Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and the Traces of History

This paper probes in the historical final results included in the Sophia Coppolas Marie Antoinette. At the offset, the direct compriseed the events that have transpired in french explanation with fresh eyes. The result is both elicit and engaging. It is interesting in the experience that the cast of characters (which is impression theatre) by means of which accounting was rendered provided entertainment to the viewers. At the like time, the movie is engaging as it was able to capture the historical events that, to me, challenged the viewers to prove history deeper. In this paper, I willing racy cleared the historical allusions in the movie that coincide in the last instance with the actual events that occurred in France more than two centuries ago.I will target that, among others, the hire supply the extravagant aliveness of Marie Antoinette, the cut rotation, the human side of the queen regnant, and the period of Enlightenment. The one-fifth element that I wi ll focus on is what the fritter inadvertently revealed in its precise contract to c erstal that is the fact that Marie Antoinette and King Louis sixteen are non innocent victims. I will argue that the gauzy conflation of film and history proved a success (and failure) in the eccentric of Marie Antoinette. .Music as Social CritiqueOf all its features, Marie Antoinette was an interesting cinematic experience because of the music. It is through with(predicate) music that the film was able to convey a historical account of Marie Antoinettes life. It is already commonplace that Marie Antoinette lived a life of luxury, and the film showed this from the beginning until the end. According to historical records, Marie Antoinettes lifestyle was alike extravagant that the general populace raiseed (see Fraser 2001). This affluence of French royal family was showcased in the film with the help of music.It was a joy to watch French royalty in their elaborate garb cavorting with their consorts and ladies-in-waiting to the unspoilt of 80s post-punk. Perhaps to evoke the dry joie de vivre of the 80s juxtaposed to the dionysian lifestyle (as opposed to hedonism) of the French king and queen and her court, they danced to an adaptation of Siouxsie and the Banshees Hong Kong Garden which was played by a string ensemble. The song then segued into the original post-punk version signifying a high level of joy and abandon for everyone.In one scene, The Cures Plainsong was played during the orthodontic bracess coronation an important and considerable shot taken on the steps of the Versailles. Ive always purpose that the music of The Cure was cinematic notwithstanding the band evoked visions of innovative-fashioned dystopia for me- of highways, electric poles and deplorable aban dod factories instead of men wearing wigs and leotards and women with exposed bosoms under dainty parasols during the last gasps of European feudalisticism. The forlorn but quintessentia l New Order song, Ceremony is played in some other party scene to create a contrast to the revelry of the French royal upper enlighten. Jarring as these may have been, these clever bits of musical comedy scoring not only comprise the best thing n azoic the film but also serve as its ideological heart.Of course, the average listener is not expected to recognize m both of these songs. In fact, in most parts, what one hears are just instrumental excerpts from some complicated track of a particular musical genre from the 90s denominate as shoegaze music. While this cultural referencing from the earlyish 90s in film is unusual (only Araki has done this to much success in The Doom Generation which was made during the early 90s), it is also apt since these attempts highlight all the more the cinematic traits of the go out but enduring genre.The contribution of Kevin Shields (who also did work for Lost in Translation) from the legendary shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine as well as th e delicate selections from current Swedish band The Radio Dept. attest to the hip and street cred consistency in Sofia Coppolas work as well as indicating her appreciation for the lost musical genre. Remember that in her first critically acclaimed oeuvre, The Virgin Suicides, she also featured in the soundtrack the French duo with high cred points Air. However, this time around, I believe that the clever use of contemporaneous music serves a purpose beyond achieving the coolness factor that the conductor is known for. It foregrounds an interesting but controversial take on a pivotal moment in the history of western society.History in/through CinemaNot only did the film powerfully show the frivolous existence of Marie Antoinette and the French Monarchy but also the manner by which this existence was put to an end by the French people. The French mutation was only shown at the last scenes of the film yet it serves a manlike reminder of how the oppressed classes of French society stood up and fought. If only for this, the film briefly yet powerfully captured the historical change that transpired during the French Revolution of 1793.It must be noted though that the death of Marie Antoinette and other French royalties indeed sparked hope, however brief a moment. I say this since the French monarchy was soon after replaced by the rule of the bourgeois (see Doyle 2001). This transition was no longer included in the film yet the fact mud that the vital force of the French Revolution served as a induce conclusion in the life of Marie Antoinette.Marie Antoinette and the Louis-Auguste were the King and poove of France at the fire of the historic French Revolution. This event marked the political culmination of the unparalleled brotherly and economical changes that began with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It represented the victory of an emerging economic order whose political form was represented by the French Republicans. At the prodding of the bour geois liberals who pushed for the republican ideals of the right to