Yang Yixuan
BIS 339B
Raissa Desmet
10/14/2014
This story happened in a tropical night. It talked about a white woman who killed Jeff Hammond and claimed that she was defending herself. There are two main female actresses in that movie. The first woman is called Leslie. She represents all the features that European women have such as beautiful, frail and transparent. The other woman is called Mrs. Hammond. Her husband was killed by Leslie. She is an Asian woman who wears a traditional headdress during the whole movie. My first impression of her is inscrutable because she always hides in the darkness and acted like a concealing woman which makes people hard to read. However, Leslie displays all her emotions on her face whenever she was happy or sad. I think the reason of this comparison is to make audiences understand the differences between European women and Asian women.
First scene: The first scene I choose to analysis is the beginning part of this movie. It’s a really quiet tropical night. A round moon was hanging in the sky. All native Asian workers are asleep in their outdoor barracks which looks like really sample. They don’t have a good house as Leslie does. This represent that this tropical country haven’t reach the same level as European countries. Suddenly, these workers are awaked up by a gunshot. Leslie shouted Hammond four times until she run out all of the bullets. At first, my guess of this part is she must hate this guy so much. Otherwise, she couldn’t shoot him four times. I also noticed that she didn’t have any emotion when she shot him. In order to render the environment at that moment, the moon has gradually covered by clouds. Darkness was coming on apace. I think this also reflect the changes of her heart. When she looked at the sky, clouds gradually receded and threw a bunch of light onto Hammond’s body. She stared at his body for couple seconds, and looks like she was thinking something. Her husband believed that she wouldn’t get any punishment for that because he thought she just killed a guy who worked for them and she did the right thing to protect herself. This represented people who from this tropical world were living in the lowest class of this society.
Second scene: The second scene I choose to analysis is the last part of this movie. They were having a celebrate party for Leslie, but looks like she didn’t fell really happy. When her husband tried to kiss her, she escaped from him and realized that she couldn’t lie to him anymore. Finally she admitted that she still love the guy that she killed. When love became hate in her heart, she was out of control and did this stupid thing. She said she didn’t want to live anymore. This gave us a hint why she went out and get herself killed. Her husband walked away and leaved her along. At this point, I can tell that her husband must be really sad about his wife because he has been worrying about her all the time and couldn’t sleep for three days. Before she worked out from the door, she looked around her house and looks like she was looking for someone. At this moment, sky has suddenly turned dark just like the time when she killed Hammond. This changes of the sky seems to indicate she is about to die. I am pretty sure that she already saw several dark figurers among the trees, but she still walked to the trees. When she first saw Mrs. Hammond, she wasn’t really surprised as what I expect. It looks like she was waiting for Mrs. Hammond. According to these hints, I would say that she was killed by Hammond is not sudden. She just wanted to get herself killed. In the end, I kind of fell pity for her because everyone was enjoying the party and didn’t know that she was died.
According to what I have read from Inventing Tropicality, I think Mrs. Hammond represents all the features that Asian women have. She also represents the whole Tropical word. She was standing in the darkness waiting for people to find her just like the Tropical word was waiting for researchers to explore it. They are mysterious and also unfathomable. “All nature seemed at enmity with man. Men were prevented from walking in the woods by tygers… and if…they should escape these, they exposed themselves to the view of venomous serpents…”(Inventing Tropicality) In that film, Leslie thought Hammond already forgive her but she didn’t, so she got killed by Hammond at the end. It’s like the Tropical world; we can’t imagine how it looks like and how danger would be without approached to it.
