Woman: A Brilliant Member of Patriarchy
— Redefining Woman as A victim —
“Wounded, raped wife battles her way back to her husband and he deserts her. They’ll destroy you. Neighbors will shun you and I’ll make sure that no one forgets the pain you caused me.” — Amy Dunne, Gone Girl 2014
We all agreedly confirm that, in patriarchal society, man sits on the highest position in social hierarchy. We believe that man always has more power, ability, quality, and are always superior. Along with that, the issue of gender is always inevitable to discuss. Shouts demanding gender equality — which was derived from feminist movement — are always being heard in every corner of patriarchal society.
Every culture has its way of valuing woman and man and assigning them different roles, responses, and attributes. All the social and cultural “packaging” is done for woman and man from birth onwards. Practically, this packaging eventually disserves woman and brings them to be demeaned and mistreated. They are restricted and can not move the way they want. Man-dominated ideology in patriarchal society often gives a man power to exploit woman. They relegate woman to the status of a dominated and constructed subject whose life is determined according to an alleged male dominant culture.
However, this issue is interestingly not always profitable for man. Gender stereotype constructed by patriarchal society also benefits as used as manipulation tool by woman. In 2013, a pedophile woman teacher in Florida, United States of America, managed to reduce the verdict of the public prosecutor who sentenced her to be 30 years in prison. His lawyer employed femininity identity of patriarchal society as a strategy to defending her. This case successfully disproves the notion of ‘suffered-woman’ in patriarchy. On the contrary, woman can brilliantly manipulate their gender construction (weak, lovely, being victim, etc.) to benefit themselves or harm others.
Voila! David Fincher successfully reflected this phenomenon in his blockbuster Gone Girl in 2014. He presented a brilliant patriarchal woman — Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) — whose cleverness and ingenuity brought his husband to the jail using her gender identity. This movie implicitly criticizes patriarchal construction on woman. Instead of a gentle and lovely figure, he presented a smart, cunning, and vicious woman with criminal mind who manipulated her gender identity to take a revenge for her husband’s affair.
“You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn’t get to win. My cute, charming, salt of the earth, Missouri guy, he needed to learn. Grown-ups work for things, grown-ups pay, grown-ups suffer consequences”
- Amy Dunne, Gone Girl 2014
Amy successfully hid beyond woman identity of patriarchy. By using those gender attributes, she managed to frame her husband (Ben Affleck) as ‘an evil husband who cheated and murdered his wife’ and frame herself as ‘a miserable poor wife who is loved by American patriarchal society’. She also used the work of her parents — The Book of Amazing Amy (a children story book that tells about a beautiful, lovely, smart, perfect, and ideal girl named Amy) — to gain more love and sympathy. Her cunning character is sharpened with how she manipulated Desi (Nail Harris) — her ex-boyfriend who still loves her — to coming back to her husband after seeing him apologized on television. Of course, she needed another story to convince people that a missing wife who was suspectedly died was still alive and fought for coming back to her husband. Then, what brilliant she was, she framed Desi as ‘a kidnapper who raped someone’s wife, and then framed her husband as the murderer of his wife’. By doing so, Amy could come back to her real life safely and still being a lovely ideal woman of American. She sit under protection of patriarchal society to control her husband and prevent him to leave. Fincher is goddamn cool to present an opportunist woman character. Amy dunne is admirably brilliant and also an evil. If you have watched this movie Guys, you must be agree with me.
“Wounded, raped wife battles her way back to her husband and he deserts her. They’ll destroy you. Neighbors will shun you and I’ll make sure that no one forgets the pain you caused me”
– Amy Dunne, Gone Girl 2014
David Fincher interestingly hits the audiences, through this femme fatale, with prodigious changing of characters role. He plays on audiences’ impression towards the characters, especially Amy and Nick. It is not only plot but also the characters are twisted, distorting the heroine and villain. The way he can subtly drag audiences from falling in love with a figure that represents an ideal woman of patriarchy to be virulent towards this character is perfectly working. Gender role deconstructed by Amy by being the femme fatale is violating patriarchal norm and may not be forgiven. Yet fortunately, through her cunning brilliance, Amy could winningly hide under the femininity stereotype of patriarchy.
This Hollywood movie presents Gender deconstruction and femininity manipulation which are done by a woman. Ameircan’s femininity stereotype helped Amy Dunne to get away from social sanction due to her violation of deconstructing her identity as a woman. A lot of manipulations was done craftily and smoothly from framing her husband as ‘her murderer’ to making up rape allegations against her ex. From the beginning to the end of the movie, Amy Dunne has been always becoming American’s sweetheart by presenting as an ideal woman for patriarchal society (even though she was a psychopath). More important, it is not only presenting an ideal femininity, but also its deconstruction then manipulation that can both useful and detriment for certain party. By doing so, David Fincher intends to criticize against patriarchy for being blindfolded by their own construction of woman.
