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Author: Ruth McPhee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317136004
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Theoretically and representationally, responses to heterosexual female masochism have ranged from neglect in theories that focus predominantly or only upon masochistic sexuality within male subjects, to condemnation from feminists who regard it as an inverted expression of patriarchal control rather than a legitimate form of female desire. It has commonly been understood as a passive form of sexuality, thus ignoring the potential for activity and agency that the masochistic position may involve, which underpins the crucial argument that female masochism can be conceived as enquiring ethical activity. Taking as its subject the works of Jane Campion, Catherine Breillat, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier as well as the films Secretary (Steven Shainberg), Dans Ma Peau (Marina de Van), Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006) Amer (Hélène Cattat and Bruno Forzani), and Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh), Female Masochism in Film avoids these reductive and simplistic approaches by focusing on the ambivalences and intricacies of this type of sexuality and subjectivity. Using the philosophical writings of Kristeva, Irigaray, Lacan, Scarry, and Bataille, McPhee argues that masochism cannot and should not be considered aside from its ethical and intersubjective implications, and furthermore, that the aesthetic tendencies emerging across these films - obscenity, extremity, confrontation and a transgressive, ambiguous form of beauty - are strongly related to these implications. Ultimately, this complex and novel work calls upon the spectator and the theorist to reconsider normative ideas about desire, corporeality, fantasy and suffering.
Author: Ruth McPhee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317136004
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Get Book
Book Description
Theoretically and representationally, responses to heterosexual female masochism have ranged from neglect in theories that focus predominantly or only upon masochistic sexuality within male subjects, to condemnation from feminists who regard it as an inverted expression of patriarchal control rather than a legitimate form of female desire. It has commonly been understood as a passive form of sexuality, thus ignoring the potential for activity and agency that the masochistic position may involve, which underpins the crucial argument that female masochism can be conceived as enquiring ethical activity. Taking as its subject the works of Jane Campion, Catherine Breillat, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier as well as the films Secretary (Steven Shainberg), Dans Ma Peau (Marina de Van), Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006) Amer (Hélène Cattat and Bruno Forzani), and Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh), Female Masochism in Film avoids these reductive and simplistic approaches by focusing on the ambivalences and intricacies of this type of sexuality and subjectivity. Using the philosophical writings of Kristeva, Irigaray, Lacan, Scarry, and Bataille, McPhee argues that masochism cannot and should not be considered aside from its ethical and intersubjective implications, and furthermore, that the aesthetic tendencies emerging across these films - obscenity, extremity, confrontation and a transgressive, ambiguous form of beauty - are strongly related to these implications. Ultimately, this complex and novel work calls upon the spectator and the theorist to reconsider normative ideas about desire, corporeality, fantasy and suffering.
Author: Ruth McPhee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics in motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 552
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Book Description
Since the mid 1990s, several films have emerged in European and North American cinema that portray female subjectivity in terms of masochistic sexuality. This thesis will examine several films that represent in varied ways female sexuality centred upon the desire for pain, submission, or humiliation. The primary films under discussion in successive chapters are Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996), The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 200 l ), Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2003), Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999), and In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003). These films will be discussed within the context of existing theoretical explorations of masochism in psychoanalytic and film theory. I shall argue that within these theories, there is a blind spot in the conceptualization of a specifically female heterosexual masochism. Much existing discourse (particularly within psychoanalysis) focuses primarily upon masochism within the male subject. In theorizing female masochism, this thesis will move away from the negative connotations of perversity, passivity, and subjection that have permeated discourse around this form of sexuality, and instead argue that masochism may be associated with an active agency of the subject. The representations of female masochistic subjectivity in these films are characterized by this activity, although it is an activity that is sometimes portrayed as ambiguous in its implications for the female subject and the choices they make. Each of these films is notable for its engagement with ethical concerns: because of the power dynamics inherent in the masochistic relationship, the question of ethics will be central to this thesis, in terms of the films' depictions of intersubjective relationships, and of how the spectator is positioned and challenged by their imagery and themes.
