Why is Ann Thinking about Trash?
-
Radiant_Rose — 19 years ago(July 27, 2006 04:44 AM)
She can do a bit about rubbish, or trash as Americans call it. She was lucky that Graham came along and by a curious miracle the combination of their flaws produced something good. But she should have been trying to find better solutions to her problems.
Don't dream it, be it.
-
JustPassingTime — 18 years ago(August 04, 2007 10:28 AM)
"She was lucky that Graham came along and by a curious miracle the combination of their flaws produced something good."
That's what I like so much about this film. They were both sexually disfunctional, they just expressed it in different ways. I think it was beautiful the way they discovered each other and helped each other through sensitivity and honesty. That's what a relationship is supposed to be about though many people never manage acheive that level of intimacy I think that is what most of us really want. -
indymovies — 18 years ago(August 19, 2007 12:12 PM)
My take on why she's thinking about trash is that she's a beautiful woman, living in a community where she's liked and admired, has a good-looking husband and a beautiful house but she's desperately unhappy and is terribly ashamed and disgusted with herself for feeling like this.
She holds everything together to avoid going to pieces - having a breakdown - and will not face the truth about her life and John and it comes out as a feeling of being overwhelmed by something she can't control - trash. On a conscious level she's no more worried about trash than the rest of us but unconsciously she feels (and fears) it growing until it will overwhelm her. -
Radiant_Rose — 18 years ago(August 21, 2007 04:43 AM)
She's also worried about starving children and about the families of airline fatalities. I suggest she should give something to the Red Cross or whatever and obey my advice on refusing, reducing, reusing, recycling and whatever the heck else I said.
Sometimes actually doing something small about something big makes you feel a heck of a lot better.Nicebat: party animal.
-
indymovies — 18 years ago(August 21, 2007 12:15 PM)
What I'm saying is that her fears over trash are not
rational
. In reality she could be doing all the things you suggest but that doesn't stop her having this wholly irrational fear about trash replicating itself.
There was a time when the bags in our local supermarket were both difficult to get hold of and also to open. While I was still opening the first bag and my stuff was tumbling towards me I would have this feeling that it would overwhelm me - that masses of merchandise (much, much, more than I was buying) would keep tumbling down on me until I will completely buried under it.
I don't know what a therapist would make of that - probably better
not
to know! In reality after a number of complaints the supermarket made their bags much more user-friendly and that was the end of my problem. -
Radiant_Rose — 18 years ago(August 22, 2007 05:38 AM)
In reality after a number of complaints the supermarket made their bags much more user-friendly and that was the end of my problem.
Or, take your own bags to the supermarket. If you already had enough plastic bags to line bins and stuff, of course.
Btw, indy, why is nobody interested in my "naked unicycling" thread?Nicebat: party animal.
-
move_over_fatso — 18 years ago(August 21, 2007 06:29 PM)
Why does Annie obsess about trash???
Lord, you people are dense. HAVE ANY OF YOU EVER BEEN MARRIED?!?! Have you ever seen your friends get married and divorce 10 years later?The trash obsession has symbolic significance in the movie.
What do married couples do when they are in superficially perfect marriages? They look for trivial flaws in their situation. Anything. The thing they find cute when they get married becomes unbearable years later. Its a subconscious psychological mechanism to find excuse to doing something they don't want to do (divorce). The marriage is obviously empty, vapid, hollow. Its a loveless marriage. That is unconciously unacceptable to Annie. But when its surface appearance is "perfect", its hard to justify breaking one's vows to your partner and God, admit failure as a wife, experience economic hardship, and social loss of position.
Trash could also represent her feeling that her husband is not fulfilling his duties as husband. Many families settle on familial chores between hubby and wife. The wife cooks & the husband does the dishes and takes out the garbage.
It was probably put into the movie to lampoon vacuous yuppie couples whining about the environment, or the quality of the yardwork, rather than what really matters: the marriage.Why on earth Soderburgh use a guy who can't make emotional contact to other women (and thus have sex), as the trigger for the failing marriage beats me. Other than a more interesting film. Once Annie does the tape, she commits marital infidelity (though not physical). Once she realizes her marriage is over, grasps the nature of Graham's dysfunction, and then proceeds to do Graham, it makes a wonderful allegory as to what was wrong with her surface perfect marriage and her decision to leave it for a "real relationship", which are two people who need, love, and actually interact with each other.
-
stavrogin1871 — 11 years ago(March 01, 2015 03:30 AM)
Yeah I think it's obvious that the 'trash' reflects her attitude to her sexual energy. It keeps on trying to escape her efforts to repress it. Everything that happens in the film is basically a consequence of sexual repression (dysfunctional marriage, subsequent affair, video fetish). The fact that she sees the sexual energy as trash (an object of disgust and fear) is the central problem explored in the film and resolved to a degree when she adopts a healthier attitude towards it.
-
chris_court_dobson — 16 years ago(April 03, 2010 10:39 AM)
I've heard its quite common for people to go to psychiatrists and make up dreams, obsessions and worries in order to deflect the psychiatrist from the real issue. That's my interpretation of why Ann is talking about trash. The way the lines are spoken makes it seem performative and dishonest, in fact she is dishonest thoughout the whole scene ( in the sense she is not being honest with herself ) . She is saying what she thinks the psychiatrist and society in general would like to hear.
-
FlaggingCard — 15 years ago(November 04, 2010 11:32 AM)
It's amazing to me that people don't get this, it's so obvious. True, her conscious obsessing on trash may be deflecting by obsessing on something she has no control over. But, the endless trash producing trash can is obviously her husband and his lying. In the story, her dreaming of that is her subconscious trying to tell her, "hey stupid, pay attention something's up; your husband is producing an endless stream of garbage/lies." Or on the film/text level it's a metaphor for the same thing. Her husband is the garbage can and his lying is the garbage. That simple.