suffrage and democratic leadership, the peasants stormed the Bastille and ulterior the royal palace of Versailles effectively heralding the demise of the French monarchy.The defeat of the royalists as manifested in the violent deaths of Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI by the behead and the subsequent rise of the French Republic meant new political and social arrangements that to some represent the defining shift from the Dark Ages to the redbrick Era. angiotensin converting enzyme of this epochs key features is the ascendancy of the belief that, finally, mans destiny is in its own hands and not under the project of some sove rein and God-ordained power as represented by the monarchy and the roman print Catholic Church.Simultaneous, therefore, with the films screening of the French Revolution is the showing of the period of Enlightenment. This includes the understanding that societies are wholly hum an artifacts subject to the joint will and power of the people that ideologically challenged the class structure of not only the monarchy and its feudal base but also early capitalist economy and its liberal pretensions. Many therefore, including Marie Antoinette, interpret the French revolution as a progressive step away from the extreme inequities of feudal society and monarchal political formations and some quarters even regard it as an event that points to the possibility of egalitarian human societies (see also Lancaster 1953).Marie Antoinette and ModernityHowever, the film Marie Antoinette takes on a different stance regarding innovativeism. For Coppola and Antonia Fraser, whose book the film was based on, to tie the relatively unknown but human story of the Princess of Vienna who became Queen of France from the other side of his-tory so-to-speak, is in itself an important statement. More so because Marie Antoinette is mistakenly vilified in history texts as the callous Que en who, in the midst of Frances bread shortage and general economic crisis, allegedly quipped let them eat cake in all her regal pomposity (see doubting Thomas 1999).Coppola shows to us instead a sympathetic and unknown side to the lives of these pampered royalties. The film takes great pains to show the sputter of Marie Antoinette and the King as they garb in to the unreasonable demands of being royalties as well as the privileges that they enjoyed. We are made to understand their humanity as they recapture their innocence in the Dionysian abandon of royal masquerades, deal with deaths in the family, and even suffer the distinct boredom of the rich and spoiled.Some historians have also tested to present us this human side of Marie Antoinette and the French Monarchy. According to their studies, Marie Antoinette is not as evil as popularly presupposed (see Fraser 2001). Apparently, this is the same point the movie is trying to collapse.That is why when the mob arrived at the pala ce gates, we are presently herded by the film to the side of royalty since it is they who we are more beaten(prenominal) with it is they who we put in funny and endearing. Never mind that it is the moment of justice for the uncivilised multitude as they vent out their anger after centuries of carrying the feudal yoke in order to provide the monarchs with the resources for their grand lifestyle and outre wars.Never mind that it is contemporaneity and human progress that is, in a manner of speaking, knocking on the gates of Versailles and that this singular event would inhale movements of liberation throughout the world including our countrys own struggle against colonizers. Coppola deftly avoids all these issues by framing this historical narrative through Marie Antoinettes eyes.What is presented to us instead is the consistent template in film of how individuals, in the general sense, are victimized by historys unslushy march. It subtly laments maria Antoinette and Louis XVIs persecution since they were merely throw into circumstances they did not choose. The reach of the royal imagination, the film seemingly apologizes, cannot go beyond the intricate pastries, the petticoats and the other regal accoutrements of their regal existence.Thus, when the mob, who was comprised of the first liberals in their original incarnation, demanded the King and Queens literal heads, a arcdegree of wistfulness was warranted. There was no indignation show in the film akin to the moral appeal of the liberal critique against Stalin (the revolution will devour its own children, and it seems that the liberals also had an appetite for pale monarchs), but through a somewhat Nietzschean lamentation for the lost of dionysian beauty and innocence. This was expressed in the film in a lingering shot of a defiled royal salon after the mob stormed the palace.The elbow room was once full of vibrant life, colors, opulence and laughter. Now, it was a drab grey room of broken furnitu re and torn curtains perchance anticipating the abandoned factories of Manchester. Was Coppola intimating the view that historys march towards modernity must be interpreted in this way? Does she share the same dystopic vision of modern society as those espoused by this band of angsty and socially dysfunctional philosophers in the persons of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault whose disdain for modernity is legendary and powerful to this day?The Element of Ahistoricity in Marie AntoinetteBy pore therefore with the intricacies in the life of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, the film was able make the earreach sympathize with them. The possible danger here is the dilution of the revolution which culminated in the reign of Maria Antoinette and Louis XVI. Some studies have also pointed out the quirks of the royal couple without dismissing the crime that they have committed (see Cronin 1989).The use of contemporary cultural references for an differently period setting is therefore an i mportant element in the light of these observations. The film achieves an ahistorical sheen as if insisting that its lessons are dateless if not enduring to this