Henry Lefebvre argues that the everyday “weighs more heavily” on women “Everyday and Everydayness” p.10. This short essay explores Lefebvre’s contention through an analysis of the movie Revolutionary Road directed by Sam Mendes.
Henri Lefebvre’s Critiques of Everyday Life was published decades before the emergence of contemporary global phenomena such as modern television and communications. The consequences of these phenomena affect the everyday life. The philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard’s contention the Evil Demon of Images (1987) questions the effects of media. Reviewing the movie Revolutionary Road (2008), this essay posits that, regardless of gender, the everyday weighs more heavily on the groups of people who either: affected by media in shaping their lives, developed higher sensibility, and achieved a great extent of wisdom. Furthermore, the set of functions which constitute the everyday life evolves throughout the time, therefore, Lefebvre’s contention that the everyday weighs more heavily on women can be challenged.
The movie Revolutionary Road depicts the life of Wheelers during the 1950s. Frank and April, an American couple, have an ordinary life in the suburbs but desire to be extraordinary. April contends that “our whole existence here is based on the great promise that we are special and superior […] but we are not” (Revolutionary Road 29:11). The young family has some very idealistic expectations of their life. April convince her husband about an idealistic decision to leave the suburban life for Paris but her third pregnancy ruins their decision. Following a series of tensions between the couple, April anxiously comments upon her second delivery that “we had another child to prove the first one was not a mistake” (Revolutionary Road 1:04:43). While contemplating the visionary life in Paris, April gradually becomes constrained by the reality of her everyday life. The concomitant result of insisting extraordinary in a suburban life leads April’s to anxiety rather than merely her gender.
The everyday life has occupied the attention of some scholars in different ages from various perspectives. Rita Felski observes it preferably “as a way of experiencing the world than a circumscribed set of activities within the world” (95). The avoidance of restricting the everyday to some specific set of activities implies that it is intrinsically variable based on the individual lived experiences which are bounded to specific time and place. In this way, Revolutionary Road represents that Paris as a specific place can be perceived very differently by April and neighbouring man Shep. The movie signifies that the individual experience and imagination are never the same. In the scene in which Frank and April excitedly disclose their decision to leave for Paris, Frank asks Shep to describe Paris as he has been there before. Although Shep replays: “Yeah, it is a great city” (Revolutionary Road 38:22) he seems shocked at hearing Wheeler’s decision, so he only responds to Frank that way and his tone and body language show that he does not mean it seriously. On the other hand, April explains the best things about Paris. She says about the low cost of living and that there are some high demands for an ordinary profession such as secretary and exaggerates the good salaries in, “NATO and ECA and those places” (Revolutionary Road 39:25). Prior to this, the movie shows April opens a small wooden case and watches a few pictures. The biggest picture shows Frank in Paris. Frank asks April if she has been there before and April answers, “I have never really been anywhere” (Revolutionary Road 22:43). Despite the fact that April never been in Paris, she is being exposed to information about that city through the silvery images of the 1950s, and also through her socialisation and hearing the accounts of those who have been there before such as her husband and Shep. For April, the reality of Paris “is produced from miniaturized units” (Baudrillard 167) and not through an actual and individual experience of herself. April’s vision of Paris is affected by the elusive duplicated models of reality which Baudrillard states as “hyperreal” (167). In the modern era, the everyday is constituted by our very personal imagination which is affected by the burden of information we receive. In this way, April is being impacted by information which turns her imagination about the future to be unrealistic. Therefore, the everyday weighs on her, to a large extent, because of the influx of information and the particular way she perceives her surrounding world.
The everyday weighs more on those who have developed a higher quality of human sensibility and envisage the everyday in an emotional way. As a very human trait, the emotion and its effects are not limited to women. Various approaches such as feminism have traced back the emotional effects in relation to the everyday, into history. For instance, under the paradigm of feminism, Felski’s reading of the everyday in relation to emotions notes that “everyday life has long been subject to intense and conflicting emotional investments” (94). There has been a long history of objecting to the association of femininity with irrationality. For instance, one of the pioneering feminists profoundly contends that masculine domination and patriarchy “enslave women by cramping their understanding and sharpening their sense” (Wollstonecraft 40). Considering the timeworn and emphatic fact of women’s subjugation, the idea that the everyday weighs more on women seems to be the concomitant result of that historical domination of masculinity and patriarchy rather than the involvement of very human trait such as emotion.
In the Revolutionary Road, it is vividly illustrated that the one who bears the heaviest weight of the everyday is a man. Johan says, “I had 37 electric shocks […] it supposed to jolt out the emotional problems just jolted out the mathematics” (Revolutionary Road 49:58). John has acquired a higher extent of sensibility, so he feels more pressures of the everyday life. Therefore, the movie provides a different interpretation upon which the narration does not comply with Lefebvre’s argument that everyday weighs more heavily on women.
The movie Revolutionary Road shows that the heaviness of the everyday has a direct relation to the degree of knowledge and wisdom by which one conceives the everyday. In other words, despite Lefebvre’s argument that the everyday “weighs more heavily” on women, the movie Revolutionary Road shows that it weighs more heavily on anyone who achieves a deeper understanding of the everyday life. According to Lefebvre, neither language and discourse, nor politics can be the source of reference, but the everyday is the “established and consolidated, sole surviving common sense referent and point of reference” (9). It means thinking about the everyday, we contemplate a concept through reference to itself. Therefore, we practice the very cyclical nature of contemplation and that means the deeper we perceive the everyday life the more we become subject to it and it has nothing to do with being a man or a woman.
In Revolutionary Road, John is the most educated person as his mother says, “he has a PhD in mathematics. I suppose you could say he is an intellectual” (Revolutionary Road 18:15). In the scene where John starts laughing at Frank and April and ridicules their decision to leave for Paris by saying “the nice young Wheelers are taking off” (Revolutionary Road 49:07), Frank asks John to walk with them outside and get fresh air. In the walking, John again asks what they are running away from and Frank answers with a big hesitation that “we are running from the hopeless emptiness of the whole life here” (Revolutionary Road 50:38). John for the first time seems happy as he hears that answer and replies, “now you have said it […] it takes the real guts to see the hopelessness” (Revolutionary Road 50:48). Despite suffering from a mental illness, John exhibits a type of wisdom which is not seen by other people in the movie. His aphoristic sentences are the rare persuasions that the Wheelers had ever received. However, Johan himself experiences deeper anxiety as he admits that “plenty of people are on to the emptiness” (Revolutionary Road 50:52). Therefore, unlike Lefebvre’s argument, the movie represents that the everyday weighs more heavily on those who have reached to a higher extent of wisdom and accumulated a deeper understanding of the everyday life.
References
Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” Selected Writings. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. 166-184. Print.
Bauman, Zygmunt. “Terrors of the Global.” Liquid Fear. Polity Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, 96-128. Retrieved on 28/09/2017. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwsau/detail.action?docID=1174283.
Felski, Rita. “Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture.” The Invention of Everyday Life. New York: New York University Press, 2000. 77-98. Print.
Lefebvre, Henri, and Christine Levich. “The Everyday and Everydayness.” Yale French Studies 73 (1987): 7–11. Print.
Revolutionary Road. Sam Mendes. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour, Kathy Bates, Ty Simpkins. DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Vantage, 2008. Movie.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Andrews UK, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/UWSAU/detail.action?docID=977729.
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