To be clear, I am discussing the independent mock-documentary by Philip Alberton about a dead body being used on modeling shoots and not the comedy about a beauty pageant by Michael Patrick Jann.
I just wanted to be clear since the comedy is the one I thought I was watching but was misinformed and just got physically ill. Instead of passing it up as possibly life-scarring bad luck, I thought I would write a blog about it and discuss what I got out of the movie since I can't seem to find many websites discussing it.
The premise of the movie is a documentary group have come to follow the rise of a young model, Cynthia, as she lands a big modeling contract with a very famous fashion designer. However, on the set, she dies (they suggest an overdose) but the photographer keeps shooting her. The modeling company decide that, in order to stay on schedule, they will continue to use her dead body and excitedly talk about starting a revolution in the fashion industry.
The message from the movie is pretty clear for anyone who can manage to listen to the dialogue over their stomach flipping at the sight of..well,...everything on screen: to the advertising industry, women are meat. We have no soul, no personality, and that is what is truly desired. The photographer in the movie doesn't look at the models' faces when he speaks to them but instead focuses his attention between their legs. When the models' go 'off-screen' to wretch, no one looks twice and later encourages them to lose more weight. The people 'interviewed' who work in the fashion field talk about how the worsts things about the models' are their relationships, their looks, and their need to be accepted. The photographer goes so far as to say that, for these women to be beautiful, they need to be used, abused, and sexualized, and-once they are on the verge of being ruined spiritually- give the impression of innocence and virginity.
Once Cynthia dies, a whole new world opens for the fashion world. No longer is she difficult to work with because they can prop her up, paint her, and dress her as they see fit. They no longer have to worry about complaints of long hours, relationships, and a life outside of her career. They move her and place her as they need and she goes on ice afterwards to await a new day of being used. Because she is dead, she is no longer the problem, it is now the other models who they call in to work with her. They become the ones who are difficult to work with as they don't want to be so close to a body or because, since one happens to be in her twenties, they are too old. One quote from the movie, "For Cynthia, it was too much too soon...wait, how old was she? 18? Then it was too much too late."
In the end of the movie, the advertisement was pulled from magazines and billboards but, because it was so shocking, kept getting reprinted. The designer she was working with went from being hated to admired for his revolution. Models killed themselves to get better work and her agent became the lead agent in dead models. Nothing was learned because society refused to.
Perhaps the dead body thing is a bit far-fetched but, honestly, advertising agencies aren't telling us much different. Women are screamed at from every side and a very early age; this is how you should look, how you should be, what you should be. You are worth nothing if you aren't these things. The images they present to us are unobtainable and often contradictions. We must be sexual virgins, submissive fighters, and commonly exotic. Our worth is determined by our body, our personality is irrelevant. In the end, we become something less than human. Models become mannequins and the end result leaves us with a picture asking a simple question....
Is she even real?
If you would like more information on the topic of how women are used in advertising (I assure you the following video will be more entertaining and better put together than my spur of the moment blog) then Watch Killing Us Softly By Clicking Here
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