I saw this movie last night, and don't believe I have ever been more disappointed in a movie in my life. I have a great respect for Plath's work, and was appalled by the fact that the filmmaker's turned her life into a Lifetime Network movie... Did this great poet, who wrote Lady Lazarus and Daddy, really kill herself because her hubby was fooling around? Could you trivialize this tormented girl's life anymore? Why did she attempt suicide at 22? Ted wasn't around, so what was it then?
(...)
I'm not saying that Ted Hughes and other factors didn't play a part, but to completely disregard her childhood and relationship to her father is just inexcusable.
I agree with you on this completely, it was a very shallow movie. And I agree that Sylvia's feelings for her father are crucial to the story. (But her relationship with her mother must not be disregarded either... funny how many people forget that at the same tiem as "Daddy", she wrote an equally vitriolic poem about her mother - "Medusa".)
Did the filmmakers even read the poem Daddy?? They quote part of it, but conveniently leave out the parts that imply incest, because it didn't fit in with the 'cheating hubby' story...
What do you mean by 'parts that imply incest'? Not 'incest' as in actual incest?! because they surely do NOT imply that. They imply an unhealthy obsession with her the memory of her father, which was already all too obvious in the poems such as "The Colossus" and "Electra on Azalea Path", in which she directly references her Electra complex ('Electra', 'Oresteia'). "Daddy" is pretty much the sequel to "The Colossus" - written a few years later, at the time when adoration was turning into hate and rebellion, caused by the failure of her marriage and the feeling of disappointment in Ted; in "Daddy", she obviously mixes her dad and her husband all the time, as one and the same, all-powerful, overbearing male figure of mythical proportions - adored and hated. It's always been clear to me - and I hope it is to other people as well - that the images used in "Daddy" don't actually describe the real Otto Plath or the real Ted Hughes, rather Sylvia's intense emotions at one time and her exaggerated view of them, merging into one and the same mythical figure. And this was already present in "The Colossus" - 'for thirty years now I have worked to dredge the sill from your throat/I am none the wiser'. She wasn't even 30 yet when she wrote that - which corroborates my belief that she wasn't just describing her attempts to preserve the memory of her dead father (this would have taken just 20 years) but her attempts to build up an adored, powerful male figure - father/lover/God - something that exists within a woman's mind/soul and that she has been forming since she was born (the real father is just one, though the most prominent, factor in this) - therefore 'thirty years'.
How about this:
"You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look"
Does this sound like a woman who adored her father, as she claims in the movie? Comparing him to Hitler, and a devil?
YES, IT DOES. She definitely did adore him, it's nowhere as obvious as in this poem (and The Colossus). That WAS the problem. She could never be free of her memory of him, she missed him so much that she attempted suicide in order to 'get back to him', as she said. So she found a man that she saw as an extension of her father. But he broke her heart, and her disillusionment and pain make her see the dead father as being as guilty as her husband - for having that terrifying power over her. This is the moment when love turned to hate and when the god, the colossus of the earlier poem became the devil and Hitler.
How about this:
'The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.'
They read the last 2 lines, but didn't mention the lines prior at all... There is a hate and a disgust in these lines that can't be conjured without some primal emotion leading one there... When does a vampire come? At night? To drink her blood - or to suck every piece of life from her?
The hate is there exactly because of the love and adoration. I'm sure you have heard of intense feelings of love turning into as intense feelings of hate.
Where does a vampire come? From the coffin, right? He is a vampire because he is dead, but undead at the same time - because 'he' still has a hold over her, all those years after his death. The only way for her to be free is to drive a stake through his heart - by making him in her mind from God into a devil.
better sorry than safe
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Agent_Kujan
18 years ago
Interesting reply, and clearly from someone very knowledgeable and intrigued by Plath's life and works. My issue is that I believe you speak too strongly in your replies, claiming in many cases that you have the only answers...
"What do you mean by 'parts that imply incest'? Not 'incest' as in actual incest?! because they surely do NOT imply that." I read much of Daddy in the same way you do, and only chose to point out the parts that I believed to be critical but left out of the movie. While I can see your points, you seem to disregard mine, which is unfortunate. I will be honest and admit that my undergrad prof 15 years ago argued against much of what I wrote above, stating that these poems where only 'partially autobiographical'... never noting that Ted Hughes was even a part of her anger. I of course now see that he clearly was, but then if Daddy really was this amalgamation of Ted Hughes and her father, then aren't these feelings of love you speak of inextricably bound as well. I don't know, but to me, the love/hate thing that you talk about is also a common symptom of the little girl, scared and confused, who loved her father and can't figure out why he would have done these horrible things to her...
I vaguely remember letters that she wrote when she was 14 or 15 that made me think the same thing, but I understand that isn't a fair statement without more information...
Take care - Dante
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