On audience's misogyny, Amy Dunne, the Cool Girl myth and the brilliance of Gillian Flynn

(SPOILERS!)

There are so many strange claims about the story of Gone Girl - that it's misogynistic, that the third act made no sense, that Amy is just a 'psycho bitch', that Nick was 'a good guy'. It's hard to write about these people as if they were people who could exist - the story, which people seem to forget so often while they are whining about the third act is a satire. But Flynn wrote these characters in a brilliant way - their actions are unpredictable and heightened to fit the pulpy tone of the story but at the same time given what we know about the characters, their lives, past experiences and personalities  - they all make sense.

Misogyny?

The claim that the story is misogynistic and Nick is  a 'good guy' is probably the most ridiculous one about Gone Girl. Nick Dunne is one of the most pitiful male characters I read about. He marries a woman, he takes her away from her happy life, he takes her money, he starts to be unhappy, he thinks 'I can't divorce her, she has the money', he cheats on her. He has severe anger issues - at various points in the novel Nick thinks 'I wanted to smack her' about different women. It's a matter of time before he snaps. Yes, Amy does awful things but Nick deserved some punishment. And he is weak and spineless. Amy was strong. And she was a survivor. These are fiercely admirable qualities. There was nothing to admire about Nick. I refuse to praise him just because 'oh well but comparing to Amy he was good and you should like him because he didn't do anything terrible'. No! He was a cheating asshole who treated his wife like a crap. Just because Amy might as well be Satan (if Flynn told us she was, I'd buy it) doesn't make Nick 'a good guy'.

Granted, in the movie Nick's affair is not given a lot of time. But in the book we are privy to his thoughts - we know of the texts and voicemails he left Andie and we know from Amy's viewpoint that she smelled the other women's "twat" on his fingers for over a year. And the reasons Nick waits to ask for divorce? Her money. He asks for divorce, he loses the bar. Oh yes, what a stand up guy Nick is.

The film itself or the story are not misogynistic. Yes, Amy was not a good person. She is a selfish, dangerous person. But she had dignity - she didn't let Nick just get away with him treating her badly. How is this a misogynistic message? She may be the villain in the end but she is not a victim.

The aura around the film is misogynistic and that is because our society is misogynistic. Brushing Amy off as psycho bitch and saying Nick was a great guy for me is absolutely despicable. What's worse is that I see women doing that. When The Dark Knight was out do you remember any posts saying 'oh gee poor Batman that he has a psycho dick like The Joker in his life?". No. People just praised Ledger's performance. But here we have a woman punishing a man and people feel the need to call her a cunt and a psycho.

(I assume I'm about to be called a cunt and a psycho just because I admired things in Amy (I was called those things before when talking about Amy).  Let me just remind everyone of comment moderation. You call me that and three people will know - me, you and your mother who read it over your shoulder during her weekly visit to change your sheets in the basement, where you live.)

That is perhaps the scariest thing about the film - that it causes people to say 'Amy was a cunt' instead of 'Amy was a complex and brilliantly written character played by Pike'.

I think a large part of this horrible thing, the cancer that is in our society in the form of this hatred for women is that men do fear strong women. Men fear responsibility too. Not all men, obviously, but who do you think cheats more? Men or Women? I deal with a lot of divorce cases and let me tell you 1 out of 4 is women cheating. Other 3 are men cheating and beating women up. And Gone Girl for women is essentially a revenge fantasy. For men it's a cautionary tale - be careful who you are marrying. And what I particularly love - Don't wrong your partner. Don't ignore your wife. Don't cheat on your wife. These are the messages we desperately need in the world where people think violence towards women and cheating on wives is 'something that happens and what can you do?'. Nick "ONLY" cheated'. "Only"?!

We need scary women characters. Men hit women, cheat on women and frankly they are mouthier than ever nowadays. 'Calm down', 'settle down', 'listen you bitch' etc. They think if they hit their wives they will become submissive and afraid. Worse yet - they think that women SHOULD be afraid of men and should be submissive. They think it's in woman's nature to be submissive and fragile. And thanks to Gillian Flynn they can now see that sometimes woman's nature is to be vindictive, righteous and very, very sly. There is nothing misogynistic in saying some women are evil. It would be misogynistic to say they are weak. And neither of the female characters in Gone Girl is weak.

Men think that if they cheat it's no big deal because 'everybody cheats'. They think if they grab your ass or unhook your bra on the dance floor they won't get the punishment. They can't fathom the idea of a woman doling out the punishment. These creeps, men who treat women as if they were lesser, as if they were their property, should see this movie. And they should become very afraid that maybe the woman they hit, the woman they cheat on, the woman they disrespect has a bit of Amy in her.

