Ok, I understand the whole metaphor with the potato. A plant needing freedom and space to grow successfully, like Fausta needs to break with the horrid past of her mother.
But come on people: Who in their right mind jams a potato into her vagina out of self-protection?!
If you're scared of getting raped, buy a belt with a lock on it, or something. This alternative felt way too constructed and kind of ridiculous.
when u live in the Andes and terrorists have destroyed all around you, desperation can drive you to do nutts stuff for protection.
shareI agree, when you have never been in that situation before, is not a smart choice to try to make a judgement on people's decision, i didn't live in the andes but i lived in Peru during that time, very scary times!.it was 911 day everyday.
shareOf course I'm happy I've never been in a situation like that. I'm not making judgments on the decisions of people in Peru, but on the screenwriters, who don't understand that something so essential for your story needs to be credible.
It's very easy to just say that my criticism isn't valid, because I don't know what it's like. If own experience is essential for being able to rightfully criticize a movie, I wouldn't be able to give my opinion for 90% of the movies I watch. I think the director/screenwriter needs to put the viewer in a position where he fully understands the main character for a movie like this.
I would never deprive you from your right to stand a point about a movie or about anything, but allow me to give you just some suggestion: try to place yourself within the cultural framework and, there, you could see if the scene you recall could be believeable or not. In fact, a friend o f mine and I discuss about it right after watching the movie at the theater: he said the movie needed some references to be understood bu people outside Peru; I did not agree: Ii do not belive the director, the scriptwriter o r whoeverelse shod adjust a film (or a novel, a poem, a piniting, wahtsoever) to make it easier on the eyes to the audience (that did happen, in my conception, to Vanilla sky when out of Abre los ojos -Open your eyes-; by the way, I did not like the outcome).
No one is saying, I bielieve (clearly, not me) you shouls know about the history of all the places in order to view a film. Nevertheless, I do not think it would be fair to approach an issue and judge it (no in a despective way, I know) only from another vision. That would be call, by some people (me included this time, I am sorry) ethnocentric.
Thanks for posting and sharing your views
Unfortunately this is a bit of a custom in the mountain areas of the Andes and is used to avoid getting pregnant.
shareWhatever it is, it's not customary, because the doctor and the dad were both very surprised.
Do you have an article or something as a source?
there's no evidence that a woman has really do it in Peru.
Claudia Llosa, the director, gave an explanation about the potato in the movie:
"The potato gives a "tridimentional touch" to the movie. Is an element that refers us to our national pride (peruvian pride), to our "roots".the potato is our national food and is moreover something that
pulses, lives and blooms"
here's the original text in spanish:
“La papa le da ese toque tridimensional (a la película). Es un elemento que nos remite a nuestro orgullo (peruano), a nuestras raíces. La papa es la base de nuestro alimento nacional y es una semilla además y a la vez es como algo que te late, que vive, florece”
you can find more info in the following article (in spanish): http://elcomercio.pe/noticia/420143/claudia-llosa-teta-asustada-dificil-complicada
Well, before I decided to post in here I've read most of the comments in this message board about if it's ridiculous or not to put a potato in your vagina in order to not be raped or if the director an writer weren't accurate to the way they tried to explain things in the movie.
Anyway, I'm Peruvian Woman and I've traveled all around my country for fun, t rally know what's going on in other cities and small towns in the Andes, in the Amazon and in the Coast. So, I think I'm entitled to give some sort of explanation about that particular issue with the potato.
Here in Peru we have a main city called Lima which is the capital and other cities with less population than Lima, but there are thousands of small villages each one with their own customs. It's impossible for us to know each and every custom of each little village. Some of those customs are similar to other villages and some are unique. Those small villages are way behind the large cities when it comes to education, develop and technology. So, even for me it was shocking to see Fausta's customs regarding the potato. However, due to my trips I learned to respect the customs of their citizens.
i.e. I was in a little village close to the Amazon and in my room in which I was accomodated I saw like 4 spiders, I can't stand spiders and I asked the receptionist to kill them and he told me "we keep them inside because the little snakes will prevent you from sleeping and the spiders make them stay out of the room", I was pretified with the spiders and with the snakes but even so I respected what the man told me, he knew better his area than I did.
