The Phantom of Smooth Talk

     The Smooth Talk experience was like stopping by the local high school to watch their production of Phantom of the Opera and the actor playing the Phantom had a bad encounter with the puberty fairy the night before, such that each song he sings is riddled with embarrassing voice cracks and every other transition he stumbles over the set pieces, occasionally tripping over his own cape and dropping his mask to reveal an acne-ridden, shock-covered face. Only Smooth Talk was 10 times funnier and 100 times more cringe-worthy. Besides the poor acting, this visual representation of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates is to be applauded…up until the ending.

     I appreciate Smooth Talk for its relative truth to the story through the vast majority of the film. Details are preserved so much so that the short story and the film flow in a similar direction (no scenes are reversed or omitted) and even key pieces of dialogue from the short story are repeated in the film. Additionally, the movie provides visual and auditory components, artistic elements that together create a whole dimension that the short story lacks. Brenda O. Daly in her essay “An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the Movies” expresses concern for “spatial limitations and invasions of personal space in Chopra’s film” (Daly). I find this point very intriguing because it makes me consider the unexplored auditory component of the film. Just like we can’t literally see the action when reading the story, neither can we hear the dialogue or the orchestra’s input. Generally, I recall that tense scenes, such as when Arnold was trying to lure Connie from her home, were scored with minor dips and eerie overtones, all elements that relate well in creating fear, a phenomenon that the story alone could not accomplish. Besides creating a mood, these specific tones hold a particular association to this story. Minor chords are generally composed of notes that are close to one another, to create crunchiness. Just as Arnold invades Connie’s space, these minor chords sound louder and louder, and the notes collide with one another just as Arnold’s presence collides with Connie’s.

     However, this dark musical layering does little to compensate for the atrocious ending of the film. In the short story, Oates concludes with the image of Connie drifting from her house, “moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited” (Oates). Readers are left to imagine what happens next for Connie. This absence of information in itself induces that cliff-hanging feeling that makes the story seem so mysterious yet so enjoyable. I held on tightly to the belief that Arnold Friend, a seasoned seducer and assassin, murdered Connie. But for all we know, she was taken to a nearby candy store to buy a bag of jellybeans. In contrast, Smooth Talk abandons all previous notions of the story’s ending in exchange for director Joyce Chopra’s preferred ending. In her conclusion, Arnold takes Connie to a nearby field where he most likely rapes her and returns her home where she has moments of atonement with her mother and her sister. While it is unclear whether Arnold actually rapes Connie in the field, the filler at the end when she returns home to her family is explicit enough to discourage non-literary viewers from imagining their own endings.

     So, what could have made Smooth Talk much more palatable and redeemed its lack of substantial acting is a more open ending. But until another film revival of Where are You Going, Where Have You Been, this awkward-Phantom-esque portrayal will have to do.

Works Cited

Daly, Brenda O. "An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the Movies." The Journal of Popular Culture 23.3 (1989): 101-14. Print.Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where are you going, where have you been?” New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.
Smooth Talk. Dir. Joyce Chopra. Perf. Treat Williams and Laura Dern. International Spectrafilm, 1985. DVD.