"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in comparison to "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night"

Blog post #1

In T.S Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot depicts the sense of Ennui and detachment from human connection as it functions within the conditions of modernity. In spite of a large difference in eras of production, Eliot’s depiction of Ennui is largely in line with modern displays of youthful angst in films such as Ana Lily Amirpour’s “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night”.

The film “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” is classified by the film’s director, Ana Lily Amirpour, with the brief words, “In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.” Amirpour combines elements of classic western and vampire film techniques in her black and white depiction of the fictional Iranian region of “Bad City”. This lonely, melancholic atmosphere as the femme-vampire protagonist sifts through desolate, oil rig filled streets is not unlike the scene painted by Eliot in the opening of “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”. Expressing this disdain for the city surrounding him, Prufrock dejectedly states: “Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent”. In spite of the drastic difference in the eras of production, the poverty and disruption of life in modernized cities is a theme that has remained prevalent in the first expressions of modernity and Ennui up until today. This disdain for the grime of modern cities and the ruin of economically failed areas circulates throughout both Eliot's poem and Amirpour’s film as a realistic plight that both motivates and concerns the central characters.

Upon initial consideration, the protagonists of Amirpour’s “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” and Eliot's “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” appear to be starkly different in character. Amirpour’s femme-fatale Iranian vampire, frequently stalking abusive men as her prey, seems to be an entirely different entity than an entity such as Eliot's Prufrock that can only go as far as to think about taking action. However, both of these characters quite similarly struggle with expressing themselves in relation to the world around them. From the human struggling to form genuine human connections, to the non-human vampire struggling to form genuine human connections, the obstacle faced by both self-identified outsiders remains the same. For example, Prufrock states in his anxiety: “It is impossible to say just what I mean! / But as a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: / Would it have been worth while / If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, / And turning toward the window should say: / “That is not it at all, / That is not what I meant at all.” As Prufrock lives inside of his own mind, ruled by social anxiety, the protagonist of Amirpour’s vampire-western film face a similar inability to bridge the gap between herself and others. In Amirpour’s depiction, the chador adorned, black lipped, Iranian vampire is never able to directly or efficiently express herself to those around her. As Prufrock is unable to put on a mask to overcome his introverted nature and engage with the women around him, the lonesome vampire is similarly unable exist as anything other than a creature of isolation. This is exemplified in the film as the outcasted vampire interacts with an impoverished child that she witnesses stealing. The darkly veiled, wide-eyed vampire bares her fangs as she venomously threatens the young child in Farsi to behave as her only means of acting upon her good intentions. In these regards, though these angst ridden protagonists differ in nature, they elicit angst-ridden response to the surrounding world by taking the position of an outsider that is unable to genuinely communicate and be understood by others.

This leads to similar issues in romantic connection that is found as central issue in both Eliot's “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Amirpour’s “A girl walks home at night”. From the human struggling to form human connections to the non-human struggling to form human connection, the obstacle faced by both entities defined as “other” remain. In “A girl Walks Home Alone At Night”, Amirpour crafts a scene of slow and painstaking silence between the main characters that is reminiscent of the barriers both formed and faced by Eliot's Prufrock that prevent unrestrained communication. In such a restrained scene absent of dialogue, Amirpour conveys a similar sense of tension arising from the same inability to communicate that is present in Eliot’s portrayal of Prufrock. All the while, in the absence of dialogue, the song “Death” by White Lies plays with a chorus that recites, “ This fear's got a hold on me / Yes, this fear's got a hold on me.” In this slow and patient scene, the inward sense of emotion is present at it highest. Similarly to Eliot’s depiction of Prufrock, there is a distinct frustration that arises as they grapple with the fear of speaking to others as they truly are.