****WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS****
In 2002 Lucky McKee’s independent horror feature May was released. May is a story about a lonely young woman trying to find her place within society. She longs to connect with people around her but because of who she is, how she was raised, and the way society is she is forced to live a life of rejection. McKee has created a complex film that deals with a variety of issues facing society, particularly facing women, including image, identity, sexuality, and violence.
Is May really evil? She is clearly deficient in social skills and is therefore unable to effectively interact with others. May is a character that is easy to relate to. She’s socially awkward, lonely, and curious. She is also adventurous, not afraid of taking risks, and loving. While she seems so shy, something about her is very attractive. Polly sees it immediately and, despite their unconventional first meeting, Adam comes to see it as well. May is sweet and inspires feelings of empathy and love. When the people in her life fail her, she lashes out violently in retaliation. While we are not expected to condone her actions, it’s hard to deny that we aren’t at least a little envious of her ability to strike back at the people who have done her wrong. These actions are a reflection and exaggeration of what we all secretly wish we could do. May is not evil because while in the film she becomes a violent killer, she represents more than violence. She represents how women are expected to behave in society and what a destructive effect this has when these expectations force women to attempt to fit into a role that runs counter to where we feel we belong. May is very honest about who she is and it’s this honesty and failure to accept her prescribed place that causes her to be rejected.
Sexuality plays an interesting role in the film. A large part of the film is about May’s sexual awakening and exploration. It shows her awkwardness, her excitement, and ultimately her flaw. Despite her inexperience she's curious and willing to explore. She has almost no inhibitions. But then her sexual freedom is tied into her weirdness and freakiness. It is also tied in with violence. Sex and violence for May are so closely related that the line blurs and she can't distinguish between the two. Polly is fascinated by the idea but only in a very superficial way, her flirtation with violence has more to do with her flirtation with May than it has to do with an authentic interest. Adam's interest in the two is also different from May's. For her they are one and then same, which we see very early in the scene with the fake knife. With Adam there is a very clear line drawn between the two. He likes violence in his movies but when it comes to reality he can't handle it. He plays with the idea of being weird but is turned off by true weirdness. As he is leaving her, they have a brief exchange. “This is weird” he says, “But you like weird” she says, sounding confused. “Not that weird.” And he leaves.
In addition to May’s sexuality, there is also Polly’s. The relationship between the two women develops not because May is a lesbian, but because she is looking for companionship and she sees no wrong in looking for this with a woman. Polly is also very liberated with her sexuality, and she's a lesbian, but in the end she is also punished for her freedom and inhibitions. It’s not an unfamiliar scenario; frequently female characters “punished” when they choose to follow a course of actions contrary to ones they are expected to follow. Hollows gives a summary of feminist film criticism and through a discussion of such theorists as Molly Haskell, Laura Mulvey, and Mary Anne Doane she follows how the role of women in film has developed. Women in film are images, they have been objects seen through the “male gaze” and forced into submission.
McKee is very aware of these conventions. When dealing with the male gaze for example, McKee places Polly’s girlfriend Ambrosia in it completely. Where Laura Mulvey states that women in films frequently become nothing more than a pair of legs, McKee makes this message literal. When we first see Ambrosia, all we see are her legs. Every subsequent time she appears the first thing we see is her lower half. McKee is making the male gaze extreme and making the viewer aware of it. The interesting twist is that these shots are all from May’s point of view. By creating the male gaze through her eyes he is giving May power. She is the one controlling the situation, the one we relate to, and the one who can fight back. We see this again later when she wields either her scissors or scalpel. In horror movies such weapons are phallic symbols and are usually used against women. In May McKee gives these weapons, and therefore their power, to May. McKee uses the male gaze not to exploit May and objectify her, but to develop her. She herself is placed within the gaze several times, all when she is either with Adam or getting ready to see him. When she is approaching a relationship to him it appears that she is giving up her power but this is not the case. While May is attempting to fit in socially, hence her position within the gaze, she never compromises herself, which is why she never remains in the gaze for very long.
McKee’s use of the male gaze is also appropriate for the subject matter. The film reflects society’s obsession with image and perfection, which in the end is what drives May's actions. She falls in love with the “perfect parts” but can find no “perfect wholes”. In the beginning, she thinks the parts will lead to these perfect wholes. She quickly realizes though that this is not the case so she decides to create her own whole. It's her imperfection that has kept her so lonely and isolated. It's other people's imperfections that hurt her. The physical flaws that she sees come to represent the internal flaws that she experiences. So in her mind if every external part is perfect then the internal ones will be as well. Susan Douglas notes that this obsession with perfection is one that the media has been encouraging for decades through advertising. For her, it has created impossible standards that women try to live up to but can’t. As a result their lives are split, they work constantly to obtain the impossible image and are always miserable with the body they have.
While McKee doesn’t attack the issue of advertising directly, through the opening involving May’s parents he does show where her obsession comes from. May’s mother plays the role of advertiser, pounding in the message that May must be perfect on a daily basis. When May still has not made friends her mother gives her Suzy, the first doll her mother ever made. Suzy must remain in her glass case, May can look but she can’t touch. For May, Suzy comes to be her only friend but she is also a harsh reminder of who May is and how alone and trapped May feels. In a way Suzy represents May’s sanity, when Suzy is destroyed May soon suffers a complete breakdown. However, the moment Suzy breaks is also moment of May’s liberation. She is able to let go of her inhibitions and fight back. In the narrative May is insane but on a deeper level it isn’t insanity, it is strength and power. She is killing people but she is also liberating herself.
Suzy and the other dolls in the film play an important role. May speaks to them and she also uses them. She is like a child, playing with dolls, reenacting situations between herself and Adam so she can learn about sex. She has a male doll with bright red hands that represents Adam with his perfect hands. She teaches herself how to kiss with this doll and another. Whenever May is with her dolls, she is reminiscent of the two little girls playing with Barbie in Barbie Nation. Her obsession with perfection and belief that only perfect people have friends is reminiscent of the little girl stating that to make friends you need to be pretty. Barbies themselves represent perfection and the impossibility of it, issues that this film is centered around.
In her quest to create the perfect friend, May sews together all of the perfect body parts she has collected to create a life sized doll. When the doll is finished, May soon realizes that her doll is not yet perfect. It can’t see. In one of the most grotesque moments of the film, May uses her scissors to cut out her own good eye which she then places on her doll’s head. May then lies down next to the doll and as the shot composition brings together their two faces to make them almost appear as one it is an obvious reference to Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona, which explores the nature of identity. May’s identity is intertwined with that of her doll’s. It represents her insanity, her quest for perfection, it represents her strengths: creativity, resourcefulness, and strength, as well as her weaknesses: narcissism, violence, and obsession. When the eye rolls of off the dolls face it might show the ineffectiveness of her actions, when she is caught at the very least she will be sent to jail, but when the doll raises it’s arm to embrace her, we see that she has been successful in her macabre quest. She has created a perfect thing that will love and accept her for who she is.
In the end May is a sad story about a girl just trying to fit in. Because she fails to conform she is forced to live an incomplete life. She again refuses to accept this and is driven to go a homicidal killing spree. Society has treated her violently and she strikes back with violence. McKee uses this violent story to attack the stereotypes and expectations that women are forced to live with. May is strong enough to fight back and, in her own way, at the end she is a hero.
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