Beauvoir The Guru Analysis

Beauvoir's concepts are applied to two different relationships that play a central role in the movie's plot, namely between the guru Baba and Ruth as well as P.J. and the female protagonist. The former relation develops when Ruth first travels to India with her friends. By touching her forehead, the protagonist is put immediately in a trance by the guru. Ruth changes her whole lifestyle, her clothes, her name and stays in India because she thinks that without Baba's presence her life would be completely meaningless. The guru can be classified as the Subject while Ruth is rather objectified. Baba is what Beauvoir calls the Essential One who knows everything about the world and is the centre of meaning and of Ruth's life. The protagonist is part of a bigger group who admires and worships Baba.

The guru is the one in power and can be regarded as the representative of humanity while his supporters can be classified as 'the Other' who have less power and influence and are dependent on the great guru. In Holy Smoke, Ruth is presented as the property of Baba who knows how to manipulate the female worshipper. The relationship between P.J. and Ruth can be compared to the above analyzed confidential relation between her and Baba. Nevertheless, the power relation between the exit counselor and his patient changes throughout the movies. When they first met in the outback, P.J. is presented as the powerful, strong man who is convinced by his ability to revert Ruth. He demonstrates his power in many scenes throughout the movie in order to intimidate the protagonist and to prove his strength. P.J. treats Ruth violently, pushes, shoves and slaps her repeatedly and finally knocks her unconscious at the very end of the movie. Furthermore, the male character makes use of crude language in order to demonstrate his superiority. Like Baba, P.J. is the Subject, the Essential One who needs to reveal the brainwashed girl her faults. From the beginning of the movie onwards, P.J. makes clear that he is in superior position while his patient is an object to him, more precisely an object of sexual desire. Ruth is what Beauvoir calls 'the Body' or 'the Sex'. She is often reduced to her curved body which P.J. can not resist. Moreover, due to Ruth's experience in India with Baba, P.J. regards her as 'the Other', the excluded one whose behavior is abnormal. After a few days in the outback, the power relations between both characters change due to P.J.'s feelings for the protagonist. Throughout the movie, Ruth and P.J. play power games and the female character uses her body as weapon. She defends herself by seducing P.J. Williams over and over again and tries to make him jealous by kissing another woman in a bar. Although married, P.J. becomes weak and develops strong feelings towards Ruth. Love drunk, he becomes the object who is willing to do everything in order to be loved by Ruth. The protagonist even manages to get P.J. wearing a dress and lipstick which clearly weakens his masculinity. All of a sudden, Ruth is the one in power who makes decisions on her own and refuses P.J.'s love at first. By knocking the young girl unconscious, P.J. demonstrates his power again and wants her to experience the consequences of her behavior firsthand. Both relationship analyses finally link to Simone de Beauvoir's concept of the 'patriarchal cultural discourse'. In Holy Smoke, P.J. and Baba are in superior position while Ruth as a woman is inferior due to the representation of her as sexual object.