Books and films
“Time takes revenge on our memories, compressing them and burying them deeper and deeper in the recesses of memory.” Elena Akrita
“The greatest gift is to be able to speak freely.” Lakis Lazopoulos (28/06/2026)
“Being happy or unhappy – is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness – a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.” From This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
The book that has inspired today’s post is Aliki’s Tupperware bowls / Τα τάπερ της Αλίκης by Elena Akrita [born in 1955 in Athens, journalist, writer and Member of Parliament]. I have occasionally watched her on the internet on talk shows or interviews or read an article here and there, but what caught my attention and led me to read the book was its title.
I’m also including two colour pencil drawings I made while writing and reading for today’s post and the next one on parrots and their advanced cognitive and emotional capacities.
In psychology, the Tupperware metaphor basically represents how we compartmentalize thoughts, feelings, problems, memories, or traumatic experiences into separate “boxes”, or Tupperware bowls in this case. It is a psychological defense mechanism that we resort to, especially in childhood, to prevent unwanted material from interfering with our daily lives. The Tupperware lids could be said to be the defense mechanism that seals pain, emotions and desires that we repress or cannot discern, so it’s a bit like storing containers in the freezer or at the back of a kitchen cupboard. However, what is not dealt with and not processed does not necessarily disappear, but lingers somewhere in the depths of our mind and body, and can out of the blue overwhelm us at some point, but mainly affects our behavior, our emotional state and our decisions without us often been fully aware of it. As Lakis Lazopoulos [writer, satirical actor, television presenter and performer, born in 1956 in Larissa] writes in, Other Women Wear Your Dresses, the book he wrote after his wife’s struggle with cancer and death, “There, deep in the unconscious, secret courts are held and I’ll be damned if we even hear a word from them. However, in a strange way, we follow this decision that was made in the court of the unconscious, without often knowing it.”
Of course, Tupperware containers with food may symbolize care and nurture, but in the book they play the role of a diary of sorts for the young heroine, and mainly represent the sealed off and compartmentalised wounds, losses, lost dreams, sadness, emotions, even a buried knowledge of reality, all that Aliki does not want or cannot face.
Akrita situates the story of her characters in the socio-economic and political context of a twenty-year period, from 1980 to 2000, and shows us how these events, to one degree or another, impact their lives. Many readers will remember neighbourhoods of Athens {Kypseli, Phylis and Acharnon, Byronas, Kolonaki), the aesthetics, the atmosphere, the aromas, the pastry shops and sweets of those years, the stamped embroideries with Demise threads, music and films, the two national stars of the cinema and the theater, Aliki Vougiouklaki and Jenny Karezi. The author selects events and incidents of those years, reminds us of how we got here, and shows us how History and the stories of people sometimes collide. She refers to the deaths of both stars from cancer, to the first MacDonald’s in Athens in 1991, to how single-story family homes with gardens were demolished and replaced by blocks of flats, to the first mobile phones, to the three prime ministers who governed the country, to political party processes, to decisive political scandals, to trials of politicians, to the terrorist group November 17, to the burning of the MINION and Katrantzou department stores on the same night, resulting, among other things, in 1000 people being made redundant overnight, to the 6.2-magnitude earthquake that leveled Kalamata on September 13th, 1986, and to the reconstruction of the city, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and many other events, important for the development of modern Greek society.
The main heroines of the book are three women, grandmother Koralia, her daughter Eleni, and her granddaughter, Alice / Aliki, three generations and in a way three recurring stories. Three women, who for different reasons, are raising their children alone, and who despite the adversities and difficulties remain united, as each one helps the next one go a little further, live a little better. Koralia, an old leftist, loves Dimitris Mitropanos’ sad songs, works as an usher at Aliki Vougiouklaki’s theatre and a cleaner at Finos Film, first to raise her daughter and then to support her in taking care of her own daughter, Aliki. Eleni also has two jobs, she’s a shop asssitant at MINION, and in her free time she organizes Tupperware demonstrations. She tells young Aliki that Aunt Tupper sends these bowls from America so that the little girl feels that she too has an extended family.
