Sequence Analysis: Poison By Todd Haynes

Sequence Analysis – Poison Poison (1991) by Todd Haynes depicts the life of a scientist who accidently drink an elixir he brewed and must face the consequences. Tom the protagonist and his female colleague Nancy, takes a walk to town as a way to overcome Tom’s nervousness over his new appearance. He receives a lot of disgusted stares from onlookers as the sequence progresses and ultimately exposed of the reason of his skin condition. The sequence this essay will analyze portrays the back and forth conversation between Tom and Nancy, mainly about Nancy trying to convince Tom that his skin condition is regular and should not be ashamed of it. Haynes shoots a large portion of this sequence in Nancy’s perspective as she tries to comfort her
The medium shot is transitioned into a long shot to depict the distance between the vendors and Tom and Nancy. It brings out the wariness of the vendors towards Tom, by maintaining distance, you maintain safety as believed in society. Haynes further exploits Tom’s condition by making puss and bodily juices come out of his skin while eating his hotdog. This could be referred as a “cinema of attraction” as it uses special effects to worsen his appearance. Even the sound of eating is only focused on Tom, as Nancy’s chewing is silent. The shot alternates between Tom and Nancy in a close up shot to both show off Tom’s appearance and Nancy’s reactions to the flowing puss. Haynes combines both Tom’s frustration and Nancy’s action to comfort him to realize this love relationship between them and showing the audience that appearance does not stop
The discussion between the two women gave a sense of direction for where Tom was, the man creepily greeting Nancy was there to show how she entered a dangerous part of the city and the last man she saw portrayed how she was frightened by his appearance, but not afraid of Tom’s appearance. Haynes portrayed the last man as a synonym to Tom’s face with the Leper condition, and Nancy was scared herself. On the other hand, she is not fazed by Tom’s appearance mainly because of her love for him. After this brief encounter with the strangers, Nancy is shown to be even more panicked as she trips over herself. This scene is familiar as it appears in a large portion of horror movies meant to foreshadow something bad about to happen. Furthermore the following scene turned the whole setting darker to gain a scary feeling of the night. The bar sign lights can be seen clearly to accentuate a time skip to an evening atmosphere where the creeps of the night run