Another example, in some villages of The Andes, when a man dies and he leaves his wife and kids, his single brother marries the widow and take the kids as his, it could be done immediately after all the services and ceremony for the dead man in the same day or a week later. The woman can't refuse, the only thing she can do is run away with her kids if she doesn't want to marry the guy but as many women of those villages, they can't provide for themselves or their kids, so they end up marrying their brother in law. If the dead man doesn't have a single brother available, a cousin can take that place. In those small villages there's no law, there's not judge or police, the community in general support that tradition.
I could be on and on describing some of the few traditions I know but my point is, it's impossible to know what could happen in the most far away villages and little towns of Peru or of other countries.
I think it could be possible because Terrorism attacked small villages and little towns in the beginning, people over there in that time didn't know how to read or write, it was very common to find illiterate people, so due to their ignorance they were recluted to join Terrorism Politic Party, so as most of the terrorist were men, they used to visit this little towns and rape women to make the population surrenders. Even the teenagers were raped, and thinking back of those years, it could be entire possible for a woman to try with whatever it came to her mind to avoid being raped.
Many of the people killed by the army were not even terrorists.
They just happened to be poor villagers who didn't speak but Quechua, and the army assumed they were terrorists or were hiding terrorists.
The war was not as one-sided as the privileged in Lima seem to think.
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Space For Sale.
Many of the people killed by the army were not even terrorists.
They just happened to be poor villagers who didn't speak but Quechua, and the army assumed they were terrorists or were hiding terrorists.You do realize that very few of the actual terrorists spoke Quechua? The terrorists were mostly urban and urban-poor, many with complete or partial college education who had Spanish as their first language.
vivianalockhart, thanks for sharing those interesting bits about your country.
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I was pretified with the spiders and with the snakes but even so I respected what the man told me
STOOPID, stewpid, stupid, and that goes to anyone who tried to explain it! It boils down to one word, the simplest idea after, "Me, food", and that is;
haven't you ever heard of -
METAPHOR?
idiots
Oh come on..is this cat NIemand really that naive & is his mind set that limited??? I bet that dusty Medusa is from the UK where men think they're above the female species & talk crazy in cyberspace, smfh! I cant believe men like that idiot actually still in exist. Look at where the girl is from & the country. How f--ken insensitive, buy a belt w/ a lock?? What a twisted sick baboon! I cant wait for 2020 when I can come thru the monitor & drop kick tricks like him!
"You make your life what it is but there's always a point where fate steps in"
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I won't discuss if it is a good idea or not to use apotato to avoid being raped. I also won't argue with those who think it is a metaphor, and above all, I won't call anybody "stupid" for exressing their viewpoints.
There is one aspect of the "potato issue" (and most of Fausta's background) that's very important and nobody have mentioned.
She was too young to understand what was going on during the terror times of "sendero luminoso", the fear she feels of everything and everyone was not because something she lived, but because of everything her mother had told her every day of her life since she was born.
For Fausta, those horrible stories were a portrait of the world. (The real metaphor, in this case, is the milk, that was claimed to cause Fausta's sorrow.)
Back to the potato: It was said, in the beginning of the movie, that her mother used to talk about a woman in the village that had hidden a potato in the vagina to avoid being raped.
Nobody knows if it was real or not. Nobody said it was common. It could be an invention, a "terrorist tale" that her mother used to tell. Truthful or not, it made such an impression in Fausta that she considered it was a good idea to do the same to "protect herself" from the "horrible and dangerous world" that her mother had built in Fausta's mind.
The movie tries to show some fantastic reality.
shareI think the name in English is "magical realism."
There are many old stories among people in the countryside. The one about the potato, for example, is not to stop a rape, but to avoid getting pregnant as a consequence of rape.
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Space For Sale.
niemand_123, I absolutely agree with you. I have lived most of my live in the Peruvian Andes and luckily I have never encountered such thing. I very much dislike the treatment Claudia Llosa gives her indigenous characters (in both her movies). She's just exporting misery to be praised in festivals and by ignorant Europeans... she doesn't even live in Perú.
I strongly urge watchers to watch other Andean films besides Llosa's in order to understand the culture. It's a shame that she has become the most praised director around these countries, especially after the 2010 Oscars...
Could you recommend some Andean films to me then? I'm not very familiar with Peruvian cinema to be honest...
"The willow sees the heron's image upside down" from 'Sans Soleil'
Just seen it and I'm sure she mentioned someone else put it there.
I own the Jelena Jankovic board
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