The Bible Gone Bad
Daisies directed by Vera Chytilová in 1966 can be called many things, most find
it radically feminist, some say its lack of narration is disturbing to watch.
Others maintain that it promotes capitalistic excess through the gluttony of
the two protagonists, while some say it is a glorification of socialism by the
death of the girls. What makes this a great movie is its many layers, it is so
dense with references and critiques that it takes multiple viewings to digest
even half of what is being offered. Vera Chytilová combines carnivalesque,
surrealist, avant-garde, montage, absurdist, feminist, and Czech new wave
elements into her film to make it multidimensional. It is interesting to note
that academia always flirts with but can never seem to fully commit to reading
the film’s many religious references. Perhaps because there is no concept of
the “metaphysical” in Marxism, film critiques prematurely discarded a religious
analysis. Yet, through the movie, Chytilová takes us on a spotlighted tour of
the Bible using her two protagonists to act out the roles of paramount
religious figures. By having her ditzy, allegorical, doll-like Maries play
these sanctified heavenly roles, Chytilová creates both a blasphemous
interpretation of the actual Bible in addition to forming her own.
The Two Maries Play God, Adam and Eve
Before the protagonists are introduced, the film begins with destruction.
Vibrant footage of bombs spewing sparks of fire is juxtaposed with a close up
of dismal, heavy machinery and a lever monotonously moving around the same
wheel. These images have strong masculine connotations and show the world of
Daisies, in addition to the world in which we live as patriarchal. The footage
of explosions will be repeated at the end of the film as well, and the
circularity of the wheel shows the routine, repetitiveness of life presumably
towards this downward spiral of destruction. Sounds of a military march
further accentuate the violent pessimistic aspects of the commencement of this
film. This is in direct contrast to the book of Genesis, which begins with
optimism via creation. The Lord takes seven days to separate light from dark,
land from water and plant from animal, among other things. God deems the
creations that He made by separating matter as “good”, similar to the goodness
that God embodies, whereas the two Maries classify the destruction that
encompasses all in Daisies as bad. They present an inversion of God because
instead of creating “good”, they create “bad” through consumption and
destruction. They decide that since everything is going bad then so are they,
the brunette (Marie II) slaps the blonde (Marie I) as if to reiterate their
newfound “badness” and they end up in a field of daisies.
In this field is a makeshift tree that stands out in its appeal not only from
its location of centrality, towering height and intriguing circular shape, but
also in the fruit it has to offer. The two Maries being tempted in this garden
right after they decide to be “bad” is similar to the story of Original Sin.
The Maries are the first two signs of life in Daisies as Adam and Eve were the
first humans in the story of creation. The themes of nature and a central
temptation of forbidden fruit are evident in both stories as well. The
paramount difference is in the intentions of the characters; Adam and Eve
wanted to stay in paradise, in effect to stay “good” and were deceived into
eating the apple whereas the Maries wanted to be as everything else, which they
had deduced earlier meant to be “bad.” There was no metaphorical snake of
deception in Chytilová’s version of the bible; to eat the peach was a choice
the Maries made out of sheer boredom and apathy. It is interesting to note how
each of these stories, or scenes, end. Many believe that the fruit of knowledge
is the apple and eating this fruit is what caused the wrath of God to punish all
of humankind into wearing clothes, working and thinking. In other words, the
apple is the source of Original Sin that lead to the downward decay and
punishment of human society. Obviously, Adam and Eve ate this fruit; yet in
Daisies, only one of the Maries ate a piece of fruit and it was a peach!
Despite this, they still embark on a journey of rebellion and sin with bright
green apples acting as their accomplice by their placement in almost every
scene. This questions the story of Original Sin because eating the apple was
the source of evil that made humans sinful. Yet in Chytilová’s bible, if you
will, her “Adam and Eve” did not eat this fruit yet they still went on to
engage in unproductive extraneous behavior.
