Amy's Feminist Manifesto in The Movie 'Gone Girl'

Marriage is a commitment between the two people. Marriage is about trust and respect. When people think about marriage, people tend to fantasize it. In this case, marriage is nothing but deception and misery. Amy Elliot Dunne is an intelligent, beautiful girl who has an interesting personality. Amy perfectly portrays a female character that makes the audience fall in love with her. One day, she went missing on her fifth marriage anniversary, this morning, leaving a game of scavenger hunt for her husband and the police to find. With each clue they find, it is leaning more towards the suspect of her husband, Nick, to be the murderer. Gone Girl reveals how Amy shows her feminist manifesto to create a female role more complex than any other women in movies.

The transition from Amy’s disappearance to revealing her plans depicts Amy’s control over Nick and the public’s opinion. She sets up a very detailed plan and finds her way to execute them. Amy disciplined herself to a fake crime. “You need to package yourself so that people will truly mourn your loss. And America loves pregnant woman” (Milchan). She befriended her pregnant neighbor and stole her urine to fake her pregnancy. She secretly created some financial problems and used that money to buy a cheap getaway car from craigslist. She slowly manipulates her neighbor and fill her with lies of Nick. She makes her believe that Nick is a violent and bad husband. Amy makes a fake diary to mislead the cops in another direction. This creates a mask for her, leaving her to have more options to plan with. She wanted the cops to find the diary to sabotage Nick and his persona. This frames Nick to be a cold-hearted human being. A reporter reports his story by misleading his title, making Nick look like a bad person. This helps Amy even more by changing the public's opinion of Nick. At this point, Nick’s reputation is badly damaged, and Amy’s plan is starting to take place.

While Amy was on the move, she was executing her plan, while keeping an eye on Nick. First, Amy was faking her death, so she had to look a bit different to not be recognized in public. She enters a public restroom at a gas station to change her appearance. She cut her hair, dyed her hair and her eyebrows, and washing herself up. While on the road to the store, she sees a lady driving by herself. It indicates that Amy can be confident and independent too. Then later she sees a couple driving and it shows that the couple is a past image of her and Nick. Amy enters a grocery store to buy food and fake glasses to mask her appearance from the public. She then later goes to a motel, as she is in her hotel, she checks the quality of the room and finds that it is not to her liking. Later at night, when Amy is washing up, she tends to find a hammer, and then suddenly hits her face with the hammer. It shows that Amy is hardcore and is willingly to go all out to complete her plan. Amy befriends her neighbors and they soon find out that she is the missing person on T.V. They go into her room, threatened her and steal her money. This leads to her making another plan, because she is financially broke. When Amy is checking her calendar, the audience can see that Amy is slowly moving her death date further and further. This shows that Amy doesn’t want to end her life. She wants to keep living but cannot face the reality of it. Amy feels that she is empowered to her own liking and is very independent. She shows that she can get things done her way by herself without anyone.

In addition, Amy’s “cool girl” scene is one of the most feminist scenes, and relatable scenes for other feminists. In her “cool girl” monologue, “You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe this kind of women exist and might kiss them” (Milchan). This is a scene that allows viewers to infer that she was only playing the cool girl to satisfy Nick’s expectations. People expected the man to be the lying one, but Amy was deceiving Nick all along. She had Nick on the palm of her hand. She also mentions, “maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girls loves seitan and is great with dogs” (Milchan). Amy emphasized the fact that most women would let men have all the powers by adhering to their standards. In the end, they wanted to be acknowledged and accepted by the ones they like. While Amy was pretending to be a cool girl, Nick was also pretending to be a cool guy. On the other hand, it was Amy who had all the power. This shows that Amy wanted to be in control of the relationship and that she believed she was independent.

In addition, her marriage led her to paint herself as a “hero” in this movie. In her diary, Amy portrayed herself as an innocent woman. She has to paint a picture of herself to be a hero. In her case, she was really playing as a victim, so she can play a dramatic victim role. Nick’s affair with a young woman also affected her motive. With Nick not having a job then cheating after Amy’s financial support on him, she was furious and devastated. This increases her hatred for Nick. Not only did she marry a jobless man, but she supported him. Everything she did for him went down the drain. Her doing all this stuff for Nick shows that in the end, she cared for him and is immensely broken down; therefore, Amy would want the world to see what Nick did to her. These are the justifications for her actions to put Nick on the death penalty.

Not only does Amy’s childhood and marriage affected Amy, but she became more manipulative. She is also kind of psychopathic. Amy is in control of her process of transitioning between her old life and her new life - until she got robbed. With Amy getting robbed, she is not financially stable. This is causing her plan to slowly fail. With her plan falling apart, she creates a new plan overnight. Her plan was to sleep with her ex, Desi, murdering him then framing him like how she did to Nick. She plans to go back to Nick because of her financially problems, only using Nick for money to get herself back on track. Amy goes and tells the police that her ex-boyfriend, Desi, kidnapped her. She tells them that she manages to escape. Amy changes the public opinion from Nick being a cold-hearted murder to Desi kidnapping her. Already framing Desi, the public and the police had to believe her because she supposedly was a kidnapped victim and got away. Nick was currently on the death penalty until Amy came back to “save” him.

In the beginning of the movie, the viewers are focused and suspicious of Nick. With Amy disappearing and clues appearing, the suspect was leading towards Nick. In the second half of the movie, the viewers are focused on Amy’s bad-doings, and wants her to be punished. As the movie progresses, they find out that Nick has been cheating. This causes the attention shifting towards Nick. The viewers can see why Amy had her bad-doings, but Amy went a little bit too far. With Nick cheating, it shows the viewers that Nick is a bastard-like person, not liking Nick, they feel for Amy.

In conclusion, Amy was very mind controlling and psychopathic women who showed strong independent feminism compared to most women out there. She couldn’t face reality sometimes and feared death. The fact that she was moving her death date further and further indicates that in her mind, maybe she will die, but in reality, she knew that she couldn’t. Amy was the type that had trouble facing problems, but eventually found a solution through something so imaginative. When Nick and Amy’s ex, Tommy, meets up, he tells Nick that Amy once framed him for rape. This shows the viewers that Amy is manipulative with a negative persona.