The stories and lives of the central heroines, who move in the urban environment of Athens, are involved and connected with many other diverse people, as it more or less happens in real life. These people are the present and absent fathers, husbands and mothers-in-law, colleagues, friends, neighbours, high school principals and teachers, classmates, prostitutes, people from the criminal underworld, aspiring politicians, gay boys that are forced or who choose activism or conventional marriages with rich brides, who wear wedding dresses by Loukia [an important Greek clothes’designer] and buy objects from antique shops, and actresses, such as Vougiouklaki, Aliki’s godmother, who, like the good fairy godmother, dressed in pastel colors, appears when the three women need her.
In fact, Akrita’s story echoes one of the actress’s best-known comedies, Heartbeats in the classroom, in which the teenage heroine falls in love with her young professor and they get married, and live happily ever after, if I remember correctly, except that in the book the love story and marriage of seventeen year old Aliki to Andreas, the charming teacher with the many political ambitions, ends painfully. Akrita describes the gradual shrinking of the girl and her life. She writes, “When Aliki raised her head, at first he did everything he could to cut her down to size…. “He didn’t openly forbid anything. But he had a thousand ways to show his opposition….” The young girl will get pregnant prematurely and unexpectedly, will have a miscarriage, will suffer gaslighting, control and irrational manipulative jealousy scenes, and in the end, she will be belittled and physically abused. Little by little, she will be led to isolation, silence and inaction, and will only escape when her life is in danger and with the help of her old school friend and family. In the meantime, during these years, she will remain silent, will take care of the house, will water the flowers on the balcony and watch life go by, and stuff everything that happens in her colorful Tupperware containers that she has had since childhood, when she liked to keep her treasures, small toys, dolls’ clothes, pencils, markers, and beads in them.
Akrita’s book encompasses the stories of the three main heroines, historical events and figures of the era, the subterranean power dynamics, and the partially invisible social games. The author touches on everyday fascism. racism and sexism, often hidden, unconscious at times, social hypocrisy and manipulation games, the prejudices that plagued and still plague people, the rise of social climbers in politics, and more. The book can also be read as a chronology of historical events that marked the whole country and each individual separately, and shows how the personal, the political and the socio-economic are connected by visible and invisible threads. There are many examples, but I will mention two. In the first story, young Aliki, pregnant and pushed by her husband during an argument in the middle of the street, stumbles and falls, while a police officer who is chasing a suspected terrorist, accidentally runs over her. She then bleeds in the middle of the street and has a miscarriage. Here, Akrita creates a scene where citizens encounter History. Specifically, she’s referring to what came to be known as the fiasco of Riancour Street that took place in March, 1992. Perhaps one can also read the event as a symbolic scene where personal psychologies, patriarchy and power, crush a woman and the child she is carrying. Another example is the accident of grandmother Koralia, who is hit by an ambulance while it’s reversing outside the court, where the trial for the high-profile scandal of banker Koskotas was taking place in 1991, as at that time a prosecuted politician was being urgently taken to hospital.
The author, with a dose of humor and sarcasm, also narrates secondary stories and events, painting a mosaic of social practices and narratives – a panic attack and love affair in a stalled elevator, death by a fishbone, a poor stray cat and the “almost cat-killer” neighbour in the next door apartment, the friendly grocer that turns out to be a secret fascist, private schools and the high school principal’s tolerance of bullying and harassment of students, with almost tragic consequences for Aliki’s friend, and meals with friends and family. Regarding these meals, Akrita comments, “The first thing a family meal needs is a family. The people who share it should love each other, not look at each other cross-eyed and say one thing while meaning another.”
But I think that Akrita’s story, even though it has no supernatural horror elements, also reminds us of the very famous and masterfully made American Gothic horror film of 1968, Rosemary’s Baby, starring Mia Farrow as Rosemary and John Cassavetes as Guy, a name that could indicate any man. François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock were the initial candidates, but it was finally directed by the then young Roman Polanski. The actors are excellent, especially Mia Farrow, who also hums the lullaby by Krzysztof Komeda that is heard at the beginning and the end of the film.
