I know the title of this post didn't suggest this at all, but I wanted to write about how disappointed I was by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You know, Brad Pitt is a movie idol, a really, really, ridiculously good-looking actor who is a joy to watch. So, just getting to see him do his thing is nice (I think I have an old blog about just watching Brad Pitt). But this movie dragged on so long, and took so many left turns, that by the time it was over, I had no idea what I was expected to walk away with. I was unnerved by the fairy-tale aspect of Benjamin's miraculous reverse aging process juxtaposed with the hyper-realism induced by including hurricane Katrina. I actually think I didn't like it, and that it really wasn't a good movie. The only thing that saves it is Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are so attractive. I guess what I'm left with is that old age is ugly and it sucks to lose your mind. This was like the antithesis to The Notebook. I read the story to my niece the other day, the original story by Fitzgerald, and Benjamin was never meant to be this benevolent, ageless creature full of wonder and sagacity. Giving the character so little personality caused me to constantly remember that I was watching Brad Pitt. It's a shame, really, to get these A list actors together so beautifully, and get so little out of it.
On to the original intent of this post -- Emily Bronte's tale of the hearth.
Chapter one of Wuthering Heights introduces a rather odd, rather Ishmael-like narrator, Mr. Lockwood. I have a lot of thoughts about this narrator. One concerns his view of what I'll simply call "the gaze." I'm trying very hard to remember the theory I've read about the gaze. I think Butler discusses the importance of the gaze in the subject/object relationship. The subject gazes at the object of desire. In Mr. Lockwood's case, he doesn't particularly care for the gaze to be returned -- especially by a woman. When Lockwood first meets Heathcliff, he gets a little crush on him, he says, because he "felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself." The first woman to meet Lockwood's gaze is the mother dog that jumps on top of him and dominates him. This is the beginning of what seems to be a pattern with Lockwood: out of fear of female dominance, he avoids the returned gaze. He seems to better tolerate Heathcliff's person, and he gives us a little insight into why this is: "I bestow my own attributes over liberally on him." Lockwood likes to look at what he can see himself in, and I don't believe that women can do that for him, but Heathcliff, with his masculine power, wealth, and frustrated heterosexual desire is something that can receive his gaze, precisely because he won't return it. When Lockwood speaks of a failed romance, he confesses that he was interested in a lovely girl, "as long as she took no notice of me." When this girl does look at him (he even insists there was no telling of love, only looks), "at every glance [I} retired colder and farther."
Now, I think for the purpose of the novel, we are to compare Lockwood and Heathcliff, and find the latter far more exciting and masculine. However, aside from Lockwood's inexperience in the country, how are we to distinguish between his frustrated sex life and Heathcliff's? I think it has to do with the gaze, and with power. Lockwood is secure until the object of his desire returns the gaze; Heathcliff is secure until Cathy turns her gaze to something else besides him. Lockwood would have liked it if his aforementioned object of affection had kept her gaze elsewhere. Heathcliff admires an empowered woman, and Lockwood is afraid of one, even if only in the form of a dog. This fear in Lockwood is so off-putting. I feel somewhat sympathetic for him, having stumbled into this mess unknowingly, but when he begins to worm his way into things, I find it don't like him. When he wants to free himself from the Cathy's ghostly arm, he rubs it bloody against the broken window pane. Something about him, his fear and his weak character, make him the great counterpoint to Heathcliff.
I find that he is very much like Ishmael, and Heathcliff is very much like Ahab.
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