The R-Rated Wardrobe: An Essay by J.D. Night Ghobhadi/@the-train-at-kings-cross
[Note: Portions of this review were published as an assignment, dated 25 Sep. 2016 for a Fall 2016 FIS 432 – Industry vs. Artistry in Film & Television course, instructed by Kynan Dias at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It has since been revised to commemorate the nine month anniversary of Rickman’s passing.]
Pain will only strengthen my will. You can break my body, but you can’t break my mind. Torture is the policy of tyrants. Resistance is my only weapon.
Radha Bharadwaj is not a household name. In fact, she was, at one time, a freshly new woman director and is not just a woman but a woman of colour, who exhibited a ton of potential, and yet, she was not given the appropriate chance by the ‘Boys’ Club’ that rules the industry at large who deemed her two attempts at directing a failure, and she all but seemingly faded into obscurity. Except, not really. She’s still around as an artist sharing her vision, just not as a film director and on a smaller, less accessible scale. She still hammers away at her keyboard, penning scripts, for both films that haven’t been produced and her one-act woman shows that she performs from time to time in New York, a creative outlet she has been honing since she was a child growing up in India, and personal short stories. She’s every bit successful in her own way, but what she really wanted to do when she first arrived in L.A. as a young, teenaged Indian immigrant hopeful, fresh out of university, was to make films. To date, she has only written and directed two: 1991’s Closet Land and 1998’s Basil, a Vicotrian Gothic piece adapted from Wilkie Collins’ 1852 novel of the same name.
Of the pair, Closet Land especially stands out the most, a unique feature in its own right as it only features two credited actors in the entire film as anonymous characters, performed in the style of a play (in which it has gone on to see success in this medium). The cast, naturally includes Madeleine Stowe, a bankable and incredibly talented actress though she seemed to have been largely overshadowed by her male co-stars and her title of ‘sex symbol’ before putting her career temporarily on hold in 2003, until she came back fast and strong as the menacing Victoria Grayson in the ABC drama series Revenge, which surely gained her more exposure with younger viewers not familiar with her early career (Closet Land, in fact, introduced me to her as more than a pretty face in mostly forgettable projects before Revenge); and the late and great Alan Rickman at the prime of his film career. Writing of Closet Land’s early beginnings on her official site, Bharadwaj states:
I submitted the screenplay to the Nicoll Screenwriting Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I ended up being one of the winners. The late Julian Blaustein, a legendary producer, and the late Dan Taradash, an Oscar-winning screenwriter, were on the selection committee, and became staunch supporters of my work. Greg Beal, who currently runs the Nicoll Fellowship, became a big supporter as well.
That same year, the screenplay was selected to participate in the prestigious Sundance Screenwriting Lab. At Sundance, I met director Alan Rudolph, who encouraged me enormously, pushing me to not compromise or give up in my fight to make my film on my own terms.
I put in a cold call to director Oliver Stone’s office. To my amazement, he not only read the script himself but also called me in for a meeting. He became a powerful supporter of my work. On the strength of his generous recommendations, I started to pass the screenplay to talent agents. Very soon, I was meeting with actors and actresses who were interested in playing the roles. The very same Hollywood that was once out-of-reach soon came a-calling. I took far too many meetings to count, with producers and financiers who wanted the script but wanted me out of the way as director—they wanted someone famous directing my script. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment gave me what I wanted: myself as director, with full creative control. I did my film with Imagine Entertainment, and remain grateful to Ron Howard and Brian Grazer for their faith in me and their support of me.
Both films—Closet Land and Basil—at the time of their release, either received overwhelmingly mixed reviews or were coldly panned altogether and unlike aspiring men who want to make and break it in film, women, who fail especially the first time, even worse if their feeble attempts strike out a second time, are not given second chances. Who runs this joint? Oh, right. Old, white, cisnormative, heteronormative men. For women, it’s rather the opposite; they’re forced to pack their bags and go home.
