Peer-reviewed Journal Articles by Alice Haylett Bryan
French Screen Studies, 2021
The rebirth of French horror cinema at the start of the twenty-first century coincided with a cri... more The rebirth of French horror cinema at the start of the twenty-first century coincided with a critical moment in the country's debates on immigration. The Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) called for cultural assimilation and integration from its immigrant population, but there was also a growing trend in the party towards a more hard-line approach. This article uses Jacques Derrida's writing on hospitality to propose that the politics of the UMP and questions of identity, immigration and assimilation are key to the renewal of French horror cinema in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It argues that the films Sheitan (Chapiron, 2006), Frontière(s) (Gens, 2007) and La meute (Richard, 2010) represent the white French anxiety over the nation's political move towards the right (as opposed to a fear of the immigrant Other directly), reading these horror films as exhibiting the tension between tolerance and hospitality key to Derrida's writing. Therefore, this article proposes that the negative depiction of white rural communities, the inclusion of characters of immigrant descent, and the emphasis on 'hosting' locations such as the hotel and the roadside café, reveal a country working through its position as a host nation within Fortress Europe.
Catherine Breillat is a director famed for her depiction of women undergoing sexual and emotional... more Catherine Breillat is a director famed for her depiction of women undergoing sexual and emotional transformations. Throughout Breillat’s narratives the bodies of her female protagonists become sites of personal exploration that challenge the patriarchal construction of femininity, and the use of shame, powerlessness, and binaries that constantly tear women in two, to oppress the female sex. This article explores the motif of the mirror in three of Breillat’s works, analysing how it is used as a prop that allows for a visual reflection, and psychical self-reflection, of the female characters, and as a double for the camera/screen with which the director critiques the misalignment between the patriarchal construction of the feminine, and actual female experience. With reference to the work of Luce Irigaray, it argues that through the female protagonists of Une vraie jeune fille (A Real Young Girl, 1976), Romance (1999) and À ma sœur (Fat Girl, 2001) Breillat seeks to rupture the construction of femininity from within, and by doing so, her characters can been seen to open up the path for the development of woman-as-subject.
Book Chapters by Alice Haylett Bryan
The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: Films, Form, Philosophy, edited by Eddie Falvey, 2022
This chapter will analyse the depiction of sex in the films of Yorgos Lanthimos as being experien... more This chapter will analyse the depiction of sex in the films of Yorgos Lanthimos as being experiences of transaction rather than interaction. From the incestual libidinal release of Dogtooth to the uncanny replacement of lovers in Nimic, this chapter will argue that sexual acts in Lanthimos’ films are rarely ones of love, but instead are a procedural tactic, a negotiation or part of a wider system of exchange. In other words, in the director’s films sex is a physical engagement between two people for reasons other than love or passion.
However, in contrast to the (heteronormative and patriarchal) exchange of women through marriage that is historically associated with the sex act, and the supposed passivity of women within patriarchal ideas of sex and life, the women in Lanthimos’ films push back against their bodies being used as currency and take hold of the reins of exchange, negotiating their own transactions. Through a combination of Luce Irigaray’s critiques of patriarchy and masculinity, and existing scholarship on the depiction of the sex act in extreme and art cinema, this chapter will propose that his depiction of sex can be seen as the quintessential example of Lanthimos’ style. It will argue that his dedication to weirdness and detachment holds both pitfalls and advantages for feminist analysis, and will explore the consequences of this for the female spectator.
