MovieChat Forums > The Virgin Suicides (2000) Discussion > why is it called the virgin suicides?

why is it called the virgin suicides?


i havent read the book yet and i was wondering if it explains or if anybody knows why its called the virgin suicides? they arent all virgins are they? i mean (in the film anyway) lux has had sex with loads of guys. is there a purpose for this or am i just being pedantic?

also, kind of unrelated, but how do you actually go about sticking you head in the oven? like, is it the gas that kills you or are you meant to set your head on fire? just wondering haha

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I dunno, I just finished the book, and Lux definetly wasn't a virgin. The only thing I can think of is maybe it had something to do with the Virgin Mary cards they used or something symbolic. I have no idea, but it is an amazing book and you should read it.

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It had to do with the Virgin Mary cards. If you remember, when the paramedics came for Cecilia's body after she slit her wrists, the card drops from the palm of her hand. And, although the cards pop up a few other times in the film, the most important one is when one of the boys finds the Virgin Mary card in his bike wheel. That, in a way, foreshadows the Lisbon girls suicide since the cards have alluded to bad events throughout the film.

Hope that helps:)



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I agree with the card thing...on the lines of the oven bit...yeh its the gas that kills you if you decide to kill yourself by sticking your head in an oven

Me My BF ME My BF Me
On a good day

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i think virgin is used to describe their innocence, just not in a sexual way for lux. they were victims of the sheltered environment that they grew up in. even lux was a little too young to really know what she was doing... i think she only rebelled because she felt so constricted by her parents.

and yeah, it's the gas that kills you. although, i guess if your head was on fire that would do just as good.

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^ Bingo

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That's how I always saw it as well.

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ahhh that makes a lot of sense, you forget when you watch the film how young lux is meant to be, because of how old kirsten dunst looks. i guess youd have to read the book to have an untainted veiw of how young she really is. thanks!

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Well.. Kirsten was only sixteen portraying a 14 year old. It's not like she was much older.

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I kind of saw it like this too. But I also thought that they used the word virgin to describe the way the boys saw them: Five virginal impossible beauties. Throughout the whole film they idealize the heck out of the Lisbon girls, and perhaps the title just drives it home.

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I thought it was because of their overbearing and pious mother and, to a lesser extent, father. The austerity of their mother (who'd burn rock music records to prove a point) drove them to self-destruction. They were so young, innocent and pure. Even Lux was innocent, or at least naïve. She only did her thing out of rebellion and to search for experience, experience she truly didn't ever manage to gain.

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That, plus Lux (like all the other ones) was a virgin "in nature". She's not pictured as some little slut that since she discovered what's itching down there, went out and started exchanging it for Lust (pan intended). She had feelings for her first, she didn't just do it with him like e.g. Sybil Shepherd does it on "The Last Picture Show". Her "reaction" (humping anybody on the roof) was just the outcome of the traumatic experience of being left alone in the football field and the parental consequences this brought with.
All in all, i think it was ok to include her under the general title "The Virgin Suicides", instead of changing it to "The Virgin Plus One Tart's Sucides".

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Exactly. Innocence. I first saw this movie at 13 (having read the book), then 15, 16, 17, and into my 20s (I'm 28 now). This movie will always stick with me. I related to the book and the movie so much. Looking back, it was that feeling of innocence, and losing innocence-- seemingly every day, that made me cling to this movie (book). Virgin isn't literal. I don't know what else to say.

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To be even more pedantic, the picture of Lux sleeping in a car may make a sense that her death wasn't actually a suicide but that she'd fallen asleep waiting for others. As we see Lux being a bit different to other girls, that does have sence. On the other hand, of course she had her own reasons to commit suicide, but still her gesture with detaching boy's waist shows that she was to keep living. But again it was her who proposed to use her parent's car that was known to her standing in a closed garage; the gesture being a habit only.

Don't know :-( It's so hard to be pedantic, i'd better stick up to more romantic opinion listed above :-D

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Lux's was def a suicide, she was buying time for bonnie and then went out back. The boys went downstairs, found bonnie and then the others, and forgot about Lux in the commotion because she was out in the garage and no one found her until the morning.

its more clear in the book

The virgin mary cards sound right, but in the book it refrences a song w/ the lyrics printed

virgin suicide
what was that she cried?
no use in stayin'
on this holocaust ride
she gave me her cherry
she's my virgin suicide


Bitch, that's a mistake (unforgivable)

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did they all plan to kill themesleves?

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Yes they all planned on killing themselves and planned on having the boys discover them.

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She's not sleeping. She killed herself with the carbon monoxide from the car, knowing full well the boys would find her.

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In polite society, there is a fairly strong disposition towards considering young girls to be sexually inexperienced (even when the evidence might seem to indicate otherwise in some individual cases). The opposite idea is not particularly palatable.

It is interesting that in older times, virgin and girl (or never-married young woman) were synonyms. In ancient Israel, any girl or young woman of Israel was assumed sexually inexperienced. If any were found to be not by her new husband, Mosaic law prescribed that she be taken outside the city and stoned to death. Deut. 22:13-21.

The Virgin Mary is so called, not due to the fact that she was sexually inexperienced, which she was, but because she was a young woman of Israel, and the word for girl or young woman in Elizabethan England (when the King James Version of the Bible was published) was virgin.

The use of the word virgin for a person who has not had sexual intercourse is relatively recent.

So, the novel and the movie could have as well been called The Girl Suicides. The Virgin Suicides is a sort of a throwback, or reference to better times, as well as being more poetic.

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[deleted]

I beleive this was already stated, but the reason for the title is the reference to a song lyric in the book. It's a mix of their innocence, age, virgin mary cards, and lyrics really.

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Nooo, it's because they were so unexperienced and unprepared for life, which consequently led to their suicides.
That and the lyrics from the book.

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In the minds of the boys, these girls were beautiful, enigmatic, and perfect. The main idea of the movie is obsession and way these teenage boys couldn't tell the difference between their idealized version of the girls and who these girls really were---normal. In the boys' minds, these girls were pure, godly, and therefore almost virgin-like in their idealized perfection.

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In the book it talks about a song that Lux really likes and its one of the band records that Mrs Lisbon made Lux burn. it goes like this:
Virgin suicide
What was that she cried?
No use in stayin'
On this holocaust ride
She gave me her cherry
She's my virgin suicide



Not all who wander are lost...

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I respect the guys except Tripp never tried to take advantage of them, that is sad Lux was the village bicycle at 14. I'm surprised her sisters or parents never caught her.

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Bump

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The virginc ards sounds like an interesting theory, but in the book it's the title of a song by Lux's favorite band Cruel Crux (not really a band). The lyrics talked about having sex, giving up your virginity, eliminating it. That's why it was 'virgin suicide'. But I don't know how that ties into the title or the Lisbon girls.

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