Long Legs through a Feminist lens

I’m just now home from watching Nicholas Cage’s latest movie Long Legs and while I admit fully to being a cranky feminist with a constant undercurrent of rage harbouring deep inside me, I can’t help but notice that this film does in fact allude to the patriarchy whether the writer Ozgood Perkins means to or not. Having watched the 1974 made for TV movie Et dukkehjem (translation: A Doll’s House) based on a play by famous Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, where he has inadvertantly written a feminist play much to the approval of women’s group, he himself admitted 

“I thank you for the toast, but must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement…True enough, it is desireable to solve the woman problem, along with all the others; but that has not been the whole purpose. My task has been the description of humanity.” – Henrik Ibsen

So while watching Long Legs I couldn’t help but think, has this movie been Ibsened?

Is this an accidental feminist thriller?

LONG LEGS

The film opens on a quote from the T-Rex song Bang a Gong (Get It on)

Well you’re slim and you’re weak / You’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you / You’re dirty, sweet, and you’re my girl.

Not being a T-Rex fan myself, I went to the internets favourite journalism source, reddit, and found what this smarter person than me had to say about the inclusion of this quote;

The movie uses it as a direct reference to The Beast, as described in the Book of Revelation.

The hydra, according to Greek mythology, is a multi headed serpent or reptilian monster. Revelation describes The Beast as having seven heads.

The movie is saying that you are in the mouth of The Beast (Satan), and you don’t even know it. There is nothing you can do to stop Him. source

Nothing you can do to stop Him? Hmmm

A young girl is outside her house and we are only shown the lower half of a man approaching her. By now in 2024 we all feel a sense of dread. In fact, it is Friday 2nd of August 2024 as I type this, mere days after the Monday 29th July UK Southport stabbing where a young man walked into a Taylor Swift themed Yoga and Dance workshop and stabbed 11 young girls, 3 of which to death, 5 remain in critical condition. The fate of the young girl is left to give the viewer anxiety as the opening credits start up.

Part one

A bunch of cops are in a dreary room being given their marching orders. They are to do what the adults don’t want to do, search for a killer by door knocking. A young woman, Lee Harker, is assigned to travel with unknown male partner. They arrive at a cookie cutter neighbourhood, and as she steps out of the car, she senses which house the murderer is in. She tells her male partner, who doesn’t believe her ofcourse, and as he knocks on the door to check it out, he is immediately shot in the head.

Feminist Point of View number 1. Don’t believe women? You die now.

 

Next we see Lee Harker in a Clockwork Orangey type room where she is to answer random questions about random images and numbers. The next scene, Lee Harker is in the backseat of a car, with Agent Carter & Agent Browning. Agent Carter reveals that she got 50%  of the guessing game right, so he considers her a 50% psychic.

Feminist Point of View number 2. Women have knowledge

 

Lee Harker is put onto the case of Long Legs, a case where family annihilators, the father, murders his family and then kills himself, yet a letter remains, written in symbolic code and signed off “Long Legs”. She asks what do the families have in common? The daughter’s birthday is on the 14th of the month. I go okay, lets look up Book of Revelation 14.

I’m really not sure if the number 14 was just plucked out of thin air, but what did strike me is the person within the nuclear family who had the thing in common. The daughter. In patriarchy, this is the person who holds the least amount of power within a nuclear family. In the past, and unfortunately in present, daughters are discarded, married off, or simply bullied within the nuclear family structure, the severity of treatment depending on exactly which patriarchal culture you were unlucky enough to born in. So this made me think okay – is this writer trying to pin the blame for family annihilations on the exact person who has the least amount of power? Is this a patriarchal reversal?