ReFocus: The Films of Nicolas Winding Refn, edited by Eddie Falvey and Tom Watson (in process, Edinburgh University Press, 2022)
In interviews accompanying the release of Only God Forgives (2013), Nicholas Winding Refn refers ... more In interviews accompanying the release of Only God Forgives (2013), Nicholas Winding Refn refers constantly to the film's central dynamic: the relationship between mother and son. Although the director hints at sexual abuse and Oedipal desire, something more nuanced also comes through beyond the usual Freudian associations of penetration and castration. In Refn's own words, Julian is "chained to the womb of his mother". This chapter will propose that Only God Forgives can be read in a manner that positions it as an aesthetic and thematic exploration of the womb phantasy. Critiquing Freud's original conception of the wish to return to the womb as an expression of Oedipal sexual desire, it will apply the work of a range of international psychoanalysts from Doi Takeo to Didier Anzieu to position the womb phantasy as the desire to return to the early symbiotic relationship between mother and child where the infant feels unconditionally loved. This chapter will argue that the film floats between these two conceptions of the womb phantasy through both the actions and words of Julian and Crystal (and the phallic power of Chang), but also in Refn's formal experimentation and mise en scène. From his lighting design of internally and externally lit spaces and dark doorways, to costumes featuring flowers that resemble exploding wombs, the key battle in Only God Forgives is not that between Julian and Chang, but between the phallus and the womb. Or in other words, between sexual desire and an overwhelming maternal love.
Mothers of Invention: Parenting and/as Filmmaking Practice, edited by So Mayer and Corinn Columpar (Completed, awaiting publication with Wayne State University Press, 2022)
The Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media and Communication edited by Karen Ross (Wiley Blackwell), 2020
Dubbed the “auteur of porn” Catherine Breillat is one of the most controversial film directors of... more Dubbed the “auteur of porn” Catherine Breillat is one of the most controversial film directors of all time. This entry will document the life and work of Breillat: from the publication of her first novel, so sexually explicit that at 17 she was unable to legally purchase it herself, to the controversies of Romance with its depictions of an erect penis and real sex, and finally to the autobiographical nature of Abuse of Weakness, which draws on Breillat’s own experience of falling prey to a conman after suffering from a cerebral haemorrhage. Further to the discussion of Breillat’s 18 films (and reference to her literary texts and scriptwriting), this entry will also isolate the key themes that run through the director’s body of work, including female sexuality, girlhood, the use of provocative imagery, and the blending together of fiction and autobiography. Pointing the reader towards the vast body of scholarship on Breillat, referencing theorists such as Douglas Keesey, Robert Sklar, and Ginette Vincendeau, this entry will explore Breillat’s contentious reputation as a filmmaker, a reputation that has not altered as her work has moved from softcore pornography to art house philosophising, and finally to the mainstream.
Transgression in Anglo-American cinema: Gender, Sex and the Deviant Body, edited by Joel Robert Gwynne (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016)
In 2012 two North American independent films were released that featured female protagonists carr... more In 2012 two North American independent films were released that featured female protagonists carrying out surgical procedures in contemporary interpretations of the mad-doctor horror subgenre. This chapter will explore the potential of these films to challenge issues of control and heteronormativity in contemporary sex and society, arguing that the depiction of women as surgeons in these works allows for a dissection of white, male, middle-class values. It will explore what happens when women pick up the surgical scalpel and begin to penetrate instead of being penetrated, asking whether this act still operates within a heteronormative structural logic, or allows for a potential queer interpretation of the penetrating female protagonist.
Pauline in Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision (2012) and Mary in Jen and Sylvia Soska’s American Mary (2012) are two very different characters; one is a teenage outsider with an unconventional surgery and blood fetish in a sexually repressed middle-class suburban town, whilst the other is a rape victim and medical student in a world of prostitution, strip clubs and body modification. However, both Pauline and Mary’s use of surgery can be read as a search for control over their lives; that through exploring and manipulating the human body, these two women seek to comprehend their position within a society that constantly alienates them.
This chapter will demonstrate how the introduction of the female surgeon necessitates a move on from previous scholarly work on the mad-doctor subgenre, due to the shift away from a heteronormative structural logic. Instead it will position Pauline and Mary within the debates on gender and sexuality that are critical to Third Wave feminism. Building on the work of Jack Halberstam, it will explore the representation of violence, control and desire in these films, and question whether the actions of these women could be seen to present a fissure in the patriarchal heterosexual system.