day. It seems to argue an interesting point that the fate of Maria Antoinette and Louis XVI, who also danced to Siouxsie and the Banshees Hong Kong Garden they in an elaborate testicle and we in our dingy night clubs are also our shared destinies.We are, in a manner of speaking, modernitys common victims. If the two were hanged by a vengeful mob at the cusp of modernity, we are its sad disenfranchised heirs existing in the rubble of modernity as a failed experiment two centuries hence. This is the shared stance of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault. Modern life is synonymous to mediocrity, alienation (or inauthenticity) and debilitating bio-power (that society is one braggart(a) prison and there is no escape). Our only refuge is towards individualism, introspection, and caring for the self. What ble ss away way to drive home this point through music than to engross the sensibility of post-punks true heirs shoegaze.There are some interesting parallelisms between developments in social theory and popular stopping point. There was an attempt by the counter-cultural folk movement of the 60s in translating its agenda into a cockeyed political force. However, the failure of the Paris Commune coincided with the cooptation of folk into hippie-dom and later corporate arena rock. In the academe, a post-political (or post-socialist condition) also assumed an influential position wherein the likes of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault became the gurus of a veiled individualism that places in its diametrical antonym society and history.Punk presented a brief respite attracting a all-inclusive section of Britains disaffected and unemployed youth under Thatcherism but eventually folded because of its nihilism and absence of class politics. This resignation is now body forth in the broad post-punk category that includes a variety of styles self-referential and heavily sentimental at times while being angular and clarion in others. Most of these bands eschewed the political and even anarchic stance of punk and insisted on appropriating an introspective tone while salvaging the innocent harmonies of The Beach Boys and the pop songcraft of the Beatles from the 60s.Of course, in the larger context, mass culture was the more dominant cultural form where artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson represented the new apex of the suns way in consumerist popular culture. In the sub-cultural field, however, the post-punk ethos was eventually adapted by a new musical movement that melded together the dark undertones of cult bands such as Joy Division and The Cure with the ethereal pop sound of The Cocteau Twins and the drone of The Velvet Underground in the late 80s to early 90s. The result is a musical movement that has come be labeled as shoegaze because of the penchant of these genres guitar players to look down on their effects boxes to create their complex and dense signature guitar sound.Meanwhile, in the academe, the same sensibilities are also gaining ground with the fashionable rise of postmodernism and its celebration of eclecticism, ahistoricity, identity operator politics and a deep and unrelenting individualism. It is, thus, no accident that these post-punk and the shoegaze movements found its most rabid supporters among the college set. By the 90s, the cult status of these sub-genres has imploded into the mainstream with the rise of the election and Nirvana.With its wall of feedback, unintelligible vocals and sweeping melancholia, shoegazes sound performs the sad and disconnected resignation of the post-political era. Marie Antoinette now follows a long line of fashionably sad cultural icons that include Kurt Cobain and the wind-swept plastic bag in American Beauty. These films make a claim for sadness as the universal currency of m odernity whether you be of royal lineage or a working class clone (or even an inanimate object) and our only balm or relieve is to wallow in Kevin Shields eloquent but loud and beautiful sound of sadness as we mourn the death of all-too-human Marie Antoinette our new postmodern pop icon. But of course we know better.Therefore, what the film try to do was paint Marie Antoinette as a victim of history. What strikes us as suspicious is our knowledge that she had the choice to change the social system. What prevented them for doing so was perhaps their passionate attachment to what the French people are asking them to give up. It was of course tremendously difficult for Marie Antoinette to give up her lifestyle that rests on the wretchedness of the general populace since it was perhaps what she has been used to all her life.This is simply the problem with the ideological stakes raised by the film and the philosophic persuasions that side with such a dystopic reading of humanitys pa st, present and future. For that matter, these also draw attention to the utter lack of radical see among the educated American youth because an assessment of even indie culture indicates that they are either too emo, fragmented and individualist to wield any form of potent politics unlike their French forbearers who were willing to bankrupt the monarchy in order to build liberal democracy.Modernity continues to be a necessary human project in the light of the continuing inequalities of our modern life. Men and women must not relent in the political proletariat of charting the direction of human history, the sadness and violence of the struggle notwithstanding.Works CitedCronin, Vincent, Louis and Antoinette. capital of the United Kingdom The Harvill Press, 1989.Doyle, William The Oxford history of the French Revolution. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1989.Fraser, Lady Antonia. Marie Antoinette, The Journey. New York Anchor, 2006.Lancaster, Carrington. French Tragedy in the Reig n of Louis XVI And the Early Years of the French Revolution,1774-1792. Baltimore, MD Johns Hopkins Press, 1953.Thomas, Chantal. The tight Queen The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette. trans. by Julie Rose. London Zone Books, 2001.