Play It As It Lays: Life Unscripted (DRAFT) Maria Wyeth is an actress, a beaut, a dimming star, a schizophrenic, and beyond that a untraditional loving mother to Kate, her daughter. The way Joan Didion writes “Play It As It Lays” in satirical way upon Hollywood lifestyle is tantalizing the mind to think that Hollywood is full of people who have problems of drinking, drug abuse, and sex. Which is undeniable happening in the most era of Hollywood lifestyle since the day one. Fame, success and pouring fortune are hard to handle for, practically anyone who deals with the hazardous lifestyle of
Hollywood. Human relationship is not weigh into the equation, includes the marriage that is usually ruined in the lifestyle, if not meant to be doomed. Maria aborted her pregnancy, haunted by it for the rest of her adult life and she is in impending divorce with Carter, all of those, leaving her more vulnerable to her mental state. In the clinic, she visualizes how her baby’s life butchered away on the floor of newspapers, undergoes hemorrhages for days before she recuperates from it but never recovered in the inside.
After she looked through the horror of er mutilated fetus as the abortion doctor tells, “it’s in that pail. ” (Didion, Play It As It Lays 83), Maria tries to live her never- ending nightmares just like what she has been through in the character in her movie, added to the gangbanged episode and the life been sucked out of it just right at the moment. She never felt the same anymore, living what we may call a zombie’s life. No soul, no remorse and day passing by as another mere count of calendar. She rations out her mutual relationship with BZ in the need of validation and shared the similar harrowing loneliness.
She lives the nothingness as a whole person the same as she is the nothingness herself. She cares nothing on the other side of people’s life but her daughter, Kate who is giving her a reason to live on. She refuses to give in and to give out for the same reason that her life may spare no dime but her Kate means something. Her life as a “postdomestic woman” would not back her down, although she tried to end her life and yet survives. In her dissertation, Deborah Marie Sims terms “postdomestic woman” as a divorcee who in search of her identity in her exclusion for the society acceptance.
The ostdomestic woman is a female character who has been married and occupied the role of wife but has since rejected or been excluded from that role. Frequently this character type has purposefully severed her marital relationship and thus deliberately operates as an independent agent based on her own desire and willingness to do so. Regardless of intention or desire, the postdomestic woman must renegotiate her identity within society. Issues of freedom, femininity, family, and love are central to the postdomestic woman, as she must resignify these once (seemingly) stable concepts according to her new ostdomestic identity. Sims 13) Sims emphasizes on essential things for an individual’s mental survival.
Love is what missing in Maria’s life, to receive, on the return of to give. The missing essentials make Maria’s life imbalance and to magnify the lack, she expresses that she hates everybody and getting tired of people surround her. In the wake of nihilism that Maria brings up in the story, “NOTHING APPLIES” echoes in her empty life. Her life reflects herself as a dimming star replaced by the younger stars is inevitable. She worries about her physical look s her only asset in the entertainment business and the life after fame is not the life expected.
She is not fond of being called old, Carter confronts Maria just find out if Maria still feels by calling her old and “menopausal depression”. (Didion, Play It As It Lays 196). This confrontation proves that in the skepticism about people in Maria’s life barely to feel if not pushed to the extent of extreme probing of one’s sensitive matters. Hedonism, a pleasure seeking is a phantasmagoria of identity destruction for the meaning of life, in its stereotype, as a common symptom of celebrity’s lifestyle. One never owns what one really needs in life by living an imaginary character.
To fight for rights always comes with its price, like it or not the rise of feminism and women’s rights movement contribute to the postdomestic woman increase of the statistic of divorce and impairs the sustainable of marriages. “However, feminism and the growth of women’s rights are not the only causes of the increase in divorce during the twentieth century. Changing attitudes toward marriage and the widespread transformation of the American notion of marriage itself have significantly impacted the ongevity of marriages. ” (Sims 24).
It becomes an argument upon what is a happiness: “is it family? “, “being loved? “, “having whatever heart desires? “, or “be content? “. Although, Maria may asks questions as Sims writes in her thesis. “Maria does not ask ontological questions; Maria does not seek out answers to questions designed to make sense of life, such as: What makes a person evil? Why is life unfair? What makes a man cruel? (Sims 213). Maria resonates answer in a complete silence, one thing she knows for sure that Kate maybe her last chance of survival rom her own destruction mode.
Kate is an inspiration for her sanity, to escape from her schizophrenic situations and save her to continue “the crazy life”. The fragmented storyline signifies pieces of Maria’s life between her infidelity and be in love with Les Goodwin. Nonetheless, ownership of property is not only applies on things but also on people such as Maria. She is an asset for the studio that employs her as an actress until she is not. And she also a property of Carter as her husband, at least that comes from an actor in the elevator she meets. (Didion, Play It As It Lays 23).
To reaffirm the sentiment of property, like any other women in entertainment business, a statement mentions “That women are nothing more but a prop” taken from the word “use” in one paragraph from “Play It As It Lays”, I don’t know if you know this, but he wanted you in this picture very badly. At one point he was ready to scrap the deal, jeopardize the entire project, just because he wanted to use you (Didion, Play It As It Lays 26). Helen May translates “use” from the paragraph as an indication of an inequality role between Carter and Maria. Furthermore, May suggests that Carter verpowers Maria and uses her as whatever he sees fit. May, Fuck It 10). It is not only Carter, other people including the abortion doctor also determines how Maria should feel and experience during the procedure. The doctor is not only drill into her womb but further to her mind, senses and her sanity. He defines what to feel, to hear, and to act like another scene in her movies.
“Nothing to have any emotional difficulties about, better not to think about it at all, quite often the pain is worse when we think about it, don’t like anesthetics, anesthetics are here we run into trouble, just a little local on the cervix, there, relax, Maria, I said relax. Later, the doctor continues, “Hear that scraping, Maria? ” the doctor said. “That should be the sound of music to you … don’t scream, Maria, there are people next door, almost done, almost over, better to get it all now than do it again a month from now .. noise, Maria, now l’ll tell you what’s going to happen, you’ll bleed a day or so, not heavily, just spotting, and then a month, six weeks from now you’ll have a normal period, not this month, his month you just had it,” (Didion, Play It As It Lay 83) Maria is and always be a sexual object as much as she is portrayed in a I said don’t make any character of her movies.
Maria’s sexual role is not much different than Ruth, the character of “Green Girl” by Kate Zambreno. Zambreno compares Maria and Ruth as two persons in one essence. They both are viewed as sexual commodity, while Ruth works as a shopgirl who sells “Desire” perfume and Maria, an actress who is sexually characterized in her movies. They are the sexualized women in their life, at work and in person. (Gay, Garish, Glorious Spectacles 2).