Other publications by Alice Haylett Bryan
Studies in Gender and Sexuality Vol. 21 no. 3, 2020
Written while pregnant and in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece proposes that ... more Written while pregnant and in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece proposes that pregnancy involves walking a fine line between two opposing states: a narcissistic self-absorption and a complete giving over of oneself in service of the other. Utilizing Kristeva’s writing on pregnancy, motherhood, and herethics, I propose that this balancing act operates both at the level of gestation and in the public realm. A pregnant woman needs to focus on herself in order to protect her unborn child and her physical and mental well-being, but this focus also holds the potential for the woman to consider her own privilege, and to reach out to, and support, other women.
Book Reviews by Alice Haylett Bryan
Conference Papers by Alice Haylett Bryan
This paper explores the influence of the immigration and assimilation policies of the Union pour ... more This paper explores the influence of the immigration and assimilation policies of the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP), and the 2005 riots, on the ‘new wave’ of French Horror cinema between 2004 and 2014. Previous scholarly research on the resurgence of the genre in France has interpreted these films as revealing the fear of the threat of the foreign other, with the victims’ bodies standing as doubles for the nation under attack from increased immigration and cultural diversity. However, these arguments overlook the onscreen and offscreen roles that French citizens who are first or second-generation immigrants, or of mixed descent, play in these varied works. With special attention to Kim Chapiron’s Sheitan (2007), but also with reference to a variety of films from across the period, this paper proposes that a number of key works in the movement critique the push for assimilation encouraged, and at times enforced, by Chirac, Sarkozy and the UMP, by representing rural French nationals as provincial, inbred, and even psychopathic. Instead of depicting white France under threat, I propose that a more progressive reading of these works can be undertaken as revealing the French nation’s fear of itself during a period that gave birth to the revival of far-right support and the return of the Front national.
Presented at Fear 2000: 21st Century Horror, Sheffield Hallam University April 2016
South Korea is on the brink of a population crisis. With its currently fertility rate of just 1.3... more South Korea is on the brink of a population crisis. With its currently fertility rate of just 1.3 children per woman the country has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. In stark contrast to these figures and the South Korean government’s fears over a shrinking population, are the rates of abortion. Official statistics display that whilst around 440,000 births are recorded each year, 340,000 abortions are also carried out, with some sources claiming that this figure is actually far higher at up to 2,000,000. Therefore the percentage of the female population who have had a termination in South Korea is one of the highest in the world, yet it is a country where abortion is effectively illegal.
This paper will provide a much-needed investigation into the representation of abortion in South Korean horror and thriller cinema, exploring its position as a frequently used narrative event and engaging with films that take this procedure as the driving force behind their plot. It will first trace the occurrence of this motif in these genres since the 1960s, investigating the extent to which the representation of this act changes with the highs and lows of the country’s population. Then, through a critical engagement with South Korean psychoanalytic theory and psychiatric research, it will propose that the breaking of the bond between a mother and her unborn child through abortion allows her to enter into a form of socially-sanctioned monstrosity in order to get revenge on those who were unwilling to support her and her offspring. Following the work of Christopher K. Chung and Samson J. Cho, this paper will analyse the importance of jeong (the bond between people) in Korean culture, proposing that the act of betrayal is key to these abortion narratives. Whether in death as a wonhon, or living as a spurned lover, these women may have chosen to rid themselves of their child, but throughout much of the country’s cinematic history there was often a degree of sympathy in their portrayal. This paper will ask whether this is still the case today, therefore providing a fresh approach to the field of the representation of motherhood in South Korean cinema, at a time when its subject matter is at the forefront of governmental policy.
