A Conflicted Feminism: Thoughts on Chytilova's "Daisies" (1967)

Alicia Chmielewski
1-29-07

Vera Chytilova’s Daisies (1967)

In Owen Heatherly’s discussion of Vera Chytilova’s highly formalist, ideologically complex Daisies (1967), he points out that the film, “… could be interpreted easily enough as Stalinist, consumerist, sexist, feminist or Anarchist, depending on one’s prejudice” and calls our attention to the fact that, “the director herself described it as being about ‘destruction or the desire to destroy’.” After a first viewing of Daisies, I find myself questioning Chytilova’s personal vision of the film and whether part of that vision is to present an audience with conflict and let them take it as they may, or else let them realize that there are multiple layers at work in understanding the social and political climate during the period of its production. Perhaps the point is that there is no one reading of the situations presented within the film. I considered the film especially fascinating, however, in terms of the feminist aesthetic it presents.

Daisies is a slippery film; just when the viewer feels as if they have begun to pin down what all of the sights, sounds, editing techniques and presentation of props metaphorically “mean,” the sequences that follow force them to reconsider, to dig a little deeper, to think a little bit more critically about what it all means. As the film progresses, a feeling of sensory overload sets in, revulsion to the constant consumption of food begins to be felt – the two young women (Marie 1 and Marie 2) become monstrous in their childlike destruction of everything they touch. Yet, even as we may become repulsed by their antics of using their not-so-innocent sexuality to take advantage of older men, and their final destructive act of trashing an elaborate banquet possibly reserved for government officials, we must acknowledge that they are given a sort of control over their lives through these acts of destruction. One particular visual scene that comes to mind in thinking about this point is that in which Marie 1 and Marie 2 sit in bikinis in front of a wooden board of some type, a tiny man visible above their heads, lying on the top of the board. The placement of the man above them in miniature form may represent the upset of gender roles that the women bring about as they exploit men of power.

However, we must be careful not to settle too quickly on this idea that the entire film is only about the women gaining power and agency in their society by destroying that which the patriarchal powerful individuals possess and work to create within it. I say this because there is also a tone of condemnation of the women present, and perhaps even worse, the idea that as women they cannot help but be subversive, possibly even evil by nature. Near the beginning of the film, a Biblical allusion is used to present the Maries’ present condition as the result of the knowledge of the sexual and destructive power they have the potential to tap into as women, whether or not they consciously know of their full potential to do so. They are like wooden dolls at the beginning of the film – mechanical, childlike and without full understanding of their need to destroy. They dance around an apple tree and pick the apples, which may be a Biblical comparison of them to Eve as they eat from the tree of knowledge, thereby beginning to realize what destruction, immorality and sexual power are. Though they are able to spoil themselves and gain control through their overindulgent attitudes, we become repulsed by their extreme need to constantly consume.

What we love about them becomes part of what we feel characterizes them as monstrosities. Perhaps by being repulsed we are even admitting that we are not fully comfortable with their radical departure from the feminine forms we are most comfortable with. And, the Maries begin to see how they are being isolated from this norm, taken as specific parts that can no longer fit into a coherent whole as they cut each other apart with scissors. The irony is that they are at the same time gaining the power they possess over men specifically through realizing how women are objectified and isolated as specific parts, expected to exhibit specific behaviors. As we discussed a bit in class, if women were expected to be infantile and not in control of themselves (as Eve, who could not resist eating from the tree of knowledge which unleashed evil and destruction into the world), then the Maries play out this traditional feminine role to the extreme.

To add even further complexity, the women’s rebellion against male power, what we delight in to some extent, appears to ultimately be condemned during the final scene of the film in which the women’s destruction reaches its peak, they suddenly buy into the communist equality ideology that hard work brings about freedom for all, a realization that seems to untie all of the knots Chytilova has created throughout the entire film up to this point, and they are destroyed because their destructiveness of “female empowerment” cannot be righted and only adds to the chaos of their world which is on the verge of destruction itself. If the women are heroes, they are tragic heroines that cannot escape their gendered roles even in rebellion of their system. The clean-up scene seems most critical of communist propaganda, which does not win our sympathy because as the Maries attempt to be happy by “working hard” they become entranced and sacrificed completely, losing their lives and their agency to do bad along with the chaotic world. They attempt to go along with political and to clean up their messy world, yet the chaos cannot be reversed, and most depressingly, Chytilova seems to acknowledge that women do not possess enough power, even in their indignation, to bring about a revolution that will free them and make them happy, at least not within the context of 1960’s Czechoslovakia. The final words we see on screen as we view more scenes of war-like destruction are: “This film dedicated to those whose sole source of indignation is a messed-up trifle.”