Meshes of the Afternoon: Feminism & Breaks from Hollywood
The following analysis was submitted for an informal film journal assignment Junior year.
Women, Sex, and Death
One might read Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon through a feminist lens. In presenting the film in a dreamlike structure, the film aims to depict the subconscious. For example, the people chasing the figure in the robe never actually fulfill their chase, which reminded me of the frivolous running people tend to undertake when dreaming. The film may be read as the exploration of a woman’s subconscious via a dreamlike sequence. Furthermore, it seems like the woman will stab herself in her sleep. She is infatuated with her knife and the flower, but the knife incites a degree of fear in the woman. Per my interpretation, it felt like the woman was struggling with intrusive thoughts of suicide. She seems to have anxiety about death. She seems to be distracting herself throughout the film, but ultimately takes her own life. We see glass fragments on the ground at the end of the film and blood seeping from the woman’s lips. We are left to wonder whether her relationship to the man in the film influences these thoughts. Also, the white flower might be a dream-like representation of purity. It is often thought that objects in dreams hold significance in the reality of one’s conscious mind, so perhaps the flower in the context of this subjective sequence is meant to symbolize her struggles with sexuality. Like a dream, however, the audience may never glean concrete meaning from this film. Rather, the film’s success lies in its ambiguity, charging the audience with the task of extracting meaning.
Break from Hollywood Cinema
First of all, Hollywood films rarely see the protagonist killing themself at the end of the film. It is almost an unspoken law in Hollywood films–the protagonist must stay alive. Second of all, the film focuses on the psychological contents of the woman’s mind. Hollywood cinema typically tells stories about reality, or about things that are perceivable in the temporal world. Yet, this film’s significance does not lie in its sequencing of action, heroic twists, or exciting narrative. Instead, it challenges the audience to extract meaning from what is essentially a dream or a painting of the woman’s psyche. Even with the presentation of the woman’s psyche, however, we are unable to extract concrete meaning from the film. While in a Hollywood narrative we might understand a character grappling with suicidal thoughts through hinted dialogue, here we deduce the woman’s suicidal thoughts through the juxtaposition of knife imagery and the woman’s actions. In other words, this film cannot be passively enjoyed like a typical film. The audience assumes the role of discovering meaning because meaning is not presented in a straightforward manner. We must look at the film’s form rather than its content to interpret the messages, while Hollywood cinema often allows for a passive consumption of straightforwardly-presented content. Finally, the film is more lyrical than sequential, emphasizing sensory states and dreams not characteristic of Hollywood film at the time.