The Virgin and The Whore
Prior to the scene in the garden, the girls confirmed, “[they] can’t do
anything.” When Marie I suddenly places a crown of daisies on her head Marie
II questions her actions. The former responds that she is being a virgin
because she is one. The crown of daisies is synecdochial for the two punishing
binary roles that are allotted to women in a patriarchal society, the virgin
and the whore. The roles are being depicted as punishing because of the crowns
reference to Jesus’ crown of thorns in that both are mocking outward signifiers
of a status (mocking because both crowns are not composed of precious metals or
gems). In other words, the Maries cannot do anything in society but fit one of
these roles. In the New Testament, the two most well-known women are The Virgin
Mary, and Mary Magdalene, who are each the paradigmatic example of the “best”
and the “worst” that can become of a woman. This constrains the roles of women
to only sexual activity, and judges their “goodness” by such. From this point
in the film on, each Marie has been designated one of these roles, it is no
coincidence that the name Marie is a derivative from the name Mary. Marie I
became the virgin by being clothed in white and constantly wearing her crown of
daisies, and Marie II transformed into a whore by her lack of a crown, and dark
hair and clothes. Yet Chytilová subverts these binary identities, questioning
the roles of women, by showing their interchangeability, fluidity and
ambiguity.
Daisies, known as the “flowers of innocence” are the color white, which is
synonymous with purity. This is how Marie I references the Virgin Mary, she is
dressed in such a way as to preserve and flaunt her purity. She acts as the
virgin as well, not only in her telling us she is but while Marie II is
seducing men, making them take her to dinner in a presumed exchange for sexual
favors later on, Marie I is the “good” one who halts this correspondence from
happening. She is seen interfering with Marie II and her seducer’s meals
masquerading as the sister who would have no qualms in telling their parents
that Marie II “goes around with old men.” Even in the privacy of their room
Marie I plays the role of virgin. She criticizes the former exclaiming that
“maybe I’ll even have a piano, when I run around like you.” This statement
implies that she thinks she is above Marie II because of her “virginal” status,
yet shortly after this scene, she is nude in an older man’s home. Here is the
only time we see one of the Maries alone and Chytilová uses this scene to argue
ones assumption of the virginal or pure by depicting the innocent Marie I in a
questionably “sinful” situation. The scene commences with a close-up of Marie I
lowering her head and bashfully biting her thumb as her nameless suitor showers
her in compliments that contradict one another. He calls her heavenly and
earthy implicating that he will say anything to her in order to become sexually
satiated. Still smiling she begins to put her bra back on; flustered he barks
“you should never have come into my life” and begins to bang out a song on the
piano. Across the screen shots of butterflies suddenly appear, which are a
specifically Czech reference to sex. Juxtaposed with these images is Marie I
undressing and placing frames displaying his collection of butterflies over her
breasts and genitalia. He takes back his previous outburst and again professes
his love for her while he stumbles around clumsily trying to undress. After
removing his vest, the suitor plucks the butterfly off the frame covering Marie
I’s genitalia. This could be seen as a metaphor for him taking her virginity,
similar to the American sayings of being “de-flowered” or having ones “cherry
popped.” This makes the viewer question the dichotomy of virgin versus whore
and if these two conditions are as rigid as they seem.
Since we see Marie I in a sexual situation though she is deemed “the virgin” by
her appearance, this forces us to wonder about Marie II who supposedly is the
embodiment of the other Mary of the bible, Ms. Magdalene. Daisies are the
flower of Mary Magdalene yet Marie II never attempts to place her friend’s
crown on her own head. Instead, her dark hair, dark clothing and décolleté
dresses provide a foil for Marie I’s appearance. Once while primping in the
bathroom, Marie II places a white circle with a cross in the center on the
front of her dress, she looks for approval to the other Marie who is busy
posing and placing her crown of daisies in various positions on her head. Marie
I looks at the cross and says “not bad, but not like that now,” instead she
takes a dark veil and drapes it over Marie II’s collarbone. This proves that
Marie II is not fit to display a symbol of religion on her person; however, a
veil appropriately suits her. Usually, one would wear a veil during times of
mourning or shame and it is implied that because of her position she should
engage in these activities. She is thought of as sexually active because she is
the character who presumably entices the older men into a dinner, while
promising more when the meal is done. Yet she never fully delivers. We never
see Marie II sexually intimate with a man though surface clues lead us to the
conclusion of her status as a whore.
The flowers that adorn Marie I’s head and act as the title of this film have
many connotations that blend the dichotomies of virgin and whore into a
perplexing ambiguity. For instance, as stated before, they are the “flower of
innocence” and the flower of Mary Magdalene.1 In a daisy the virgin and whore
are combined. The legend is that Mary Magdalene was shedding tears in
repentance for her wrongs and as each tear hit the earth, they transformed into
a daisy. Then, does this theory reconcile the binary roles of women with the
“good and pure” ultimately winning because Mary is repenting? Perhaps, yet
daisies have other negative connotations as well, it could be argued that they
represent men’s fear of women and especially of castration. Katarina Soukup
explains this in her essay “Banquet of Profanities: Food and Subversion in Vera
Chytilová’s Daisies,” when she claims:
Chytilová’s heroines are monstrous man-eating daisies,
which are, after all, beautiful flowers whose petals resemble teeth. They are
literally cunts with fangs, vaginae dentatae, as the phallic food scene would
indicate. They devour everything in their path, a grotesque exaggeration of
stereotypical femininity.2
Daisies are notorious for their ability to destroy other plants and to engulf
large areas with their presence, and this creates a threat to the established
order. It is interesting that something feared and hated for its weed and
“whore-like” qualities is the flower of innocence. In Medieval Scotland
whichever farmer had the most daisies in their wheat field had to pay a fine of
a castrated ram.3 If daisies were allowed to run rampant and take over,
castration would occur. If the Maries, and perhaps this could extend to women
in general, were allowed to run rampant and take over, castration would occur.
These seemingly innocent flowers with “teeth-like” petals and all consuming
powers combine the two most prominent roles that the bible gives to women and
shows these “states” are not a static binary. In addition, Chytilová portrays
women’s identities as more fluid which can be seen from the interchangeability
of the two Maries via their “daisy-like activities” and the fact that they
share the same name, which we can compare to the interchangeability of the two
biblical Marys via their name as well.
“I So Love Eating.”
Both the fluid virgin and dynamic whore engage in multiple excesses, known in
the bible as the Seven Deadly Sins, which ultimately lead up to the orgy of
excess that they participate in during the climax of the film. It is said that
the sins of sloth, gluttony, pride, lust, envy, anger and greed set sparks that
could erupt into the fires of mortal sin. In other words, they are classified as
venial sins and can be compared to bad habits but Catholics believe that if a
person engages in these behaviors too often this would pave the way to mortal
sin, which is called such because these sins take away a person’s soul.
Chytilová uses this format as well, showing the girls downward decent from
venial to mortal sin. They are the paradigmatic example of gluttony, sloth,
pride and greed through their behaviors. For instance, they can be seen
constantly gorging themselves with food, never doing anything productive,
eternally looking in the mirror applying makeup and even going so far as to
steal the tip money from a bathroom attendant. Chytilová defines her
protagonists as “parasites. Not only in relation to others, but also, and this
is fundamental, in relation to themselves.”4 Gluttony and greed can be grouped
together as taking too much of an interest in material possessions, pride is
having too much interest in oneself and sloth is being unproductive. These four
sins are considered to be the most detrimental to a self-sacrificing,
hardworking collective socialist regime. The Maries exemplify the remaining
three sins as well but in more subtle ways since Chytilová wanted to mainly
concentrate on the sins that viewers from her country would judge as the worst.
During the Czech New Wave, directors finally had the opportunity to cautiously
criticize citizens’ activities and to take a political stance in their works
that did not necessarily glorify communism. Here is where her film can be seen
as Czech officials saw it when they banned Daises and kept Chytilová from
directing for seven years, as a critique on socialism. Though the girls are
sinning it could be argued that there is a subtle glorification of the girls
actions, yet it could also be interpreted as a “lesson” that excess inevitably
leads to one’s demise. Before the New Wave, when the Soviet Union implanted a
communist aesthetic known as Socialist Realism into Czechoslovakia, a strict
censorship of the industry was in place in order to subdue any threats to their
new form of government. In the 1960s this ban on expression was lifted enough to
allow artists some breathing room that they constantly tried to expand with the
innovation of many different techniques in their New Wave. Chytilová worked
with this movement and was able to ambiguously critique society with comedy to
the point of absurdism. The Maries engage in gluttonous, prideful, sloth-like
and greedy behaviors to such a comic and hyperbolical extent that the
sociological critique was made blatantly clear.
