lisa rowe & daisy randone (narrative foils/parallels) + meta
cont. tags/commentary from this post, other meta post I am referencing is here (linking any future posts i make on these two here as well: x)
**At that point, Daisy's father had not only broken his daughter down to such a fragile psychological state that she could not continue living after Lisa's aggressive confrontation (unfortunately, the only way Lisa does confrontation with anyone about anything…), but he & the abuse he enacted on his daughter (that the system additionally seemed to turn a blind eye to on every level) had now added to & reinforced the life schemas Lisa sees the world through:
...that being Good in a world where the people in power/their influence are corrupt is an invitation to be taken advantage of at best and a life spent complicit in your own abuse & dehumanization at worst. According to the system, Daisy did everything right, yet she ended up in a gilded cage, still under monitoring, never truly Free.
(As compared to, say, the hospital that Lisa somewhat sarcastically refers to as her home. One she admits to Susanna that she has no hope of legitimately leaving ("Then you're a lifer—like me."). Interestingly, the suicide of her former roommate mirrors Daisy's suicide: both by hanging, both after some interaction or lack thereof with Lisa (you might imagine Georgina taking Susanna's place as mediator if it were an altercation), both in cages; one gilded and the other somewhat more literal.
...that this is the system working as intended. Whether at home, in the hospital, or on the highway, people are out to get you—the world is Cruel, and the only way to Survive without being defeated by this is to internalize the cruelty and turn it back out (thereby shirking her own humanity).
...that true Freedom is not to conform to the system or to make the best choices for yourself according to everyone else but to reject it completely and to instead parody, dodge, and dominate the cruelty levied at you at every turn. to affect without being affected, to choose your own path without regard to your effect on others.
…as well as messing up her plans with Susanna. Feeling that she had finally seen Lisa for who she truly was, she abandoned their plans together, regardless of what that meant for the other girl—unable to consider sticking together with her and running away as a possibility anymore (rightfully so)—which, with Lisa's unwillingness to return to the hospital, unfortunately meant that she, in turn, abandoned Lisa.
[lyrics & film analysis break]
The last song Daisy chooses to listen to specifically deals with themes of abandonment, emotional insecurity, and black-and-white thinking—all of which are extremely central both to herself and to Lisa. We last see her robotically ascend the stairs as if walking upward to heaven, and this song almost seems to be her making ironic commentary from the afterlife. Every line seems steeped in a thick layer of irony, all wrapped up in a heavy melancholy.
"Why do these eyes of mine cry?"
This line of the song plays as Susanna enters Daisy's home through the veritable arch of flowers adorning the wallpaper around her front door and up the staircase, surrounding her with orange and yellow gerbera daisies (symbolizing innocence, purity, strength, warmth, and happiness) as well as silver sparklers (optimism, resilience, beauty, and transformation).
Lisa is sitting at the kitchen table wearing her sunglasses despite the weather and her being indoors, the lenses tilted slightly forward as if they were indeed making the room too dark—her eyes obscured as she fidgets with half of a clean percolator, haphazardly flicking cigarette ash in the general direction of the ashtray and looking as if she has been absentmindedly considering making coffee. A small flowerpot containing three yellow tulips* sits off to her right, usually representing cheerfulness, hope, and friendship. Obviously, these things are relevant to point out for a character named Daisy. But everything is wrong here. With the pancake money inexplicably pressed into the ashtray on the other side of the table, Lisa has seemingly decided to use the tulips to stub out her cigarettes, where they remain lodged between the petals. Seemingly impatient and irritated about the loud music, she does not follow Susanna upstairs, and she does not remove her sunglasses. Altogether, she seems clearly perturbed and has been chain smoking while awaiting Susanna's return.
*These flowers are generally given as a birthday gift to a friend. This might be a nod to the book, in which Daisy commits suicide on her birthday.
"Why does my heart go on beating? Hmm, hmm"
This line is sung as Susanna comes into frame at the bottom of the staircase with the camera overlooking Daisy's cat, Ruby, staring down as if waiting for her to follow. Obviously, the name Ruby literally refers to the deep red-colored gemstone—a symbol of love and passionate romance—but the colour red is furthermore associated with blood, strength, courage, sexuality, and danger.
