Representations of Female Masochism in American Cinema PDF Download
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Author: Janice G. L. Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Masochism
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
Author: Janice G. L. Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Masochism
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Get Book Here
Book Description
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: Ruth McPhee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317135997
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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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: 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: David Greven
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230118836
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
The theme of female transformation informs the Hollywood representation of femininity from the studio era to the present. Whether it occurs physically, emotionally, or on some other level, transformation allows female protagonists to negotiate their own complex desires and to resist the compulsory marriage plot. A sweeping study of Hollywood from Now, Voyager, The Heiress, and Flamingo Road to Carrie, the Alien films, The Brave One, and the slasher horror genre, this book boldly unsettles commonplace understandings of genre film, female sexuality, and Freudian theory as it makes a strong new case for the queer relevance of female representation.
Author: Janet Staiger
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452902678
Category : Cinema
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
On female sexual morality
Author: Gaylyn Studlar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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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: 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: Tingting Hu
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1782847251
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
This book examines the representation of women in relation to violence in Chinese crime films made on the mainland, and in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It introduces a new trajectory in the investigation of the cinematic representation of female figures in relation to gender issues by interweaving Western feminist and postfeminist critiques with traditional Chinese sociocultural discourse. An in-depth narrative identifies three major representations of women: the female victim, the female perpetrator of violence, and the female professional. Salience to contemporary society shows up in many ways, passive and active, all of which reinforce a sense of male dominance and patriarchal power. Analysis bridges the gap in the field of female representation in Chinese culture/Chinese film studies by systematically examining Chinese crime films as a genre in its own right. The depiction of female victimisation at the hands of men in the selected crime films consolidates the notion of women's vulnerability and inferiority as perceived in Chinese gender discourse. On the other hand, the representation of active female perpetrators of violence, and as professional working women, presents what may be seen as a postfeminist masquerade a cultural strategy that shows an ostensible impression of female empowerment albeit that it reinforces traditional gender hierarchies in the Chinese gender context. While graphic female victimisation is commonly presented, female perpetrators of violence and females in professional roles in crime films are shown to remain under the control of male authority, leading to the conclusion that Chinese crime films are produced in a context of heavy patriarchal power and misogyny.
Author: Karen A. Ritzenhoff
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137096632
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
How can love be understood globally as a problematic transgression rather than the narrative of "happy endings" that Hollywood has offered? The contributors utilize varying methodologies of textual analysis, psychoanalytic models, and cultural critique and engage with a broad range of films to explore issues of gender identity and spectatorship.
