Breakfast At Tiffany’s
Let’s talk about why B@T does NOT pass the Bechdel test...like, at all.....
So, Lula Mae is Hepburn’s original character name, pre-move to NYC, when she was but a mere farm-girl, married young to an old dude with children and responsibilities and country sensibilities. Lula Mae, married at 14, was but a child herself!! She was never awarded autonomy, whether it be bodily, socially, emotionally. She was stunted in her youth by being involved in something so adult as marriage and child-rearing.
So Lula Mae, controlled by men, existing only in juxtaposition to men, takes it upon herself to up and leave. She moves to NYC, and suddenly is Holly Golightly. The chic party girl with no past, no future, only a glamorous and mysterious present. She’s independent, she’s out of reach. Or is she just guarded...experiencing trauma and protecting herself from experiencing further trauma? I think this is more accurate that her imagined persona.
So Holly meets another man. A writer, a gentleman (?), an NYC transplant like herself, but firstly: her neighbor. Holly’s carefree ways are both confusing and delighting to him. She’s a puzzle he must solve, a trinket he must own.
When his character, Paul, confronts Holly near the end of the movie, he speaks in a moment of ironic clarity, that I do not believe is supposed to apply so well to my analysis, but rather is a commentary on how Holly SHOULD NOT be chasing this faux-freedom. Paul says,
“You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.“
While his sentiment is supposed to suggest that “people do belong to one another” (another thing spoken by him right before telling Holly about her true cage), what I see in this statement is a truth lying beneath the film, Even when Holly attempts to define herself BY herself, she defines herself in contrast to men consistently. She is both a figment of men and proof of their lack of respect for women-people. Holly Golightly does not exist in the real world, she can’t. Women don’t run around, from man to man, taking this from that one and that from this one, rent paid by him and emotional wellbeing from the other one. This idea of a woman like a cat, picky choosy and yet ultimately dependent, is so insulting and unreal.
A favourite movie of mine for the glamour and the acting, but the plot is so seriously lacking and so very dependent on the male ego, its striking and upsetting.