We’ve all known someone like her. Perhaps even dated one or two. Dinner and a movie and an unending monologue. The chosen few, marriage and family, with the hours passing like centuries. Museum Girl. It sounds almost wistful in the telling, as if she was “that woman” of whom we caught only a glimpse, but a glimpse to last a lifetime. I, a budding art novice, untethered, looking for guidance, only to find a sultry siren who clearly knew her Abstract Expressionism. In some ways, yes, Woody Allen’s reduction of femininity to a single, stupefying symbol, but also that undoubtable allure. Sure, she’s insane, but just imagine the mathematical possibilities. Smart as a whip, but just as likely to end her life somewhere around dessert. The nullification of joy, but the very reason we keep trying despite a thousand and one disasters.
Museum Girl has but one scene. One droning drip of dialogue. But here, some fifty-odd years later, she’s still a heroine of the most fashionable nihilism. We get her, even as we want to get away. Naturally, given her pensive posture, she’s the one we’d first consult if we thought a museum was the place to pick up chicks. Maybe it was, one glorious summer afternoon as the Vietnam War raged, but no more. During our own dark days, the odds of finding romance in a learned hall are very long indeed, if not incalculable. Instead, we’re reduced to dating apps with 1000/1 male/female ratios and a prevailing attitude where even the fatties are insisting on six figures. And even if Museum Girl did transcend time and space and appear before us, out loud and in public, few would dare the attempt. Something about raging toxicity, safe spaces, and a humorless femininity that shut everything down pending further notification.
But Woody was game. Shooting his shot, back when it meant something. “That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?”, he asks, knowing full well the painter’s identity was shared knowledge. Today, a little doubt. A lot doubt, if we’re being honest. “Yes, it is,” she answers. Contact made, there’s reason to continue:
- Woody: “What does it say to you?”
- Museum Girl: “It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.”
Okay then. Sunshine and roses she’s not, but there’s feeling. Purpose. Depressing, yes, but every word seriously considered. Wedded bliss, perhaps not, but fortunately, there’s a lot to consider before entertaining that bit of surrender.
“What are you doing Saturday night?”, he counters, upping the stakes with abandon. No turning back now. “Committing suicide,” she declares, matter-of-factly, as if she’d confused it for “cleaning out my attic.” Naturally, old sly-boots doesn’t miss a beat: “What about Friday night?” It’s the greatest retort in the history of the English language, and perhaps a hundred other dialects to boot. Shakespeare could labor for a million centuries and never pen anything better. Point of fact, it’s the only thing anyone could say to such a declaration without having to resort to jaw dropping incredulity. She wants to die. Seeing this painting was one of the last things she wanted to do. She sees no hope left, and it’s time to go. But a man – the man – thinks maybe, just maybe, she’d want to have sex before her big departure. At this stage, what’s it going to matter? Apparently, it does.
And that’s the joke. A woman has lost all touch with hope and humanity and she’s still unwilling to lay down with you. Museum Girl walks away, perhaps not with pure disgust, but no one believes she’s changing her mind. Maybe she’ll bump it up to Thursday, just to be safe. And that’s the loser’s lament. When you’re down, you’re really down, but just like Mr. Dylan said, “When you think that you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more.” Lonely is one thing, but rejected by the suicidal? Maybe that’s rock bottom, after all. The manual used to say such broads were easy pickings, but maybe that came before they started burning bras.
So why an Unsung? Why, when Museum Girl is now the norm and pretty much femininity’s default position? Like I said, it’s all in the moniker. Museum Girl. Not Tinder Lady, or Bar Babe. A woman who gives up not because she’s strung out, or traumatized, or so steeped in psychosomatic suffering that she’s forced to invent something more ludicrous than fibromyalgia. She sees the world clearly, and says no. Not on these terms. A rational act against an irrational world, chin up and freely defiant. Godless, so what have I got to lose? Now, it’s all melodrama. Rejection. A baby daddy. Or two. A narcissistic impulse to show them all. Here’s to ya, kid. Death with meaning. From an era when we could connect art to our suffering, instead of insisting on the sanctimonious dissection of the artist who created it.
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