This seems to be the case for Bharadwaj who has not sat in a film director’s chair since Basil. The promotion for the former film was indeed small, though Rickman, whilst promoting an explosion of other projects at the time, had a chance to make a brief comment about the poor reception to journalist Diane Solway for European Travel and Life’s August ’91 issue. She writes that the film is ‘’a chilling two-character’’ piece ‘’reminiscent of Kafka’s The Trial but not nearly so effective.’’
‘’When we were making the film,’’ Rickman stated, ‘’I thought, ‘This could be too relentless.’ I mean, there wasn’t a single joke in it.’’
A 2015 stage production of Factory 449’s Closet Land, with Sara Barker as the Woman (a.k.a. the Victim) and David Lamont Wilson as the Man (a.k.a. the Interrogator), performed at the Anacostia Arts Center
Unsurprisingly, some obscure, independent films are given new life only years after the fact. Both films have since gained better reception, if not by critics but by the audiences who are rediscovering them. Although, for the sake of time, and the fact that I saw Closet Land first years ago and have since periodically revisited this gem, personally and in writing, given the remarkable impact it has had on me (so much that I plan to write a script loosely inspired by it in theory: Being Mr Interrogator), as well as others as Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play The Pillowman shares uncanny similarities, I will be strictly focusing on said title.
This dystopian tale can very well be metaphorically linked to C.S. Lewis’ renowned 1950’s Chronicles of Narnia series and in other forms, more broadly to Lewis Carroll’s nightmarish-inducing, adult-orientated, mid-late-Victorian-acid-trip-in-all-its-glory Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. While it can be argued that neither work of literature is really for children, take both sets of classic fantasies, strip them of their otherworldly elements and multiply whatever titillating subtext there is by one-thousand. You’d probably get an R-rated, sexually violent, pornographic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where, instead of Mr Tummus befriending and subsequently aiding Lucy with hospitable tea, toast and sardines (with the initial intention of abducting her and turning her over to the White Witch reluctantly acting upon her orders), Mr Tummus deceives, tortures, humiliates and manipulates her, including prying open her legs against her wishes to examine her for signs of menstruation, having her stripped down to her underwear, forcing himself on her with a—I don’t even know how to describe this—‘tomato and garlic French kiss’ (it is what is with him regurgitating some of the contents into her mouth), inserting a heated rod into her anus, eliciting electric shocks through her vagina, forcibly removing her toe nails and triggering suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse—which is essentially Closet Land.
Naturally, it’s certified an R rating/18 certificate, despite plenty of the violence being heavily suggested and happening off screen in a similar fashion to the torture sequence of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, though I hate to admit, I first viewed it when I was definitely under 18. Though in Maurice Sendak’s words, ‘’I saw the most horrendous movies that were unfit for child’s eyes. So what? I managed to survive.’’ With Madeleine Stowe as the Alice or Lucy of her Wonderland or Narnia, an unspecified country in an unspecified future deteriorating under a brutal police state, we are immersed in the wrongful imprisonment of a children’s book writer, the Victim, believed to be incorporating political messages into her work by Rickman’s Mr Tummus, her sadistic, ruthless, often times morally ambiguous yet all the same human in every way, Interrogator.
It is eventually revealed that her newest manuscript at the centre of the accusations, ‘’Closet Land’’ parallels the child sexual abuse she experienced by a male friend of her mother’s, which she confesses in tears that her mother ‘’never saw,’’ and towards a crucial climax, she is led to believe the Interrogator is her former abuser, although this is wildly left open to interpretation; in a lot of ways, the age of the Interrogator (Rickman was 45 at the time of production, though had a way of appearing younger) doesn’t add up with Stowe’s youth of 33 (who also had a knack for exerting both a maturity beyond her years and a helpless, childlike innocence), which makes it all the less likely that he is, indeed her past abuser as he would have been no older than her, approximately twelve at the time of her childhood experiences. Especially given the fact that, as strongly established from the beginning, the only reason he knows so much about her, least of all her childhood background in the first place, is because it is knowledge received by the oppressive, Orwellian government, the Big Brother that watches and sees everything that takes place in the lives of its dwellers. And the Interrogator is merely their guinea-pig, shown in an ambiguous flashback as once an ordinary university professor somehow recruited and working, under their control, for them. At one point, he even proclaims, ‘’They’re watching me too.’’ Whoever ‘they’ may truly be. Profusely, it could be said that he is as much a victim as his Victim.
