Shirley (2020)

Whose Afraid of Virgina Woolfe meets the Virgin Suicides meets A Doll's House.

Decker, Josephine. "Shirley." Hulu, LAMF, 2020, USA.

This is the first feminist manifesto that I've had the opportunity to be truly sucked into. Despite the issues within the (feminist) movement it is still representation that is the pinnacle for inclusivity. While the movie is solid in representing stale marriage traditions especially of the circa 1950's my biggest issue with Shirley is what fails to provide. Yes marriage can be a lifeless struggle and pursuit for individuality but what about the key or light at the end of the tunnel for Elizabeth Moss (Shirley Jackson) Odessa Young (Rose).

The play A Doll's House (Henrik Ibson)which reminded me heavily of the set design was poignant during the time of the late 1880's, the play features a houswife who famously abandons her Idyllic home and child and ventures to anywherebut there... A lot of controversy still surrounds the play and the playwright but what Shirley does best is explains the Why. The behind the scenes of a marriage so unhappy as to lead a woman to commit perhaps the ultimate sin of the time -abandoning a child- Shirley also offers us an alternative view to dissect the full spectrum of a woman s choices put in place by society... What if Nora didn't leave and instead stayed with her husband and family? There is of course the potential of leaving but at a terrible cost we witness an escape that doesn't involve divorce, the golden carrot of freedom becomes a sucidal dream world by plummeting off of a cliff, the alternative to staying and slowly going mad. The genius of Josephine Decker is that she first casts off the reliability of our narrator to only then find her guilt absolved because we get to see - in good measure - the origin story of the neurotic, paranoid, agoraphobic, and fiercely independent writer and witness as it becomes Rose's own "coming of age" story.

For the movement, times have indeed gotten better for us. We are allowed our separation from men and the ability to sustain our own pleasures - financially, artistically, spiritually- without a cage. It's the craving and the obsession which is still needing to be worked on. The women instead of pursuing their own outlets become instead become swallowed by their men. Shirley at one time mocks the woman that her husband is sleeping with by saying "You would bore him in a week" after she's chastised to "dab" instead of "rub" a wine stain. I would say that the messy, exotic behavior of herself is part of her charm which is what still consumes their marriage after the honeymoon phase has left off.

Obviously these energies could be channeled elsewhere, more holistically, without taking such a physical and mental tolls on our heroines, but alas, it is what it is, and what it is makes for a great story. However the mistresses, the double-life, alluded murder, the betrayal of her husband all seem to be disappear the moment he approves of her novel, an approval she has worked toward all along.