Daisies stands out as the most impressive work in the Czech films since it is set on a vibrating background. It attempts to unravel patriarchy in the eyes of two women who look more like cartoon characters with their behavior and antics being exaggerated. It does not have any real story but rather the two girls, both called Marie, move around and speak some nonsense or engage in gross behaviors such as eating a lot while holding conversations with people. The film opened a rift with the conservatives within the Czech communist regime of the time. It is, in my opinion, a much needed persistent nudge to the left that all the communist regimes require. We human beings tend to get locked in our safe zones and comfort zones, however, we need to also be open to being uncomfortable, particularly when there is a desire to enable support for those who do not have influence or access to systemic power structures. Daisies is one such attempt.
Marie I and Marie II are usually found seated. With every little movement creaking sounds can be heard. Their voices are also robotic like their movements. They reminiscence over the past and decide that they too be a wreck like the history they talk about. Marie I has an intimate meeting with an older man. Marie II interrupts them claiming to be ‘The sister’. She orders a pile of food on the boys’ expense, insults him directly and keeps interfering as he is courting Marie I. The girls abandon the boy and walk away.
And so these patterns repeat and these girls begin to wreck one social scene after another. They attempt committing suicide but fail at doing so because they trip accidentally. Men begin to chase them. They think it is entertaining but overall annoying. Eventually, the Maries find themselves seated in a royal dining room with this table filled to the extremities with food. Then they feast. As the movie draws to a conclusion, scenes of bombs being dropped transition on the screen with the caption ‘to those who only care about a smashed bed of lettuce’.
So, I won’t hold you at fault if you feel Daisies is just useless chaos that is impossible to understand.
Watching foreign films before even acquainted her with the fusion cinema must have created a surreal experience, and that is exactly what Ariana remarked about. If we look closely, the Eastern Bloc countries indeed produced the most surreal of the cinema during that time period. It tends to be a radical notion because the preceding generation of communist leaders had grown too comfortable and needed to be roused. What Daisies is striving to accomplish is to strip off a layer of hypocrisy that is only qualified to ‘civilized’ society to illustrate how in numerous ways women are deprived of their power solely for the sake of masculinity.
There is plenty of decorum philanthropy talk from the American Democratic party that one would rally for. The other side, the Republican Party, however, does create a ruckus, but then again, that serves no purpose for them. Both methods are obstructionist. The former is up this sabotaging of actual important material progress by imposing fake smallness that tunes to one on the clock. The latter brings in purposeless havoc, continuously beating down the potholes and orthodoxy. While I doubt I can comment on Czech society while Daisies was about, I do see some resemblance with the condition of today’s America.
I believe that women who are not obedient and listen to whatever they are told are not able to leave their mark in history, and this statement has been made several times during Trump’s rule but now seems to have disappeared in the age of Biden/Harris. In my opinion yes, but I do not support those who were repeating the same thought over and over again. Most of the people who I heard on this uttering were the people who hugely benefited from the present situation. They were the same people who thought that Aaron Sorkin’s dramatized perspective of the American political scene is the actual truth of the political subway. They used to hound out anyone who held true conversations with them, the only acceptable option they gave was to indulge in carefully crafted and sanctioned marches. So violence is sponsored by the very definition of ‘well-behaved.’ Protest which do not interfere with the business and day to day activities of a society could as well be done behind the closed doors.
A polite society is a lie. It conceals the reality of this “developed” society. American people are told that they live in the freest country in the world, that the country and everyone’s life keeps getting better, that there will soon be more equality. This is a lie that takes little effort to disprove. All it takes is a glance at the history of the United States from the perspectives of those who are at the bottom of that hierarchy for an entire lifetime.
I recently finished “The War Against All Puerto Ricans”, a text which primarily deals with Puerto Rican experience under the United States administration in the early to the mid-twentieth century. Among many agonizing things concerning that era, is the story of a political prisoner who was treated with a cut of meat, which was a deviation from the dry bread that his American masters used to give him a few times a week. He was asked by the jailer after the meat if he liked his son. The prisoner could not comprehend the question. That is when a boy’s head that had been severed was taken out and shown to the prisoner. His reaction was to vomit while the soldiers were laughing, after which he succumbed to a heart attack.
This is just one of the many things the “civilized” United States has done.
The book said how, over the span of several decades, Puerto Rico citizens, as well as the citizens of the States, were engaged in several projects that exposed them to excessive amounts of radiation almost ten times over the safe maximum. One such project involved feeding breakfast cereals infused with radioactive materials to mentally disabled youngsters who were misled that they were under a science club.
Bringing back Daisies, The Maries are relentless in their campaign of devastation driving their aim to the complete and total obliteration of a dining room, where slop food is everywhere to be found, torn and mismatched clothes are strewn about, and their furniture is shattered. At the end there is nothing left but destruction. The hideous truth is that underneath civilization there are more monsters to be found, us barbarians who act as humans we don’t belong to the natives of this land, we have subdued these and have raided and raped this land for centuries these natives had their own issues for sure, but never were they out to single-handedly demolish the entire globe to bring it back home layer by layer.
In recent times there is somewhat of a controversy, “what is a woman?” to which women are nothing more than a mere social construction.
The presence of a uterus seems to be the main requirement, according to many. They don’t quite know what to say when the reproduction organs fail, for they have compressed a woman into her sole capacity of breeding. That a woman is someone who drapes over a gown or goes home with the children or any such nonsense tagged onto the definition of the world “woman” which keeps on being thwarted. Dressed women who call themselves men do exist. There are also men who go out on leave from work to look after their children. There are male primary teacher, a job usually classified as a woman’s role.
A woman is no different from a man and vice versa. Daisies is about two young people who realize that they can play women very well. They are sufficiently women in given situations to realize what they want from the situations mainly food and fun. People who are transgender comprehend gender performance more than any of us cis people as they have likely been compelled to perform for the gender onto which they were assigned, their entire childhood or more.
As an admission of the constructed nature of their identity, the girls are robots at the beginning of the film.
But, in the last part, they have overindulged to such an extent that it turns into a sickening horror fest of excessive appetites. They feel sorry for themselves for having consumed all the food. There is something to be said for engaging so fully in something for a long period of time, including a game, that you feel empty. All the enjoyments and excesses lose their appeal, and a sense of reality begins to dawn. This is depicted in the final sequence with bombs falling out of the sky. That’s the reality of the social structures that were assigned to us upon birth, a mask for a brutal barbarism that is going to annihilate us all.
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