The still dis-stills. It does not so much give us a frozen moment of a continuous action (like a freeze frame) as it condenses an entire drama. The stills are dense with suspenses and danger, and they all look as if they were directed by Hitchcock. The invariant subject is The Girl in Trouble, even if The Girl herself does not always know it. In Barbie-doll garments, in the suburbs or at the beach or in the city, The Girl is always alone, waiting, worried, watchful, but she is wary
of, waiting
for, worried
about, and her very posture and expression phenomenologically imply The Other: the Stalker, the Saver, the Evil and Good who struggle for her possession. She is the Girl Detective; she is America's Sweetheart; she is the Girl We Left Behind, soft and fluttering in a world of hard menace (...).
The Girl is feminine to her fingertips, Vulnerability is her middle name, and yet she has all the great virtues: bravery, independence, determination, spunk and tremulous dignity. (...)
Each of the stills is about the Girl in Trouble, but in the aggregate they touch the myth we each carry out of childhood, of danger, love, and security that defines the human condition where the wild things are.
ARTHUR C. DANTO
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