I don’t like all this you know. I tell myself it’s just a job and then in my dreams these words float by: ‘’Because thou hast the power and ownst the grace to see through and behind this mask of me, against which the years have beat thus blenchingly with their rains, and behold my soul’s true face.’’ It seems so long ago. My soul’s true face.
The stunning performances and the incredibly strong writing that every actor dreams of chewing in their sleep by then first-time woman director, Bharadwaj is what ensures that this film be remembered for what it is; it’s a wonder why it was so grossly overlooked in ’91, though through critical response, it becomes clear that many—being the late, fantastic and widely respected Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, Janet Maslin of The New York Times, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times—found the message of the film to be ‘’smug,’’ ‘’overconfident,’’ ‘’preachy,’’ like a ‘’sermon,’’ ‘’squarely on the side of innocent women,’’ and overall, a ‘’porno chic.’’ The only positive aspects spewed it seems, of course, were the actors—some favouring Stowe over Rickman and vice versa (both of them, are, in every respect, equally magnificent, playing off each other beautifully to create a dynamic chemistry, performances that would likely have been half of what they are if it weren’t for both of them owning their roles in every which way and their ability to validate the believability of their chemistry; neither upstages the other and likewise I could express the same for Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 independent beauty Beasts of the Southern Wild where then precocious—six-years-old at the time of filming—Quvenzhané Wallis set the award accolades on fire, putting most adult actors to shame, though if it weren’t for Dwight Henry as her complex on-screen father slowly dying of a blood-eating disease, her performance would have likely been rather emptier, in spite of her undeniable gift)—and the late, renowned multi-talented artist Eiko Ishioka’s marvelous production and costume designs. If not immediately recognised by name, she is most known for her incredible work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Cell and Mirror Mirror to name a few. Yet when she worked on Bharadwaj’s project, she was still relatively new to the industry but even then, her sheer talents turned heads—gorgeously stark and appropriately simplistic they are. Personally, even if these arguments are nothing short of valid as no constructive opinion carries no worth, and though the product is far from a clean-cut, creation of undying perfection (well, my rating is, maybe more than biased), perhaps critics and audiences alike weren’t quite ready for it.
In the age of YouTube where the film is now being rediscovered and freely accessed, response has seemed to fare better. However, I will say that in fresher times, this film has somewhat been ruined unintentionally for me by some amount of constant ‘ogling’ (of mostly vocal women but I’m sure there’s the fair share of less vocal men to dispel the harm of heteronormative standards) over the lead actor—which a lot of it, I understand and am very aware of, derives from the BDSM-styled simulations of the Interrogator’s violence against the Victim. And no doubt, just the charming way Rickman carried his character is enough, a trait which, probably without him meaning to, translated to all his characters, at times, even Severus Snape who, in Jo Rowling’s universe, was described as the sickliest, greasiest, poorly hygienic, revolting child abusive dick to grace the halls of Hogwarts; one would never receive that impression, however from the films’ romanticizing of Rickman’s Severus into some tortured, Gothic, Byronic, Romantic hero with absent crooked, yellow teeth, a modish frock coat with so many damn buttons that working-class book Severus would never in his right mind bother with and a swishy, non-oily wig to die for. Virtually, he is the complete opposite of a man-child who unhealthily obsesses with one woman nearly half his life, probably bathes, without the use of soap, twice a year and is literally the furthest thing from repulsive. At least, in looks.