Presented May 2015 – Korean Screen Cultures, Copenhagen DK
Throughout the history of French cinema, the idea of a return to the countryside has been used to... more Throughout the history of French cinema, the idea of a return to the countryside has been used to ignite nostalgic longings for a simpler life, represented through the ‘sentimental tourism’ – as Guy Austin puts it – of verdant farms and rolling hills. From the heritage film to the comedy genre, these works tie the French countryside to the idea of a positive national identity. The Cinéma Rural trope in particular, depicted city-dwellers travelling out into remotest France to learn something new about themselves and having experiences that would give their life meaning beyond the drudgery of urban life. However, part of the recent resurgence in French horror cinema has been the transformation of the representation of rural France on film from a pastoral idyll to a blood-soaked and barren wasteland, occupied by the inbred, the cannibalistic, and the debauched. Those who visit these forgotten backwaters do learn something about new themselves, but this time it is their innate and animalistic ability to fight, kill and survive that is rediscovered.
This paper will look at the reinvention of the Cinéma Rural trope in recent French horror, arguing that these new depictions of the countryside display an engagement with the darker aspects of French history and the current political crisis around immigration. It will propose that the locations of the farm, the isolated hotel and the national border are used as key sites where the transient and the stagnant meet; acting as symbolic representations of the confrontation between France’s proud history of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and the current rise in far-right nationalism. This paper will demonstrate how is not just the fear of the other that drives the reinvention of this cinematic trope, but instead it is the combination of this fear with a simultaneous apprehension over the rise in extreme political beliefs, that is expressed in these complex works.
In 2012 two North American independent films were released that featured female protagonists carr... more In 2012 two North American independent films were released that featured female protagonists carrying out surgical procedures in contemporary interpretations of the ‘mad-doctor’ horror subgenre. This paper will explore the potential of these films to challenge issues of control in patriarchal and heteronormative sex and society, arguing that the depiction of women as surgeons allows for a dissection of white, male, middle-class values. Pauline in Richard Bates Jr.’s “Excision” (2012) and Mary in Jen and Sylvia Soska’s “American Mary” (2012) are two very different characters; one is a teenage outsider with an unconventional surgery and blood fetish in a sexually repressed middle-class suburban town, whilst the other is a rape victim and medical student in a world of prostitution, strip clubs and body modification. However, both Pauline and Mary’s use of surgery can be read as a search for control over their lives; that through exploring and manipulating the human body, these two women seek to comprehend their position within a society that constantly alienates them.
Through a critical engagement with Robert Jensen’s radical feminist essay “Patriarchal Sex”, this paper will explore the role of violence and control in the depiction of sex and sexual pleasure in these films as a fissure in the patriarchal heterosexual system, therefore providing a reading that is positioned at the boundaries of queer film theory. It will discuss these two female leading characters from a feminist perspective, questioning their representation and the films’ portrayal of sexual desire, as potential sites for a critique of patriarchy. In conclusion, this paper will shed new light on the evolving representation of female sexuality and the monstrous feminine in contemporary North American horror cinema, whilst exploring the critique of heteronormativity that can be seen in these works.
Many scholars of Japanese horror cinema are quick to describe the popular subgenre of the kaidan ... more Many scholars of Japanese horror cinema are quick to describe the popular subgenre of the kaidan film as ‘uncanny’, arguing that these ghost stories of avenging female spirits are designed to unnerve their audiences. However, this use of the term uncanny negates Freud’s full psychoanalytical definition of the expression by ignoring the role of the mother, the home and the maternal womb in uncanny feelings. Kaidan films are uncanny, but to an even greater extent than these scholars suggest. This paper will use films by Miike Takashi, Nakata Hideo and Shimizu Takashi to address the key position of the relationship between the maternal womb and the home in Freud’s theory of the uncanny, paying special attention to the tropes of the haunted house and the unheimlich mother in kaidan films. It will put the heim back into the uncanny by demonstrating that the unnerving emotions encouraged by these works are grounded in their subversion of the figures of the housewife and the mother and the perceived safety of the home, and how this is tied to the symbolisation of the womb, the first home of all human beings. Combining Freudian theory with the work of the Japanese psychoanalyst Kitayama Osamu, this paper will trace the many symbolic links between the home, the mother and the womb both in Japan and the West, shedding new light on the international popularity of kaidan films.
