'Her only companions are her household appliances. They're the sole witnesses to her pain, her solitude and her anxieties. They're also the only witnesses of the murder she commits. ' Expand upon this comment from Almodovar's interview with Strauss explaining the full significance of this affirmation to the characterisation of Gloria in ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (1984).
In ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto!!, family members devices are, as Almodovar areas, Gloria's companions. They are also, quite simply, the bane of her lifestyle. They are a symbol of the incessant amount of housework within which she is constantly immersed, the deterioration in the associations she stocks with her husband and children, and the present day lifestyle that has didn't deliver its profitable guarantees. This duality that the household equipment present for Gloria will be explored in the ensuing essay.
The first time the viewer perceives Gloria in connection with her household kitchen appliances is when she fills her washer with clothes. Another immediate liaison between housewife and product sometimes appears when she places a pan into the oven. In both instances the camera is positioned so as to show the gadgets, in place, taking the point of view and looking again at her. Almodovar clarifies this selection of camera angle: "I framed the photographs from within these domestic appliances because I needed to tell the story from the point of view of the things that were a part of her daily life. " Indeed, the subjective shots in the household appliances suggest Gloria is being witnessed by the things.
Moreover, the camera structures Gloria's face in a close-up for a number of seconds at the same time - a view which is almost never seen throughout the whole film - which is in these instances that the viewers can properly see Gloria's lines and wrinkles, her frowning lips, her eye totes. All this infers that this is merely the appliances that can understand "her pain, her solitude, and her anxieties", whereas her husband, or other people for example, could not worry less. Her only companions are indeed her home appliances.
On the other hand, the viewer could deduce the opposite at the same time by analysing this same mise-en-scène. These sequences feature an unconventional reverse-angle shot amidst a typical kitchen setting up: only the reverse shot is shown; we do not see Gloria's perspective that one would normally expect of the washer as she lots it with clothes. While this non-naturalistic use of the reverse-angle shot is startling as it creates a distancing impact for the audience, it isn't entirely unfamiliar, since TV commercials for clothes washers and fried-chicken quality recipes long ago appropriated this particular editing figure (D'Lugo, Pedro Almodovar, p. 40). Almodovar clarifies in his interview with Philippe Rouyer and Claudine Vie, "I wanted showing the flip aspect of all these ads that always tout the contentment brought by local kitchen appliances but never the misery that envelops the housekeeper, the lack of pleasure that these kitchen appliances bring. " (Willoquet-Maricondi, Pedro Almodovar: Interviews, p. 75) Almodovar indeed succeeds in demonstrating this idea since there is absolutely no sense of happiness in Gloria's look as she places in the laundry; the quotidian, daily habit nature of loading the washer can be obviously perceived here in her indifferent expression. In the advertisings of yesteryear however, the housewife using the washer would have a bright toothy look plastered onto her face, as if to claim that she could not be more content doing anything else since the machine has made her life very easy.
In simple fact, this spoof of old advertisements seen in these sequences models the genre of the whole film itself. Despite its eclecticism and resultant cross types mother nature, ¿Que he hechoâ!! suggests generally speaking a satire of the sitcom in regards to a beleaguered housewife. Its frenzied pace makes the film run hastily, and the close-quarters framing, where the viewers is shown the constant movement of stars in and from the frame, recreates the appearance of the television display. As Marcia Pally writes, ¿Que he hechoâ!! has directly off of the practices of daytime Television set without quoting any particular sitcom or cleaning soap (Willoquet-Maricondi, Pedro Almodovar: Interviews, p. 86).
These home appliances definitely do not in any way make her life any easier: the chicken breast that she had put into the oven for supper becomes burnt, leading to her spouse to curse at her. It is then she who eats the used up parts - this effectively as an example of how it's the housewife who sacrifices herself for her family. In this esteem, it can be deduced that the household gadgets do more injury than good to her.
In this latter scene, the range doubtlessly manifests itself as a adding source of anxiety and conflict between your married couple. In addition, following the shot from within the washing machine, she impatiently shoos away her son Toni from the kitchen when he comes to ask her help with his homework. Within the next shot, the viewers sees Toni walk into the living room and it his grandmother who asks him how his home work is coming along, and offers to lend him a hands. True, she provides him all the wrong the answers, but that is next to the point: Toni and his grandmother spend a lot of time together, discussing their future ideas when each goes back again to their pueblo, walking in the roadways and the playground, heading to the movie theater, etc. To the end, in conditions of film editing and enhancing, the contrast between the interactions between Toni and Gloria, and Toni and his abuela, are especially emphasised because of the juxtaposition of the two scenes.
Gloria has been far too occupied doing her housework to note her sons increase up over the years. This is confirmed close to the end of the film when Toni hands her a few of his cost savings. She tells him, "Hijoâ que poco te conozco"; she certainly has been unacquainted with what he does indeed and where he moves everyday. When the bus pulls away, we live shown a mid-shot of Gloria for more than 45 secs as she strolls back home. The length and type of shot allows us to fully understand Gloria's facial expressions which is markedly chock filled with emotion: tearful and distressed, it would appear that it has just dawned upon her what she's missed all these years being truly a housewife, and now it appears to be too later as both sons have gone. Maybe it's thus said that her only companions are her home equipment by virtue of the extremely idea that her household appliances are her companions! The fact that she is dependent on amphetamines such as cleaning detergent cannot express any clearer this point that she's an unhealthy romantic relationship with her household appliances; just like any drug addiction, it spells the deterioration of her romance with her family.
