Old video about Coppola’s previous works.

Last year, I discovered this YouTube channel, Brooey Deschanel. The film analyses by Brooey always blow me away with how intricate she draws connections between different works into one coherent argument, analyzing the narrative structure and character development into the wider political impositions made by the respective films. Since Priscilla, the new Sofia Coppola movie about Elvis’s wife and her experiences throughout her relationship with him, Brooey released another amazing Sofia Coppola analysis video. I linked her previous one as well because of how differently she depicted Sofia Coppola’s narrative troupe, the “Guilded Cage,” between Priscilla and her previous works. In “The Politics of Pretty,” Brooey praises this narrative framework, which Coppola includes in most of her coming-of-age films, claiming its relatability and accurate depiction of the feelings of girl adulthood. The protagonists are placed in a world of pretty colors and delicate aesthetics; however, these elements are there as indications of isolation; it is these elements of girlhood that trap the protagonists into a world they can’t seem to escape. In Brooey’s first Coppola video, she points out this gilded cage Sofia paints out their significance for each of her characters in her films, then uses it as a counter to Coppola’s various male critics of her works. Brooey argues that this idea of the Guilded Cage is crucial to understanding Coppola’s protagonists and storytelling. In the second video, Brooey changes her outlook on Coppola’s Gilded Cage. Instead of praising this, Brooey points out its restrictions on the full character development of the female protagonists in the context of Priscilla. Additionally, Brooey argues how Coppola’s iconographic ideas are presented through her cinematic work. However, they do help with her accurate depiction of girlhood, which can be used against themselves to exploit the idea of girlhood depending on who the gaze is intended for. These arguments are presented through the introduction of “foreclosure of adulthood,” which Brooey points out is a pinnacle of Coppola’s movie endings: as soon as the female protagonists finally reach freedom and escape their gilded cage, the movie ends. It’s like they never escape the gilded cage in the first place because once they do, they “figuratively” die. Who are these characters away from suffering? We never find out. Each of the videos is very rich in content with specific examples of the broad arguments I explained above; I would highly recommend checking these two out as well as some of Brooey’s other videos which are also highly analytical. 

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