Film Fatale: Wanda, Sick of Myself and the Apathetic Woman

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Wanda (1970) directed by Barbara Loden is one of my favourite films. We follow the titular depressed housewife as she leaves her husband and aimlessly travels across her Pennsylvanian mining town before running away with an abusive petty thief. Wanda is apathetic, passive and to all appearances ‘allows’ herself to get into this depressive situation. The audience is left asking why is she doing this? To which there is no logical reason. Wanda’s choices are a form of self harm. Putting herself in bleak situations simply because she can. 

Wanda’s approach to nihilism differs greatly from her male counterpart, her abuser: he needs to dosomething, he needs change. Domineering and controlling, he plots to rob a small town bank. Wanda sits in the passenger seat.

Film critic and author Amy Taubin shared the negative response when showing her students the film during her feminism and film classes, not long after the films release, in Criterion’s article Wanda Now: Reflections on Barbara Loden’s Feminist Masterpiece: “[The class] resented having to spend nearly two hours watching a character who is so passive, who allows herself to be so mistreated. They could not see how the film and Loden’s performance spoke to Wanda’s humanity and to that of the majority of women worldwide who can’t envision a way to fight back.” 

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Taubin’s middle-class and college educated students struggled to empathise with Wanda’s decision to give up. Wanda’s apathy seemed to be misunderstood as being complacent; Wanda - a working class woman from a small town - was part of the wider problem rather than a reaction to the situation she was in. 1970s America saw feminism go mainstream, with Gloria Steinem at its helm – a woman that looked like Sharon Tate dressed up as a librarian, brushing shoulders with Hollywood actors. Jane Fonda was also a high profile activist during this time – an actual Hollywood actor. Although a high profile face can be a positive for getting a movement funding and visibility, this glamourisation of feminism seems like the beginning of the mess we’re in today; neoliberal feminism. 

Third wave feminism has been watered down massively in the public eye. The feminist movement, that once was a symbol of hope, is now in the claws of the neoliberal American agenda.

Third wave feminism has been watered down massively in the public eye. The feminist movement, that once was a symbol of hope, is now in the claws of the neoliberal American agenda. Described by George Monbiot in The Guardian, Neoliberalism is “seeing competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency.” When this is intertwined with socio-political movements - it alienates the participants - diminishing them to useless vessels of capitalist agendas. It can make a movement powerless, intertwining it with products and images.

This is unappealing. Why would a person partake in such a garish, empty ‘movement’ when there’s so much horror going on in the world? The sky is on fire, who cares about pubic hair? War and the climate crisis are too much for the individual to consider. The earnest desire to offer guidance and hope for young women has been defaced in the name of Meghan Trainor and Hilary Clinton.

The goal of liberation is secondary in today's socio-political movements; what comes first is the perception of liberation. The falsehoods of social media and that mouth frothing hunger for a dopamine hit has led rich white women and social-media-only activists astray. With a culture of falsehoods becoming more and more prevalent, me and my peers are urged to give up altogether, to bask in nihilism instead. 

It all paves the way for the rebirth of the apathetic woman, like Wanda, downtrodden from the brutal realities of having no money and even less respect, except now she has balayage and lives in one of the most desirable cities for arts and culture. She’s sad because it’s almost too easy, her emptiness is not motivated by external pain but internal pain. She’s begun a rampage of hurting herself, just to feel something.

2023’s Sick of Myself features Signe, who is the model of a middle class woman hungry for perception - Signe is willing to go to irreversible lengths to get her fix of validation and recognition. Directed by Kristoffer Borgli, Sick of Myself is a practice in self absorption; Signe is filled with self hatred - and audiences love it. 

The Worst Person in the World, another Nordic ‘messy woman’ flick, was a similar smash hit. Young women cannot wait to see another portrayal of a problematic woman to relate to. Although The Worst Person in the World (2022) goes for a more real approach - a middle class white woman feeling countercultural for drinking natty wine and smoking cigs on a weeknight - Sick of Myself explores the lengths and pushes the boundaries of what one could do for validation and sympathy. For anyone disappointed that The Worst Person in the World protagonist Julie wasn’t actually the worst person in the world, Borgli introduces us to Signe.

We’re seeing more and more apathetic women on our screens - handheld and cinemascope - as well as in our literature. Self destructive, lazy and depressive liars who view themselves as the world’s punching bag - no matter how much money their parents send them fortnightly. Think of the boom of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, at first the admiration of disturbed women seemed like a niche corner of the internet - chronically online women bonding over self hate and not looking after themselves. The book's unnamed protagonist desires change, yet her response to this is to sleep. She monologues: “I turned the TV on - ABC7 news - and off. I didn’t want to hear about a shooting in the Bronx, a gas explosion on the Lower East Side, police cracking down on high school kids jumping the turnstiles in the subway, ice sculptures defaced at Columbus Circle. I got up and took another Nembutal.” To do nothing is the answer.

Currently, the apathetic woman genre is almost always acquainted with rich white women. Mostly because women of colour can’t afford to ‘clock out’ in the real world, engaging in social politics is part of life for many. Think Marie Antoniette if she was living in 2023 and instead of having her head cut off, she couldn’t get out of work during the Dover Street Market sale. She gets on her Substack and tappy taps on her MacBook Air about how capitalism sucks. Her Twitter bio refers to herself as a post-Marxist and a whore. 

Wanda is a portrayal of apathy from a working class perspective. Her motivation isn’t self flagellation but rather an act of passive despair. Signe, on the other hand, is the dark sided version. One that is hard to defend but so easy to secretly relate to - what if we were to act upon our most bratty desires in the name of nihilism? Wouldn’t you burn off your own skin for a bit of algorithmic attention too?

Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum