1969
Director: Larry Peerce
Starring: Richard Benjamin, Ali MacGraw and Jack Klugman
(based off the novel by Philip Roth)
In 1969, Larry Peerce directed Goodbye, Columbus, an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novella by the same name. The film is about a young love affair and explores the lifestyle of a nouveau riche Jewish-American family. With deeper analysis though, the film shows the conflict of growing up navigating traditionalism and modernity while practicing second-wave feminist sexuality.
The maturities of main characters, Brenda and Neil, are compared through aesthetic scenarios as well as dialogue and interaction. Brenda is a young, spoiled, college student whose family is socially and financially privileged, while Neil is from a working-class background, is a former military man and “has no plans for the future.” Part way through the film Brenda comments that she has had several boyfriends and was engaged up until the week before she and Neil met. She is highly comfortable in intimate settings and explains that she only does something when she wants to, including, but not limited to sex. She embraces the modern mindset of young, free love, but understands the importance of marriage and status as urged by her parents.
The movie begins through the “male gaze,” with a montage of close-ups of bikini-clad breasts and rears followed up by Neil’s face. Neil is never an aggressor, but actively pursues Brenda’s attention after meeting her for the first time at the private country club he is visiting. She is the first woman that demands his attention through interaction, not simply display. She, with her seemingly innocent disposition, is obviously aware of her attractiveness and teases him for her own entertainment, as if to show the power of her femininity.
Because of her family’s advantages, Brenda exhibits a careless air, one that lacks responsibility and maturity. With her child-like temperament, Brenda plays mind-games and uses her sexuality and self-aware femininity to pull others into them. As in the dinner scene in Brenda’s home, a hurried affair where no one of her family members interacts with another, she teases Neil by touching him inappropriately under the table while her mother interrogates him on his background. Also, during the party scene when she and Neil sneak off to argue, she demands that he love her and then she runs naked into the pool to distract him. He runs to greet her as she climbs out of the water and they begin to caress each other which is strobe edited with shots of the party to reveal the true excess of their relationship and of the advantages of youthful sexuality. Brenda exhibits herself in a voyeuristic way and flaunts her found sexuality both for herself and to demonstrate her carelessness when it comes to traditional standards.
Through her initial denial of sexual gratification, Brenda holds the upper hand in the relationship, as if a traditional courtship is being had. Since her ideas of privilege consist of ever-accessible material wealth and the ability to move seamlessly between assumed traditional trust and more modern practices, such as premarital relations, she taps into the availability of both. Although Neil consistently conveys that he wants to have sex, Brenda is the one that demands he “make love” to her when they are in her attic. In this moment she pursues him and he happily goes along. Later, Neil discovers that he has wrongly assumed Brenda had been using birth-control pills since he has not taken protective measures himself concerning the sex they are having. He demands she go see a doctor to receive pills and she refuses. This refusal is traditional in that it is against modern contraceptives, as well as it’s a refusal to Neil’s control over her, and, analytically, almost a refusal to use the man-made pill and its negative side-effects. This is seemingly a struggle of male dominance over the accessibility of female sexuality and simultaneous non-responsibility versus the female’s choice over when and who to have sex with, with or without protection. Although Brenda later gets a diaphragm, another man-made female contraceptive, she chooses to leave it at home and rid herself of it when she goes back to school. It is discovered at home and her parents become severely disappointed in her. This prompts her to hysterically question her ethics and decisions since her parents’ trust was invaluable, yet taken for granted.
This fast-lane lifestyle, funded by the assumption of safety and confidence, is mixed with privilege and vanity. It is a product of two opposing cultural standards that differ in response to sexuality and out-of-wedlock intercourse. Throughout Goodbye, Columbus, the paralleled differences are compared, side-by-side, and clearly show the issue young adults have in understanding their place, materialistically and expressively. Where Brenda and Neil may have the ability to be sexually active, there is the constant question of traditional ethics and modern sexual choice.
Fatal Femmes 