The Virgin Suicides was directed by Sofia Coppola in conjunction with American Zoetrope in 2000.
The Virgin Suicides is a film about teenage adolescence and the struggle to be understood. In the film, the five Lisbon sisters attempt to cope with strict parents, societal pressures, sex, boys, and a loss of control over their own lives. After their youngest sister, Cecilia, commits suicide, rumors about the girls spread wildly around town. They become a commodity, desired and feared by almost every guy in their school, as well as obsessed over by their neighbors, the narrator and his group of friends. Lux Lisbon, the second-youngest at 14, is played by Kirsten Dunst. Lux is the wild child of the sisters- flirtatious, rebellious, and struggling to understand her own sexuality. Nearly every guy in the school desires her, but during the film she falls briefly for the school jock, Trip Fontaine, only to lose her virginity and get her heartbroken by him.
More than just dealing with standard teenage problems- the possibility of love, boredom, and trying to find one’s purpose in the world- this film contains an underlying current of absurdity regarding the status quo. All of the sisters are blonde, white, middle class young women. Their parents are married and get along well, and they are growing up in the suburbs in Michigan in the 1970s. They are not drug addicts and they do not want for anything materially. So why, then, are these girls so miserably unhappy? Why do these girls with their picturesque life decide to all commit suicide rather than endure their setbacks? The answer is simple: girls want, and need, more than to be objects of desire or beauty, more than to be commoditized and cherished for their passivity, virginity, “goodness”, more than to be controlled and kept quiet. Young women need a creative outlet, should be valued for their differences, and should not be judged by their “purity”, as Jessica Valenti would define it.
The idea that women must be protected from themselves for fear of them being “ruined” becomes the focal point of the film after Lux breaks curfew on Homecoming night, returning home the following morning. Outraged, the Lisbon parents withdraw all of the girls from school and literally lock them in the house for weeks. Mrs. Lisbon even forces Lux to burn all of her rock albums, in order to take away one of the only outlets she has left. This film is an interesting commentary on the attempt to control young women’s lives, and the desire for girls to rebel from that control. After the lockdown begins, Lux rebels by routinely sleeping with random men on the roof of her home. Perhaps if the girls had more freedom they would not have felt so desperately trapped and hopeless. Had they been given a voice and respect, they may have found that they really are worth something, and not felt overwhelmed or pressured to be what society expects of them. When expectations for young women are so high, it is no wonder that self esteem plummets after they fall short of an unattainable goal.
Changing the way society values women is an important issue in girl studies. Self esteem, confidence, health, family, school, and many more things are affected when young women are valued only by their sexual worth, chasteness, or submissiveness. In The Virgin Suicides the Lisbon sisters are driven to end their lives because of this view. We can start by changing the way young women value themselves, but it is not until that change in value is universally recognized that girls will be seen as the autonomous, capable, worthwhile beings they already are.
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