Ninotchka (1939)
It’s about dogmatism and there’s a lot of that running around now; you might catch it — like COVID-19. The best way to fight dogmatism, as this film teaches us, is to laugh. That was the tagline for Ninotchka — ‘Garbo laughs” — and that is the turning point for her. Melvyn Douglas tells Ninotchka joke after joke, but nothing penetrates her grim, politically correct exterior. Then suddenly he falls off a chair. She is as convulsed as Garbo might ever be, and after that she is a new person. Laughter is magical; Bergson tried to explain it, he said laughter happens when we see human behaviour that resembles a mechanism. But this explanation is inadequate — any explanation might be. If it strikes us as funny, it’s as random as striking us as beautiful, and the two responses may come from a similar place. Could the key be that very unpredictability? (the very opposite of Bergson’s theory?). I feel guilty for reviewing Ninotchka because it doesn’t in any way qualify as a bad movie, but for some reason it didn’t make a big impression on me when I first saw it many years ago. But there was no ‘woke’ back then, nor had feminism taken the #Metoo route. What’s amazing is that Garbo, as a Conscientious Communist, is as much a Modern Woke Feminist, as anything. And by ‘woke feminist’ I mean, by definition, a humourless person. I have a friend who's a female writer, and she wrote a novel many years ago, in which a man throws a woman down the stairs. And that scene is meant to be funny. The novel’s female editor said that it could not be funny for a man to throw a woman down the stairs. But what can I say, it was. This goes to the very basis of art; it must be what we don’t expect or what offends us, because the element of surprise is what shocks us out of life, which can be very boring. Ninotchka in the first half of this film resembles a certain kind of woman — the kind of woman I no longer have as a friend. The world is filled with them these days; what I notice is that they cannot accept that I am a girl inside. This is odd to me, because the women who disapprove of me are usually committed feminists, and trans-enthusiasts. But that’s the point; I am not trans, I am sexual gay man (an old thing really, and by that I mean not just an old man, but an old concept) that is not in vogue and is now offensive. For these modern sexless woke feminists, gay men are even worse than straight ones, because they are more sexual even than straight men (after all, we tend to come in pairs). Well when I am with these women I can feel their creeping contempt when I start to act girly (am I making fun of them? making fun of trans?); they refuse to accept that a being with this body and a penis that works so well (at least mine did, up until recently) could ever have a girl inside. So I admit it, now I try and hang around with women who adore homosexuals; because yes I’m somewhat of a narcissist, and I feel comfortable with women who not only tolerate me, but love me too. At any rate, when I meet the kind of sex-hating feminist I’m talking about (they used to be lesbians, now most of them are straight women or trans men) it’s impossible because I am addicted to anarchic irreverence; when I feel a judged I just want to crash through the envelope. Just in case you don’t believe that Ninotchka was satirising these glum disapproving wokies as far back in 1939, consider what happens when a valet tries to take Ninotchka’s bag. She says — “Don’t make an issue of my womanhood.” And when the valet replies that taking her bag is his ‘business,’ she says — “That’s no business, that’s social injustice.” I quiver in fear nowadays when I hear that term social justice: and not — as you might suspect — because I am so unjust, but because social justice warriors judge people only on their ideas — they are impervious to your energy, intentions, and yes, any love you have in your heart -- and will instead respond robotically to the content of your thoughts. (Maybe Bergson was right after all, it is this robotic-ness which is funny about Ninotchka, and which invites us to laugh at ‘social justice warriors’ — that is, when we're not terrified.) At any rate Ninotchka can teach these modern politically correct feminists a thing or two, when she says unequivocally to Melvyn Douglas -- “I have heard of the capitalistic male in western society. It’s your superior earning power that has made you that way. Your type will soon be extinct” -- this is what we hear in the voice of young trans pioneers who are oh so pleased to inform me that the rule of cisgendered males is over, and they have come to take my place. (There is no doubt that I am already extinct; the best I can hope for is that after I'm dead all these blatherings will be studied as example of ancient irrelevant attempts at wit that have no relationship at all to social, political, or cultural redemption). But Ninotchka, unlike the modern woke warrior, is somewhat sympathetic to a rich, powerful male: “You are the unfortunate product of a doomed culture” she says “I feel very sorry for you.” But we only have pity for Ninotchka. She gets drunk with Melvyn Douglas (apparently Garbo had to be convinced to do it — she had quite a bit of Ninotchka in her — she found the drunk scene ‘vulgar’). After which, Ninotchka says “No one can be so happy without being punished.” How true that is, especially these days. But for me the moment that rang most true was when her three Russian compatriots defected to Constantinople and opened a restaurant, and had a sudden realisation: “Imagine, we don’t have to whisper anymore!” Or maybe it's when Ninotchka first sees the Eiffel Tower, and says matter-of-factly: “I do not deny its beauty, but it’s a waste of electricity.” I know several men who are on the autism scale, and they sometimes say things like that; I know that life is not easy for them, and I just want to help. Perhaps the challenge and the allure for me — being with all those who do not laugh — is trying to make them do so, and it’s been one of my biggest mistake in life, to mistake that laughter for love.
