Asparagus - Exposing How Society's Piss Smells Terrible!

Asparagus blew my mind! I know that these aren't supposed to operate as movie-review blogs, but I just want to begin by praising this film as one of the most aesthetically spirited as socially provocative films I've ever seen!

A theme that I find fascinating, even in the first two minutes of the film, is the conflation of the fantastical with the domestic banal - of boundless generation with constrictive frames. For example, an opening circular frame gives way to unhindered flora and majesty, which pans to a quotidian set of lamps, books, mirrors - and another frame, into which we dive. Another scene shows the female protagonist stood before a moving picture pan across the window - a show of unbridled and tremendous oneiric foliage, but again, limited by the frame of the window. Another example is the matryoshka lemniscate of doll houses within doll houses. This imagery provoked a sense of claustrophobic infinitum, which for me, is a true and heartfelt discourse of the tragedy of subjugation upon the human spirit.

I found the imagery in this film beautiful. It was an absolute delight. I was especially fond of the surrealistic wildlife, which Judith Mayne, in Women in the Avant Garde, described as a feature of the 'primitive' female narrator. I took the term primitive as a positive connotation - images free from meaning, unencumbered by significance - flight from the oft phallocentric Symbolic order into the Imaginary. Physically and emotionally, the fantasy spectacle felt liberating, freeing, giving hope to the plenitude of automatism. The satire of the public sphere too, laden with fucktoys and guns, made me happy. Though satire often evokes negative, even hyperbolic and sardonic imagery, which is unpalatable to some, it makes me happy - I see the absurdity of gender-relational irresponsibility everywhere in daily life and films - the culmination of even a single day's observation constitutes, in essence, an absurd and bleak landscape as is expressed by Pitt.

The Mayne reading helped me unpack the paradox, or at least multiplicity, of the film. Those might not be the correct terms. Mayne describes it as a "refusal of divisions." The fellatio conclusion of the film, for example, could be read as a passive act of service or an active sexual statement (I would decode it as the latter). The opening defecation scene was strikingly strange to me - is it a disregard for the phallus - is it the production of 'phallic' power? The lines between activity and passivity are blurred - it speaks to our failure as a society to have codes granting females sexual agency! Under phallocentrism, the 'receiving' of the active penis is a passive act - where can women find sexual assertion under amid our sexual lexicon?

I agree with Mayne that over the course of Asparagus, the female protagonist finds active agency. The theatre scene, in which she unleashes the frenzy of her Pandora's box into the theatre, bridges the divide between the audience and the screen. This is essential, in relation to apparatus theory - cinematic hegemony has positioned the audience to identify with active masculine imagery and view femininity with voyeurism. Masculinity has depth, Renaissance perspective (as is shown through the Anemic Cinema-style whirling circles on screen before the character opens her box. Similarly, after actively engaging the theatre audience, the character actively addresses the phallus. I love this eding scene! The phallus is garnered so much influence and power in our society, the most magnanimous phallus! - but the phallus desires! - it stands tall because it is still at a distance from completion, orgasm, pleasure - and that is the ultimate agency of the character's mouth: she loads the gun, she completes the phallus, alchemizes it into golden magic, gives it meaning and purpose.

Also, the claymation in the theatre scene is incredible! A hundred different antsy patrons  fidgeting endlessly! I can't even image planning the separate human movements for each character, frame by frame!

I read online that Asparagus was shown in tandem with Eraserhead for two years on a midnight circuit - what a trip that would have been!

The point is, the film is loaded with gender-dynamic discourse, it's masterfully crafted,  we need stronger female occupation in cinema (duh) but moreover we need more overt and confrontational feminist works such as these. This blog did not neatly distinguish between my reaction to the film's content, my emotional reactions, and my thoughts in relation to the readings - my reaction was, simply, strong and complex. All I can ever ask for is a film about which I could write endlessly and never fully surmise my experience watching and digesting. Thanks for sharing this gem.