It’s beyond a testament to Rickman’s rare talent and charisma that no matter how flat a character was written on the page (i.e. Hans Gruber, arguably made memorable and of rooting interest by Rickman), no matter how despicable and unattractive a character was meant to be (i.e. the Reverend Obadiah Slope, Elliot Marston, Grigori Rasputin, Severus Snape, Eli Michaelson, Judge Turpin), he always, in some way, made them more likable than they were intended to be and wildly three-dimensional beyond the vacuous at mind’s comprehension; whether they had a backstory or not, when Rickman was in their skin, they never failed to appear like they had a complicated history and that everything they committed was, in their minds, for good reason (perhaps, except for Judge Turpin; rape, no matter what, does not slide in my book and while P.L. O’Hara virtually committed the same act in the statutory legal sense, which in the moment was unbeknownst to him with his long-lost daughter, he truly seemed to not have the slightest perception of what he was actually doing, making him more empathetic than his book counterpart yet, in every moral sense no better than the manipulative Meredith Potter). Whatever are ‘villains’? He portrayed dynamic members of society; he has educated an entire generation to do away with labelling characters, something he was extremely vocal about until the end. Without question, the Interrogator is Rickman’s most forgotten screen role compared to his more culturally defining ones (Hans Gruber, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Colonel Brandon, the Metatron, Alexander Dane/Dr Lazarus, Severus, Marvin the Paranoid Android, again Judge Turpin) yet, in my book, stands as his magnum opus, marginally ahead of his interpretation of Rasputin (on stage, that title would be given to the Vicomte de Valmont). For Stowe, the Victim, though at times a little too valiant, trudges fairly close to Victoria Grayson, who is arguably more layered.
There is nothing wrong with fangirling; humans—men, women and gender fluid people alike—are highly perceptive, emotional beings with every absolute freedom to express themselves. Fangirling should not have to be viewed habitually with negativity, a direct result of patriarchal normative views of what is perceived as ‘typical women behaviour’: ‘’feminism is weak, masculinity is strong.’’ In many ways too, though there is a time and place for passionate fan ramblings and sexual fantasies; when expressed appropriately, it’s free to be, not harmful. Displaying these fantasies on an open forum to a film about political torture and sexual violence, chiefly when many are survivors of such unspeakable atrocities and have to constantly waltz through life against triggers and discredit of their experiences from others, comes off as inappropriate and somewhat disrespectful to why the film was even made… and why Rickman even signed up to be a part of it. I doubt he said, ‘’Hell yes!’’ just to look sexy in a suit and glasses, folks. He was, after all, a self-proclaimed feminist. Of course, these fan discussions are free to take place, but when mixed with discussions about the actual disturbing nature of the film, particularly when considering the content was loosely inspired by a real Chilean government prisoner, Veronica DeNegri, matters can become rather muddled.
There is nothing immediately taboo or wrong with BDSM culture, contrary to conservative judgments, consensual role-play is healthy—a very good acquaintance of mine is, in fact, a frequent consenting participant and he has every freedom to be—but Closet Land is torture, violence, manipulation and control being masked with BDSM traits where sex and the Victim’s past experiences with childhood sexual abuse are being used as a weapon against her. The relationship between the Interrogator and the Victim is not, by any means, a healthy sexual relationship where two people are consenting role-players and communication is the key. The Interrogator commits these acts, under the watchful eye of the dominating police state as their puppet, to hurt the protagonist, not give her pleasure. To a degree of concern, this celebrity attraction is usually discussed in favour of the more visual monstrosities as well as awareness of government torture (despite the often times very bizarre fabrications) this film has to offer, considering too the profits for this film went to its consultants, Amnesty International.
I doubt with all my sense that it was anyone, whether Bharadwaj or Rickman’s intention, to make the Interrogator physically and sexually appealing. Rickman was, naturally out of his control and much to his awareness, sexually appealing in which he was asked in a 2007 interview in promotion of Sweeney Todd, ‘’Are you comfortable with the sex symbol status…?’’ regarding the Harry Potter fandom.
Where he bluntly replied, ‘’The world is weird. This is the thing. This is why Sweeney Todd has only ever been relevant because there are apparently—I haven’t looked—websites now where grown, mostly women, write porn and putting those characters together. So, Sweeney Todd is a smallfry to the idea of that going on and this isn’t even being done covertly. They have conventions and things.’’ In fact, so is Madeleine Stowe; she was, and is, exploited as a sex symbol, the one double-standard in the industry that sets women apart from men where it seems more common that an actress is pretty or a sex symbol first, talented second, or alternatively, just pretty and not talented at all. Rickman, on the other hand, was a sort of ‘unconventional sex symbol,’ whatever the hell that may even be. He didn’t experience the sexist, misogynistic double-standards that women do, but was regarded as an agent of sex appeal instead of as a passive object of sex appeal.
