femmesbashback

When I'm not writing papers about the subversion and/or enforcement of gender roles in animated Disney movies, I occasionally wander into society and buy food. Apparently this is a bad idea. Today I was en route to the local - sssshhhh - starbucks, and found myself, once again, under the stubby unmanicured thumb of an overzealous security gaurd. 

Director Steven Shainberg has a way with female masochists. His explosive 2002 film "Secretary" is best known for scenes of Maggie Gyllenhaal pulling up her skirt and awaiting the disciplinary smack of James Spader's hand.  In "Fur," which recently came out on DVD, Shainberg sets his kinky sights on the 20th century American photographer Diane Arbus.

The film - which describes itself as "an imaginary portrait" of the artist, is a lush, surreal and visually rich fairy-tale, featuring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. act out a sort of urban revision of Beauty and The Beast.

Too bad "Fur" focuses more on psychosexual fetishism than, well, art. If Dr. Freud ever wanted to argue that a camera represents a vagina, or vice versa, he only needed to use Mrs. Arbus as a case study. Or so this film "imagines.” 

When we meet Diane (Kidman) she is every bit the buttoned-up 1950s housewife, doubling as an assistant to her husband as he manages the family business, a photo studio. The couple is a regular Brad-and-Janet duo, innocent, conservative folks in pastels. They live in a large apartment building prone to invasion by Diane’s uptight, wealthy fur-pedaling parents. When Diane begins to cry after an evening of entertaining and mothering we realize that – cue Betty Freidan – something, probably career-related, is missing.

Or is it sexually-related? Diane is apparently unfulfilled and repressed six ways till Sunday. She stands on her roof and rips open her suffocating, oppressive cotton dress, perhaps channeling Kate Chopin. This girl needs to be either liberated, awakened, saved, inspired, empowered, or whatever else can be done to turn a mere woman into an Artiste/Provocateur.

Her mysterious neighbor, Lionel (Downey Jr.) is just the man for the job. As his name suggests, Lionel resembles a certain fuzzy character from The Wizard of Oz, due to a genetic disorder causing excessive hair growth. Appropriately, because this is an arty kinda film, his den looks like something Lewis Carroll hallucinated.

Lionel, playing the role of Frank in our little indie picture show, courts (frees?) Diane by asking her pervy questions about masturbation and exhibitionism and ordering her around. She enjoys this enough to disrobe for him and accidentally spend the night. They go to cocktail parties with Siamese twins and an armless woman. At this point, Todd Solondz and Tim Burton should have just taken over and showed us how a freak show is really done.

Diane realizes that, unlike any other human being in the entire world ever, she is intrigued by people with mutations and abnormalities. She’s also sexually attracted to them, and feels uneasy about it. This is the force behind her photographs. Because what is a woman’s art, if not an expression of her inner sexual neuroses?

Film students will find much to deconstruct in “Fur” if they can manage to untangle some semblance of a message from the thick mess of biographical inaccuracy and heavy-handed metaphors involving body hair. I’m still trying to figure out who would cast Nicole Kidman as a Jewish person.

The other day I'm at Whole Foods trying to save the earth by shopping at a big overpriced corporation, and I spot a basket of juicy red cherries in between a tan bicyclist with 2% body fat and a woman with three giant dreadlocks. Above the cherries, a sign reads "FREE SAMPLES."