The female protagonists of many of Catherine Breillat’s films can be seen as undergoing a sexual ... more The female protagonists of many of Catherine Breillat’s films can be seen as undergoing a sexual and emotional transformation. Throughout Breillat’s narratives the bodies of these women become sites of personal exploration that reveal both pleasure and disgust in equal amounts. Breillat’s female bodies are sexual bodies, but are they sexualised? This paper will look at the motif of the mirror in Breillat’s work: both as a prop that allows for a visual reflection, and psychical self-reflection, of the female characters, and as a double for the camera/screen with which the director critiques the misalignment between the patriarchal construction of the feminine, and actual female experience. Through an analysis of Une vraie jeune fille (A Real Young Girl, Catherine Breillat, 1976), Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999) and À ma sœur (Fat Girl, Catherine Breillat, 2001) it will demonstrate how Breillat uses mirrors in her narratives as markers in the stages of the transformation and sexual awakening of her female characters. With reference to the work of Luce Irigaray, it will then demonstrate how the relationships that these women have with their own reflected image critically engages with the sexualisation of the female body on screen.
This paper will demonstrate how Breillat uses these moments of physical and psychical self-reflection to trouble the stereotypes of virgin and whore, and to question the constructed and controlled nature of femininity and female sexuality within patriarchal culture. Therefore this paper will ask the question of what do Breillat’s characters see when they look at themselves in the mirror, and how does this relate to the director’s fundamental project surrounding the representation of female sexuality, obscenity and transgression.
This paper will use the work of the French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu to outline the potentia... more This paper will use the work of the French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu to outline the potential for an embodied psychoanalytic response to François Ozon’s 1997 film Regarde la mer, exploring the relationship between tactility and the maternal as represented on screen, and in the relationship between the viewer and the work. Moving away from the ocularcentrism of Lacan’s mirror stage, Anzieu proposes that the human psyche and ego are formed through the contact with the mother’s skin in the first stages of childhood. He argues that the skin is both a container (an envelope) and an organ of communication that enables the transmission and receipt of messages, therefore allowing for a pre-verbal comprehension of the self – or skin ego – that is intertwined with a phantasy of a common skin with the mother.
Although predominantly overlooked in Anglophone film studies (with the exception of an extended, single study by Naomi Segal), Anzieu’s work opens up a space in which psychoanalysis can be taken beyond its traditional focus on language and vision through a study of the sensational body, an area usually approached via phenomenology. Therefore the work of Anzieu enables us to ask questions about embodiment that have hitherto been placed outside of psychoanalytic film theory. Anzieu’s text Le Moi-peau (The Skin Ego, 1985) seeks to understand the psyche through the body, arguing that the skin acts as a mirror to the soul, an outward reflection of the inner physical and psychical health of its inhabitant. This paper will explore Anzieu’s theory and test the idea of an embodied psychoanalytic response to cinema through both Ozon’s characters of Sasha (Sasha Hails) and Tatiana (Marina de Van), and the real-life relationship shown onscreen in the film between the actress Sasha Hails and her own daughter Samantha.
