Rosalie: Marxism

At first glance, Rosalie might be seen to contain Marxist themes with its story of a girl working in customer service who slowly becomes a machine. My original intention of a straight-forward superhero story no doubt got muddied by the reality of the girl being trapped inside the capitalist system and the painful "reality" of that experience. I wanted to tell a RAH- RAH feel good superhero story but instead, what came out was this dark David Cronenberg body horror story. Marxists would say, ah-hah, that's the nature of a story about working in the capitalist system.

Thing is -- look away now -- I don't really care much for Marxism. To me, it's just student politics. Things like free healthcare, commitment to housing, employment etc. that's just moral values -- it has nothing to do with Karl Marx. My interpretation of Marxism, really, is of violent revolutionary uprising -- there's nothing of the kind in Rosalie.

The scene in which she's in the bathroom, looking at her face changing, seeing the blue paint over her cheeks; sure, that has Marxist implications. It's also what happens to any teenager -- bodily changes -- and it's doubly inconvenient when you're at work.

It's true that Rosalie's workplace -- the diner -- resembles one of the worst jobs I ever had with its single disabled toilet cubicle; that would be working at a Texaco station Subway. This was really my interpretation of what a shit job would be; it wasn't intended to be any kind of political statement.