Although the film is considered a horror film, essentially it’s a satire and social allegory. It reflects the patriarchal structure of society and the power dynamics, highlighting the oppression, exploitation and violence against women, and the manipulation and control within relational contexts. The film has also been considered an allegory for the culture of rape and the reproductive manipulation of women. As viewers, we will probably wonder if the horror is truly metaphysical, because the scary thing is what the heroine experiences within a suffocating sociopolitical context. In this horror film, the real seems to matter more than the supernatural evil, and we almost forget the Gothic elements that in any case are not particularly scary, and we can feel the injustice and the heroine’s despair as we watch how she is gradually and systematically weakened, undermined, sidelined, drugged, raped, and infantilized and treated as if she were incapable of making decisions regarding her pregnancy or her health.
Like Akrita, the creators of the film, and the author of the book on which it is based, Ira Levin, situate the story of the couple in New York in the 60s. Critics have viewed the film as both a reflection and a symptom of the political and cultural upheavals of an era of opposition to institutions and traditional hierarchies, and when conspiracy theories were rampant. Critics and scholars have commented on how the film takes a critical look at this era, a period of political and cultural changes and clashes of the new with the old, the traditional with the modern, the rational with the metaphysical, good with evil. The film captures the mood of the time, as there are references to the Pope, Catholicism, the Kennedy period, and more. In 1968 when the movie was released in theaters in America, Senator Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, which had sparked protests for Blacks’ rights almost across the country, and the anti-war movement was at its peak, the second feminist movement was demanding rights for women and women’s reproductive rights were a hot topic of discussion, the hippie movement was challenging traditional institutions and values, as well as, organized religion, and turning to mysticism.
Joan Didion’s collection of essays reflecting that era, Slouching towards Bethlehem, originally published between 1965 and 1967 also focuses on that era. Drawing its title from a poem by Yeats, the book explores themes of dislocation and disorientation, existential malaise among the thousands of young people who flocked to San Fransisco, and the darker side of the hippie movement and the era, and the more troubling realities, especially within the context of California in the 1960s, like cultural disillusionment, poverty, crime and violence, gurus and drugs, child neglect and lost adolescents. It includes a variety of characters from cultural icons to housewives, women in prison and teenagers, who have run away from home. Didion comments, “These were children who grew up cut loose from the web of cousins and great-aunts and family doctors and lifelong neighbors who had traditionally suggested and enforced the society’s values. They are children who have moved around a lot, San Jose, Chula Vista, here. They are less in rebellion against the society than ignorant of it….” Later she writes about her own life, “I would like to promise her [her daughter] that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that.”
Didion reports moments, events, images, and details from overheard conversations, chance encounters, fragments of interviews, a brief conversation with a police officer, her experiences with white radicals, people on acid trips and teenagers. This mosaic of random people and instances seem to work well in showing us how parts tell us a lot about the whole. Two powerful images that conclude the essay with the title are that of a five year olf girl on acid and a little boy who has lit a fire and burnt himself, while the adults ignore him as they are trying to retrieve some drugs from the wooden floor cracks. Didion, both detached and immersed, reports the scenes without commentary allowing readers to judge and reach their own conclusions.
To return to the movie, here too, the young woman is isolated, subjected to control, surveillance and victimization by her charming, conniving and ambitious actor husband, in order to fulfill his professional ambitions and secure financial power. His egocentrism and ambition will lead him to immoral compromises and make him an easy target for exploitation and manipulation by their older predatory neighbors, the Castevets, and their cronies. The lack of family ties among the young is also depicted even though Rosemary comes from a large family, in fact the extended family is a structure that is absent from the film, as well as, how the media guides the population on how to think, how to behave and what to buy, and also, determines various choices of the couple. Finally, the price that the older ones demand from the young in exchange for the transfer of power to members of the generation is also demonstrated.
From the beginning of the film we witness scenes of control and betrayal of her trust, as Rosemary is at the mercy of a group of older men, and the women around them, as well as, her husband. Just as in Akrita’s story, young Aliki feels out of place and alone with Andrea’s political circle and acquaintances, so too Rosemary increasingly feels discomfort in her social interactions. Some analysts of the film report that what the heroine suffers at the hands of those she trusts is a classic example of victimization by systematic patriarchy, and that isolation and loss of control are the central terrifying elements of the film as we watch how trust and the roles of motherhood, homemaking, and the natural anxieties of a mother-to-be are turned against her. Some find influences in the work from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. The new apartment of the couple in the film, decorated with care and enthusiasm by Rosemary, is transformed from a dark, gloomy apartment in a historic and infamous apartment building into a bright space dressed in various shades of yellow. In the film, as in the short story, we also watch how the heroine is led to a dead end or escapes reality.
