Hear Me Out: ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ is women’s ‘Fight Club’
You might be thinking, what does a film about two disaffected men engaging in vaguely homoerotic street fighting clubs and anarchic destruction of American consumerism have to do with the beloved 1960s rom-com about a fabulously quirky New York socialite?
The answer is nothing really in terms of the plot. But if we dig a little deeper and look at how the two films have been interpreted, or rather, misinterpreted over the years by their legions of fans, then we might actually notice some similarities in how these films are perceived.
In many ways, Fight Club is a film like no other. It has gone from box-office bomb to transgressive cult favourite to a meme that encapsulates everything that is wrong with modern masculinity. It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood movies and books, not only of our generation but in all of film and book history.
Thanks to David Fincher’s gritty, fractured film style, the undeniable coolness (and hotness, let’s be honest) of 1990s Brad Pitt and plenty of quotable criticisms of contemporary American life, a whole generation of men came away from a satirical film thinking masculinity is in decline, it needs a violent outlet, and it’s all the snowflake left’s fault. But those with a little more media literacy and analysis skills understood that the film and the book were very much meant to be a satire.
Written by, at the time, closeted gay author Chuck Palahniuk, the novel was intended as a critique of the American dream and where its failure left disaffected American men, who had followed it all to a T and still found themselves lacking. But instead of inspiring men to question the lies that capitalist America has fed them and trying to find an alternative, it inspired a bunch of actual fight clubs and even a few Unabomber types attempting a Project Mayhem of their own. Plus, who knows how many young men were left believing that they have a right, a necessity even, to take out their aggression however and whenever they want.
But again, what does this have to do with Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Well, I believe that women and the world in general have wildly misunderstood this film in the same way that many have misunderstood Fight Club. Where men idolise Tyler Durdan, his good looks, confidence and self-governance, women idolise Holly Golightly, her Givenchy dresses, glamorous lifestyle and apparent financial independence. As many, many reviews on Letterboxd extol, “I want to live in NYC with my cat and a hot writer neighbour too” or “Being broke wearing Givenchy dresses is a whole mood”.
This is all well and good, until you consider how she’s keeping up this lifestyle: by “entertaining” rich men, gangsters and as she calls them, “rats”. While the movie might have stripped away the overt references to Holly’s profession as a sex worker, we all know what’s going on. Especially considering that one scene where she escapes through her bathroom window to hide in Paul Varjack’s apartment, as her client for the evening threatens sexual violence.
This might all be glossed over in a tongue-in-cheek manner, with a ‘boys will be boys’ and devil may care attitude, but if you look at the facts, it’s all really quite sinister. Even more so when we meet Doc, Holly’s – or should I say, Lulamae’s – husband. He arrives on a Greyhound bus from the sticks to collect Lulamae and bring her back to her ‘family’, whom she joined as the matriarch when she was only 14.
Yes, Lulamae ran away from her life as a groomed, child bride to the big city to become Holly Golightly, who sells her company to save money in order to eventually support herself and her younger brother, Fred. She has adopted a frivolous, fabulous and coldly unattached persona in order to get by in a world that has continually chewed her up and spat her back out.
Not to mention that she has cultivated an obsession with consumerism that’s led her to believe that Tiffany’s is the safest place in the world. While surely Holly Golightly is more than safe in the high-ceilinged, jewel-bedecked store, its history is one marred in controversy, given the colonial history of its famous yellow diamond and who knows what else in the store. Not a brilliant symbol of safety, is it?
Then there’s Holly’s sheer disinterest and almost contempt for the New York Library – as a lifelong bookworm who was taught that the most important thing a woman can do is to read, I was personally offended. Not to mention her dislike of the women around her, like Mag Wildwood, who she makes fun of for being a hick (pot, kettle, black?) and watches on as she drinks herself silly enough to keel over right in front of her at her party. Not much of a girl’s girl then our Holly.
Now, some people might say I need to touch grass or just let people have fun, but it only takes digging a little bit deeper to understand how fully we have been duped by this film. Sure, it’s charming and sweet and beautiful; there’s absolutely no doubt about that. But just like Fight Club, beneath the surface lurks something far more sinister and behind it is a book that has been stripped of its more nuanced, critical elements.
In Truman Capote’s novel, Holly Golightly is a weed-smoking prostitute who seems to be much more in the know about Sally Tomato’s ‘weather reports’ than her film counterpart. She’s also much younger and more irresponsible. By all measures, Capote’s book is much more about the cost of the so-called American Dream than an endorsement of it. Which undoubtedly the movie is.
It might not be endorsing sex work as the way to the American Dream, but it does give the message that the only way for a woman to make it in the world is to rely on the money of more impressive, more successful men. Or that the best thing a woman can do is settle down with a good man and belong to somebody. After all, the film completely erases Fred/Paul/narrator’s homosexuality and turns him into a white knight ready to save Holly from herself, instead of another of Holly’s admirers.
All in all, the book is much more akin to the likes of Midnight Cowboy than it is to Funny Face and in dialling down these elements, the film portrays Holly as something like a proto-manic pixie dream girl. Despite all the terrible things she’s been through and the awful men she’s had to put up with, we’re still here idolising her life and seeking it out decades on.
Of course, the women who idolise Holly definitely aren’t doing the kind of damage that the Fight Club fanboys are, but I think it’s time for a different kind of idol. Maybe the American Dream, or just consumerism in general, isn’t the lifestyle we should actually be rooting for. It’s a cute movie and Audrey Hepburn is as charming as ever, but let’s leave it as a relic of its time, instead of something to be aiming for in 2025.
And don’t even get me started on Mickey Rooney.
