Note: I'll place quotation marks around phrases that float around in common cultural consciousness, "if you know what I mean."
"At one level," you could say, Jasmine presents us with an allegory of the Great Recession, 2008 before and after. She and her Ponzi-scheming husband Hal (Alec Baldwin). "Living the high life," they were, until it abruptly collapsed. Yet, as the movie begins, Jasmine's "sense of entitlement" let's her feel disconnected from her changed (crumpled) situation -- actually she is "split," in shock, suspended or going back and forth between the self that "treats herself because she deserves it" and the bedraggled self that must "reinvent" or "pivot" -- "going forward" while also looking backward. The split is represented by a "geographic" -- New York City (up to the crash), San Francisco (after the crash). And the contrast is depicted in the changes time has wrought, contrasted against her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and their different socio-economic realities. The allegory part is this: there are millions of people in Jasmine's predicament, pre-collapse and post-collapse.
That's enough for one post!
Today's Rune: Possessions.
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