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Kate & Leopold Commentary continued

Kate & Leopold on modern society

The movie Kate & Leopold points out how our scientific, goal-driven, literal-minded society is out of balance. This was part of the director’s intent in making the movie. The movie also speaks to how many people feel about their work in our unbalanced society. When Kate says that Sunday is “poisoned” because it’s the day before Monday, when she has to go back to work, that echoes how many people feel. Their work doesn’t fulfill them. It wears them out, makes them tired, so they need a rest. They are essentially prostituting themselves to their job, since they feel they can’t afford to lose it.

Kate’s prostitution to her work becomes clear in the scene where her boss, JJ, is having dinner with her and coming on to her. Kate starts becoming flustered when she realizes that JJ is trying to initiate a sexual relationship but she doesn’t dare risk making him mad. So she tiptoes around the situation, asking what their relationship really is. Leopold then arrives and says to JJ what she cannot say—“to court a woman in one’s employ is nothing more than a serpentine effort to transform a lady into a whore”. Kate has prostituted herself to her work already, by doing what she does not love to make money, and now JJ is trying to “prostitute” her. She doesn’t feel she can say “no” to him or risk making him angry. The next day at work, she is continuing to apologize to JJ for the incident, feeling that she is bad because of Leopold’s behavior. Yet all Leopold did was stand up for her and speak the truth. Leopold merely revealed the lies that JJ was telling, highlighting his false pretensions.

This incident shows how the ego’s connection with the animus gives strength to speak the truth, to stand up to “power devils” and say “no”. It gives one inner strength, to protect from the depredations of those who would steal power or treat one in an inappropriate way. Kate’s boss, JJ, represents the inner power devil that tells lies and tries to control the person. The power devil appears both internally as well as in the outer world, like JJ. A power devil can be very insidious—it appears to be truthful and reasonable but it tells lies and leads one to be untrue to oneself. This also shows an inappropriate way for the male/female to interact, where one is trying to impress the other but not being sincere. The same thing can happen internally, where the inner masculine or feminine is approached in the wrong way, leading to distance rather than union. Leopold here serves as the function that corrects this behavior.

The other principal characters round out the story by showing other archetypes or aspects of humanity and how society reacts to them. For instance, there is Kate’s brother Charlie, the creative, unemployed actor. Like Charlie, the creative force inside ourselves is often unemployed or underemployed as well, since we don’t value it. We usually value knowledge and technology more than creativity. Then there is Stuart, Kate’s ex-boyfriend, the genius visionary. He can see beyond the surface appearance most people are locked into and as a result he ends up in an insane asylum. This would most likely happen to someone if they really discovered time travel like Stuart. Fortunately he finds one person who believes him and releases him. Charlie and Stuart then bring together Kate and Leopold at the end. That would suggest that we need to tap into the creative side of ourselves and have help from other archetypes to unite with the inner masculine (or feminine, for men). This is not something that can be accomplished alone by the ego’s willpower.

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Personal reaction to Kate & Leopold

This is the kind of story that can inspire one to take a hard look at their own life so I will describe some of the considerations and changes it prompted in me. This will perhaps resonate with other people’s experiences of their lives as well, given that many people are out of balance and are not happy with their jobs.

This story put me more in touch with an incredible longing inside myself, to connect with lost parts of myself. I identified strongly with the Kate character in the movie—it’s like the story of my life—striving to be like a man, to succeed in work, but feeling unloved and cut off from what I really want and not able to enjoy life. When she says that Sunday is poisoned because it’s the day before she works, that hit me in the gut because that’s exactly how I feel. I only feel truly alive after work hours, in the evenings and weekends when I am doing stuff I enjoy, stuff that makes me feel alive and enthusiastic. I feel shut down and gloomy when I have to go back to work, particularly after a vacation—that’s when it is most noticeable. I remember noticing this after my first vacation during my first computer network administration job years ago. When I returned to work I was very sad and miserable, I felt shut down. It’s like a vital part of me shuts down when I’m at work and I am just using my masculine side and not my feminine, emotional side. Sometimes I can literally feel myself shutting down and switching into the technical, masculine, efficient mode. Not that there is anything wrong with this mode—it is a necessary side of ourselves. But I have operated from it as my primary mode and not balanced it out with the other side. Unfortunately, society is likewise unbalanced and rewards those who are like this. I am now working at opening up more to my creative, feminine side.

When Kate is in the elevator going to the company dinner, instead of being elated about her promotion, she is sad because she misses Leopold. When she sees his valet’s name, Otis, on the elevator, it brings tears to her eyes. It brought tears to my eyes as well, as I could identify with her feeling of being cut off from a part of herself. Like her, I have not integrated the positive animus into myself and I have been listening all my life to “power devils” tell me who I am, what I am feeling and what I should do. While working on these issues in my dreams with a dream analyst, I find additional inspiration from movies like this that dramatize the process of uniting with the animus.