There were scary female movie characters before but they didn't win. A pretty protagonist girl would win. And it's Flynn's brilliance that in her story the villain and the pretty protagonist is one and the same. And she triumphs.

However, if Fincher was the only one responsible for this movie, I'm not sure if I would fight misogyny claims. There is a number of changes:

1. Nick saves the cat in the beginning of the movie, establishing him as the good guy; the fact that it is Amy's cat and she makes a point of leaving food for him and saying goodbye before she disappears is nowhere in the movie,

2. Tommy - in the book after Amy drops the charges his life is normal, here we get the story of how he can't find a job and can't date anyone because rape charges are in his records,

3. Desi coming off as sympathetic rather than creepy, not showing Amy being afraid of him and being trapped again.

All these changes make Amy look even more evil than in the book, but Flynn wrote these changes. She is fascinated by dark characters and I think she really wanted to show Amy as the biggest villain there. Thankfully there are small things that really show you she is not some cold sociopath, period but so much more - for example shots of her in tears during the diary writing montage and little hops of joy she does.

Amy

When people claim Amy is a 'psycho bitch' and that's all they have to say about her it's the very peak of ignorance. The best part of Flynn's book is how richly complex the character of Amy is. She is the product of her personality traits and experiences and most of all - the result of ridiculous expectations and pressures women have to put up with in the world. She has always been a selfish narcissist - not giving her mother a moment of peace, because she selfishly wanted to be the center of attention even when she was a little girl (Amy was the only alive daughter the Elliotts had, 7 girls before her were either still born or miscarriages, she grew up believing she was special, that she was a miracle). But it's the expectations - you have to be gorgeous, elegant, kind, married and have children - that drove Amy further than selfishness. It drove her to very interesting kind of insanity - controlled insanity. It drove her to become the Old Testament God of her own universe.

I'm not sure how much of this people got from the movie - was the Cool Girl rant enough?  The fact that the most important thing for Amy and Nick is to be liked is what brings them together in the end. And Amy has pathological need to be around others and being admired - in the book she engages Greta, in the movie it's the other way around. Why does Amy hang out with her and Jeff? Because how can she feel superior when she is alone?

She is intensely, intensely complex - here is a woman who was brought up with all the attention as the only child but every step of her way her self worth took a hit with Amazing Amy books - whenever Amy 'failed' her parents would rewrite history. When Amy was single they wrote Amazing Amy getting married. So in time Amy started craving compliments - she wanted people to think she was Amazing Amy.

"Until Nick, I’d never really felt like a person, because I was always a product. Amazing Amy has to be brilliant, creative, kind, thoughtful, witty, and happy. We just want you to be happy. Rand and Marybeth said that all the time, but they never explained how. So many lessons and opportunities and advantages, and they never taught me how to be happy. I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that, too, but I wouldn’t understand why. I would sit there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun"

Given her perceptiveness and brilliance she knew how to be the center of attention - with Desi she lied about her father abusing her (something I found to be very despicable of her) making Desi think he is a big hero and he is rescuing her. With her old boyfriend once he started to stray she accused him of rape to punish him. Amy had to be the most important and she would punish any slight.

And Amy started getting older. She figured with how society views women she needs to get married, be the person people say 'she is a perfect wife' about. She also needed to compete with Amazing Amy.

"But fact is, it’s been years since I even really liked someone. So how likely is it I’ll meet someone I love, much less someone I love enough to marry? I’m tired of not knowing who I’ll be with, or if I’ll be with anyone."

And she met Nick.

Given how uninteresting I found Nick I was a bit surprised Amy would stay with him. But here's the thing - since she doesn't understand love, it doesn't matter. Love would have prevented Amy from wanting to break Nick and rebuild him as perfect husband. She doesn't know what love is.

In the beginning everything was fine but when the marriage started to collapse and more dangerously - Amy became bored - her master plan was beginning to be inevitable.That Nick slipped was understandable, given his weak personality. I  think in some way Amy must have found this to be a blessing. Here's the opportunity to make everything interesting again.

I admired Amy's refusal to just let him wrong her. So many people say 'well it happens 'about adultery. NO. It shouldn't happen. When you take vows, it shouldn't happen. I think marriage is too common. That's why people slip. Had marriage really been about two people who love each other and want to spend eternity with each other adultery would happen less often. But people marry due to social pressures and here it goes. The vow of fidelity has no meaning. But not to Amy - while it's not perhaps the fidelity she was protecting but it was her dignity she stood by. No. I won't let him do this to me. No, he'll pay. I cheered, How can you not cheer? While the means she chose were over the top - again, it's a satire - the fact she wouldn't brush it off and would stand up for herself and not let him get away with this was very admirable.

