result if women changed the balance of power and seized the means of reproduction . . . But they avoided reproducing sentimental expression of maternal sacrifice or mother-daughter unity.[12]
And while Adams recognizes the notion that traditional images of maternity are employed as devices of oppression for women, she insists on using the representation of the self sacrificing mother as a source of power, symbolizing a solidarity between women and a starting point for female consciousness. In the chapter, "Mother Myths," Adams excludes the male fetus, and represents the solidarity between parent and child as strictly feminine, and strictly biological, taking place only between a mother and her female fetus. Both Theweleit and Adams, therefore, represent birth and child care as a source of power for women, rather than a social construction that impedes their chances to compete in an industrial society. As a result, they are able to represent men as lacking physically as well as emotionally, and, according to Adams, devoid of the strong mother child relationship that only women are able to enjoy. This view is supported by the statement of Jo Ann McNamara, who writes that "experience indicates that the masculine gender is fragile and tentative, with weaker biological underpinning than the feminine."[13] The disturbing point, however, is that Harold Becker echoes this view in his movie, fostering a notion of women's unity that is magnified to the point of a conspiracy: a conspiracy against men and against society. While none of the male characters in the film has a mother, Tracy is connected with an old, wicked, and alcoholic mother (Anne Bancroft), who, in exchange for a bottle of whiskey, tells Andy how she had taught her daughter to be a money hungry temptress and swindler. Andy is finally faced with what Adams refers to as the "thread through which women thread their way from generation to generation."[14] One is unaware of what such "threading" may entail. However, one, such as Hal Hinson, is able to ignore all the terrible traumas that women undergo in the film to conclude that "men [are] in danger" of being victimized by a female conspiracy. Hinson, still affected by the publicity that followed the Lorena Bobbit case, sees men at the end of the millennium as the victims of a relentless (though not invincible) front of vicious women.
But birth would only be a source for women's power had it been voluntary. It is important to recall that while Alice E. Adams and Jo Ann McNamara celebrate the biological superiority of women over men, the mother-child solidarity is tainted with the loss of opportunity, and the infinite sacrifice that mothers, much more often than fathers, are forced to make. It is for that reason that the issue of abortion, far more than the issue of birth, is central to Malice, and is directly connected, through notions of monetary loss and gain, with a power struggle over the means of production and reproduction alike. The economic significance of control over the female body is given first priority by the fact that Tracy does not perform a standard abortion, but an ovariectomy in which she attempts to realize the commodity value of her reproductive organs. At the beginning of the film, as Tracy is presented to the audience as the "ideal" woman, she works as a volunteer in a hospital who does not earn any money. That she and her husband plan to have children is a guarantee that she will draw no income in the future as well. By her ovariectomy, however, Tracy does not only try to avoid the lack of income that can be caused by child birth, but also to realize the monetary value of a biological capability that none of the male characters can possess. This act does expose, of course, the biological and emotional lack of the men in the film, and the unconscious connection that Hinson draws to Lorena Bobbit has to do with a sense of castration that is caused, as Kaja Silverman claims, by a universal male lack -- a lack that is directly connected with the oedipal relationship between the Law of Kinship and the Law of Language that are imposed by the family structure.[15] The family, however, is not only a psychological unit. It is a financial unit, guaranteeing the financial superiority of the male primarily through the agency of child bearing and raising by the women. More than the fragile psyche of the male, it is the uneven distribution of power that is threatened by women's independence, by the assertion of power by women over their own body, and, consequently, of the prospect of financial independence that will alter or destroy the family. In "Capitalism and Gay Identity," John D'Emilio ties the family structure with a capitalist economic system that created a particular fragmentation in gender relations: While the capitalist system created space for alternative gender relations through the creation of individual economic practices in the free market, the dominant patriarchy asserted itself through the "elevation of the nuclear family to preeminence:"
On the one hand . . . capitalism has gradually undermined the material basis of the nuclear family by taking away the economic functions that cemented the ties between family members . . . On the other hand, the ideology of capitalist society has enshrined the family as a source of love, affection, and emotional security.[16]
As a source of love, affection, and emotional security, however, it is interesting to see how the family became a vehicle of oppression, in which financial dependency is a tentative and fragile condition for sustaining the fiction of male superiority. More than their oedipal lack, it is this uneven relationship within the family that keeps men in constant danger of losing their financial edge, and, consequently, the origin of their masculinity. Unlike Lorena Bobbit, Tracy does not castrate her husband physically, but only through the agency of his wallet. Therefore, when Andy finds out that his wife had foregone her ovaries for money, his first reaction is to ask for half of her gains, not doubting for a minute that the sale of the ovaries is the sale of his very own property, and that he is entitled for a part of the money. Tracy refuses. She argues with Jed Hill, who is in favor of paying Andy, and claims that the money is the result of her own suffering, and of the loss of her own organs. It is bad enough, she adds, that she has to share that money with Jed Hill in the first place. When Hill insists, Tracy finally kills him, asserting full right over her own organs, her own property, and her own money. Her violence, which is represented in the film as the result of excessive greed, can also be read as the outcome of the frustration that a woman may feel as she is repeatedly forced to share her biological and social potentials with the men who surround her. It seems, then, that Hinson is correct: Men are, indeed, in danger. Towards the end of the millennium, men are finally in danger of no longer being able to treat the bodies of women as if they were their own.