"Don't they know, it's the end of the world? It ended when you said goodbye…"
The song in this scene initially started playing during the last verse, and the outro finishes up just as Susanna gets upstairs and peeks into Daisy's bedroom, where we can see that the wallpaper has changed to a pattern of various pink-tinted butterflies. Except for an unmade bed, her room is pristine, and resembles that of a much younger girl. Susanna watches as the needle of her record player lifts up and drops back down at the start of the song, which begins again (and again, and again, and again, according to Lisa's outburst).
"Why does the sun go on shining?"
The sun is not shining brightly on the day of Daisy's suicide—it's overcast, foggy, and rainy—"suicide weather," as the book describes it.
"Why does the sea rush to shore?"
This line plays as Susanna starts slowly making her way toward the bathroom, where Ruby was clawing at the door as if she needed to get in.
"'Cause you don't love me any more Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the stars glow above?"
These lines are sung as the camera focuses in on Susanna's face, showing her trepidation. We can see that the walls here are white and bare save for two gold ornaments as she hesitantly calls Daisy's name.
"Don't they know it's the end of the world? It ended when I lost your love"
These lines are sung as Susanna opens the door to the bathroom, and we see her horrified and devastated reaction to the scene in front of her, her face and reaction exemplifying the meanings of ending and loss.
"I wake up in the morning and I wonder Why everything's the same as it was I can't understand, no, I can't understand How life goes on the way it does"
Lisa comes into frame exactly as these lines are sung, facing away from the camera, even as she is easily in sight of Daisy's body; she stiffly climbs the stairs one at a time, finally removing her sunglasses only as she comes into frame behind Susanna, looking unsurprised at what she sees. The first two sentences out of her mouth are wildly inappropriate, as if this scene is to be expected, as if it changes nothing to her (or, as if she had already seen/expected it after waking up that morning, perhaps wondering why the music was going on and on). She seems to find the other girl's reaction amusing and follows her retreat into the bedroom with her eyes, then takes several points to bring her gaze back up to where Daisy is, making an ambivalent expression that settles into her usual smirk after telling a joke, which has again fallen into an unreadable expression when the camera pans to her again.
With one hand in its usual confident place atop her hip, she leans slightly against the wall, looking thoughtfully at Daisy's body as her other hand again fidgets, tentatively and with the railing this time, before using that hand to pull herself forward, apparently having made the decision or found the resolve to take money from Daisy's housecoat, or perhaps she was simply taking one last look at this girl who had been alive at the other end of her taunts just the night before.
[lyrics and film analysis break end]
Lisa refused to accept the cash to emphasize that it was dirty money—perhaps why she felt it belonged in the ashtray. because of how Lisa sees the world and moves through it in unhealthy ways, she was unwilling to view Daisy's situation as anything except her own fault, seeing as it would challenge too many of her own beliefs, instead casting her as a willing victim… rather than the truth of the matter being that she was repeatedly victimized despite all attempts to empower herself through circumstances often beyond her control, to the point where the gilded cage seemed like the best option—a very dark place to be in.
Daisy was constantly faced with denials of her agency concerning all areas of her life. Most obviously, her bodily agency was violated, and her ability to regain control via disordered eating was then restricted via over-reliance on laxatives, which were always in short supply due to her abusing them. Furthermore, Daisy's attempt to regain her sense of control only ended up compounding the reason she felt powerless in the first place, as her abuser was then able to completely control her diet, secure more visits, and create a wider gap between victim and hospital staff, all while further alienating her from other patients who might've understood her, were her situation already not so advanced that she was impossible to reach.
Intentionally so, as she continually felt she had to push people away to maintain what little bodily autonomy and environmental control she had left. Such are your options when your ability to discern your own wants and sense of self is damaged by enmeshment. Daisy, like the nyctinastic silver sparklers decorating the walls of her home, was increasingly enveloped in a shadow that caused her to completely close herself off to others, leaving her trapped in a disempowered state. Lisa, in comparison, was closed off to herself and to her own emotions, as a way to empower herself despite any circumstance. She felt Daisy had more power in her situation than she was willing to acknowledge/act on and judged her sorely for it (…that being a repressed judgment of herself).
Similarly to Lisa, Daisy continually chose quick fixes. She had to choose: suffering the indignity of other patients being allowed to invade her room*, or not having the pills she needed, which would mean a loss of control/agency. Lisa had to choose: suffering the indignity of other people being allowed to invade her sexually/physically, or not having the money she needed, which would mean a loss of control/freedom. Neither of these girls wanted to put themselves into the situations they ended up in; each was picking the option they found the most tolerable in that moment.
