GIA the World’s First Supermodel
The 1998 film Gia, directed by Micheal Cristofer, tells the tragic real life story of Gia Marie Carangi played by Angelina Jolie. Gia’s rise to fame took the modeling industry by storm in the late seventies and eighties. Her sudden popularity in the industry was in part due to her eccentric and many times abrasive mannerisms. She did not -as they say- “Give a F@#$.” and would regularly act out but her drug habit would in the end be her fatal flaw.
The opening scene is a montage of interview clips with the people who knew her best: ex-loves, fashion photographers, and her mother. Gia’s own personal words from her journal entries are used throughout the film via Jolie’s voice over. Some of the entries are poetic ramblings of a crazed mind and others are more innocent illistrating Gia’s feelngs through Once-upon-a-time type stories. In one poignant allegory, Gia writes of a princess who grows gold for hair and every night theives break in a cut off a piece saying “She’ll never notice!” but eventually the princess was left with nothing having been robbed by everyone around her.
“Fashion isn’t art. It’s not even culture. Fashion is advertising. And for every dollar you earn, someone pays the price…”
The film’s scoring bounces between jazzy film noir to techno beats that dominated the eighties. The jazzy tune set the stage for Gia’s more tasteful moments while the techno music plays to Gia’s darker street side. Gia copes with the stress of her job by self medicating. At one point Gia is so unresponsive on set that camera crew members arrange her limp body for a photoshoot.
Gia is like a kitchen door… she swings both ways. From the very start of the film it is evident that Gia is a sexually liberated women. Gia casually hooks up with one or more people at a time but she begins falling head over heals for Linda a blonde makeup artist with a boyfriend. Gia is androgenous in many of her ways and even says “I don’t think a woman is really a woman, unless she’s a blonde, you know?” this quote offered great insight into Gia’s perspective on life and her sexuality. Linda describes Gia’s need for attention saying“ She was like a puppy. She was like… ‘love me, love me, love me, love me’… and I did. I did. I did right away. She was my lover. The only person I really loved.”
Telling a story that is so similar to many others’, Gia is a captivating watch but haunting. The rise of the young beauty is like a dream but as the film progresses it depicts how industries will harvest whatever they can, for as long as they can and then leave you when you have nothing more to give. Gia is a legend from the grave and her story is now a warning to many who are entering the industry.
