Steven Brence
10-17-2011, 12:32 AM
1. What is the significance of the Lisbon Girls' persisting (or recently lost) virginity in the persisting fascination with their suicides? Would their suicides have been less the object of fascination if they had been less 'innocent'?
2. How do Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon relate to their daughters' developing sexuality? What might their relation to their own now lost youth have to do with their dispositions?
3. What does the film perhaps have to say about the nature of meaning in how it represents various parties attempting to explain the cause of the suicides? What, within the film, seems to be the source of the failure of those attempts? Is it significant that it is exclusively women that attempt such explanations, while the men either check out (Mr. Lisbon), deliberately misrepresent the facts (Father Moody), busy themselves with mundane tasks like removing the iron fence in the yard (the neighbor men), or surrender in the face of inadequate evidence (the neighbor boys)?
4. What does the film seem to think about adolescent desire, especially as we relate (or expect to relate) to it after adolescence?
5. Why was Trip Fontaine the only person represented in the memory of the boys that we also encounter in the present of the film (that is, the time of the narration)? Why did the film present him as in a rehab facility as an adult? Was his nostalgia for the past different than that of the neighbor boys?
6. What role did the Lisbon girls' suicides play in the nostalgia of the boys who narrate the film? Why is it that they still find themselves "going over the evidence" as to the cause of the suicides of neighbor girls they really didn’t know? Why are they still talking about it, if they haven't figured it out after 25 years? Why is it still fascinating to them?
7. In so far as the Lisbon sisters are scarcely given a voice of their own in the film--our perspective is always that of the boys looking back--what might the film be thinking in terms of how women are represented in popular films? Is it revealing that many commentators on the film, conditioned by that representation, fault it for not clarifying the cause of the girls' suicides--something the boys, whose memories effectively constitute the film, could not know?
8. While the film presents itself in many respects as a kind of mystery, it indicates very early on that the mystery of the cause of the suicides will remain unsolved ("Even then, as teenagers, we tried to put the pieces together. We still can't."). Since we cannot then be expected to solve that mystery, might it be the function of mystery itself which the film directs viewers to try to figure out (rendering the film a 'mystery-mystery' rather than, say, a 'murder-mystery')? Does the film provide any useful clues as to the, perhaps essential, role of mystery in our lives?
9. How are the boys' memories perhaps conditioned by popular culture--note the apparent likeness of the images in their imagination of the Lisbon girls frolicking in fields amongst unicorns to the common portrayal of girls and women in television and magazine advertisements, how their memories are attended by popular songs, etc. What does this suggest about the role of popular culture in our collective self-understanding, the construction of gender, etc.?
10. What is the significance for the meaning of the film of the frequent references to, and images of, family photos, vacation photos, saved objects, etc.? Why do objects play such a central role in remembrances, especially nostalgia? How might the film inform our present fascination with photographs?
11. What is the symbolic significance of the dying tree in the Lisbon's front yard, or the fears of environmental catastrophe that first rose to popular consciousness about that time (the early 1970s)?
12. What is the point of the ending of the film, the remembrances of the swamp smell, the asphyxiation-themed debutante party at which the honoree is celebrated for her ambitions to become an actor (and her admission to Yale drama/law school), the adults drunkenly mocking teenage angst…?
2. How do Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon relate to their daughters' developing sexuality? What might their relation to their own now lost youth have to do with their dispositions?
3. What does the film perhaps have to say about the nature of meaning in how it represents various parties attempting to explain the cause of the suicides? What, within the film, seems to be the source of the failure of those attempts? Is it significant that it is exclusively women that attempt such explanations, while the men either check out (Mr. Lisbon), deliberately misrepresent the facts (Father Moody), busy themselves with mundane tasks like removing the iron fence in the yard (the neighbor men), or surrender in the face of inadequate evidence (the neighbor boys)?
4. What does the film seem to think about adolescent desire, especially as we relate (or expect to relate) to it after adolescence?
5. Why was Trip Fontaine the only person represented in the memory of the boys that we also encounter in the present of the film (that is, the time of the narration)? Why did the film present him as in a rehab facility as an adult? Was his nostalgia for the past different than that of the neighbor boys?
6. What role did the Lisbon girls' suicides play in the nostalgia of the boys who narrate the film? Why is it that they still find themselves "going over the evidence" as to the cause of the suicides of neighbor girls they really didn’t know? Why are they still talking about it, if they haven't figured it out after 25 years? Why is it still fascinating to them?
7. In so far as the Lisbon sisters are scarcely given a voice of their own in the film--our perspective is always that of the boys looking back--what might the film be thinking in terms of how women are represented in popular films? Is it revealing that many commentators on the film, conditioned by that representation, fault it for not clarifying the cause of the girls' suicides--something the boys, whose memories effectively constitute the film, could not know?
8. While the film presents itself in many respects as a kind of mystery, it indicates very early on that the mystery of the cause of the suicides will remain unsolved ("Even then, as teenagers, we tried to put the pieces together. We still can't."). Since we cannot then be expected to solve that mystery, might it be the function of mystery itself which the film directs viewers to try to figure out (rendering the film a 'mystery-mystery' rather than, say, a 'murder-mystery')? Does the film provide any useful clues as to the, perhaps essential, role of mystery in our lives?
9. How are the boys' memories perhaps conditioned by popular culture--note the apparent likeness of the images in their imagination of the Lisbon girls frolicking in fields amongst unicorns to the common portrayal of girls and women in television and magazine advertisements, how their memories are attended by popular songs, etc. What does this suggest about the role of popular culture in our collective self-understanding, the construction of gender, etc.?
10. What is the significance for the meaning of the film of the frequent references to, and images of, family photos, vacation photos, saved objects, etc.? Why do objects play such a central role in remembrances, especially nostalgia? How might the film inform our present fascination with photographs?
11. What is the symbolic significance of the dying tree in the Lisbon's front yard, or the fears of environmental catastrophe that first rose to popular consciousness about that time (the early 1970s)?
12. What is the point of the ending of the film, the remembrances of the swamp smell, the asphyxiation-themed debutante party at which the honoree is celebrated for her ambitions to become an actor (and her admission to Yale drama/law school), the adults drunkenly mocking teenage angst…?