Nancy Oliver: Writer
Lars and The Real Girl
Nominated for the 2008 Oscar Best Original Screenplay
I’m always kind of surprised that Lars and The Real Girl doesn’t come up more often when people talk about their favorite gynocentric movie. And, then, I’m also not surprised. Nancy Oliver’s story of a socially inept man who lapses into an elaborate delusion about a sex doll’s realness isn’t exactly funny, not entirely comfortable and not precisely feminist. It is a story about connection, unconditional love and acceptance for men, their fantasies and the women who love them. There are plenty of opportunities for a feminist and patriarchs alike to squirm in their seats a bit and we do.
Nancy Oliver is a writer for hits HBO Six Feet Under and True Blood. Out of collage and long before these successes she worked on a video game and wrote web content. Her experience with techie men in these jobs, some of whom she saw as being extremely lonely, inspired her to write Lars and The Real Girl, “The specific real doll thing -- I had a weird job that brought me in contact with a lot of young guys and a lot of weird websites….At the same time, I can completely understand how it could happen and why people have them. So that stayed with me for a while. I wanted to make a fairy tale and give it that twist.” (Walsh, 2007). The completed Lars screenplay languished for years among her personal projects until her career caught up with her i.e. she had an agent and connections to people who could produce a film. The screenplay morphed during the making of the movie; a fact of writing for TV and film Oliver is somewhat pragmatic about (Walsh, 2007).
Oliver’s subjects and projects often deal with overt and typical male models of female sexuality in somewhat subtle and sometimes conflicting ways. Riana Rouge is the ubiquitous mostly naked female video game heroine whose saga begins with a failed attempt to save another women from being raped. Six Feet Under displays the full range of Madonna to Whore female charicatures. True Blood expresses the classic innocent/good vs. evil/bad tropes within the vampire/human relationship.
Lars and The Real Girl objectifies women through Bianca’s, the doll's, object status (O’Neil), desexualizes and Madonnafies her, and makes her a Pygmalion kind of character via a man's wish and work. Conversely, Lars' longing for and struggle to connection with women, the emotional disability of men (Hooks, 27), the outsider position of men who do not fit the social normative male role, the difficulty in growing into manhood without examples of whole personhood and the loving support of community can be read as rallying cries for the more multi-faceted manhood Hook’s describes in her book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love (Hooks, 2003). Ms. Oliver says, “It’s about exploring the geography of kindness and compassion.” (O’Neil) Lars and the Real Girl can be read as part of an effort to address male pain (Hooks, 110).
Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. New York: Atria, 2004. Print.
O'Neill, Kate E. "Female Effigies and Performances of Desire: A Consideration of Identity Performance in Lars and the Real Girl." Forum Journal. Google. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.
I found this so interesting because I never really thought of the movie in that way. It just seemed like some weird independent film, but after hearing the backstory to it I can understand the film better. I remember watching the movie and finding myself becoming emotionally involved in this on screen relationship between a man and his doll. It shows the simplicities of love as well as the vulnerability of the human heart, whether it belongs to a man or a woman.
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