"Paranormal Activity" is also in the grand tradition of the Neckline Dictates Character truism/directorial laziness. For girls, I mean. In this movie, the girl, Katie, only wears scoop-neck sleevless tops with medium-width straps.
In this way we know that she's fun and naive and sexy-but-not-slutty (one inch less strap-width and we'd have a whole different picture). Katie, with her wife-beaters and boxer shorts and "my toenail polish is chipped, don't take pictures of my feet today" with her childish, submissive accent, even when she's arguing, and her readiness to just drop the argument, and her needing to be possessed by a demon before she can stand up to her stupid boyfriend and break his stupid fucking camera - she reminds me of a certain kind of girl I knew in college. Girls who didn't really express themselves very much, but knew what kinds of things they wanted to wear. Girls who really wanted to be The Girlfriend, and went tanning, and slept in their make-up, and had really boring boyfriends with really nice biceps, and everybody was nice to one another - unless some girl showed up looking slutty.
Every lady neckline tells a story. It's like in "Gossip Girl," where all the different girls have their own special decolletage. Have you noticed?
This is Blair:
This is Serena:
This is Vanessa:
Blair, in this way, constantly reminds us of her need to be in control, and her vulnerability is especially poignant when she does button down, or, you know, do a strip tease at her true love's burlesque parlor that he owns.
Serena, on the other hand, her whole moral dilemma, which she constantly bumps up against, is that although she is "hot," deep down she is really a "good girl." Difficult conundrum time! In the second season, she meets a guy who wants to have an open relationship, and she tells Blair she's cool with that, "you know I always wished I could live in the 60s." No-nonsense Blair is like, "You love the idea of sandals and peasant tops, but at heart you're a prude just like me." Blair ends up being right. In another episode, a super-cool model lady tells Serena she's too fun and hot to be held back by Blair's needs and moralizing, so Serena hits the town... only to discover that, at base, she is a homebody. A homebody whose glamorous neckline will forever get in her way of being the terrible, stilted character she really is.
Vanessa is a wanna-be boho whose dangly jewlery hide the most tedious neckline ever. So there's that.
I saw another movie recently, because it had Michael Cera in it. It was so boring, we had to rent it twice.
"Paper Heart" is all about whether its protagonist, Charlene, will ever believe in semantics. In this film, she barely speaks to the guy she likes, and mopes around various cities thinking about "love" and speaking to outtakes from the documentary portions of "When Harry Met Sally." Charlene's character wears high, sloppy necklines. She says, "I want to be his girlfriend, but I don't want to be The Girlfriend... I am one of the guys!"
Which makes sense. Why would you want to be a Girl, or hang out with any girls (Charlene exclusively hangs out with "dudes"), or wear shirts with detectable necklines, or even call yourself a Girl, if all the media kept telling you that girls are like Katie and Blair, and girl moralism is all coded in what you wear, and You Will Be Judged, and you'd better not veer off the path of Normal Girl Stuff, or else you'll end up in an Edith Wharton book, or sleeping with the junior senator of Serenatown.
Safer to be an expressionless "one of the guys" with no visible emotions, being terribly, terribly precious in your affluent creativity.
Whatever. I'm just saying:
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