But regardless of physical attractiveness of either party, to solely focus on some ‘hot dude sexually tormenting some hot girl’ undermines the harrowing experiences of victims and survivors of sexual violence. I don’t give a flying hoot that Rickman was some hot dude, the Interrogator could have been any dude, sex appeal or no sex appeal; the gritty fact remains is that this ‘hot dude’ is harassing Stowe, not consensually stimulating her. He is but a fictional representation rooted in a small fraction of reality of all the men and women out there, hot or not, controlling vulnerable people—boys, girls, men and women with sex as a weapon. This message is far more pivotal than Rickman being ‘hot’ with chewed up tomato and garlic foaming at his mouth. The fangirling and private sexual fantasies of the film’s viewers has every right to persist; it just seems a little ‘off’ when it is being done so as the film’s elements, true to many real-life abuse survivors’ experiences, are being discussed simultaneously. There ought to be more separation between the two—pure fantasy isolated from the film’s message itself.
Madeleine Stowe for a c. 1990’s photoshoot where she was and is paraded as a sex symbol
I do have to wonder, though, in response to well-meaning criticism, and despite the fact that Stowe and Rickman owned these roles to the point I wouldn’t likely have it any other way, does the Victim necessarily have to be a woman and the Interrogator a man as male-on-female violence, though a reality, can in the world of fiction read as typical, cliché, and exclusive to the plight and horrors that male victims face, often suffering in silence in fear that their masculinity may be questioned? Can the roles be easily reversed without characterisation being tampered with; or rather can the Victim and the Interrogator be of the same sex given real-world political torture often deals with male-on-male prisoner violence? Can this ‘rolebending’ occur on the stage where, despite the swaps, the bulk of the story remains largely intact?
Or would only audience perception alter when confronted with the less ‘gender banal’ representation of violence?
ClosetLand.com (Original site) | Radha Bharadwaj Official Site | Official Facebook | Official Twitter | Official Blogspot | Closet Land: The Stage Play on Amazon | Film on Amazon | Film on YouTube
how come we never see you and madeleinestoweonline chatting anymore? i miss the victoria love you two share!
I’m not really sure what you mean seeing as my conversations with Tori have always taken place in private. We keep in touch as often as we can, but she’s got a job and a busy life outside of tumblr so we don’t always get a chance to exchange words.
Never fear, though, our friendship and mutual love for Victoria is still very much alive! x
Hey welcome to the blood bath, called Revenge meets Tumblr. Let’s get to know you. Send to 10 more people.
Tagged by: infinity8tattoo & infinite-losses.
1. Favorite character? Victoria Grayson
2. Least favorite character? Emily Thorne
3. Character you wanna punch? Charlotte Grayson
4. Character you wanna hug? Victoria, poor bb
5. Favorite season? Season 1
6. Favorite couple? Victoria & Dominik / Victoria & Pascal
7. Which team are you on? Victoria & Margaux
8. Kiss? Marry? Kill? Amanda, Nolan, Emily
9. Character you miss most? Patrick Osbourne
10. Give a prediction of this season? No matter how unlikely it might be. Victoria realizes her two youngest children are trash, ditches David's crazy ass, and hops a flight to Tuscany where she happens to reunite with Dominik and blissfully lives out the rest of her days with him, Patrick, Patrick's charming husband, and their baby. The end.
Tagging: narcissasmalfoys, revengenda, madeleinestoweonline, and anyone else who hasn't already been tagged in this.
So recently I caught 2 people pretending to be MSO
Who were telling people they worked with me or for my site or that they were me.
I am the only person running MadeleineStowe.org and ANY of it's social media pages, just me. No one save EmilyThorne.org has the permission to post under my banner or say they're in partnership with me.
I don't think I've ever been more annoyed with a group of fans than I have been right now. Don't ever take credit for my website.
