Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Troll 2

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the last of my critiques.


Film: Troll 2 (1990)
Subtext analysis: Feminism


Troll 2 is ostensibly the story of a little boy in a normal American family who is getting warnings from his dead grandfather that all is not right in chosen vacation-spot, the town of Nilbog. It turns out Grandpa Seth is right: Nilbog is 'goblin' spelled backwards, you see, and everyone in the town is a vegetarian goblin who wants to turn humans into plants to eat them.

In truth, of course, Troll 2 is about so much more. It is about an oppressive family structure brought under an objectifying, feminizing gaze in the absence of a sufficiently effectual patriarchal figure.

The film begins with a subversion of the fairy tale romance, an androcentric form geared for the male mind to view the woman as a sex object prize. In this version, a "boy" named Peter meets goblins in the woods and instead of fighting he begins to run away. After falling and going unconscious, he awakes to a beautiful female. Here the narrator tells us, "Peter was bewitched by that gaze, and it was that look that deceived him." We are instantly, in this prologue of the film, brought face-to-face with an alternative gaze, the female gaze. The male narrator presents it as a threat. Indeed, the beautiful female turns out to be a goblin, who turns Peter into an edible plant for she and the goblins. The male is made into an object that can be consumed by the feminine gaze. This whole fairy tale is a cautionary tale told by a grandfather to his grandson--the males preparing themselves against subversive feminine power.

Tellingly, the next moment the boy's mother walks into the room, flicks on the switch, and the grandfather disappears. She informs us the grandfather is dead. The patriarch is absent. She also warns the boy to stop fantasizing about his grandfather's presence. In this family, the mother is clearly dominant. The father is an ineffectual softy: a sissyboy. Our introduction to him is reclining in a feminine pose chatting on the phone, as if Fragasso were worried we would be unable to figure it out on our own. The other family member, the boy's sister, Hollie, is shown lifting weights: a powerful female, she dominates her dorky boyfriend Eliot and fights for authority over her father.

With this all set up, this androcentric family unit, as well as an RV full of Eliot's friends--teenage boys told by Eliot that Nilbog is full of lonely, sexually liberated, beautiful women, making them perfect representatives of the agents of female objectification--all head out to Nilbog.

The reality is that Nilbog is the goblin kingdom. From the first fairy tale prologue, goblins are already associated with feminine subversion of the patriarchal order and the male gaze. This is emphasized when we discover that the queen of the goblins is, in fact, an ancient druid sorceress who uses the powers of Stone Henge. This is important, because it was the role of Hellenic-Christian culture that gave women in society a role of subordination. Pre-Christian Europe gave women a stronger role in society. This sorceress is therefore effecting a purgative solution to the Patriarchal-Christian problem of society.

The apogee of this role the Goblin Queen plays is the most stunning set-piece of the film. One of the teenage boys watches a television screen of dancing women. This is a perfectly exemplification of what Mulvey calls the Male Gaze. Women are being displayed as sex objects for his scopophilic gratification. Suddenly the television is taken over by the powers of the Goblin Queen, who has made herself look particularly young and seductive for this conquest, strutting provocatively with a cob of corn. She breaks the forth wall and demands the teen leave the RV to find her, which he does. She takes complete control of the situation, dominates him, makes him take her corn in her mouth--as if she were taking phallic power of the situation. His gaze is destroyed under a swell of popcorn--symbolic of cinematic voyeurism--while she prepares to kill him.

In the meanwhile, two of the teenage boys are dealt with by the Queen, turned into plants. One boy, to emphasizing the impotence, emasculating force the Queen turns on him, asks, "And why can't I move? There must be a logical explanation for all of this." Logic, the tool of masculine intellectual domination, fails; this character, Arnold, is made into the Queen's houseplant for her to gaze on, "my pretty flower." The food the goblins give is, thus, a subverting force, feminizing: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

The family is also being terrorized by the goblins, initially in the guise of townsfolk. As long as the mother is in charge of the family, they are useless to fight back. The only force in the diagetic context with power to fight the goblins is Grandpa Seth--the ghost of patriarchy. He gives the boy, Joshua, the tools to fight against the goblins. Eventually, all the family members give in, ending with the mother, and they even hold a seance to summon Grandpa Seth's aid. This is a reversion of the family unit to patriarchal forces, a counter-reformation against the subverting forces of femininity.

Grandpa Seth brings the boy to touch the stone of Stone Henge, which takes power away from the Goblin Queen. They must do this all as a family. Grandpa Seth emphasizes this is the power of 'goodness' over the goblins. The notion of 'goodness,' a Christian notion, which has historically demanded female docility, virtues of caring and submission. The few moments we are allowed to see into the goblin mind, however, give us good arguments that their way has a goodness of its own.

After defeating the goblins in this way, the family attempts to return to a mundane life. Immediately upon entering the driveway, the father blandly states he must check in at the office. The seed of subversion has been sown, however. Entering the house, the mother is turned into a plant and quickly consumed by goblins before Joshua's eyes, "They're eating mom!" The last line is, "Do you want some, Joshua?" Does Joshua want to see things with new eyes, risk accepting the goblin point of view?

The maker of this film, Claudio Fragasso, appears to ultimately sides not with the hegemonic forces, but with the subversive, alternative forces--the goblins. On the other hand, it is worth considering that the character of Grandpa Seth, and his grandson Joshua, are the most sympathetically viewed characters in the film. Grandpa Seth, the missing patriarch, taints the entire world with his absence. There is a sense that, "If only Grandpa Seth were here," the goblins could not possibly triumph.

Despite the ambiguities of Fragasso's position, or perhaps because of them, this film is especially worthy of consideration as a work of critical cinema, a cinema critical of the normal, voyeuristic cinema that has dominated cinema from the beginning. This film is potentially empowering and consciousness-raising. Enthusiasts of feminist filmmaking, or of experimental, alternative forms, should hold Troll 2 in high regard.