The Last Supper
All of the stupid little excesses of the girls cumulate into the climax of the
film, appropriately titled “The Last Meal” as a direct reference to The Last
Supper. This would be considered their final straw, in other words, their
mortal sin because it is made explicitly clear that the action they are
partaking in is wrong, they know it is wrong, and they fully consent to doing
it. Breaking into a banquet hall in search of nourishment, the girls climb into
a dumb waiter and end up in a lavishly extravagant room with ridiculously
excessive amounts of food laid out. Marie I chastised her counterpart, saying
they have to pick at the food “carefully, so no one notices.” As she says this,
she plunges the whole of her hand into a bowl of mashed potatoes, expunging the
display. The girls giggle and begin to wreak havoc, devouring or destroying
all. They decide to lay out a banquet yet right before they begin their feast;
Marie II accidentally breaks a glass. The scene transforms from black and white
into colored flashes of intricate dishes as a shattering noise blended with
high-pitched screams is heard. This foreshadows the destruction of the food,
silverware, and inevitably, the girls. Marie II is sad and startled by her
actions yet does not think twice about everything else she is destroying and
eventually becomes convinced that the glass, like all else, does not matter.
They then resume their feast. In a frenzied desire to consume all that the
banquet has to offer, the two girls alternate sitting in ten chairs
personifying ten different individuals, in addition to the other two people
they embody eating while standing. They consume as though they are twelve
people when in reality they are only two. It is interesting that Chytilová uses
the number twelve, parallel to the twelve apostles dining with Jesus for his
last supper. This meal is the girls’ mortal sin and in effect, it becomes their
last supper. They consumed what was not rightfully theirs, a stark contrast to
the Bible where Jesus did not eat but instead gave his body and blood to the
apostles. They portray the Biblical Last Supper in a completely irreverent way,
clawing at the food with their nails, smacking their lips, throwing cakes and
breaking glass. If this was not bad enough when the two Maries are satiated,
they hold a fashion show on top of the table! Marie I drapes a white curtain
over her body and Marie II pulls her half-slip up for a makeshift negligee.
Here again, “we have a commingling of the images of whore and virgin in the
final banquet scene.”5 They use the table as their runway and their high heels
to break glass and pierce any food that is beneath them to the beat of a
mainstream song from the “beach” genre. When they tire of this, the
anti-heroines climb on top of the chandelier and begin to swing and kick their
feet in belches of glee. Yet even their greatest sin is a spoof on the excesses
of those in power in Czechoslovakia since no one needs food in that much
abundance. The “anti-heroines are literally ‘beggars at the door.’ Their
monstrous gluttony only serves to parody (and thus expose) the gluttony of the
communist officials.”6
“Rehabilitation Center; die, die, die.”
After the climax of their orgy of gluttony, the girls end up in a body of
water. They repeatedly scream for help to figures that we cannot see and
attempt to climb on oars to get out of the water. The girls confess that they
have gone bad and ask for forgiveness, “Help! Help! We’re drowning! We’re
screaming for help? It’s because we’ve gone bad! We don’t want to be bad!” This
scene is frequently compared to the drowning of witches in medieval times yet it
also has baptismal connotations that in my personal research were never touched
upon. Baptism is a time of rebirth where a person leaves his or her old life
and is “reborn” into the life of Christ. A priest places the newfound religious
individual into a body of water or dunks their head into a bucket of “holy
water” to complete the first sacrament of Catholicism. Priests metonymically
use water in order to cleanse away a person’s old ways of life, and sins,
including the vanquishing of original sin. The themes of water as a physical
and spiritual cleanser as well as being a tool for rebirth occur in Chytilová’s
drowning scene. Yet do the girls attempt to change their ways because they think
this is their only chance to get out of the water, or are they truly repenting
and their drowning is a sign for this? Either way, they ask for forgiveness and
express a desire to stop being “bad” and instead become reborn into a life of
goodness. Suddenly, the words even if they had a chance, it would probably look
like this… appear on the screen.
