Gone Girl?

*Spoilers*

I am reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and I am feeling incredibly conflicted.  Mostly I am enjoying it but I cant decide if its supposed to be ironic, or if it is overtly anti feminist.  The movie didn't help me in the least. Ben Affleck starring in it is obviously also somewhat perverse and didn't help my unease.  Watching him suck on the nipples of his mistress, and have gratuitous sex scenes that do nothing to drive the plot, and thinking about Harvey Weinstein, Ben Affleck, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, etc. etc.  That just makes me feel icky. The other factor is that I know Reese Witherspoones production company made the film and it was with the intent that it was supposed to be produce strong female roles.  I just don't see it. The story is still a woman using her womanly wiles to manipulate people.

The trouble is that despite the conflicting feelings I'm having, I still liked the book. The movie was a big no, but the book was good.  Gillian Flynn has developed interesting characters, and taken a dysfunctional relationship to the extreme. Nic Dunne's internalize misogyny is on point. The thought patterns dominate the story, that Amy controlled everything, that she expected him to notice what she liked or remember the stories she told and he has justification for his inability to do those things. The inattentive man and the angry woman who cant just leave her husband despite hating him.  I just cant.

  Perhaps its only me, however who feels like the archetype of the woman deservedly scorned is dangerous. I also thought this in Mad Men.  The way Betty and Megan Draper are terrible and whiney and Don is the one cheating and lying to them. Nic Dunne is the worst and yet the story had to be written so that he was the worst because Amy was so bad.  There is valid point that they as a couple are the embodiment of consumer culture, and the depiction of the long suffering Midwest that Nic and Amy are what's left when all stuff and the house are gone.

The trouble is specifically in the current culture.  The woman who says that she has been raped, or her husband is beating her, is depicted as a liar.  Which is exactly what Amy Dunne has done in the story.  What I am conflicted about is this, is the story depicting the absurdity of women doing all these things to men. Showing how psychotic she would have to be to do them, or did Gillian Flynn use these tropes as plot device?

Am I uncomfortable with a woman being staged as a villain? This is absolutely possible. But I'm ok with Cerecei Lannister, so for now I am going to put a pin in that conflict. Do these tropes matter?  I come to the conclusion that they probably do. I don't know that a woman staging multiple rapes, domestic violence, or pregnancy, to be spiteful, even as a display of the absurdity isn't harmful to women who are actually experiencing those things. As long as the reaction is that women must be lying the making light of the absurdity will be lost on anyone who believes the latter. Women are constantly forced to accept brutalities they suffer to be weapons, don't cry rape, or he just needs help with his anger. Amy Dunne falsifying rape with the top of a wine bottle not only never needed to be depicted but, it also leads one to believe that woman would do that to herself out of revenge.

The movie never needed to happen.  It is pretty bad in my opinion.  The rhythm of Nicks inner monologue, alternating with Amy's journal entries doesn't play onto the screen, they fail to really show  the misogyny of Nick or make Amy seem as likeable as she is at the beginning of the book.  Lastly they left out all a lot of female characters that made it clear Amy was a sociopath not a scorned wife. Instead they left the part where she lied about rape and left everyone else out.

The one thing I can say is that I enjoyed the contrast of Amy the person and Amazing Amy the character.  I think its not only a gendered relevance.  Parents do this to their children frequently. We see them one way, they behave another, and then we either amend our vision of them as people, or create a delusion of them without their flaws.  Girls and women though are supposed to be perfect, they are supposed to be chaste and then marry, and then reproduce like rabbits.