To face this "danger," Malice is produced as a strong advocation of family values, together with a number of films that were released in the last few years, such as Mrs. Doubtfire, Home alone, Corina Corina, and, of course, Walt Disney's The Lion King, followed by The Goofy Movie, all of which celebrate in some way the wonderful traits of the family. Simultaneously, film theorists have also noticed a trend of "rape-revenge narratives" such as I Spit on Your Grave, MS45 / Angel of Vengeance, Mortal Thoughts, and even the much celebrated Thelma and Louise.[17] In speaking of the "action heroine" in Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema, Yvonne Tasker chooses to observe that female characters are abundant as well as central in contemporary films. She does not seem to agree with other films theorists who see in the "musculization" of the heroine a presentation of a central character that is "really" a man. And, in fact, she believe that such "musculization" helps to define the "limits OF masculinity", questioning the definition of what is masculine or feminine behavior.[18] Tasker does not mention the film theorists she is at odds with on this issues, but Teresa De Lauretis' idea of (in)difference in "Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation" comes to mind when one considers how the reception and assimilation of sexual difference operates within a heterosexual equilibrium that renders spaces for contradiction unavailable:
It is in such a space, hard-won and daily threatened by social disapprobation, and denial, a space of contradiction requiring constant reaffirmation and painful renegotiation, that the very notion of sexual difference could then be put into question, and its limitations be assessed, both vis-a-vis the claims of other, not strictly sexual, differences, and with regard to sexuality itself. . . . And it seems to me that the racist and class-biased practices legitimated in the notion of "separate but equal" reveal a very similar paradox in the liberal ideology of pluralism, where social difference is also, at the very same time, social indifference.[19]
Tasker is correct in observing the centrality of women's roles in movies of the 1980's and 90's. Here, in comparison, is what Molly Haskell, in From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies writes in 1974 of the roles of women:
But even these, the great women's roles of the decade, what are they for the most part? Whores, quasi whores, jilted mistresses, emotional cripples, drunks. Daffy ingenues, Lolitas, kooks, sex-starved spinsters, psychotics. Icebergs, zombies, and ballbreakers. That's what little girls of the sixties and seventies are made of.[20]
But, to assert De Lauretis' view, the absorption of women's difference, in recasting them as action heroes -- not unlike the thoughtless and violent male figures that one is accustomed to see in movies of very similar plots and moral aspiration -- results in an erasure of female culture and identity. In the "Rape-revenge narratives" that Tasker and mention, the most obvious difference of the female character is accepted at the expense of the reasons that may have driven the female character into action, or her particular circumstances as a female heroine. In Men Women And Chain Saws: Gender in The Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover discusses the 1977 film, I Spit on Your Grave in relation to rape-revenge films as an appropriation of a feminist agenda in order to create the misogynist image of an "angry women" :
Once the social changes of the sixties and seventies made credible the image of the self-avenging female, Jennifer [in I Spit on Your Grave] had to happen. and with her appearance, the syncretism was complete. Her femaleness allowed the "body" story to be told with far greater relish, and her feminist rage pumped new energy into the "social" story.[21]
The rape is therefore erased, and all that is finally left is the image of "self-avenging women", symbolized by the over publicized incident of Lorena Bobbit. It is important to notice, of course, that even the Bobbit story entails violence on the side of the husband. But as Lorena Bobbit was stereotyped as a cultural symbol, this story of her abuse had been slowly forgotten. What is left, however, is her presentation as the "castrating woman", symbolizing the danger that men in the 90's must curb by the reassertion of their masculinity.
In Malice, the rape is no longer a necessary part of this presentation, and although it is a part of the violent sub plot of the movie, it is not used to justify Tracy's actions. Harold Becker relies on the existing representation of "angry women" to create a female character that no longer seem to require a reason to despise men and to take advantage of their weaknesses. Working into the tradition of the "self-avenging women," the film is no longer interested in portraying abuse and vengeance, but only in mimicking a notion potential female violence to justify a forceful reassertion of male domination. Against female students who lay their feet over his desk and a wife who sells her ovaries without his consent, Andy is presented, like Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984, as the last of his kind, a solitary believer in past civilities that no longer exist in a world of endless power struggles. He can only assert his grounds by being the male that Becker wants him to be, retaliating against the women that Becker represents, and curving the danger that Becker believes men face. However, the most obvious problem is that, within such a dismal world view, none of the characters seems happy at the end of the film. Jed Hill dies before the end. Tracy is arrested, and has very slim chances of receiving any compensations for her ovaries. And Andy, finally unkempt and unshaven, is compensated in a rather unconvincing manner. At the very end, there is some indication that Andy may marry the local police officer, a marginal character who serves as a poor replacement for the energetic and intelligent character of Tracy. In Malice, a movie in which there is no love, no true happiness, and no personal success on the side of any of the characters, men and women play their stereotypical roles to guarantee their survival in the endless feud between the sexes. It is Harold Becker's implication that we should do the same.
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