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May. 8th, 2009 10:59 amAfter I finished Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman last night, I found myself sitting down and hunting through the internet for essays on it - not because it was at all incomprehensible, but because there were an epic ton of layers of interpretation there and I wanted to see what someone else made of them.
(Some days I miss being an English major and getting to dork out about this stuff in class so hard, you have no idea. It is kind of ridiculous.)
Anyway, academia aside, Kiss of the Spider Woman is about cellmates Valentin, an Idealistic Argentinian Revolutionary who is in jail for Revolutionary Activities, and Molina, a thoroughly apolitical and fairly flamboyant window-dresser who identifies as female and was charged with 'corrupting a minor'. (The novel has no narration; it is almost entirely dialogue between Valentin and Molina, occasionally interspersed with internal monologue or the warden's reports.) Molina is a big fan of classic Hollywood cinema, and to pass the time he starts retelling some of his favorite movies for Valentin - and I'll be honest, I got way too much enjoyment out of the conversations they have about them. The first movie Molina retells is Cat People (which was extra fun for me because I actually have seen it, in a feminist film studies class; it is about a woman who turns into a panther! because of sex!) and they spend half their time psychoanalyzing it and the other half the time it is like "so, also, the lead is TOTALLY HOT," "but actually I think the assistant is really my type!" which is also the kind of conversation it entertains me too much to see people having.
Molina loves the movies, totally and unironically, and that comes across in the way he tells the plots. Valentin is at first more interested in mocking and deconstructing the films, but despite himself he often ends up captured by the stories. The characters get closer, the forces around them are revealed to be a lot more sinister, and we start to learn more about the situation the two men are in that the movies are an escape from; at times the story of Valentin and Molina seems to be playing into the kind of Tragic Love Story narrative that Molina relates in his film retellings, and at other times it's clearly deconstructing it. Either way, it's kind of a fascinating book.
(Although there are in fact no spider women in it. Just to be clear.)
(Some days I miss being an English major and getting to dork out about this stuff in class so hard, you have no idea. It is kind of ridiculous.)
Anyway, academia aside, Kiss of the Spider Woman is about cellmates Valentin, an Idealistic Argentinian Revolutionary who is in jail for Revolutionary Activities, and Molina, a thoroughly apolitical and fairly flamboyant window-dresser who identifies as female and was charged with 'corrupting a minor'. (The novel has no narration; it is almost entirely dialogue between Valentin and Molina, occasionally interspersed with internal monologue or the warden's reports.) Molina is a big fan of classic Hollywood cinema, and to pass the time he starts retelling some of his favorite movies for Valentin - and I'll be honest, I got way too much enjoyment out of the conversations they have about them. The first movie Molina retells is Cat People (which was extra fun for me because I actually have seen it, in a feminist film studies class; it is about a woman who turns into a panther! because of sex!) and they spend half their time psychoanalyzing it and the other half the time it is like "so, also, the lead is TOTALLY HOT," "but actually I think the assistant is really my type!" which is also the kind of conversation it entertains me too much to see people having.
Molina loves the movies, totally and unironically, and that comes across in the way he tells the plots. Valentin is at first more interested in mocking and deconstructing the films, but despite himself he often ends up captured by the stories. The characters get closer, the forces around them are revealed to be a lot more sinister, and we start to learn more about the situation the two men are in that the movies are an escape from; at times the story of Valentin and Molina seems to be playing into the kind of Tragic Love Story narrative that Molina relates in his film retellings, and at other times it's clearly deconstructing it. Either way, it's kind of a fascinating book.
(Although there are in fact no spider women in it. Just to be clear.)