 "I'm married to a man who will always choose what’s easy, and when he gets bored with this dumb twat he'll just find another girl who is pretending to be the cool girl, and he'll never learn his lesson."

I admire brilliance in characters. And Amy is brilliant. I think had she met her match, someone who she would genuinely admire, someone who understood her (again Nick took her from the life she loved, the life where they were both happy, life during which Amy wasn't acting like the sociopath she was) she wouldn't do the things she did. But Nick didn't understand her and she didn't understand him. However these two were defined by how they were perceived.

Nick and Amy

Nick desperately wanted to be liked, wanted to be seen as a good guy, good husband. Amy wanted to be seen as perfect. The hate for the story's ending makes absolutely no sense to me. There is even monologue form Amy correctly stating how with her Nick is a better man than others. In the movie there is a quick moment of Nick mentioning how he is better when Amy is motivating him. With Amy Nick tries to be seen as perfect. So when she hands him the opportunity to be the perfect husband and father, he stays. Because she is also right in another thing - while their life is toxic he would never find any other woman as interesting as Amy. He would get bored.

The idea of two people staying with each other to play a game and caring about the perception so much reality no longer matters is frightening. What's most disturbing for me as a woman is the idea that the woman takes the man and reassembles him, manipulates him, frightens him into submission. It's all poison. How can you respect a man who is this weak? How can stay in this toxic relationship? How can you settle for just an average guy and spend your life changing him into someone you consider perfect?

I foolishly believe in love and finding someone you want to be with forever. Not entire life - forever. Finding someone who gives you comfort, warmth, safety. Finding someone you always want to hold and always want to talk to. And Gone Girl with its chill, danger and hatred that are rooted here in this couple is basically a horror film. How many of these perfect couples we see holding hands, are really hating each other or playing sick games? Is the kind of love and relationship where you genuinely sweetly and innocently love another person and stay with them for years even out there? Or is it all lies? Does it all come down to bitterness, resentment, banging sluts and coming up with ways to hurt each other?

The Cool Girl

It's interesting or shall I say very disturbing when people make Amy responsible for everything - 'she pretended to be someone she wasn't when she married Nick' - hundreds of men are yelling. Newsflash - we all pretend. But with the pressures on women we are the ones who actually have to pretend. You would think this world is modern, but it's really not, it's still the fucking 50's out there. We are supposed to find a man and marry and obviously we have to have children. Because if we don't get married and don't want to have kids something is wrong with us. Unwed childless man? No big deal. Unwed childless woman? Well, what's wrong with her? 

We are supposed to be skinny, gorgeous, have perfect hair. We are never supposed to raise our voices, demand things, be aggressive or passionately voice our opinions. If we do those things, well, we are just fucking crazy! It's still Salem out there. Instead of fire and stones we simply get viciousness directed at complex female characters, judgment passed on us by dimwitted morons for liking those characters and things like 'calm down' or 'why aren't you married YET?' said to us.

"Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation!  Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl.  Men believed she existed – she wasn’t just a dream girl one in a million.  Every girl was supposed to this girl, and if you weren’t, then there was something wrong with you."

But women are not blameless. I suppose we have our version of a cool guy, don't we? It's the prince charming myth or someone our mothers tell us is a person we should marry (because we have to, have to marry) - it would be the best if he was a doctor or a lawyer but he can be other things as long as he is wealthy. As if we ourselves couldn't be doctors or lawyers who are wealthy. The idea of pretending, members of the audience use so quickly to make Amy into some evil creature because she pretended to be someone she isn't is going on both sides. Is it because people are so afraid of admit they are not perfect? Are we all supposed to be just robots, Prince Charming and Cool Girl horde? Well that sounds incredibly boring. We have different experiences, lives, desires. And the fact there is only one golden standard for both of the sexes, the standard we are supposed to meet is what leads to pain, lies and tragedies.

