Flashback Friday — Movie Moment: Switchblade Sisters (1975), Patch edition

This entry was originally posted on December 5, 2009 at 2:42 pm. Captions have been added to some of the photos.

There are many recommendable qualities about what is, to me, the title holder of all-time greatest cheeseball popcorn-flick, writer-director Jack Hill’s masterpiece of the exploitation genre, Switchblade Sisters (1975).

For one thing, the four taglines are as follows:

They’d Rather Kill Their Man Than Lose Him

So easy to kill. So hard to love.

Mothers… lock up your sons. The Switchblade Sisters are coming!

Lace… Maggie… Patch… Donut… Bunny… The wildest girl gang that ever blasted the streets!

Dig the poster art (click any of them to blow it up).

The film, which do not think this is the last entry in which I will talk about it, centers on girl gang The Dagger Debs — a sort of ladies auxiliary of their boyfriends’ gang, the Silver Daggers — who later change their name to The Jezebels (some bootlegs of the film still have this as the title) under the advice of their new co-leader.

That bowling alley is rougher than the cantina on Mos Eisley.

Name changes and the new co-leader do not sit well with what is for my money the number one reason with a bullet (or switchblade, if you prefer) to watch this movie:

This flyass bitch right here.

Monica Gayle as “Patch.”

Her name is Patch. Former first lieutenant of the Dagger Debs, Patch came to kick ass and look hot as hell — and she’s all outta blue eyeliner.

You will want to marry her when you watch her snarl and flip and hiss across the screen. It’s wonderful.

Look at that willowy neck and perfectly snide expression. I cannot believe that Monica Gayle did not go on to ridiculous heights of stardom and fame, but at least it ups my chances of running in to her at the grocery.

Quentin Tarantino put up the money through his Rolling Thunder productions company to oversee the recent remaster and distribution of this film in dvd format. He claims it is among his favorite 70’s movies, and QT devotees insist that shades of the plotline, composition, and even characters from Switchblade Sisters can be seen in some of Tarantino’s films.

Note the composition, with organic materials framing the hard face and the strong horizontals in their look-space.

I cannot imagine where they are getting this. Even if he has seen Switchblade Sisters, I doubt it has in any way influenced his own work.*

What am I talking about?, they clearly have patches on different eyes — psh. Not alike at all.

*Obviously that’s in jest … but actually I love the fact that he based the “look” of Elle Driver on Patch. Love it. And then he put Daryl Hannah in the role on top of it?! Winner winner, chicken dinner! It’s like that loquacious elfin genius makes movies purely so I don’t have to. My hat is forever off to him.

addendum 7-2-10: It’s still true. I know it is becoming vogue for some reason to consider QT “tired” or “irrelevant” or “pretentious” or any one of a million labels that float about like baseless ice cubes in the tall glass of haterade Hollywood critics pass around, but I will love him, deeply and without measure or reservation, until the end of time. Call me.

Movie Moment: Metonymy and Synecdoche in Legally Blonde

I’d like to take a moment of your time to demonstrate the intriguing and in many ways fun fetishistic metonymy in Legally Blonde (Rob Luketic, 2001). The shot list calls for the constant breaking of the women down in to digestible parts when they are focused on Warner. This is important because, to a man like that character, taken as a whole, what are we ladies? Too much to chew on, it seems. That’s my personal theory as to why scenes that involve Warner or preparing oneself for Warner so vigorously metonymize Elle and Vivian (Selma Blair). In cinema, where it functions differently than in literary criticism, this metaphorical use of small parts to symbolize the whole, and the psychological underpinnings of its use, falls beneath the aegis of metonymy but really is a better example of synecdoche.

Synecdoche, sometimes considered as a metaphor, is also a metonymical device enabling an idea or object to be indicated by a term whose meaning includes that of the original term or is included in it. The singular replaces the plural, the type the species, the abstract the concrete — or the other way round. Most of the part takes the place of the whole: a sail for the ship, a palm leaf for the tree.

As Elle becomes self-actualized during her rising success in law school, she ceases to so flagrantly feed this synecdoche, insisting on being seen as a whole person. That’s why in the next-to-final sequence, when she walks away from Warner and disappears in to the sun of the outside world, we see her entire body for only the first time from his perspective: slipping in to the haze because Warner never really knew Elle, he knew only the idea of her that he formed in his mind between her misguided visual clues and his contextualized experience of women.

More properly, if I had to put it in pretentious film school bullshit parlance, the cinematic discourse established by director Rob Luketic employs the consistent rhetorical metonymical device of synecdoche to psychologically reinforce the theme of a woman’s appearance and its attendant little kicky details being only a small part of her fuller self. The arc of the narrative allows for the falling away of this device, which further serves to underline the discursive element of metonymy and its being unnecessary to a fully-fleshed-out, dynamic character who has undergone change throughout the film. (I am so glad I quit film school. I would eat my right hand in a sandwich with razor-blades and broken glass before I put my name to and was proud of the publishing of such empty academese for a goddamned living.)

This trope is familiar in the cinema where metonymical juxtaposition becomes changed in to metaphor without the syntagma (this contiguous form) becoming paradigmatic (integrated as a fixed sign, like a lexeme, folling a substitution of meaning. The connoted meaning is objectified in to an object, which performs the function of a sign; but this objectification depends on the connotation: it does not precede it or present it ready-made.

(Semiotics and the Analysis of Film. Mitry, Jean and King, Christopher. London: Athlone Press, 2000. p. 198)

When they are grooming themselves for Warner and aiming at gaining his attention, the camera’s conversation with us shows that Elle and Vivian subconsciously understand he could never possibly grasp nor appreciate the entirety of the experience of “having” them — what will lure, fetch, and keep him are the pieces he can actually conceive of as they relate to him and fit in to his ideas of feminine symbols. Hair, feet, fingers: they can speak of wealth (Vivan) or sex (Elle) — in both cases, the women feed his vision rather than contradict it, despite it being only one small aspect of their larger identities as people. In cooperating with his metonymical synechdochized view of them, Elle and Vivian allow Warner to make them a woman first and a person second. As both of their understandings of Warner evolves, this cooperation begins to sour, and, able to see one another as people first once they have discounted his view of them as women (which made them rivals), they become friends who appreciate the unique facets of one another’s different personalities.

This is not the case with all men, not even in the film; you never see that shit getting pulled on Emmett, who sees and admires the wholeness of Elle from Day One. Look, ma: whole person!

Look, Legally Blonde is not a perfect film even at all, and I know that. It’s not meant to be psychoanalyzed, most likely, and I am also aware of that. I’m just saying it has slightly more artistic merit than most people give it credit for. That’s right: I am a Legally Blonde apologist. Alert Gloria Steinem.

I like this movie and there ain’t no shame in a name. I’m off for C-town right this red-hot minute to soak up its sunny pink silliness with Miss D. Have a great day and catch you on the flip side!

Daily Batman: Reflections on ladyhood and gal pals

Gotham Sirens, which I have mentioned before, is part of the Batman: Reborn series. Art by Dini and March.

It’s all well and good to fly solo now and again. But a little company makes it even more fun!

I have come to believe that no lady ever really stands alone. Even if she does not appreciate it at the time, she is surrounded by a network of friends and family who have been everywhere she has and are there to support her in times of trouble and toast with wine in time of plenty.

Gal pals: they are a Thing!

Kidlet is spending the day with her godmother going to that atrocious eye-rape Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, which I would rather drink bleach than watch. I think I’m stupider just from seeing the trailers. Let’s be sure not to leave a single memory of the 1980s with its dignity intact, okay Hollywood? Thanks, you guys are the best. Then they’re going out for lunch to the Wendy’s, which every time I enter I fantasize about burning down (I just feel like it is begging me to do it, and I genuinely believe its employees, despite losing their jobs, would wet themselves with gratitude when they arrived at that hellmouth to find it a heap of ash and rubble), so I gave them my blessing and made alternate plans. Hmm. I feel like all the sentences I just wrote make me sound very angry and solitary. Totally not the case, I’m just sick of wasting my time on materialistic bullshit and fast food poison. (Carl’s Jr. is exempt, don’t challenge me as to why!)

I am totally looking forward to an overdue girl day with Miss D in C-town. I am scootching down soon, armed with Legally Blonde and its sequel, two of my favorite feel-good popcorn flicks. We can just sit on the couch, chat when needed, and basically take a pink space rocket to Planet Veg. Will it once again be retro to be passed out on the couch when Paolo gets home from work? Only time can tell!

Movie Moment: Switchblade Sisters (1975), Patch edition

There are many recommendable qualities about what is, to me, the title holder of all-time greatest cheeseball popcorn-flick, writer-director Jack Hill’s masterpiece of the exploitation genre, Switchblade Sisters (1975).

For one thing, the four taglines are as follows:

They’d Rather Kill Their Man Than Lose Him

So easy to kill. So hard to love.

Mothers… lock up your sons. The Switchblade Sisters are coming!

Lace… Maggie… Patch… Donut… Bunny… The wildest girl gang that ever blasted the streets!

Dig the poster art (click any of them to blow it up).

The film, which do not think this is the last entry in which I will talk about it, centers on girl gang The Dagger Debs — a sort of ladies auxiliary of their boyfriends’ gang, the Silver Daggers — who later change their name to The Jezebels (some bootlegs of the film still have this as the title) under the advice of their new co-leader.

Name changes and the new co-leader do not sit well with what is for my money the number one reason with a bullet (or switchblade, if you prefer) to watch this movie:

This flyass bitch right here.

Her name is Patch. Former first lieutenant of the Dagger Debs, Patch came to kick ass and look hot as hell — and she’s all outta blue eyeliner.

You will want to marry her when you watch her snarl and flip and hiss across the screen. It’s wonderful.

Look at that willowy neck and perfectly snide expression. I cannot believe that Monica Gayle did not go on to ridiculous heights of stardom and fame, but at least it ups my chances of running in to her at the grocery.

Quentin Tarantino put up the money through his Rolling Thunder productions company to oversee the recent remaster and distribution of this film in dvd format. He claims it is among his favorite 70’s movies, and QT devotees insist that shades of the plotline, composition, and even characters from Switchblade Sisters can be seen in some of Tarantino’s films.

I cannot imagine where they are getting this. Even if he has seen Switchblade Sisters, I doubt it has in any way influenced his own work.*

*Obviously that’s in jest … but actually I love the fact that he based the “look” of Elle Driver on Patch. Love it. And then he put Daryl Hannah in the role on top of it?! Winner winner, chicken dinner! It’s like that loquacious li’l elfin genius makes movies purely so I don’t have to. My hat is forever off to him.