Lit1 Essay #1 - Kiss of the Spider Woman

Darlene McCoy

Madeline McDougal Lane

LIT1

10 November 2010

A Novel of a Film

Prison cells are dark, deep, holes in walls that cut off a man and his cell mate from the outside world. The stone cold confinements provide no beauty to gaze upon; no color to even spark one's imagination. So, in these unchanging chambers, what are two men, confined to their own miniature world, to do but interact with one another? Manuel Puig imagines the going-ons of two imprisoned men, Luis Alberto Molina, and Valentin Arregui Paz, in his novel, The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Valentin is a stone cold political activist - detained for taking part in a hunger strike against the Argentinian government. On the contrary, his cellmate Molina bleeds romance; he uses films to fantasize about life, and more importantly to him, love. Molina's interest in film leads him to recount them to Valentin, including a work of unnamed Nazi propaganda. The film shares an astonishing amount of similarities to the novel as a whole: the plot and characters in each tale mirror the other.

In both plot lines, the two main characters encounter one another during times of political turmoil. In the novel's plot, Molina meets Valentin because he has been set up by the Argentinian government to extract extremist schemes from Valentin. The government throws them in a cell together, and expects Molina to develop a friendship with Valentin. They believe that with time, Valentin will reveal the deep dark secrets of his extremist group to Molina, and that Molina will relay the information back to them. In the film's plot, Leni, a fine woman who embodies France, meets Werner, a young German lieutenant at one of her shows. While it is not odd for a German to be in France - Werner was there to enjoy some fine entertainment after a full day of regulating the occupation of Paris during the Third Reich. During the show his eyes spied Leni, and after he left flowers in her dressing room. With time and some courting, the two become as well acquainted as Molina and Valentin.

The second significant plot point shared between the novel and film is that both Molina and Leni are given clear incentive to betray their respective friend. The warden of the prison utilizes Molina's mother's happiness to further prod him into uncovering Valentin's extremists' plots. He discloses, "It seems your mother is feeling a lot better, since he spoke to her about the possibility of a pardon... She's practically a new person" (149). The warden, well aware of Molina's intense compassion for his mother, employs his love against him. This situation parallels Leni's in the Nazi film. A man known as the clubfoot, who affiliates himself with the French maquis brings Leni and her cousin to a rendezvous point. He explains to Leni that she is to infiltrate German man's headquarters to find papers denoting the location of an immense German arsenal. She refuses the offer at first, but when the clubfoot threatens her cousin with death, her only option is to cooperate - "So she promises to do whatever she can" (75). The clubfoot, aware of Leni's love for her cousin, uses her love against her.

Over time, Molina and Valentin, and Leni and Werner's relationships progress to the point where they fall in love. Though their betrayals continue, the two betrayers comply less and less with their orders; they want to reveal less and less to their oppressors. Because the couples fell in love, the men with the information willingly give out their secrets to their believed-to-be confidants. Leni and Molina attain the information that will take their lives, and the plots thicken.

Each leading lady discovers her own way of deceiving the man in her life. The warden assists Molina in keeping Valentin fully decieved by providing him with specific bags of groceries. "We have to come up with something to justify your euphoria, Molina. That's definite. I know now, we can requisition some groceries for you, and pack them up the same way, how does that strike you?" (151). Supposedly sent to Molina by his mother, the bags retain the validity of Molina's fib. Valentin never becomes aware. Leni beguiles Werner using her voice and a piano. Werner sends his majordomo down into the cellar to fetch an expensive wine, and then continues outside. Leni approaches the piano to provide herself with an accompaniment to her singing, but instead of doing so, she sets down a record loaded with her talent. She starts the music, and then enters Werner's office to scour through his things. "But she manages to prepare a little bit of a ruse, and puts on a recording of herself that's accompanied by piano too, and meanwhile she goes into his private study and starts rummaging through the papers" (75). Werner and the other men believe that the record is actually Leni, and they never discover her deceit.