Author: Barry Keith Grant
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292745745
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 785
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Book Description
From reviews of the third edition: “Film Genre Reader III lives up to the high expectations set by its predecessors, providing an accessible and relatively comprehensive look at genre studies. The anthology’s consideration of the advantages and challenges of genre studies, as well as its inclusion of various film genres and methodological approaches, presents a pedagogically useful overview.” —Scope Since 1986, Film Genre Reader has been the standard reference and classroom text for the study of genre in film, with more than 25,000 copies sold. Barry Keith Grant has again revised and updated the book to reflect the most recent developments in genre study. This fourth edition adds new essays on genre definition and cycles, action movies, science fiction, and heritage films, along with a comprehensive and updated bibliography. The volume includes more than thirty essays by some of film’s most distinguished critics and scholars of popular cinema, including Charles Ramírez Berg, John G. Cawelti, Celestino Deleyto, David Desser, Thomas Elsaesser, Steve Neale, Thomas Schatz, Paul Schrader, Vivian Sobchack, Janet Staiger, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.
Author: Janice G. L. Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Masochism
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
Author: Kristin Yaworski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Masochism
Languages : en
Pages : 85
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Book Description
The figure of the female masochist, along with her desires and experiences, has been largely ignored within theories of masochism and examinations of masochistic aesthetics. With the rise of more graphic and challenging representations of female sexuality in cinema, it is time to readdress the female masochist and her representation in film. This thesis aims to fill this gap by examining representations of heterosexual female masochism in Michael Haneke's film La Pianiste (2001) and Lars von Trier's film Nymphomaniac (2013). Both films centre around a female protagonist whose masochistic desires and impulses propel the narrative forward. While these masochistic desires lead to ugly and violent sexual encounters with the main male character in each film, masochism is not condemned as the reason for this violence. It is, instead, normatizing world views that violently restrict notions of female subjectivity and sexuality. In this thesis, I examine the empowering aspects of masochism presented in these films. The female masochist exercises control over her desires and fantasies by creating and establishing a masochistic contract with her partner. In analyzing the contract in both films, it becomes clear that it allows for the female protagonist to be empowered. That the contract is betrayed and the female masochist is subjected to violence is indicative of how she continues to be restricted by gendered expectations of female behaviour. Such a conclusion is further supported through both films' use of an anti-aesthetic. In contrast to the normative aesthetics of S/M, which emphasize pleasure over pain, the aesthetic in La Pianiste and Nymphomaniac insists on showing the infliction of pain and its effects on the female masochist. It is through this depiction of pain that both films invite spectators to reconsider the dangerous comfort of views that allow for such violence to persist.
Author: Gaylyn Studlar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231082339
Category : Feminism and motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
In a major revision of feminist-psychoanalytic theories of film pleasure and sexual difference, Studlar's close textual analysis of the six Paramount films directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich probes the source of their visual and psychological complexity. Borrowing from Gilles Deleuze's psychoanalytic-literary approach, Studlar shows how masochism extends beyond the clinical realm, into the arena of artistic form, language, and production of pleasure. The author's examination of the von Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations shows how these films, with the mother figure embodied in the alluring yet androgynous Dietrich, offer a key for understanding film's "masochistic aesthetic." Studlar argues that masochism's broader significance to film study lies in the similarities between the structures of perversion and those of the cinematic apparatus, as a dream screen reviving archaic visual pleasures for both male and female spectators.
Author: Jim Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135216452
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Film Theory Goes to the Movies fills the gap in film theory literature which has failed to analyze high-grossing blockbusters. The contributors in this volume, however, discuss such popular films as The Silence of the Lambs, Dances With Wolves, Terminator II, Pretty Woman, Truth or Dare, Mystery Train, and Jungle Fever. They employ a variety of critical approaches, from industry analysis to reception study, to close readings informed by feminist, deconstructive and postmodernist theory, as well as recent developments in African American and gay and lesbian criticism. An important introduction to contemporary Hollywood, this anthology will be of interest to those involved in the fields of film theory, literary theory, popular culture, and women's studies.
Author: B. Mennel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137069996
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Defining masochism as 'literary perversion', this book probes the productivity of masochistic aesthetics in the literature of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and contemporary queer films, analysing radical accounts of desire, gender, and sexuality.
Author: Susan M. White
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231101139
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Using film theory and current criticism, White traces the figure of woman in the work of Max Ophuls.
Author: S. Arnold
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137014121
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood examines the function of the mother figure in horror film. Using psychoanalytic film theory as well as comparisons with the melodrama film, Arnold investigates the polarized images of monstrous and sacrificing mother.
