The Making of a Cat Lady…or Bag Woman
Those stereotypes are rooted in reality. Women with way too many cats that eventually act as metaphor for their withdrawal from society and those women who really should more accurately be termed shopping cart women who merely trade in hoarding cats for hoarding everything else do exist. And, what’s more, they do not come into the world acting out those stereotypes. At her best, it may be utterly impossible to imagine Jasmine either of these two sides of the same coin that inhabit American with great frequency. At her worst, however—as in the film’s closing shot—it is not just easy to imagine, it has become difficult to imagine such a future, or something like it, does not lie in wait. All the lonely, solitary, obsessive-compulsive women who have disengaged from society through whatever guise had completely different lives before reaching that point. Jasmine’s story can be viewed thematically as just one of the countless many.
You CAN Be Too Rich
They say that you can be neither too rich nor too thin. Of course, the light shed upon bulimia and associated eating disorders since the 1980’s make the latter obsolete as even an empty statement. But most people still fervently cling to their belief that the former is not opinion but a matter of fact. The stories that surround Jasmine as well as her own illuminate the lie. As a matter of fact, you absolutely can be too rich. The problem, however, is that what qualifies as too rich literally varies from person to person. Some people blessed with tremendous wealth are motivated to use it. Most, alas, choose the path followed by many of the miserably unhappy characters in this story.
When one reaches a level of income that subverts ambition, motivation, and imagination and instead begins to engender a recurrence of despair, entropy, self-delusion and—importantly—shifting the driving force behind everything over to the fear of losing that wealth, the result is something that has actually been given a name for some time now: the idle rich. People who accumulated enough wealth that they no longer can even come up with a way to enjoy it other than constantly trying to protect it are doomed to become as disconnected from reality as Jasmine. Not in the same way, of course, but definitely to the same degree in a great many instances.
Middle-Aged Female Alcoholism
How many times in the movie is Jasmine shown holding a glass of wine? Or drinking wine? Or being in the presence of wine? Too many to account. Make no mistake: Jasmine’s problem is not that she’s an alcoholic. Her demons go way deeper, but that’s the point. Someone dealing with a hell buried that deeply in their soul should not even be allowed to smell wine, much less consume it enormous quantities. A huge problem exists in America that is being completely ignored because it has been deemed “acceptable.” How many middle-aged women of your acquaintance can you name who do not consider a glass or two of wine a day—literally every single day—no different from a day without orange juice.
And here’s the dark kicker: an enormous chunk of segment claiming to drink a just a glass or two are in reality consuming something closer to half a bottle a day the greater part of the week. And, in fact, this phenomenon is hardly limited to America. If she had someone in her life strong enough to simply take the wine glass out of her hand at least half the time they see it, the odds of Jasmine turning into a cat lady or bag women would definitely improve despite all her other mental health issues. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, alcohol is not cause Jasmine’s bigger problems, but it sure as heck also is not the solution to those problems, either.
