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ï¬lmâs faute de mieux protagonist, is thus not merely the butt of the Coensâ sophisticated humor (in an unforgettable scene she delivers a Sunday School lecture to a barely articulate primitive); she is also âassociated with deeply buried desires for safety and nurturance, infantile wishes that must be cloaked in humorâ (35). Graceâs essay interestingly and richly parallels a line of interpretation developed earlier by Hilary Radner (whose essay on Marge as âNew Hollywood Womanâ is not referenced, though it is included in the select bibliography). Sharrett ï¬nds the ï¬lm a âcritique of American civilization, particularly the late twentieth-century family and communityâ (55). But he does not ï¬nd this critique altogether pleasing, since it seems âto have partaken fully of a particularly noxious current of postmodern liberal sensibility, namely a need to affirm what is simultaneously belittledâ (56). This, at least, is Sharrettâs take on the heavily ironized binary at the heart of the ï¬lm, its juxtaposition of the terrifyingly extraordinary and the banal everyday in the manner of bourgeois neo-noir thrillers, which Foster Hirsch identiï¬ed as âmelodramas of mischance.â Sharrettâs essay, however, is richer and wider ranging than such a brief summary suggests, since it attempts to
Film Quarterly – University of California Press
Published: Jul 1, 2005
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