Welcome to the Dollhouse & Middle Grade Despair

no but see you told me you used to go out with steve is it true we think once last spring that's it it's all over now well i was wondering if i might have the chance if you wanted to go study with me not a chance but sorry don but that's like just the way it is you don't cut it what if i wear something look in the mirror there comes a point in every child's life where they become aware of the world's perception of them as young children we are fiercely imaginative and unapologetically us we don't have a sense of shame about our identities things like beauty and status don't mean anything to us because we aren't even aware of those things exist but as we grow older we tap into the world we live in we learn what the world values that it values beauty and intellect and status and then we project those values onto ourselves we learn that the way we look is not the standard of beauty admired and coveted by the masses we think there's something wrong with us we try to fix it with different clothes with a different look fix it by being agreeable by being quiet by keeping our head down maybe then people will like us but most of the time they don't welcome to the dollhouse was an unexpected gym when it premiered at the sundance film festival in 1995. recently when i made my account for this year's festival i answered the question what's your favorite sundance film with welcome to the dollhouse and it only took me a second to come up with that answer because the movie resonated so deeply with me todd sollins was the writer and director behind this movie about an awkward seventh grader doing her best to cope with being ignored at home bullied at school and an onslaught of new insecurities brought on by learning that she doesn't fit the societal standard of beauty played by a young and clever heather matarazzo long before she dined on genovian popcorn dawn is a quiet social outcast her last name is weiner so naturally all the kids in middle school take joy in calling her wiener dog when they aren't completely ignoring her existence dawn is lonely and she really just wants to be liked she wants her parents to care about her to notice her and when she can't give that to work she tries to get the attention of a high schooler when her little sister missy goes missing don is convinced that she was kidnapped and taken to new york so she forms a plan to go to new york save her sister and then finally she'll be the hero dawn you're the best daughter a mother could have i love you so much i love you dawn me too [Music] but even that doesn't work out don experiences humiliation after humiliation rejection after rejection all her attempts to simply be loved are foiled and it's painful to watch it brings back memories of middle school and the cruelty of children majority of the films about pre-adolescent years are tied to themes of levity adventure and true friendships in these movies kids may experience bullying and hard times but the adventure they experience aids them in overcoming their tribulations they conquer the danger of their quest and now they can easily face their bully on this adventure they bond with people that will be their friends for life these movies end on a hopeful note that's part of what makes welcome to the dollhouse so different it's a movie about middle school and the terror that comes with that awkward in between of teenage dim and childhood although those are the themes the movie isn't made for kids it's too vulgar and way too bleak it's for the people who have already been through it lived through that grueling age and lived to tell to tell from high schoolers to retirees the movie calls back not only the cruelty of burgeoning adulthood but why it's so hard and such a strange thing there are a lot of stories about leaving high school going to college leaving college trying to as they say adult these are the most common coming-of-age stories and yes these stories are important and relatable etc but personally when i recall the most pivotal and emotional moments of growing up they're all memories from when i was 12 or 13. it's a tough age things are changing you're changing maybe your family is changing and sometimes it can be too much for me this was the age when i realized i didn't have many friends and started to question what was wrong with me it was the age when looking in the mirror could make me cry a lot of good things happened too i learned to skateboard i wrote stories without carrying a lick about how nonsensical they were i started to find out about me and before i knew it all the bad stuff was behind me and the despair i felt is now just a faint memory something i can look back on with a bit of humor which perfectly describes welcome to the dollhouse it's a bleak affair but when you're looking back on it as an adult it's kind of funny callum baker wrote about the two contrasting worlds of childhood and adulthood in a piece called welcome to the dollhouse the ultimate coming-of-age film the complicated blend of typical on-screen childhood tropes with more unsavory adult plot points becomes a rigorous commentary on just why growing up is so strange instead of trying to ingratiate itself into the viewer's very personal experiences attempting to give some overbearing reassurance that it'll all turn out fine it just joins you an adult at the end of it all to look back and wince instead of seeing the world as we want to see it in the simplest terms the most convenient definitions it de-aestheticizes the whole experience and reflects anew with heightened realism the simple fact that no matter how much we romanticize our teenage years and the people that were there for us growing up is an intrinsically strange and lonely experience throughout welcome to the dollhouse there seems to be no end to the despair and that's kind of the point when you're that age you feel weighed down by the doom and the gloom it's impossible to see a silver lining you feel the helplessness that dawn feels and worse the complacency because at that age all you really can do is wait until you're older until you're able to change things there's a scene where dawn does try to change things she attempts to hit one of her bullies with a spitball she misses and hits her teacher instead and in the principal's office dawn explains i was fighting back whoever told you to fight back in a way those bleak moments prepare you for how life can feel like a series of unfortunate events dawn is all of us at that age the movie is an impressive feat and it's really a specialty of todd solid that he blends really really dark i mean dark scenarios with these poignant social and psychological observations in comedy for example brandon a character who terrorizes don and bullies