When Kate gives the speech on the pier about paying dues all her life, being tired and needing a rest, that’s exactly how I have felt about my career. I have been doing work all my adult life that has not fulfilled me, just to make a living, since I have to work to survive. But the work has just generally been what I could get given the job market and my skills, rather than what brings me joy. I have always been “settling” for what the world has offered me.

My pursuit of first a scientific and then a technical career has been due in part to the fact that I have been psychologically “married” to my father and have pursued a line of work that he would approve of and that would be similar to his work. Also, my mother felt stifled in her typical woman’s role and thus instilled in me a desire to have a “non-feminine” career and forego having children. I felt proud to be a “computer geek”, to do non-feminine work. I felt that made me more valuable to men and society. However, my heart is no longer in it, which becomes apparent when I connect with someone whose heart is in it and realize I no longer feel as they do. At one time my heart was into it but I have grown tired of it after 12 years. And having done essentially the same job for the past 7 years (for 4 different companies), there is no longer much opportunity for challenge or creativity in it. Since the other opportunities at work are equally technical, I am pursuing creative tasks outside of my job to bring more balance into my life.

When I was a child, I remember having a desire to work with dogs and to do creative writing, among other things, but then I shifted goals to the more scientific career of wildlife biologist, which never panned out. I did not enjoy it when it got into the nitty gritty technical details and I found no work in the field. To my mother’s credit, she suggested in high school that I be a journalist rather than a biologist, since writing came so much easier to me than biology. However, I am too introverted to be a journalist (or at least a newspaper reporter) and I lack interest in politics. So after receiving a biology degree in college, I ended up working as a secretary, which was pure drudgery but paid the bills. I later got into computer work, which stimulated my brain and allowed me to express creativity at times. Now it has become very technical, with little opportunity for creativity and I am bored with it. I do enjoy creating web pages but not when it gets into the real technical aspect of it. I realize my heart is really in doing writing, healing work and working with animals.

One of my recent creative impulses has been to write about movies—how they reflect our inner selves, retell mythological stories and apply to our lives. The movie Kate & Leopold touched me so personally that it impelled me to write about it. Given the unbalanced nature of our society, I feel it has important messages for everyone about becoming a whole person.

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Movie Synopsis

This synopsis gives away all the plot points of the movie. Please watch the movie first before reading this if you don’t want to have the story “ruined” for you. You can rent it at most Blockbuster Video stores or buy it online.

Leopold is an English Duke living in New York City in 1876, about to be forced to pick a rich woman to marry, though he loves none of them. Stuart is an inventor in 2001 who figures out how to travel in time by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. He travels back to 1876, where he watches his great-great grandfather, Leopold. Leopold pursues Stuart and ends up accidentally going back with him to 2001. Kate McCay lives downstairs from Stuart, her ex-boyfriend, and is a market researcher, successful in her work but unfulfilled and lonely. When Stuart falls down an elevator shaft and is taken to the hospital, Kate and her brother Charlie end up befriending Leopold, though neither of them believes he is from the past. Kate is looking for an appealing spokesperson to do a margarine commercial at work and realizes Leopold is the answer. After the focus group watches Leopold for the commercial, Kate is mugged while hailing a taxi. Kate runs after the mugger. Leopold grabs a horse from a tourist horse and carriage, picks up Kate and races after the mugger, trapping him and astonishing Kate.

Kate’s boss invites her to dinner and comes on to her, making her uncomfortable. Leopold and Charlie show up and Leopold’s remarks show the boss to be a liar and a cad, embarrassing Kate. Leopold invites Kate to dinner the next night, in apology. He puts on an exquisite dinner on the rooftop, wowing Kate, and they fall in love. Leopold shoots the margarine commercial and discovering that it tastes awful, threatens to quit. Kate and Leopold fight over this. Stuart gets out of the hospital and tells Leopold he must return to the past, which he does. Kate receives the big promotion at work she has dreamed of. That night, Kate goes to the fancy company dinner, which is held at the townhouse where Leopold lived in 1876. She mopes around the rooms, missing Leopold.

Meanwhile, Leopold is attending the ball in 1876 where he has to choose a wife from a bunch of silly, rich girls who he has no interest in. Kate’s promotion is announced at the dinner and she starts to give a speech. She looks down on the podium and sees photographs of herself in 1876, taken by Stuart, and realizes she wants to be with Leopold. She races off with Stuart and Charlie to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge before the time portal closes. She leaps and ends up in 1876, where she has to race to Leopold’s townhouse before he announces his choice of bride. She makes it there just in time. Leopold is astonished to see her and announces her as his bride. They kiss and begin dancing a waltz together.

Kate & Leopold kiss

Picture © 2001 Miramax Films. All Rights Reserved.

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