ipl-logo

Female Sexuality In Daisies, By Andrzej Zula

1195 Words5 Pages

Surrealist filmmakers seem to take a special interest in exploring female sexuality. The surrealist movement aimed to expand their viewer’s and their own perception of reality. Often this was through the exploration and the human mind, especially repressed urges. Female pleasure is one such area that is repressed in the patriarchal system. Often in Surrealist film, freeing this urge leads to a complete rejection of the system. In this essay I will use Vera Chytilová’s film Daisies (1966) and Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981) to explore the ways in which surrealist filmmakers reject established political structure and avoid conventional interpretation in their portrayals of female sexuality and pleasure. I will focus on how these films align female sexuality and pleasure with destruction of any existing order of meaning. In these films rejection of the patriarchy means a rejection of the patriarchal constructs of language and symbols, creating a film that defies the constraints of conventional modes of interpretation. Like many surrealist films, both Daisies and Possession begin in a world that could be considered “real.” This is the rational and objective world that conforms to tangible social and political conventions. Possession seems to start as any other film about marital …show more content…

It is natural that this topic would be at the forefront of many interpretations of these films as it contextualizes them. However in both Possession and Daisies with further examination of their treatment of the communist system, this seems to be a simplified interpretation of the films. As the messages get muddled, a rejection of capitalism as well and possibly a rejection of all political systems emerge. Both capitalism and communism are patriarchal and oppressive to women; therefor the only way to truly reject the patriarchy is to be critical of all political

Show More
Related

  • Feminist Representation Of The Blonde In Vertigo, By Alfred Hitchcock

    1739 Words  | 7 Pages

    Second, I investigate the cinematic techniques Alfred Hitchcock utilised in order to create the seeming superficiality of his blonde protagonists. My claim is that through this framing the male protagonists and the spectators are misdirected about the blonde’s passivity. Finally, in order to argue this case, I will discuss how the superficial masquerades of the blondes Lisa Carol

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale And The Bloody Chamber Analysis

    1647 Words  | 7 Pages

    This is suggested by Helen Simpson who stated that Carter centralises ‘latent content of fairy-tale’ is that women are objects of male desire hence patriarchal discourse establishes male supremacy to which Carter does this to challenge contemporary perspectives on the place of women by revealing the oppression that society inflicted. The Marquis is an overt example of male ownership of female bodies. Similarly, where Atwood exposes the harsh realities of oppressive patriarchy through the female body, Carter utilises the construct of the Marquis in the eponymous story ‘The Bloody Chamber’ as a grotesque embodiment of patriarchal control. In her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Laura Mulvey coined the feminist term ‘male gaze.’ She argues that men are the audience and women are to embody the male perspective of women as objects of satisfaction.

    Read More

  • Alfred Hitchcock Rear Window Analysis

    1431 Words  | 6 Pages

    It also holds a message about ‘reality’. From time to time, we are all like Jeff, secretly intruding other people’s private lives, whether it be those of our neighbours or by watching a film. The Film also skilfully portrays the issue of male gaze. Lisa’s role in the film, though she is an independent and successful woman, still serves for the purposes of male gaze. Even though she was a willing active participant, Jeff’s interest in her sparked when she embraced his point of view, took part in his own “subjective narrative” and became an object of his

    Read More

  • It Happened One Night Analysis

    2528 Words  | 11 Pages

    This analysis will focus on questions of gender and notions of femininity existing during the Great Depression in US Culture, which are reproduced through the film itself. To support my thesis, I will analyze the most important key scenes

    Read More

  • Patriarchy In Oates's Stories

    413 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminist writers are usually thought to state the protagonists of their stories –most of the times females- as heroines. However, this is not the case of Oates. This down-to-earth writer achieves to expose a common denominator in her stories “Lethal”, “Embrace”, “The Mother” and “Love, forever.” This essay purports to illustrate the strong presence of the patriarchy society in them. This conception of society is based on a binary system in which a positive and a negative term coexist as cornerstones of a created social reality.