Each story sets up a "death trap" for each of the heroines. The warden of the novel orders men to follow Molina once he is out on parole, and if they come upon no information following him, they have orders to print an article in the local newspaper. The article will set Molina up as extremist bait - and once the fish bite, the government will pounce upon them like a starved panther. Either way - Molina is not set up for his benefit: he is merely an unaware pawn. While Leni's situation does not mirror Molina's exactly, she ends up in a "death trap" of her own. She returns to Paris to aid Werner in the search of the maquis. She manipulates the maquis into taking her to one of their establishments by teasing them with her knowledge of the German arsenal site. There, Werner's majordomo reveals to her that he is the head of the maquis, and that he is aware of Leni's affiliation with the Germans. He and his affiliates know that the Germans are behind her; that they are on their way. At that point in time, Leni becomes a pawn in a trap that is anything but beneficial for her. If the Germans realize her betrayal, she is just as safe with them as she is with the maquis.

Death ends a drama in quite the final fashion, and both plots close with one. Ferocious men shoot ferocious heroines down. Molina is killed in a shoot out between the warden's men and Valentin's extremists. The formal report reads, "At that moment, however, several shots were fired from a passing automobile, wounding CISL agent Joaquin Perrone, along with the subject, both of whom immediately fell to the ground" (274). Molina dies by the hands he was attempting to aid. Leni's life comes to a close as she grasps a curtain,
"...she opens a window to escape and right there down below stands the driver assassin, and her boyfriend sees him in time and fires a shot, but the clubfoot, no, I mean the driver, because the clubfoot's already dead back at the museum, then the driver, while he's dying there, manages to get off one shot at the girl" (92).
Leni dies by the hands she affiliated herself with.

The plot lines are not the only component of the novel and film that mirror one another. The characters themselves resemble their corresponding part. Molina and Leni and Valentin and Werner serve as the heroines and their respective lovers.

Though Molina's physical features define him as a man, he and Leni portray the female protagonist of their tale. The people of the world of The Kiss of the Spider Woman see women as creatures that romanticize life - they do not put politics, or any other just causes above love. Molina believes that he is a woman, and goes as far as to describe and refer to himself as such, "Hey, what do you take me for, and even dumber broad than I am?" (89). Molina features his womanly side, "That's how I am, very sentimental" (29). Molina refers to Leni, the woman he desires to be, as exquisitely woman-esque time and time again, even as, "The most divine woman you can imagine" (50). Both of these heroines die embodying their inner selves - ladies who revel in romance. While it is not completely clear that Molina died as the (wo)man he was, Valentin implies that he did so, "I think he let himself be killed because then he could die like some heroine in a movie, and none of that business about a just cause" (279). Only a woman would die so romantically. The last thing Leni did before she died was tell Werner that she loved him, "...she loses whatever strength she has left and says how much she loves him, and how they'll soon be together in Berlin again" (92). She demonstrates her femininity.

The two tales present Valentin and Werner as the manly male lovers. Men in the novel believe in politics and fighting for a "just cause" above all else. Valentin states his masculinity by explaining to Molina, "The great pleasure's something else, it's knowing I've put myself in the service of what's truly noble, I mean.. well... a certain ideology..." (28). A song depicts the waters of a German river, and it brings Werner to tears. He cannot hide his love of his country.  His love bolsters his manliness and is not seen as womanly because men who love their country to an incredible degree are man-gods, and are invincible (55). Physical beings fascinate Valentin and Werner. Valentin always asks, without fail, how the women in the films Molina describes look, "How is her figure? Does she have a good build, or is she more on the flat side?" (50). Leni's aesthetically pleasing figure brings about comments of, "what a marvelous creature [you are]" (55) from Werner's lips. He too, is entranced by beauty.

Though there may be a few cracks, this Nazi propaganda film mirrors The Kiss of the Spider Woman. The plot lines and characters share a copious amount of similar points that it is difficult not to wonder why they correlate so well. In the footnotes on pages 82-95 the Nazi film is recounted in its original theatrical form. Leni goes to Germany, and becomes a Nazi. She returns to France to aid Werner with the German occupation, and at the conclusion of the film, she is not the heroine she is portrayed to be - she also lives. Depending on when the reader reads the footnote, immediately after its notation or after they have finished reading the rest of the Nazi story, the reader will either have known of Molina's betrayal, or have felt betrayed by Molina's retelling. This evidence just further alludes to other happenings down the line. The Nazi film is a narrative hidden in a narrative that reflects its own - a meta-narrative to be discovered for as long as The Kiss of the Spider Woman is explored by readers.