Junior High is Stupid: My Interpretation of ``Welcome to the Dollhouse''
2.17.99
Does anyone ever come of age in this movie? From what the movie portrays, I would have to say ``no.'' However, from what society portrays, the answer is ``yes.'' The movie seems to portray growing up as a moving through stages. With each stage come different problems. Dawn Wiener is on the bridge of entering adolescence. She is picked on and trampled on mercilessly by everyone in her junior high school. Things do not seem to change until she severs all ties with her past friends and engages in self-destructive behavior. It is this part of society in which I hope the creators of the film were making sarcastic comment about; and not gloryfying the lessons we learned in junior high (i.e. making ourself less miserable by making other people more miserable).
So in this movie we have Dawn, the prototypical female protagonist, headed towards Salinger's proverbial cliff. She has a friend - in fact her only one - when she enters junior high. She is insulted and degraded by her junior high peers. So what does she do? She sacrifies her only friend to try to fit in with the people who hold her in such disregard. Is this normal behavior? Apparently so for people in junior high. I can draw upon familiar experience in my pre-adolescence where I witnessed this first very same scenario first-hand; only with different names. Dawn then learns to take the insults and frustration she receives from Brandon and everything else in her life and then package those to give to her ex-best (and only) friend. This alienates herself from that friend. - Admittedly, though technically it was first him who turned upon her in similar circumstances. The metaphor of Dawn applied to all the children at the junior high.
Why does she do this? Well, because she associates all her current problems with her existence prior to junior high. So why does she distance herself from the one person who sticks up for her? Because she feels that distancing herself is the best way she can wipe her slate clean. But the biggest unanswered question is why does she want to fit in so much with the people who dislike her?
This is not, however a new situation to the human drama. Obsession can rear its head in many ugly forms. Dawn Weiner is so obsessed in fitting into the stereotypical junior high-school popular person that she completely strips herself of her dignity. This is behavior of the most stupid sort. Normally, when one takes a field rat and pokes it with a needle, the rat tries to bite all your fingers off and/or run away. Dawn, the ``sapiens'' does not do this. Instead, she tries to make out with the syringe.
This is quite normal, in my experiences with junior high, it seems to me that people were always looking for ``new'' people, ``different'' people, ``dangerous'' people. These were new and unfamiliar things which the seekers hoped would bring fullfillment and understanding in their lives.
Dawn then starts down the path of codependent relationships. Perhaps her destiny is to end up in a trailer park somewhere, watching the Home Shopping Network as her five children run around her wondering why mommy is so tired after she had so much energy to clean the kitchen and the bathroom at four in the morning after she snorted some of that white powder. Suddenly, Dawn then stirs, and readjusts her tube top as her husband Brandon wipes the sweat trickling from the tatoo of ``Aryan Nation'' on his forehead that his homies gave him during his last stay at Chino, and listens to the now familiar cry of ``Woman, get me a beer!'' as Brandon then complains about what is wrong about the Dodge this time. If all relationships in junior high led to marriage, America would be a nation of trailer trash. But she cannot see this, because she is wrapped up in the belief that external events in the Brave New World that is junior high will transport her, as the magic staff transported Prospero. - Shakespeare, The Tempest
This is the core of junior high school. People take crap from their peers and their parents, but unlike the field rat who when poked with a sharp needle says ``Fuck that, fuck you, fuck your whole species, I'm going to bite you in two!'' the developing adolescent is much lower on the evolutionary scale and he or she says ``Please shove that stick up my ass once again.'' All because they hold the belief that somewhere out there is a perfect someone who can, with a wave of a magic staff, transport them to a magic isle where they can reign supreme over their future. Women, who are socialized to be weak by society are even more at a disadvantage because said decadent bourgeoise {\it pomo} society states that they cannot better themselves, but instead must latch themselves onto successful people. - aka the characters in the movie 9 1/2 Weeks, 1986, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger
To this end, there is no escape. Everyone has shit to deal with. However, capitalist society impresses upon us that we can simply consume ourselves out of any problem. - ``Throw enough money at a problem and it goes away.'' - popular saying. Thus we see that the people in this junior high are learning that if they consume and use each other then they can ignore their problems and pass their insecurities onto each other.
So does anyone come of age in this movie? I would have to say, ``No.'' Coming of age would definately need to show more of a step up in the emotional and intellectual evolutionary scale. Perhaps Dawn Weiner should learn that when people hand you a pile of shit - you don't have to take it, you can just walk away.