I hated him for not knowing it had to end, for truly believing he had married this creature, this figment of the imagination of a million masturbatory men, semenfingered and self-satisfied. He truly seemed astonished when I asked him to listen to me. He couldn’t believe I didn’t love wax-stripping my pussy raw and blowing him on request. That I did mind when he didn’t show up for drinks with my friends. That ludicrous diary entry? I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself. That was pure, dumb Cool Girl bullshit.What a cunt. Again, I don’t get it: If you let a man cancel plans or decline to do things for you, you lose. You don’t get what you want. It’s pretty clear. Sure, he may be happy, he may say you’re the coolest girl ever, but he’s saying it because he got his way. He’s calling you a Cool Girl to fool you! That’s what men do: They try to make it sound like you are the cool girl so you will bow to their wishes. Like a car salesman saying, How much do you want to pay for this beauty? when you didn’t agree to buy it yet. That awful phrase men use: ‘I mean, I know you wouldn’t mind if I …’ Yes, I do mind. Just say it. Don’t lose, you dumb little twat. So it had to stop. Committing to Nick, feeling safe with Nick, being happy with Nick, made me realize that there was a Real Amy in there, and she was so much better, more interesting and complicated and challenging, than Cool Amy. Nick wanted Cool Amy anyway. Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?

In the end Amy triumphs because what she wants is to be loved by everyone - it's ironic because when she sheds her Cool Girl persona she is no one - she simply floats in the pool, her skin is sun burnt, her cheeks puffy, a shell that doesn't even want to talk to anyone. She is not happy, isn't she? It's just a phase, a phase of waiting for new challenge. Interesting thing about Amy is as cold as she is, she can experience happiness and joy - whenever she wins, whenever things go her way Amy is happy. But during the beginning of the second part of the book and novel Amy, while being herself, is floating through life. Her eager mind needs something new. And then Nick gives her new mission again - get back to him.
At one point of the book Amy comments how she doesn't really have personality and her entire life she was adapting different personas. That's not really true. Her entire life Amy wanted to be admired and be the center of attention. So when she gets back she finds the perfect way to achieve that - American heroine, a survivor, perfect wife.

With a husband that's too scared to be anything other than the perfect partner to her.

I think Flynn's goal with the story to begin with was to write about a very weird modern image of love. I did not get that from the book - the ending there being different, Nick showing defiance by saying he feels sorry for Amy because she needs to get up every day and being herself and Amy thinking he really shouldn't have said that. In the film Nick stays and his defiance pretty much goes away the second he realizes he is gonna be a father. And these two? These narcissists who love admiration? Maybe they are soul mates? Pike and Affleck's chemistry certainly sold it as twisted love story more than the book did.

 Wicked

Another reason why the claim this movie is misogynistic is insane is that Amy, in the end, not only has everything she wants but also she is finally FREE. She is herself with Nick who finally sees her for who she is. She may be one thing for the cameras but in the end Amy gets what she always wanted - she is the one who has control. In the movie Desi comments how she had him on her leash. Well now Nick is on one - not just the baby but also the realization that his wife will do terrible things if he ever tries to run.

There are some other claims that are being shouted - how the film shows a woman lying about abuse, using pregnancy to trap a man and making false rape allegations and how WRONG it is to show this. My questions is - are you fucking kidding? When a man is shown to kill hundreds in the movie is the movie accused of promoting that? As a person with a working brain I feel offended that people claim a Hollywood movie somehow lessens the seriousness of those things Amy lied about or claims that it's offensive to feature something like this in the story. Are people under impression that women don't ever lie about things like that? It's horrible, but it happens. Ultimately the problem people have here is that the film shows the ugly truth - women lie, women manipulate, men are shit husbands, men cheat, monsters sometimes win. Is all that is expected from movies nowadays tiptoeing around controversial subjects and shoving the same cliches down the audience's throat? I'm afraid it is, seeing the number of ridiculous accusations this movie met.

Gillian Flynn who over the last few months became a heroine of mine and such amazing, brave voice we so desperately need, said this:

“Isn’t it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.” 

I'm beyond thrilled that Gone Girl is such a success and so many women are recognizing the importance of Amy and trying to make others realize what got her to be the person she is. Sasha Stone of Awards Daily wrote an amazing article talking about Amy and awful social pressures towards women. I saw words sympathetic thrown around too. And I'm so happy that other books of Flynn's are getting adapted. Both Dark Places and Sharp Objects have strong, complex female characters and they are even less about love than Gone Girl is. Libby and Camille are not in search for it. They are not lamenting over the fact they don't have it. 

There are simply more important things happening in their lives that finding and pleasing a man and being what society wants them to be.



artwork by me and inspired by - Amazing Amy by Kirk Van Wormer, Chicken Television by inz-feelgood, James Porto - Ada and Zeus, Untitled by Gustė Andrulytė, Ernst Haeckel, “Nepenthaceae”, from Kunstformen der Natu, Aitch - Beautiful Us, Caro’s Design - Artificial and the promo material for Gone Girl.