I saw "The Notorious Bettie Page" on Monday night. Gretchen Mol gave an excellent performance. I was pleasantly surprised, given the actress had a lot to overcome after the (inadvertant) kiss-of-death Vanity Fair gave her by prematurely dubbing Mol "Hollywood's New IT Girl," years ago.
The thing that struck me about Bettie (as portrayed in the film), was her odd purity and clarity regarding what she was doing when posing for the racy pin-ups that made her famous. She is portrayed as naive, yet in truth, she was much wiser about the whole process than anyone else involved. She knew she was just posing for pictures, and, though she had moments of doubt about posing nude, she reasoned that Jesus made her, and that nothing Jesus made could be bad.
Mol perfectly conveys Page's incredulity and humor at what she considered the silly "costumes and props" used in the S&M photos she was perhaps best known for. Bettie was not a "Bad Girl," she was just posing by the hour. In fact, it was the audience who "enjoyed that kind of thing" that projected the "badness" and kink onto her image. The people who sought out those photos were only validating and enforcing a concept they already had in their heads.
The goofy reality of the photo sessions (as experience by the posers and photographers) is apparent when viewed from behind the scenes, and especially enlightening when watching actual film footage of Bettie Page, mugging and hamming it up for the the camera. Her awkward expressions and clownish, exaggerated "sexy" poses suddenly make sense.
It reminds me of Jessica Rabbit, from the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" cartoons. Her motto, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." speaks volumes to the fact that our perception is our reality--and only true for us. It seldom has anything to do with the person we are projecting it upon.
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