Week 6 – Bananas

Bananas opens with a very satirical tone. The first scene gives a perfect example of satire with the American reporter who introduces the movie by reporting from San Marco’s, “a Latin American country” as he says. He is reporting a political broadcast for “wide public sports” which I thought to be rather comical. His descriptions of the occurring assassination and coup d’etat that is about to occur in this mythical Latin American country sound exciting, the reporter really does sound like he is sports anchor (which we also see at the end of the film). Bananas, to me, was a satire towards politics but also Mellish’s sex life.

Allen’s character, Fielding Mellish works as a product tester. We are introduced to him in the second scene where he is testing out the executizer, a machine that helps executive Americans get their daily exercise because there simply isn’t enough hours in the day. While he is testing out this product we can see that he is having a difficult time. Once he is in a change room with his co-workers he vents out to them that he is unhappy and that isn’t the job for him. His co-workers seem to not care or perhaps be irritated with him telling him that they have to hear this every day.

In the next scene, Mellish is in a magazine store. The camera focuses on sex magazines and Mellish is looking at them but he tried to be discreet because there is a lot of people around. An older woman seems to be staring at him and he becomes embarrassed and pretends to buy other magazines listing the names. When he reaches for one of the sex magazines he says “I’ll put this in there too”, believing that no one knows until the cashier yells out “How much is this ORGASM?!”. Mellish (or Allen) tries to find a reasonable explanation as to why he is purchasing this magazine by telling the people in the store that he is “doing a sociological study on perversion about advanced child molesting”. I found this to be quite interesting for the fact that the very little I know about Woody Allen is that there has been controversy about him having sexually abused his ex-wife’s daughter in the past.

Later on in the film, we meet Nancy, a philosophy student who knocks on Mellish’s door asking him to sign a petition to stop the US government in helping the San Marcos dictatorship but instead help fund the rebels. Nancy becomes Mellish’s love interest very quickly which eventually ends even faster. Before the break-up scene we see Mellish in a therapy session where he is explaining his sexual frustrations as a boy and problems he had with his parents. I’m not entirely sure why this was added into the film but it continues with a reoccuring theme of Mellish (or Allen’s) issues with his sex life. When Nancy breaks up with Mellish she tells him that she thinks it’s best that they no longer see each other because she feels that “something is missing”. Mellish doesn’t understand why she would do such a thing and starts listing attributes that perhaps might make her feel the need to end things. Although everything he is saying isn’t the reason Nancy ends up telling him that he is immature emotionally, sexually, and intellectually. For this reason Mellish leaves the US and goes to San Marco’s, where he ends up becoming the president of the country. Now, as a disguised president he meets Nancy again where she falls for him. They both sleep together and he afterwards reveals his true self where Nancy says yet again “I knew something was missing”.

The last scene where Mellish and Nancy get married is rather strange. Their marriage is consummated by having intercourse infront of an audience and is covered by the news reporters at the beginning of the film. Again, the reporter is announcing as if it were a sports broadcast. He later interviews the couple and asks how things went. Nancy replies with saying it was quick and that Mellish was out of shape and that it could have been better. This shows the reoccuring theme of Mellish’s sexual incompetence or frustrations. Which I think could be actual perceptions that Allen has with himself. Overall, I thought that Bananas was very rare but I also enjoyed it for that fact. Another reason that one of my favorite films is a Woody Allen film so I just enjoy seeing his work.