Female in The Fly
Geena Davis in The Fly
“Be afraid, be very afraid”- Geena Davis in The Fly. Take this quote from David Cronenberg’s The Fly into consideration when thinking about women in horror. A lot of them are grotesquely sexist and art directed to appeal to the male gaze. Although some play the role of victims, a good deal of horror movies have women playing the protagonist or hero. One such film is The Fly in which Geena Davis plays Veronica Quaife, a journalist who falls for a scientist Seth Brundle who is brought to life by Jeff Goldblum. After a sexually charged accident, Seth Brundle starts going through a metamorphosis in becoming a human fly hybrid coined Brundle-Fly.
In addition to directing the film, Cronenberg also co-wrote the script with writer Charles Edward Pogue. Although the lead role is a woman, the film is still male-centered. Cronenberg has written Veronica, who is also referred to as Ronnie in the film, as a modern woman for the time. This is shown through her career goals and sexuality, the care she gives Seth as he goes through physical changes, and her desire for an abortion. This depiction of womanhood in Ronnie is progressive in some senses.
Veronica meets Seth at a party.
The 1980s saw a trend come hand in hand with shoulder pads and power suits. It is the 1980s career woman. Veronica Quaiffe falls into this trend. Although, it is not as apparent because The Fly is a horror movie, a genre that at the time was mainly trying to target a male audience. Movies like Baby Boom (1987) and 9 to 5 (1980) are aimed at female viewers and are formatted into the more palatable genre of comedy. The career woman came out of ideas founded in the 1970s feminist movement. Quaiffe’s career is an important part of who she is. It led her to meet Seth Brundle at a party. Career women work in a male-dominated environment. Ronnie’s editor is her former college professor and lover who routinely hits on her. Her dedication to her career is shown when attempts to film Seth’s transformation even for the advancement of science even when it pains her to see her lover become an unrecognizable monster. Veronica, being a career woman, shows how she is a modern woman in the 1980s.
Ronnie as a character is sexually forward. She sleeps with Seth Brundle shortly after meeting him. Her actions are reflective of a decade that was changing sexual scripts. This also is the impact of the feminist movement and sexual revolution. She owns her sexuality and turns down the advances of Stathis, her boss.
The Fly is a love story and a tragedy as well as a horror movie. It seems at times that Ronnie plays a supporting role to Seth because he is so afflicted by the transformation of becoming BrundleFly and the plot is centered around it.
Ronnie and Seth in bed.
In a Q and A about The Fly, David Cronenberg stated that he chose a woman to be the hero because he likes a woman’s sensibility which is a way of saying how he appreciates how sensitive to other people’s emotions women are. One would hope that a lover would be able to hold the other when they’re suffering. It is this sensibility that Cronenberg wrote into Ronnie’s character which makes her the ideal woman of that time.
One radical aspect of the film is the representation of abortion. It is still a highly taboo subject in America and it was in the eighties as well. It is seen as a solution to Ronnie’s problem of possibly being pregnant with a fly baby. Ronnie’s deep desire for an abortion could be seen as feminist because she isn’t being forced to have an abortion. It’s her choice.
Veronica gives birth to fly baby in nightmare
Cronenberg portrays motherhood as monstrous. This is evident in Ronnie’s nightmare, where she delivers a thrashing maggot instead of a child. This is also a theme in one of Cronenberg‘s other films, The Brood. In this film, he uses grotesque body horror to depict an unnatural birthing sequence where the main character is mentally unstable and has a sacklike appendage emerging from her midsection. Birth is messy, but these depictions amp up the gore to an unnatural extent.
Cronenberg’s depiction of womanhood is based on cultural ideas of the time. This is seen through the characterization of Ronnie in The Fly. Her sexuality, career ambitions, sensitivity, and human rights are explored in this film. For Geena Davis, this role helped launch her career. After years of acting, Davis started the Geena Davis Institute to fight for gender equality in Media. Film as a medium has come far since The Fly but there is still so much more potential for gender roles to grow and become less confined in the film industry.