#i am simply word salading my way thru this liveblog the hyper is fixating

[benevadeca]

Rewatching house 3 days after seeing it for the 1st time and things noticed//more thoughts on the themes of it etc. literally me examining it line by line like ugh i get it. the symbolism the cinnamontopography. also GOD all of this ended up being ONLY for part 1 hhhh i'll make a seperate post for the other parts actually:

"I see your father in you, it's a weakness" > explicitly by attempting to NOT be like his father/falling for his relative's peer pressure that causes him to do exactly what his dad did to him (neglect and leave his children worse off than they would've been otherwise)

Penny rights! I know this is a daddy problem's focused story but I do enjoy that while she falls quite easily into the deferential passive mother-figure she does have a bit more will to her than is first apparent. That she's the reason her kid's manage to escape the house/minimizes the consequences of the inevitable spiral of intergenerational trauma presented by the father (poverty to orphanhood is better than poverty to dying and being dead probably)

I think she's very interesting. Like she has some awareness of what isn't right but she still falls for it. (Sitting at the sewing machine after staying up all night- "i've got so much work to do" when before she'd work together with Mabel on chores / "Isobel don't touch that" subconscious awareness of its danger when it's related to her kids but not herself) I think her silence on everything that happens (several scenes where Raymond is a speaking agent and she's just silent beside him) is the most telling? Like very Feminine Mystique failure of women to be given the opportunity for identity outside of wifehood and maternal identity (this 2nd one being kind of secondary and idk how to describe how it ties into her complicitness in the neglect of her daughters but ehhhh) yeah obvs not something the narrative focuses on but regardless is does pervade the plotline implicitly....

but yeah anyway uhhh maybe something like her falling for the pretty lie, but still working within her own means to try and provide something real? tangible? because it was her curtains that helped them escape in the end. also her being the one who still had the sense to tell her kids to escape

Furniture as a motif in part 1 maybe? like it's also in the other two a bit but not used quite how it was in the 1st. the 2nd is more abt technology and the 3rd is more widely general w/ the whole repurposing things. but yeah part 1 uhhh

furniture that's passed down through generations, the dollhouse: things that connect you with your loved ones, all the furniture in the new house taking their places, being "designed by the architect" not as things with sentiment with history but as objects to own. Again parallels his relatives comments on the dresser thing, them only seeing it as a statement piece VS raymond "it was my father's" seeing the value of it as something more.

THE ROOM LITERALLY NAMED "WITHDRAWING ROOM" the room where they withdrew from themselves one another their children their previous lives values feelings. this movie makes me want to eat plaster. also it being "right across" from the dining room and the recurring themes of indulgence/desire/gluttony like why don't you shoot me in the head actually i would feel less deranged.

I feel like windows are a pretty interesting recurring motif thru the whole movie and not just part 1 but IDK the words for it

PT 1: relatives looking out the carriage window > architect through the carriage window > actor standing in the window before coming into the house

also the more obvious progresses from looking upward at the work on the new house thru the window // Mabel seeing their old house down below (in the dark of the night) > a room blocking the view (you're trapped now kids!) > the house getting destroyed (in the light of the day)

Also Penny specifically relating to this. Her theme of curtains- seeing the windows left bare so she'd have something to make busy with (prove her own value, the value of her work to make a home, which she ends up distracted from the moment she neglects her kids ofc and it becomes more the work to make beautiful, superficially). But also it again being her that allows them to escape out the window, they physically climb down her transformed body to escape.

The scene w/ raymond looking out the window as well! Something about the house contrasted at night VS in the daytime maybe? Windows are something that narrow your vision, only show you a limited perspective. But also the house at night is more dangerous kind of, because where would you be in the dark but at home? The night is where danger lurks (where raymond was first tempted) (but also like. the dark of the upstairs where the kids got lost, the metaphor is losing me but anyway)

Still thinking of light as a recurring metaphor, as desire, as something mesmerizing that can cloud your view // combined with it being easy to miss the reality of your situation if you fail to step back and look at it from a further perspective.

everyone standing in awe of the house but it's only Mabel who takes a moment to look away and see the actor hiding in the corner. Also her when they're in the house, everyone blinded by the house itself but only she sees all the other workers at play. Something something being blinded by what's in front of you you fail to see what's around you.