her only friend ralphie threatens to her multiple times it's one of those moments where the juxtaposition between childhood and the darker themes hits the hardest brandon continues to threaten don and don continues to follow suit with his plans her relationship with him is toxic and shocking but it's not a huge deviation from what movies have been telling women about relationships for decades movies and parents have told little girls that when a boy pulls their hair or pushes them they like them we teach them that violence is love in a way brandon and dawn become a parody of this but i think marijuana should be legalized why do you always have to be such a solons ridicules the dark undercurrent of middle school of movies end up suburban life by mirroring it and towing the line between parody and gritty realism welcome to the dollhouse was one of the first of its kind and has undoubtedly influenced films like bo burton's impressive directorial debut eighth grade and maybe even mean creek oh my god you remember mean creek but even before nobody knows and welcome to the dollhouse there was one movie that set the standard for middle grade inks the 400 blows the iconic film from francois chufa was perhaps cinema's first look at the trials of early adolescence the story follows antoine donnen a 14 year old who was misunderstood by his parents and teachers and authority figures arriving seven years before robert bresson's muschette in nearly 10 years before or the 400 blows was an instant classic it was one of the big founders of french new wave cinema and the film antoine is a kid often left to his own devices his mother and stepfather are often away busy with work or with other people they don't have the time to grant him attention or care they're not the ruthless type they're not cruel or violent but the silence and the solitude is violence enough school isn't much better his teachers have given up on him deciding he's not worth the effort and he's nothing but a troublemaker and antoine's parents who barely know him rely on what others have to say about their son's character so everyone thinks of him as a troublemaker and antoine goes with it if everyone tells you you're going to turn out to be one thing it's easy to start believing it to just throw in the towel things go sour for him at every turn and eventually he ends up in a juvenile home brandon officially as the troublemaker everyone always made him out to be welcome to the dollhouse is likely catholic group in many ways both lead characters are young teenagers on the cusp of adolescence and both are beginning to understand their place in the world a place not of their choosing but one carved out for them both are left to their own devices all but abandoned by their parents and disregarded by their teachers in my now unlisted video on euphoria and the conventions of the teen drama the video is fine i guess i go into detail about when movies started to center around and be catered to the teenage market and all that's fine it's just that i made it two years ago and doesn't really reflect all the complexities i feel about euphoria now so anyway i talked about how media for teenagers exploded onto the scene after rebel without a cause since then a lot of tv shows and movies about coming of age or growing up are about people from the ages of 15 to 19 honing in on those high school years in america these high school movies were steadily on their way to becoming all the rage high school hellcats in 1958 the delinquents in 1957 the list goes on and in france at the tail end of that decade francois truffaut was telling a different kind of story about growing up and it turned out to be one of the best movies in one of my favorite movies of all time [Music] in the years since the 400 blows we got films like mooshette and la fongnu but the cinema of pre-adolescent despair died down until 1995 with welcome to the dollhouse in the years since we've seen films like we are the best all about lily choo choo kid with a bike the inevitable defeat of mr and pete the fifth and eighth grade all films that focus on that particular uncomfortable age looking back on all the moments that shaped us with a new inviting lens in some of these features you can see the influence dollhouse had but its influence has never been limited to this you see glimpses of it and saved which is the best movie ever i am filled with christ's love in ghost world drop dead gorgeous election i could go on and all of these every movie i just mentioned scratch that every single one i've mentioned in this video is one that i highly recommend and i can see dollhouse's influence on some of these even if it's just a slight glimmer and i love that i want to talk about heather matarazzo for a second her performance in the movie is absolutely stunning i think even as a child she had this empathy for the characters she played that made all of her performances feel very genuine welcome to the dollhouse did great things for todd saunders career and even for madorazo briefly the movie thrusted her into the limelight suddenly but it came with the knowledge of how the world viewed her and valued her it was changed because i never thought about the characters that i played when i was younger but it wasn't until i became an adolescent that i started hearing words such as ugly or plain i started to get a firm grasp on how other people saw me and i took other people's views of me as absolute truths her role as the awkward don wiener had her typecast as the nerdy girl the outsider the plain one and it was something that affected the way she saw herself for years but she never placed blame on the film or the character despite don being a product of solon's imagination i'd argue that no one loves her more or has more respect for her than heather so in 2016 when solons's film wiener dog came out it stung when moderazzo found out that dawn weiner would not only be making an appearance in the film but that she was to be portrayed by greta gerwig through twitter she found this out on twitter of course my ego was bruised i found out about it on twitter i felt sad and hurt but people grow and people change and that's part of life i wanted to talk about that last part because heather makes the film really click she's perfect as dawn and she's my only dawn wiener and that's that next i'm haley i have a cat irrelevant november 30th today was my birthday and i got an american girl doll but jackie said she already had that one i hate her in her stupid face take her dog [Music] for you the vacuum cleaner sucks my brain dry as i sit and stare at colors on tv [Music] she does the same to me she looks like

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Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021