Following many of the conventions of the American postmodern horror film, but with a willingness ... more Following many of the conventions of the American postmodern horror film, but with a willingness to move beyond the confines of the genre, contemporary French horror cinema has recently experienced a rebirth in international popularity. Focusing specifically on three films within this ‘new wave’ of works (Bustillo and Maury’s À l’intérieur (2007), Gens’ Frontière(s) (2007) and Laugier’s Saint Ange (2004)) this paper will explore the implications of the transformation of Clover’s masculinised ‘Final Girl’ into a pregnant woman. Whereas the female protagonists of the American slasher allowed for cross-gender identification and a safe space to experience the ‘return of the repressed’ I contend that the pregnant woman in contemporary French horror encourages wider ethical and philosophical questions to be raised. Drawing on Kristeva’s writing on the maternal and the abject, I will use the figure of the pregnant woman as a potential metaphor for horror cinema, a position situated on the borders between suffering and joy, disgust and beauty, self and other. As a further development to this argument, this paper will also look at the role of the female attacker in these works, arguing that protagonist and antagonist form what Kristeva sees as the two faces of the mother; the abject and the sublime. Yet critically in these films it is not how these two faces oppose each other, but how different female characters can be seen to possess both positions in order to manipulate – as well as to adhere to – the conventions of the genre.
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Peer-reviewed Journal Articles by Alice Haylett Bryan
Book Chapters by Alice Haylett Bryan
However, in contrast to the (heteronormative and patriarchal) exchange of women through marriage that is historically associated with the sex act, and the supposed passivity of women within patriarchal ideas of sex and life, the women in Lanthimos’ films push back against their bodies being used as currency and take hold of the reins of exchange, negotiating their own transactions. Through a combination of Luce Irigaray’s critiques of patriarchy and masculinity, and existing scholarship on the depiction of the sex act in extreme and art cinema, this chapter will propose that his depiction of sex can be seen as the quintessential example of Lanthimos’ style. It will argue that his dedication to weirdness and detachment holds both pitfalls and advantages for feminist analysis, and will explore the consequences of this for the female spectator.
Pauline in Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision (2012) and Mary in Jen and Sylvia Soska’s American Mary (2012) are two very different characters; one is a teenage outsider with an unconventional surgery and blood fetish in a sexually repressed middle-class suburban town, whilst the other is a rape victim and medical student in a world of prostitution, strip clubs and body modification. However, both Pauline and Mary’s use of surgery can be read as a search for control over their lives; that through exploring and manipulating the human body, these two women seek to comprehend their position within a society that constantly alienates them.
This chapter will demonstrate how the introduction of the female surgeon necessitates a move on from previous scholarly work on the mad-doctor subgenre, due to the shift away from a heteronormative structural logic. Instead it will position Pauline and Mary within the debates on gender and sexuality that are critical to Third Wave feminism. Building on the work of Jack Halberstam, it will explore the representation of violence, control and desire in these films, and question whether the actions of these women could be seen to present a fissure in the patriarchal heterosexual system.
Other publications by Alice Haylett Bryan
Book Reviews by Alice Haylett Bryan
Conference Papers by Alice Haylett Bryan
Presented at Fear 2000: 21st Century Horror, Sheffield Hallam University April 2016
This paper will provide a much-needed investigation into the representation of abortion in South Korean horror and thriller cinema, exploring its position as a frequently used narrative event and engaging with films that take this procedure as the driving force behind their plot. It will first trace the occurrence of this motif in these genres since the 1960s, investigating the extent to which the representation of this act changes with the highs and lows of the country’s population. Then, through a critical engagement with South Korean psychoanalytic theory and psychiatric research, it will propose that the breaking of the bond between a mother and her unborn child through abortion allows her to enter into a form of socially-sanctioned monstrosity in order to get revenge on those who were unwilling to support her and her offspring. Following the work of Christopher K. Chung and Samson J. Cho, this paper will analyse the importance of jeong (the bond between people) in Korean culture, proposing that the act of betrayal is key to these abortion narratives. Whether in death as a wonhon, or living as a spurned lover, these women may have chosen to rid themselves of their child, but throughout much of the country’s cinematic history there was often a degree of sympathy in their portrayal. This paper will ask whether this is still the case today, therefore providing a fresh approach to the field of the representation of motherhood in South Korean cinema, at a time when its subject matter is at the forefront of governmental policy.
