The Piano A Feminist Film???
‘The Piano,’ an Oscar award winning film directed by Jane Campion, explores the idea of feminism and depicts it in both a positive and negative light. As the film pushes the sexist ideologies that women will accept abusive behaviour from men in positions of power, Jane Campion also provides a sense of empowerment through female voice and personality. By narrating the story from the perspective of a woman who’s voice is suppressed throughout the film, ‘The Piano’ discovers the concept of feminism; in doing so, however, it also inevitably glosses over harsher socio cultures where women have been exploited to provide for men and how feminism was regarded back in 1993.
In the film it is shown how a woman is societally bound to providing for a man’s need for pleasure. From the beginning of the film, it is shown how women need to please their dominant male figure. Right in the start of the film Ada’s father marries off Ada to Alasdair who lives in New Zealand. “Today he has married me to a man I have not met soon my daughter and I will meet him in his own country” is one of the first things Ada narrates in the commencement of the film. Without her consent at all Ada has to go to a foreign country with her daughter to live with a man she has never spoken to and never even seen, just to satisfy the needs of her father. Feminism is defined as the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes, in the scenario Ada has no right or equality whatsoever and has to just agree to leave everything behind in order to make her father happy, which doesn’t portray feminism at all leaving it just to be a woman helplessly following the rule that she has been told to follow without any say in it. During the movie we can see how Ada is used for both the pleasure of Baines and Alasdair. Baines takes her piano and coerces her into letting him touch her so she can ‘earn’ back what is rightfully hers. “I’d like us to make a deal, there’s things I’d like to do while you play. If you let me, you can earn it back.” When Baines first gets a hold of the piano from Alasdair, he says these words to Ada and after not even giving it much thought Ada just agrees. Afterwards in this scene you can see a high angle shot which is a technique where the camera points down on the subject from above. In the scene you can see Baines being assertive and showing his ‘dominance’ on Ada. Towards the start Ada does somewhat push away this idea of Baines using her for his pleasure but when it starts coming down to the last couple of keys before Ada starts not resisting at all which leads Baines to fully give the piano back to her. “I have given the piano back to you. I’ve had enough. The arrangement is making you a whore, and me wretched. I want you to care for me. But you can’t. It’s yours, leave. Go on, go.” Most feminists would agree that men have power over women in basically anything whether that be economically or socially men always seem to have the sense of supremacy over women, but when a woman starts giving into the needs and compromising their morals and ethics equality between a man and a woman is uncertain. Throughout this film the idea of feminism and equal rights has been questioned, with actions such as these pointing into another direction than the film being recognised as a ‘feminist film’ this therefore explains how feminism is shown in a negative light in The Piano.
Jane Campion the director of the film has given the protagonist Ada a symbol of voice in the film through narration, even though she’s voice is suppressed during the course of the film. “The voice you hear is not my speaking voice, but my mind’s voice” is what she tells the audience at the very beginning of the film. “The strange thing is, I don’t think myself silent. That is because of my piano.” Ada refuses to play the submissive wife that patriarchal society would confine her to by refusing to talk. In the film without a voice Ada has to deal with masculine control and gain autonomy in many occasions. For example, when just arriving to New Zealand Ada’s piano gets left behind and not bought along with them. Ada demands that the piano be brought with them to her new home, but Alasdair rejects her wishes and refuses to transport the piano because it is “too heavy.” When Ada tries to retake the piano, Alasdair asserts his power by saying, “We are a family now, all of us will make sacrifices, and so will you.” Yet still Ada manages to get the piano even though it was through a sexual arrangement with Baines. Throughout the film you can consistently just sense that she does not want to be there with Alasdair and continues to neglect him throughout the film. Despite the fact that the Ada, Baines’s rape problem is a popular issue revolving around feminism, it is important to understand that despite the predicament she was in, Ada maintained her position of power and then it came down to her choice when Baines then pushed her away. Even though feminism in the film has been an area of debate, Ada’s strength and independence she showed in the film shows how The Piano has shown feminism in a positive way.
Ultimately Jane Campion deliberately set the movie in the past where attitudes were very different to her own and those of the late 20th century. The Piano took place in the 19th century and you could just see how women in the film were treated. Nessie, for example, there is multiple times in the film (such as when Alasdair was talking to Aunt Morag) where it’s a medium shot of people talking and her always being in the corner of the shot, hardly speaking but when she did, she was told to be quite or act responsibly. In today’s times things like this could potentially happen but are less likely to happen then back in the 19th century. Another example of this is what happened to Ada right at the start of the movie, she just got married off and told to go to New Zealand to live and make a life with a person she has never met or seen before. Nowadays it is probably less than one percent of marriages that take place like this in the western society. Campion tries to show these problems and how it was quite normal for females to be undermined back in those times, which shows her view as feminist and on how she wanted to portray the film in.
In conclusion, The Piano has is both a feminist and non-feminist film as it depicts feminism in a good and bad light. Campion shows how feminism was disregarded & overlooked a couple of centuries ago by showing how a woman is societally bound for providing a man’s need of pleasure and how she gave a female a voice throughout the film while her being deaf & mute, The Piano enlightens the idea of feminism in a optimistic and pessimistic way. But also on top of that the director showing her view on how she thought feminism was back in the 19th century, the film is shown equally as both a feminist and non-feminist film.