This brings up a very important subject which is the idea of reversals. We live in a reversal society. For example, the idea that Eve came from Adam is a reversal. It’s ridiculous. Who could believe that? It’s contrary to all biology. But with that myth in mind, people can justify somehow the idea that God is male. And therefore that male is God. And that he’s the origin. But he’s not the origin. The Bible is full of reversals. There are reversals everywhere. – Mary Daly source

In a time where we can literally watch youtube videos of how a family annihilator interacts prior to the father deciding to annihilate them *cough* RIP to Shannan, Bella & Celeste *cough* the growing social consciousness is really starting to ask “What the hell is up with men? And then this movie comes along and goes, hey you know what. The real reason Good Dads are killing everyone is because um… daughters.

Well at least that’s what I thought might be the case.

So the daughters have the same birthday, the father is the one doing the murdering, and the letters are there. Lee Harker goes home and calls her mother. Its a stiff disjointed call, emotionless, and pregnant with silence. Then Lee sees someone and runs outside to find them, not my first instinct but go Girl!

While she is outside, the figure is now inside her house, and as she breathes extremely heavily while holding her gun, i’m thinking damn you’re really giving away your location with that heavy breathing girlfriend shshshshsh.

She sees a letter on the desk, saying not to open it until after the 14th. But she sits right down and slices that envelope open now.

Feminist point of view number 3 – Nobody tells women what to do and when okay?

 

Its a 9th Birthday card, and on the back is the coded writing of Long legs. Somehow Lee has figured out how to decode it, and the message is something quite crude, I cannot remember it verbatim but it had something about boobs and cutting. If someone reading this has the answer, let me know.

Lee’s phone rings again, its her mother calling back. She ignores it. And then the phone rings again, this time she answers it but its Agent Carter and he needs her down at the station.

Seeing Agent Carter sitting directly under Bill Clinton suggests to me some intention and messaging here. Sure you could hand wave it off as time and place setting, making this movie set somewhere between 1993 and 2001 when Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States. But i’m sitting here in 2024 rattling under the exciting possibility that the USA might just see its first female president in the Democratic Incumbant Kamala Harris, and remembering this same feeling back in 2016, so sure I was that Hilary Clinton was going to win against the idiotic, moronic, and downright dangerous Trump, and now 8 years later to be in the exact same position. I read the photo of Bill Clinton as a symbol of a man who destroys women’s careers.

Feminist point of view number 4: Men ruin women’s careers and the effects can be worldwide

 

This part of the movie gets a little fuzzy for me now, so i’m gonna skip ahead to my main points of view.

Lee Harker does some customary journalling of the facts, putting down dates, looking at satanic books to see what the relationship is, drawing lines and OH MY GOD IF YOU FOLD THIS BIT OF PAPER HERE AND THEN DRAW A LINE HERE IT IS AN UPSIDE DOWN TRIANGLE.

Upside down triangle you say? Hmmmm

Fun Fact! The black triangle is a lesbian or feminist symbol of pride and solidarity.

Feminist point of view number 5: Literal feminist symbol being used as the Killer motivation?

Okay so why would a murderer dude use a feminist symbol to chart his killing? To be honest, I really don’t think the writer thought of the fact the inverted triangle stands for feminism. Maybe i’m not giving him enough credit. But if he did, great. If he didn’t, then my suspicions this film has been “Ibsened” are correct.

Back to the movie, clue after clue leads to the site visit of the first family annihilation, the Camera Family farm murders. The Camera farm murders are also shown to the viewers in flash back, and I cannot help but notice the first on camera murder is of a Black male. Is this on purpose or is the writer unaware of the trope “Black guy dies first“? Personally I don’t think Racism is at a place in the world were it can be referenced satirically, so i’m left with the impression it’s just simply racist.

Back in the present time, Lee & Agent carter are in the barn at the Camera fam. They go upstairs and under what I see as a Christian Cross, is a gap in the floor that they break open to find a very life-like girldoll of about 9 years of age.