Presented May 2015 – Korean Screen Cultures, Copenhagen DK
This paper will look at the reinvention of the Cinéma Rural trope in recent French horror, arguing that these new depictions of the countryside display an engagement with the darker aspects of French history and the current political crisis around immigration. It will propose that the locations of the farm, the isolated hotel and the national border are used as key sites where the transient and the stagnant meet; acting as symbolic representations of the confrontation between France’s proud history of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and the current rise in far-right nationalism. This paper will demonstrate how is not just the fear of the other that drives the reinvention of this cinematic trope, but instead it is the combination of this fear with a simultaneous apprehension over the rise in extreme political beliefs, that is expressed in these complex works.
Through a critical engagement with Robert Jensen’s radical feminist essay “Patriarchal Sex”, this paper will explore the role of violence and control in the depiction of sex and sexual pleasure in these films as a fissure in the patriarchal heterosexual system, therefore providing a reading that is positioned at the boundaries of queer film theory. It will discuss these two female leading characters from a feminist perspective, questioning their representation and the films’ portrayal of sexual desire, as potential sites for a critique of patriarchy. In conclusion, this paper will shed new light on the evolving representation of female sexuality and the monstrous feminine in contemporary North American horror cinema, whilst exploring the critique of heteronormativity that can be seen in these works.
This paper will demonstrate how Breillat uses these moments of physical and psychical self-reflection to trouble the stereotypes of virgin and whore, and to question the constructed and controlled nature of femininity and female sexuality within patriarchal culture. Therefore this paper will ask the question of what do Breillat’s characters see when they look at themselves in the mirror, and how does this relate to the director’s fundamental project surrounding the representation of female sexuality, obscenity and transgression.
Although predominantly overlooked in Anglophone film studies (with the exception of an extended, single study by Naomi Segal), Anzieu’s work opens up a space in which psychoanalysis can be taken beyond its traditional focus on language and vision through a study of the sensational body, an area usually approached via phenomenology. Therefore the work of Anzieu enables us to ask questions about embodiment that have hitherto been placed outside of psychoanalytic film theory. Anzieu’s text Le Moi-peau (The Skin Ego, 1985) seeks to understand the psyche through the body, arguing that the skin acts as a mirror to the soul, an outward reflection of the inner physical and psychical health of its inhabitant. This paper will explore Anzieu’s theory and test the idea of an embodied psychoanalytic response to cinema through both Ozon’s characters of Sasha (Sasha Hails) and Tatiana (Marina de Van), and the real-life relationship shown onscreen in the film between the actress Sasha Hails and her own daughter Samantha.
However, in contrast to the (heteronormative and patriarchal) exchange of women through marriage that is historically associated with the sex act, and the supposed passivity of women within patriarchal ideas of sex and life, the women in Lanthimos’ films push back against their bodies being used as currency and take hold of the reins of exchange, negotiating their own transactions. Through a combination of Luce Irigaray’s critiques of patriarchy and masculinity, and existing scholarship on the depiction of the sex act in extreme and art cinema, this chapter will propose that his depiction of sex can be seen as the quintessential example of Lanthimos’ style. It will argue that his dedication to weirdness and detachment holds both pitfalls and advantages for feminist analysis, and will explore the consequences of this for the female spectator.
Pauline in Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision (2012) and Mary in Jen and Sylvia Soska’s American Mary (2012) are two very different characters; one is a teenage outsider with an unconventional surgery and blood fetish in a sexually repressed middle-class suburban town, whilst the other is a rape victim and medical student in a world of prostitution, strip clubs and body modification. However, both Pauline and Mary’s use of surgery can be read as a search for control over their lives; that through exploring and manipulating the human body, these two women seek to comprehend their position within a society that constantly alienates them.
This chapter will demonstrate how the introduction of the female surgeon necessitates a move on from previous scholarly work on the mad-doctor subgenre, due to the shift away from a heteronormative structural logic. Instead it will position Pauline and Mary within the debates on gender and sexuality that are critical to Third Wave feminism. Building on the work of Jack Halberstam, it will explore the representation of violence, control and desire in these films, and question whether the actions of these women could be seen to present a fissure in the patriarchal heterosexual system.