To Almodovar, the sequences that happen to be reminiscent of commercials also have another implication: "Advertisingâ is the sole medium making these objects alive and even endows them with personalities. There are always a large numbers of commercials in which the main personality is a yoghurt carton, aimed as if it were a real persona, lit by the cameraman as if it were a genuine legend. I'm very interested by this facet of advertising. The value it gives to objects and just how it changes them into characters. " Indeed, the actual fact that the audience sees Gloria, the subject of the shot, from the point of view of the washer and the range makes it appear as if the household kitchen appliances are autonomous beings who've some sort of demand and higher power over Gloria, bidding her to reside her life around beginning this door, filling up that compartment with detergent, pressing this button, turning that knob, etc. These shots are troubling and marginally alarming when observed in this light, but this is really the underlying reason why Gloria is so downtrodden by her job as a housewife, little by little crumbling under the weight of the travails that everyday life dictates.
On a deeper level still, these household appliances, independent of the commercial-like representation in the film, are a frequent reminder of this modern standard of moving into which Gloria and her family inhabit. This mise-en-scène demonstrates the migration motif of the narrative. The story and mise-en-scène of ¿Que he hechoâ!! is similar to a specifically Spanish tradition of black comedies from the fifties and early sixties such as Jose Antonio Nieves Conde's Surcos. Indeed, this is a film which Almodovar himself acknowledges among the cinematic inspirations for ¿Que he hechoâ!!. Grounded in the socioeconomic conditions of the time, these films focused on the plight of metropolitan dwellers. They battled to make it through in a city that was unable to provide jobs and property to a inhabitants swollen by recent arrivees from the economically even more eager provinces in search of the consumerist culture that had been the promise of Franco's financial regulations (D'Lugo, Pedro Almodovar, p. 41). Unlike Almodovar's often-cited declarations about making movies as though Franco never been around, ¿Que he hechoâ!! depicts a world created by the metropolitan non-planning of the Franco years, growing out of a policy that actively desired by passive disregard of urban cultural services to discourage immigration to the "corrupt" metropolitan areas (Carr and Fusi, "The Rural Exodus" in Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy, pp. 66-70). Like the individuals from those before videos, both Gloria and her partner attended from the pueblo, the pueblo to which her mother-in-law and aged kid Toni will gain by the end of the film. The post-Franco city has failed them, as it fails Gloria, despite their seemingly greater material well-being in a world of timesaving home appliances, the "consumer paradise" of modern day Spain. As Almodovar succinctly puts it in his summary of the film, "[Gloria] wish to become a member of the consumer world, but only handles to take herself, daily. "
Nevertheless, as Almodovar claims in the offer in the question above, really the only witnesses to her murder aren't beings but her refrigerator and gas stove. The one other "witness", the lizard, is killed. Obviously due to their inanimate nature, they can not reveal the truth to the policemen, but because they do not, thus seems to suggest that they sympathise and even tacitly approve of the murder of her brutish man. In this respect, the household kitchen appliances are indeed her companions, and perhaps passive accomplices in the criminal offense.
The characterisation of Gloria is also conveyed by using still camera photographs. Almodovar acknowledges that although this system was determined somewhat by the constrained characteristics of the units, "the tripod was simply perfect for the film; it added significant amounts of tension. Generally, tracking shots tend to soften the action as the tripod hardens it. I wanted to stay inside since it was Gloria's only universe. " Hence it is the house that is the setting for much of the film - as though the house, and everything within it, were a protagonist itself. This undoubtedly connects family members with Gloria, as though these were on equivalent footing, and thus reinforcing Almodovar's assertion that "her only companions are her household appliances". In addition, this stress that the utilization of the tripod brings for the audience serves to intensify the sense of anxiety and stress that Gloria the housewife undergoes perpetually as she is accessible within her "universe".
In the attempted suicide world, on the other hands, Almodovar uses almost an extended tracking shot. He starts with a shot of Gloria and then moves to an elaborate traffic monitoring shot, with the camera surveying her whole field of eyesight before time for her. "I really wished to use a genuine shot. The effect if pretty profound, it renders what is most romantic in a individual. I wanted showing that as soon as she becomes free, clear of any obligation, she comes home home and discovers it so nice and ordered that she feels terrible, because there's nothing for her to do. Her life has no meaning. She functioned for her family her life time, never taking time and energy to do something for herself, to get hopes. She feels the emptiness created by everybody's departure, an enormous abyss opens under her" (Willoquet-Maricondi, Pedro Almodovar: Interviews, p. 75). This 360-degree pan from her viewpoint registers the emptiness of the home. It appears that Gloria's lifetime has been about only cooking and cleaning and portion her family. The film starts with Gloria as a housewife and thus, so far as the viewer can be involved, she may as well have been a housewife forever prior compared to that. It practices thus that when there is absolutely no longer a need to make use of her household equipment to provide her family, she's lost her raison d'etre. This is indeed what leads her to want to commit suicide by the end of the film.
It must be apparent after this discussion that whenever Almodovar describes the household kitchen appliances as Gloria's companions, he does not mean to suggest that they are simply her friends. Although they are the only entities that pay her any attention whatsoever, she actually is enslaved to them, which is clearly damaging to her associations with her husband and children. Moreover, the household appliances represent the present day approach to life for Gloria and her family, and therefore reveal having less fundamental change despite the intervening many years of the so-called monetary miracle and the end of Francoism.
