Poor Things (film)

[TinselAngel]

Has anybody here seem Poor Things yet?

I went to see it this afternoon and sat slightly horrified in a cinema full of chortling people, about Emma Stone's character being relentlessly exploited by men but this being portrayed as not being altogether a bad thing.

How is it a male fantasy when she coms out on top ( no pun intended)

I read this thread yesterday and saw the film today.
I loved it and found the last 15 minutes uplifting.
Yes, maybe a little bit more sex than required, but everything amusing and poignant. Emma Stone was sublime. I accompanied two women, maybe about 30, en route to the car park at the end and they were on their third visit. They’d gone back to acknowledge the layers they’d missed and to pay homage to Bella’s astute assessment of society.
Sound track devilishly weird but haunting.
Favourite scene ‘London’

I saw it for the 2nd time last night. What came across even more clearly was that Bella makes deliberate choices to do what she does.
She is never coerced, except when she gets in the box.
I strongly suspect that many posters haven't actually seen the film.

Emma is a mum. Perhaps before making wild assumptions about her personal character you could have a ten second Google

Also Emma produced it.

I enjoyed it. I didn't see the character as brain injured or as a child in a woman body. She is a supernatural being. Her transplanted brain isn't quite human - she matures at an accelerated rate and doesn't display the emotions of shame or sadness that normal mortals have. It's clear that this isn't a standard transplant, something has changed her into an alien like being.

While I don't see it as a feminist movie, I did see it as an interesting exploration of how we would perceive the world and react to it if we had no preconceptions and saw things very logically. I think it would have worked with a male character in the role in that sense.

The female aspect comes in where we see all the men trying to control her. But Bella ultimately with a cool head has her own way in every situation, even if it takes her a while to figure it out.

I'm uncomfortable with the premise that a science-fiction story of a transplanted baby brain rapidly maturing is so representative of brain injury, that the role ought to be played by someone with an intellectual diability (aquired or otherwise). In what way are these things similar?

Yes knew she was one of the producers but didn’t realise she was a mum of a toddler - she must keep her family life more private (than my knowledge of celebrities) which is nice. I have googled the film creatives - most of the 10 producers were men and she was the only female pga out of 4 pga (apparently a pga title is given to the ones that have more input). So with the original story being male, the adaptor being male taking the male viewpoint (only) from book, a male director, a male editor and mostly male producers, I would still class it as a male-created story.

@Tinysoxxx How did you feel while you were actually watching the film? Were there any aspects you liked?

She isn’t “prostituted” OP, she chooses to do it, it is not done to her against her will.

Absolutely loved it. It is an artistic work but stays on the right side of the issues mentioned above. She is basically an alien, it's a grotesque story but also fascinating and beautiful to watch.

She isn’t “prostituted” OP, she chooses to do it, it is not done to her against her will.

She's giving a brothel keeper a third of her earnings and doesn't get to choose her clients.

And it's because she's no other way of earning money.

I stand by "prostituted".

well, no. She has her 1st sexual encounter in the brothel when she has money. When Max takes her money, she explicitly goes into the brothel to work because she sees it as a quick and easy way of getting money, and gaining experience, leaving her most of her time to pursue other activities. She says this.
And, when the madame turns down her idea about prostitutes choosing their clients, she accepts it, as, to experience life, she has to have the good and the bad.
I'm not pointing this out because I find it realistic in real life. But this is the character arc in the film. Plus, when she feels the need to leave the brothel and return to England, she does.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen it. Not sure if I will or not.

But in response to this, from what others have said, is it not the case that she's not so much 'supernatural' or 'alien' as human, just without the usual social conditioning about not spitting your food out, masturbating in public etc?

That Guardian piece with the different viewpoints is very good reading. And yes, Zoe Williams does not disappoint or surprise. My 'favourite' part of it: 'Her spell in a brothel is the most honest pass at the question, “What does sex work look like stripped of internalised stigma?” I’ve seen in ages.' Yes, Zoe, that's right, the only reason anyone objects to men buying access to women's bodies is internalised stigma, which is probably their own fault for not being clever enough to recognise and reject it 🙄

That line annoyed me as well.

Material reality seems not to intrude upon Williams.

What does sex work look like stripped of internalised stigma?

WTF. Does she mean 'trauma'?

She means that women only find it distressing to work in the sex trade because they've been brought up to be ashamed due to our patriarchal society. It's a very fashionable viewpoint for those of a certain class.

@MarkWithaC she doesn't have social conditioning, but she never gains it either. She develops and learns, but doesn't internalise it. She will eat nice food until she is sick and then just emotionlessly vomit whereever she happens to be and walk off. She ceases to masterbate at the breakfast table only because she is told it isnt polite and she has set herself the task of learning, not because she has a sense of shame. She sees the brothel dispassionately as an experiment - and remarks how bad the sex is, asks odd questions of the clients, treating them as experimental subjects and internalises nothing about it. Ofc a real woman couldn't do this, she isn't a real woman and isn't intended to be. She is a strange emotionless investigator into what people call life.

When she was made, it was as an experiment and the experimental, detached nature has been expressed through her. She isn't a normal mortal.

None of whom, as far as I know, work as sex workers themselves. I don't know if any of them have daughters/nieces/other young women in their lives or, if so, how they'd feel about them overcoming 'internalised stigma' and becoming sex workers.

They're usually from such a comfortable financial background that the commercial sex trade would never have been a possibility. See Williams' private school education.

If Williams had ever had to contemplate the sex trade for herself, that might have concentrated her mind on the material reality of working in a brothel, having sex with men who you would never touch otherwise.

Moll Flanders in muttonleg sleeves.

Emma Stone is magnificent in it, Brando raw and funny.

The hooking bit was too long and implausible, to use the polite word.

Thinking about it, the closest character I can think of to the type that is Bella is the Arnold Schwarzeneggar Terminator in Terminator 2. He also plays a man made being who dispassionately learns about the world around him, increasing in skill at appearing normal, but never internalising it.

When Bella realises she her body has had a child she asks - Did I have a baby and where is it? On learning the truth, she isn't horrified but pronounces it interesting. She isn't a woman, but an alien like being.

The lawyer thinks he is getting a naive child like woman to use and dump, but that isn't the case at all.

I loved it, didn't expect it to be so funny.

A tweet I saw today from Andrea Heinz, a woman who has exited the sex trade.

90% of sex buyers come faster when they see the woman wince or recoil. Softly saying “oww, ouch” was a strategy we’d use to get them to finish & get off of us.

It’s laughable when people say that johns (at large) pay for “intimacy” & “human connection”.

They pay to dominate.

Hey Williams, do you think that's an issue caused by women's internalised stigma?