With the exception of Inception, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and the Harry Potter series, I like to think I don’t watch movies because of the hype that surrounds them. Or I at least don’t watch them when the hype is still fresh. So I felt safe watching The Lovely Bones the other day considering that it has been about a year since the movie has been released. While I certainly did not like the movie, I can’t say I absolutely hated it. It is more appropriate to say that the film frustrated me.Before I begin my rant I suppose it’s necessary to provide a brief synopsis of the film. Essentially, Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl, is murdered by her neighbour George Harvey. Instead of “moving on” to heaven, Susie stays in the “In-Between” world and watches as her family and murderer deals with and tries to move on from her death. When her murderer is brought to justice, when her family is no longer fragmented and when she fulfils her dream of kissing her crush (which she does in a very Ghost-like moment wherein she inhabits the body of another girl) Susie is able to leave the In- Between and go to heaven. The end.
Now, I haven’t read the novel and there is a good chance that I won’t enjoy it if I do decide to read it, but even so, I can still tell that the film is a bastardization of the book. The characters are one-dimensional, failing to portray the complexity of grief and of losing a child/sibling (VERY disappointed in Mark Wahlberg who I generally enjoy watching onscreen), the motives of the murder are nonexistent, making George Harvey a crude villain (although I do admit that Stanley Tucci does a great job considering the limitations of his character), the in-between world itself is garish and cartoonish, and the overtly sentimental tone of the overall film (exacerbated by the unnecessary narration and maudlin script) either forced me to change the channel for a few seconds or yell “PUH-LEASE” or “COME ON” at the TV. However, none of these aspects irritated me as much as the stereotypical character Denise Le Ang a.ka. Holly Golightly, a girl Susie meets in the In-Between.
I was upset by the fact that Denise Le Ang, an East Asian girl, is a type of “Magical Minority” character in that she just appears to Susie with knowledge of the In-Between and subsequently serves as Susie’s guide through this ethereal world, which is characteristic of Magical Minority characters, such as Bagger Vance (Will Smith) in The Legend of Bagger Vance and Cash (Don Cheadle) in The Family Man. In relation, I was irked by the fact that Denise was allotted the minority best-friend role. Although it is revealed by the end of the film that she was also a victim of George Harvey’s, throughout the narrative, she is given no back story, no desires, no wishes – her only goal is to help Susie move on from the In-Between and into Heaven. She has absolutely no personality or character. Even when the film reveals that Denise died at the hands of George Harvey, Susie finds out for herself and through her narration, tells the audience. Denise isn’t even given enough agency to tell her own story – a robbery that reminded me of Edward Said’s Orientalism in which he summarizes the maxim of imperialism as being “they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” I do not think such a reading of Denise’s character is too much of a stretch or too heavy-handed, for film does perpetuate these types of sentiments, perhaps unconsciously, but they’re still present and prevalent and they still come through.
It is true that overall The Lovely Bones is a one-dimensional and, despite the heavy subject matter, almost frivolous film that contains a variety of stock characters from the father, Jack Salmon, to the murderer, George Harvey, to Susie herself. However, none of these characters are stereotypical and therefore none of these characters are complicit in perpetuating typecasts and imperial limitations in relation to racial minorities. I cannot say the same for Denise "Holly" Le Ang.