They take the doll to – I don’t know – since when do autopsy people do dolls? Or is there a special Doll-opsy place they go to for the exact details of his exquisite porcelain manufacturing? Either way, there is some expert dude there to tell us all about this doll. She is finely crafted, porcelain, canvas, human hair? And last but not least, a silver sphere, which he shall call the brain. However it is empty. Oh is it? Typing this out is making me angry. What is this supposed to say? Then I think back to Henrik Ibsen’s dollhouse and go okay metaphor metaphor. Dolls are choice-less, voiceless, and completely controlled by the owner.

“I’ve been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Daddy’s doll-child.” (Act III) – Quote from Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House

There was one survivor of the Camera farm house murders, the daughter, however she has been in a catatonic state since then. However, after finding this doll in the barn, she has become awake – or more awake. They go and visit her and she is speaking in a sort of Southern American kind of way that just reminds me of True Blood. And for someone who hasn’t ever had any visitors for who knows how long, she’s kind of mean to Lee Harker, calling her the B-word and also alluding to the doll. Saying she would do anything He told her to, and happily. She would jump out the window and greet the pavement rushing towards her with joy. Survivor Daughter is the ultimate symbol of submission.

Lee and Agent Carter have a chat back in the office where Agent Carter says he’s read her file. Did she know her mother filed a police report on the 13th? The day before her 9th birthday? So that means Lee Harker’s birthday is on the 14th too. Hmm. Lee has to go visit her mother.

Lee visits her mother Ruth and the first thing Ruth asks her is if she is still praying. This question was also asked in an earlier phone call between Lee & her mother Ruth, and its like some exposition where you think okay, the mother’s really religious and maybe a bit of a nutter. Lee responds by telling her mother no, in fact she has never prayed. Ruth bursts out into raucous laughter, and goes to say yeah praying doesn’t do anything anyway.

Her mother then says some pretty cryptic things, like “You got to grow up” which is poignant to me this week, and every single week of my life actually, bearing witness to the destruction of many many of my peers, and of many girls younger.

Ruth denies having any knowledge of any police report, and Lee gets distracted deciding to go through her stuff. An interesting comment here is Ruth – the mother – saying I might have remembered nothing, but I have kept everything.

Feminist point of view number 6: Patriarchy is so all encompassing – women are unable to remember all of the assaults against us

I watched a video about Sasha Marsden this week. The Southport Stabbings happened. Thats just a 4 day snippet of endless terror so far in my 41 years of life as a female inside patriarchy.

“Every woman who has come to consciousness can recall an almost endless series of oppressive, violating, insulting, assaulting acts against her Self. Every woman is battered by such assaults – is on a psychic level, a battered woman.”
― Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism

So Ruth has kept all of the stuff and lost all of her memories, except for one little rhyme about how no-one visits, not any family, no big bad wolves, and thats presented as some kind of mother-daughter saying she says as she holds her daughter tight. This brings me to my next point;

Feminist point of view number 7: Patriarchy destroys relationships between mother & daughter

To read more on this point of view – I highly recommend Bethany Webster

Lee Harker is back at home now, going through her stuff. She finds a photo of Long Legs and brings it to Agent Carter.

Interspersed into this movie is like a couple of seconds of Nicholas Cage, Nicholas Caging. Looking like a cross between Jigsaw & Bruce Jenner, screaming while driving, and doing little hand dancing moments and sing-songing along.

But now they have a photo, and so the cops pick him up.

Back in the dreary wooden offices, hold on, brain flash. One of the films transitions is Lee Harker and then a tree. And the police station is entirely wooden. This reminds me of the patriarchal reversal of Jesus on a cross, a cut-down tree, the symbol of death doubled. A dead man on a dead tree. And Lee Harker’s transition is into a tree. And the police station is completely covered in cut-down aka dead wood. I’m sure there is symbolism here.

So at the death-decor police station, they set up a video and watch Nicholas Cage do some more Caging, singing Happy Birthday to Lee in particular. And after shutting it off before the song ends (awww), Agent Browning confirms he continues for another 24 minutes. Thats quite a precise detail. If anyone else read into this part more than me, let me know.

Lee decides to go and chat person to person to Long Legs. He must have had an accomplice. Lee is trying to find out who?

Long Legs is being all satanic and saying weird things but one thing that did prick my ears (get it) was that he would stay alive in all fathers wings. Interesting. Is Long Legs a metaphor for Ultimate Male Entitlement & Control? That is what is the cause behind family annihilators. Patriarchy that tells men they are gods and deserve everything they want no matter who or what gets hurt in the process. So that was an interesting comment. Lee once again begs him to tell her who his accomplice is? He responds; Ask your mother.

Next minute its head bang time, by which I mean, he bangs his face into the desk. Now I personally have never heard of this method of suicide, and it sort of doesn’t seem like a real thing. But either way, that is how Long Legs dies. The End. No, not really.

Lee now goes with Agent Browning to her mothers house. Agent Browning stays in the car so Lee can just simply calmly ask her mother to join her back at the station. Lee gets out, goes into the house, and we see her mother, now looking very Nun/Nurse like, holding a very large rifle and shooting into the car.

Lee begins her intensely heavy breathing run to the outside just to make sure whoever has a gun nearby can hear exactly where she is, and confronts her mother who is now holding the rifle at a Lee-clone Doll Child. Lee tells her mother its over, and Ruth shoots the doll in the head, and Lee collapses onto the ground.

Okay now its answers time.

Back to the start. And the little girl – Lee Harker – is talking to Long Legs. Ruth, her mother, goes out to confront him and ask what the hell he is doing. He does a little dance thing and next thing we know. Lee is back in the house and Long Legs has Ruth on the ground  hog-tied. Ruth begs for her daughter’s life, and Long Legs grants her wish on one condition. That she become his accomplice. Ruth’s love for her daughter forces her into joining forces with Long Legs. It is Ruth who has dropped by each of these houses and delivered to them a precious doll, a gift from the church delivered by a nurse, that will deliver evil to the home and make a murderer of the man of the house.

Ummm. Okay, so this is a Great Excuse. And i’m using Great there like its used in Make America Great Again. Not good. Not good.

We see Ruth being sick at the fact she has brought murder to homes, but then after somehow awakening in bed, Lee gets a phone call (From WHOM?) and rushes to the house of Agent Carter, knowing his daughter is having a birthday. Once inside, she see’s her mother already there, neat as a pin, and the doll next to the daughter.

The family is behaving weird. The wife of Agent Carter, asks if he wants to cut the cake. She asks again and he loses it at her, demeaning and degrading her, and Lee Harker just stands there as they go into the kitchen. Weren’t you packing heat girlfriend? What are you doing? We hear him stab his wife and come back out, now she decides to use force and shoots him twice. Next she targets her mother, and shoots her point blank in the third eye, and we see a very religious looking dead woman. She turns to shoot the doll….but there are no bullets left. So she leaves with the daughter.

This end scene leaves me with a lot of head scratching. Why didn’t she shoot the doll first? If that is the source of the evil, doll first girlfriend? Why did she kill her mother? Her mother only ever wanted her to grow old and she was placed in the impossible position of dying or killing. And lastly, I wondered who exactly would have the last say in this film? And my suspicions were confirmed when before the backwards end credits rolled, Long Legs gets to say “Hail Satan” like he’s some kind of metalhead. The end.

This is what makes me suspect Long Legs of being Ibsened. Theres some feminist consciousness and some not-feminist consciousness. I will leave this now with a Mary Daly quote as I go off into the night, to scratch my head some more thinking about Long Legs.

“We are aware that the gods of patriarchy are pale derivatives and reversals of ancient yet always Present Goddess(es). We suspect that phallocentric writers and artists who have even a glimmer of insight are sometimes made uncomfortable by their own state of deception. Those who have any awareness of the heinous crime of reversal which is patriarchy must be in a state of deep conflict and fear of…Her.”
― Mary Daly, Quintessence…Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto