Frida

I think that so far, Frida is the most creative film to reflect the work of the
artist and the biopic story of their life in one project. The scene where Frida sat on a
stool cutting her hair facing a painted reflection which was a representation of an actual
piece was fantastic. I really loved seeing the work in such a surreal way. Again, when the
film did a graphic match of the scene with her body in a white garter and her spine like a
cracked oil shaft, I was pleased. I like how the film really showed the artwork of both
painters as a reference to their biographies. The paintings were then displayed in the
context of a story and could be that much more appreciated and easier understood. This is
alot like american splendor with the editing being a lot like a comic book. My favorite
image was a shot the film made for itself, when Frida was impaled with a rod, bleeding and
covered in gold. By pulling out in slow motion it was shot as if it were an actual piece of
art that Frida had drawn.
Throughout the film Frida makes a conscious effort to subvert the standards of
gender roles. For her family portrait she insisted on dressing up as a man and posing like
one too. she ignores the social construction of beauty and proudly displays her unibrow. She
has every intention of giving the cultural establishment hell and trying to make a change.
This resounds with Otner's assessment. If man is unambiguously associated with culture, than
woman must be associated with its opposite, nature. Because nature often poses a threat to
the cultural need to control, it must be subdued. Frida is a plant fighting back against
this cultural oppression and trying to create a little space and motivate other women to
fight back too. Her accident helps to subvert her gender identity by removing one of the
most key elements of womanhood: fertility. Since the accident she can no longer produce a
healthy child; she has become trapped in her alternative gender identity. Once she accepts
her lesbian tendencies, it seems that she sleeps around almost as often as her cheating
ex-husband. She takes it so far that she cuts her hair to look even more like a man. Her
identity becomes so lost that she loses all sense of herself. It wasn't until she made love
to Trotsky that her sense of womanhood seemed to return, and when it did return she welcomed
it and it seemed refreshing for her. Trotsky's role becomes interesting because rather than
acting as a man of conquest, like rivera, she is sensitive and gentle and treats Frida like
a woman. There is something comfortable for her about the way he creates the identity of
woman as opposed to the way Diego makes her think of herself.
I felt like the piece by Bergman-Carton is irrelevant. To read it as a comparison
between two different female feminist figures as artists is interesting and to see their
similarities begins defining things into categories, but I think that the author is actually
going against what she's praising them for. The author is talking about how these two women
are breaking the norm but classifyin them as traditional figures of "fallen women". Its the
act of classifying which is going against what the author seems to want to do. To classify
these women is to control them by creating symptoms like part of a disease which can be
cured of more appropriately pacified. The author is giving creedence to the male domination
they are fighting against. Also, I thought Frida didn't deserve to be associated with
Madonna because Frida seemed to do these things because she genuinely adopted that kind of
identity, but Madonna seems to have exploited that idea and used it for show business. By
doing that, Madonna has removed some of the power of the act and turned it into something to
pay to see, hidden behind a curtain almost like a freak show.
I think Frida was a fantastic film. Visually it had vibrant colors which
turned the set into a painting on its own. The hispanic culture and soul was easily conveyed
through this film and I appreciate it more and more everytime I see the film. I think that
this is a very successful, creative approach to the artist biopic and it deserved every
award or nomination that it got.