Key themes that the film touches upon are the loss of bodily autonomy, the loss of control and choice within relational and medical contexts. We watch her husband and the surrounding community monitor, interfere and undermine her every choice. For example, they tell her which doctor to go to, they suggest she get rid of the pregnancy books she is reading, they convince her that the pain and weight loss are normal, they give her herbs, they control her food, they throw out her books, they drug her. Other issues that are touched upon are the gradual and systematic isolation from old friends (even their victimization), the ignoring of her objections, the dismissal of her fears as hysteria, and the gradual silencing of Rosemary. A key tool that is used is of course systematic and systemic gaslighting. We could say that the Gothic aaspects (or background of the film) can also be seen as an integral part of the gaslighting process, as on the one hand, when Rosemary finally decides to ask for help, she is not believed since her story sounds like a wild conspiracy theory, and on the other hand, it functions as a kind of veil that disorients her, as it generates fear, confusion and doubts, which all prevent her from understanding what is really going on.
The film, like the book, demonstrates how the personal can be closely intertwined with the broader socio-political, as it makes visible the participation and complicity of the husband, her social environment and the institutions of a deeply patriarchal society. There is a symbolic scene where, after the now heavily pregnant Rosemary has tried to escape, the doctor to whom she has secretly sought help notifies her husband and gynaecologist, who force her into a taxi and bring her back. However, it has been argued that this scene where two men are dragging a mother figure is also an echo of the memory of Polanski’s mother, who was arrested and taken to a concentration camp when he was eight years old. I will refer more to the autobiographical references in the film and the Jewish themes below, which point to an additional reading of the work.
And while some believe that Polanski created a feminist and subversive film in the horror genre, other critics question the film’s feminist perspective, primarily because of Polanski’s controversial personal history and the things he did afterwards. Also, in contrast to the ending of Akrita’s story where the heroine starts a new life with her baby, Rosemary remains trapped, helpless and without a viable choice. It seems as if Polanski has depicted a woman’s worst nightmare. In contrast to the chilling ending of the film that creates a feeling of impasse, at the end of the book Akrita offers us a feeling of relief and hope as the characters move forward, untie knots, stand on their feet again, forgive, reconcile, support each other, make plans. Aliki, with the support of her family, will learn to walk again, heal wounds, with the guidance of a specialist she will open lids, doors and hidden corners in the gardens of the mind, and she will finish school, go to university, she will raise her child and grow along with her daughter.
But before I bring today’s piece to an end, I will briefly refer to the film’s references to the Holocaust and Jewish identity that I mentioned above. Polanski and Levin were both of Jewish origin. There are allusions in the book and the film, such as the line, “The Second World War filled the apartment building again,” alluding to the refugees from Europe that fled to America. The two evil neighbours, Minnie and Roman (Roman Polanski gives him his name), who has changed his name to hide his origins, resemble the stereotypes that existed for Jews during that period. Roman also says about the sinster Jewish physician with the Hebrew name, Abraham Sapirstein, “He’s a brilliant man with all the sensitivities of his much-tormented race.” From this perspective, the isolation, the confinement to an apartment, the fear and distrust, the systematic surveillance and manipulation by an organized and dominant group reflect the experience of Jews and possibly the experience of Polanski’s family. The fear or danger comes from ordinary people, not from monsters or the Devil, and the film reflects how friends, neighbors, even relatives, often acted as informers during the rise of Nazism, and perhaps the postwar anxiety [of the refugees from Europe, the immigrants and others] of survival, assimilation and social advancement in American society.
As with most works of art, whether they are visual creations, written or cinematic stories, they are usually multi-layered and multi-thematic and open to many readings. Each reader, listener and viewer may understand and give meaning to these stories in many different ways. Over time, the understanding of artistic products can change, even for the creators themselves. So, in concluding this passage, I’d like to add that it’s quite possible that there are other readings, opinions or interpretations beyond what I mention or comment on in today’s post, and this is one of the reasons why art is important.