(*Metaphorically, I see this as an example of how conditioned she is to accept temporary boundary violations/grin and bear it, considering how symbolic her private room in the hospital is of her body itself/her need for boundaries.)
Daisy would repeat this pattern with her move, again ending up in a worse situation in which she had less control than before, her enmeshment and desperation leaving her in a state of chronic disconnection to her own reality. The wearing down of her very personhood becomes extremely obvious when, even in what she considers to be her own domain & supposedly her pride and joy—her home—she is easily relegated to the upper floor. However, despite Daisy's situation resulting in such a damaged sense of self-worth that she probably felt utterly powerless without her usual false image of superiority and semi-normalcy propping her up after Lisa pointed out the cuts on her wrist, she still attempts to create and enforce boundaries, perhaps specifically wanting to assert herself to Lisa as a person who has boundaries, and (politely) demands they be respected: "Please be gone in the morning."
Lisa would also continually repeat this pattern of helpless self-destruction, seeking her freedom only to find herself in police custody, in a padlocked room, in a state of lethargy after being administered shock therapy, "blowing guys at the bus station" for cash, etc. She is able to see the hypocrisy in the way that Daisy presents herself as being recovered despite her situation (and takes great personal offense to the idea that any kind of freedom could ever be found within a cage…), but is willfully ignorant about her own level of denial and delusion concerning her own "freedom". That is, until Susanna attempts to level the same amount of verbal abuse back at Lisa, to "push her buttons," in the same way she witnessed Lisa do to Daisy… all for daring to understand her. Compare what Daisy said to Lisa with what Lisa cried about herself at the climax of the movie:
Daisy: You're just jealous, Lisa. Because I got better. Because I was released. Lisa: You think you're free? I'm free! You don't know what freedom is! I'm free! Daisy: Because I have a chance, and a life. Lisa: I can breathe! And you… you'll go choke on your average fucking mediocre life! Daisy: My father loves me. Lisa: Why am I so neglected? Why doesn't anyone […] tell me… that I'm a fucking whore, and that my parents wish I were dead?
Daisy doesn't say so maliciously, or to "press buttons," but Lisa is unable or unwilling to interpret her words any other way for how they offend her. Tragically, Daisy displays a deep understanding of Lisa that no other character seems to have, which Lisa responds to by completely rejecting and maliciously going after her weak spots in an effort to tear her down and shut her up, resulting in a tragedy of which she readily deflects the blame (as is her specialty) back onto Daisy, a perpetual victim: the person most like herself, who she was unable to influence and so chose to destroy.
I would have liked for Daisy and Lisa to both survive, to become friends, and for Daisy to have been able to hear some of Susanna's great speech at the end of the film:
"I've wasted a year of my life… and maybe everyone out there is a liar, and maybe the whole world is stupid and ignorant. But I'd rather be IN IT. I'd rather be fucking in it, than down here […]"
Daisy offered her genuine thoughts, which ended up benefitting Lisa down the line. It's so unfair for her to die... Ideally, Lisa could have accepted the criticism Daisy readily offered to her, rather than lashing out and postponing her development until much farther in the future, under much worse circumstances—but, of course, having cut down the one person making an actual attempt to get through to her, she pushes herself further into her illness and recommits to those patterns, unwilling to accept the parts of herself that drew her antagonistically towards Daisy in the first place. Lisa so easily could have helped her learn to be less tolerant of having her boundaries crossed, and by accepting and helping Daisy build up her fragile self-image, Lisa could come to accept those parts of herself as well. They could have helped each other to recognize the ways in which they have harmed themselves (and others) and both found more secure identities outside of trauma and victimhood. but for someone victimized for so long that it eclipsed her identity in totality—groomed to be a Good and compliant girl—to take it to her grave… Lisa's cruel psychological attack was her breaking point.
[end meta]
The song continues to loop.
Why does my heart go on beating? Why do these eyes of mine cry? Don't they know it's the end of the world? It ended when you said goodbye...
Daisy hung herself without saying a word to anyone, the only sort of "note" left being the bills in her pocket, also taken from her. These lyrics beget the audience to consider the complicity of all parties involved in her short life, present or absent, while solemnly acknowledging that the world has indeed continued to agonizingly turn for all but one.
Susanna flicks the music off, silencing the reminder. She collects Daisy's heart- her Ruby, and waits outside.