The girls are transported back into the banquet hall, dressed in newspapers and
twine to symbolize their newfound “uprightness.” They make a pathetic attempt to
clean up the mess that they created, resetting the table with shards of glass
and broken plates, dumping vomit-like ground mixtures of food back onto serving
trays from their prior locale of the floor, and all the while chanting how they
will be good and happy. When they finish this ordeal, the two Maries situate
themselves stomach side up onto the center of the table and exclaim:
Marie I: “We worked hard, didn’t we?”
Marie II: “Yes. We put everything right again!”
Marie I: “I’m happy.”
Marie II: “I’m happy too!”
Marie I: “We’re both so happy… Say that we’re happy!”
Marie II: “Is that a game?”
Marie I: “It isn’t. We’re really happy!”
Marie II: “But we don’t mind.”
“But we don’t mind.” Throughout the film, the girls have played the “Do you
mind? I don’t mind” game (Vadì? Nevaì). Whenever they do something wrong one of
the Maries asks the other if they mind, this starts with Marie II slapping Marie
I and travels through the movie until this final scene of destruction which was
foreshadowed by the terror Marie II felt at the breaking of the glass.
Chytilová has said of this nihilistic game that “if played systematically for
prestige, may lead to death.” FOOTNOTE Since we know that at least one of the
girls thinks that even this newfound morality and goodness is just a game we
can expect Chytilová to use the Maries as an example of the fatality of this
way of life.
Abruptly after this statement the chandelier comes crashing down on them, even
in the second chance that they were not technically given the Maries meet their
death. One would think that this is the end of Chytilová’s bible, there is no
resurrection and the girls did not rise on the third day to forever roam the
heaven and earth like Jesus. They brought their death actively upon themselves
because of their wasteful activities, unlike Jesus who passively accepted his
fate to die because of others sins and faults. The girls promised rejuvenating
baptismal vows too late to get a second chance, yet to show that even these
claims of repentance (shouted while drowning in a forced baptism) were half
hearted; Chytilová has the last scene being what would have happened if the
girls could do it again. We realize that they still think this is a game and
for this reasoning, their lives are taken a second time. The opposite is true
for Jesus who was baptized obviously much earlier than right after his death.
Since he suffered to alleviate the sins of others, he was saved unlike the
girls who suffered because of their own sins. Here again the use of the crown
is symbolic because Marie I made her crown of daisies and always wanted to wear
it, parallel to her making her own demise. While Jesus’ crown of thorns was
placed on him, his punishment was given to him by others. Yet according to
Hames, there are “doubt[s] that the meaning of the film can be restricted to a
parable on the destructive forces of nihilism and aimless provocation.”7 This
certainly is not the ending note of Daisies, which shows bombing footage
accompanied by the sound of guns right after the chandelier collapses on the
Maries. Across the screen, the words “this film is dedicated to those whose
sole source of indignation is a messed up salad” appear in red type. Meaning,
the movie is for people who are irate at the sight of a trifle. This turns the
film not into a critique of the girls and their excesses, but of those who
would become upset at such a thing.
Conclusion
Chytilová’s film, Daisies, could be called her own bible, one that offers a
critique of society with familiar tales from the original Bible that she
inverts, subverts and questions. She begins and ends the movie with shots of
destruction as opposed to the beginning and ending of the Bible, which are
stories of creation. She then uses her anti-heroines to illustrate the fall of
humanity by placing them in a garden of daisies, like the Garden of Eden. Yet
parodies the Bible by having the Maries eat a peach instead of an apple. She
then moves onto feminist politics, how the labels of women in the bible are
determined by sexual activity and she blurs these rigid lines in her film using
the mixed metaphors that daisies stand for and the interchangeability of
biblical women as well as her two protagonists’ names (all can essentially be
called Mary). Then she gives us blurred lessons on The Seven Deadly Sins
criticizing as well as glorifying the Maries for taking part in these excessive
activities. Finally, she decides (or she decides that society has decided) they
have gone too far after expunging a banquet hall and she punishes them with
death. Their demise is evident because of their actions and thus the second
chance we see them get is only a “what if,” unlike Jesus who passively died for
others and was eternally rewarded. Chytilová then subverts her moral message
with the quote at the end of the film, turning the blame not on the sinful
girls but those that would be upset by such trifles. She uses the doll-like
girls to act out biblical scenes in an absurdist, comical and criticizing way
making Daisies an excellent multi-dimensional film.