Word: stratten
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...FOSSE FILM is a little like a steel fragmentation grenade shiny, precise, and efficient--but not something one wants to get too close to. Some say that Fosse's new film Star 80 is merely a violent update of A Star is Born: pretty, naive young Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) is discovered working in a Vancouver Dairy Queen by a small-time promoter and pimp, Paul Snider (Eric Roberts). He wines and dines her, wins her away from her mother and younger sister--and gets her into the centerfold of Playboy magazine. Dorothy marries Paul, becomes Playmate of the Year...
...TRAGIC DEATH of Playboy's 1980 Playmate Dorothy Stratten (masterfully depicted by Bob Fosse in his latest movie Star 80) could easily become ammunition for moralists, anti-capitalists, and anti-porn feminists; for at first glance it offers an indictment of the sexual and economic exploitation of women in American society. This would be unfortunate, however, because the issues raised by her case add up to a social dilemma which is too complex to be solved by simplistic thinking...
...moralist explanation for Stratten's violent end at the hands of her small-time promoter husband would probably go like this: "Women who do naughty things such as posing in the nude are simply asking for trouble...
...anti-capitalist argument, interpreting Stratten's misfortunes as an inevitable result of capitalist exploitation, would focus on the Disneyland nature of Hefner's Playboy empire (as Fosse does) and on the insatiable appetite of a capitalist society for junk food, junk movies--in short, junk values. It would also point an accusing finger at the American propensity for materializing and objectifying life; through, for example, the starmaking machinery in New York and Los Angeles, which manufactures individuals into cardboard cutouts and then expresses shock when they age, bleed...
...more reasonable and cautious analysis of the late Stratten's hapless situation centers around the perceptions and nature of Americans themselves: In contrast to Europeans, Americans have apparently failed to integrate different aspects of life. They tend to compartmentalize love, sex, work, etc. But is this a sufficient excuse for Americans to prevent a woman from being treated as an object of sexual desire and an intelligent human being at the same time? Male idols like Richard Gere, Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone, and Tom Selleck have been able to exploit their masculine appeal without losing control of their lives...