Presented at Fear 2000: 21st Century Horror, Sheffield Hallam University April 2016
This paper will provide a much-needed investigation into the representation of abortion in South Korean horror and thriller cinema, exploring its position as a frequently used narrative event and engaging with films that take this procedure as the driving force behind their plot. It will first trace the occurrence of this motif in these genres since the 1960s, investigating the extent to which the representation of this act changes with the highs and lows of the country’s population. Then, through a critical engagement with South Korean psychoanalytic theory and psychiatric research, it will propose that the breaking of the bond between a mother and her unborn child through abortion allows her to enter into a form of socially-sanctioned monstrosity in order to get revenge on those who were unwilling to support her and her offspring. Following the work of Christopher K. Chung and Samson J. Cho, this paper will analyse the importance of jeong (the bond between people) in Korean culture, proposing that the act of betrayal is key to these abortion narratives. Whether in death as a wonhon, or living as a spurned lover, these women may have chosen to rid themselves of their child, but throughout much of the country’s cinematic history there was often a degree of sympathy in their portrayal. This paper will ask whether this is still the case today, therefore providing a fresh approach to the field of the representation of motherhood in South Korean cinema, at a time when its subject matter is at the forefront of governmental policy.
Presented May 2015 – Korean Screen Cultures, Copenhagen DK
This paper will look at the reinvention of the Cinéma Rural trope in recent French horror, arguing that these new depictions of the countryside display an engagement with the darker aspects of French history and the current political crisis around immigration. It will propose that the locations of the farm, the isolated hotel and the national border are used as key sites where the transient and the stagnant meet; acting as symbolic representations of the confrontation between France’s proud history of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and the current rise in far-right nationalism. This paper will demonstrate how is not just the fear of the other that drives the reinvention of this cinematic trope, but instead it is the combination of this fear with a simultaneous apprehension over the rise in extreme political beliefs, that is expressed in these complex works.
Through a critical engagement with Robert Jensen’s radical feminist essay “Patriarchal Sex”, this paper will explore the role of violence and control in the depiction of sex and sexual pleasure in these films as a fissure in the patriarchal heterosexual system, therefore providing a reading that is positioned at the boundaries of queer film theory. It will discuss these two female leading characters from a feminist perspective, questioning their representation and the films’ portrayal of sexual desire, as potential sites for a critique of patriarchy. In conclusion, this paper will shed new light on the evolving representation of female sexuality and the monstrous feminine in contemporary North American horror cinema, whilst exploring the critique of heteronormativity that can be seen in these works.
This paper will demonstrate how Breillat uses these moments of physical and psychical self-reflection to trouble the stereotypes of virgin and whore, and to question the constructed and controlled nature of femininity and female sexuality within patriarchal culture. Therefore this paper will ask the question of what do Breillat’s characters see when they look at themselves in the mirror, and how does this relate to the director’s fundamental project surrounding the representation of female sexuality, obscenity and transgression.
Although predominantly overlooked in Anglophone film studies (with the exception of an extended, single study by Naomi Segal), Anzieu’s work opens up a space in which psychoanalysis can be taken beyond its traditional focus on language and vision through a study of the sensational body, an area usually approached via phenomenology. Therefore the work of Anzieu enables us to ask questions about embodiment that have hitherto been placed outside of psychoanalytic film theory. Anzieu’s text Le Moi-peau (The Skin Ego, 1985) seeks to understand the psyche through the body, arguing that the skin acts as a mirror to the soul, an outward reflection of the inner physical and psychical health of its inhabitant. This paper will explore Anzieu’s theory and test the idea of an embodied psychoanalytic response to cinema through both Ozon’s characters of Sasha (Sasha Hails) and Tatiana (Marina de Van), and the real-life relationship shown onscreen in the film between the actress Sasha Hails and her own daughter Samantha.