    Read More

  • Daughters Of The Dust Analysis

    1537 Words  | 7 Pages

    In her feminist film theory essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to criticize and scrutinize the fetishism, scopophilia, and eroticism in Hollywood mainstream cinema. What Daughters of the Dust executes impeccably roots from radically abandoning the cultural conventions that depict women as subservient and submissive to patriarchal

    Read More

  • Funeral Parade Of Roses Analysis

    2104 Words  | 9 Pages

    The film is a masterful combination of avant-garde and exploitation aesthetics that results in a collage of dialogues, memories, interviews, thoughts, lyrics and extracts presented in psychedelically vague narration, rather than a "regular" film. Furthermore, Matsumoto managed to demolish almost every taboo existing at the time: nudity, sex, drugs, but most of all, the unfaltering depiction of the Japanese gay society through the eyes of a transvestite made the majority of the other films of the movement seem almost

    Read More

  • Theme Of Symbolism In The Handmaid's Tale

    1321 Words  | 6 Pages

    Symbolism in “The handmaid’s tale” by Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood is a Canadian-born writer who is famous for her novels, poems and short stories. She was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and studied at Victoria College at the University of Toronto. Atwood has received several prizes on her literature works which most characteristic is the depiction of stories about strong women, who have to go through difficult situations. Her novels mainly describe political chaos and societies in which women are oppressed and abused. This can be seen in one of her most renowned novels: “The handmaid’s Tale”, published in 1985 and which portrays the life in Gilead, a new society which emerged after a group of rebels assassinated the President.

    Read More

  • Essay Comparing The Female Bell-Cricket And This Powder Box

    780 Words  | 4 Pages

    In both The Female Bell-Cricket and This Powder Box, Nakamoto Takako and Uno Chiyo explore the notion of female sexuality as power. By asserting their sexuality, the female protagonists in both texts deliberately defy socially-prescribed female virtues of chastity and obedience. This ownership of their sexuality grants them power in their relationships with men and liberates them from the submissive position that women are traditionally expected to be in. It is crucial to note, however, that the depicted ‘strength’ of the two female protagonists is ultimately a constructed façade; they are still tied down by society’s prescriptive ideals of “femininity” and “love”, and have their behavior propelled by their relationships with men.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Metropolis

    1892 Words  | 8 Pages

    Introduction The rise of feminism in the 19th and 20th centuries brought along a deeper understanding of the inherent perceptions of masculine and feminine societal roles. Typically, the audience’s interpretations of a film, either consciously or sub-consciously, is often influenced by their gender. This affects how the presentation of gender in fictional works, either conforms, or diverges, from the societal gender expectations. By viewing the silent German film, Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang in 1927, we are able to see the contemporary ideas of gender roles and understand the concept of femininity in Weimar Germany.

    Read More

  • Essay Comparing The Bloody Chamber And The World's Wife

    494 Words  | 2 Pages

    Oppression is prolonged cruelty against certain groups of people. In society today, it is clear that many females are still oppressed in western and non-western countries, whether this is by the media objectifying women or even through the gender pay gap. Angela Carter and Carol Ann Duffy are both writers who speak out on female oppression in their works. By subverting the stereo typical role of female characters, in their notable texts, Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and Duffy’s “The World’s Wife”, both writers are known to have made bold statements about the new and improved role of women in modern day society of the late 20th century. This new and improved role of a woman includes being independent and not relying on the rescue of a man,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Miss Representation

    2346 Words  | 10 Pages

    Introduction The documentary, Miss Representation was written, directed and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Miss Representation highlights how the media and our culture objectify and belittle women and girls in society. The documentary begins with Newsom’s childhood story and the life and future, she wants for her daughter. The media is used as the main source of information.

    Read More

  • Feminist Theatre History

    1521 Words  | 7 Pages

    The construction of a self-conscious female gaze is the prime objective of feminist theatres everywhere. British feminist theatre practice as elsewhere is an attempt made by women to claim their rightful space in the creative realm of theatre that was deliberately denied to them by patriarchy. The public gaze on women was always the male gaze, one that always wished to see women as objects. It was an ideological position that patriarchy sanctioned as the normal way of looking at women. Women were always the secondary sexual objects for the gratification of male sexual fantasies.

    Read More

  • Secret Superstar Character Analysis

    1240 Words  | 5 Pages

    Abstract: In most parts of the world, females have always been the victim of oppressive patriarchy and male chauvinism since ages. This problem has been represented by many people through various forms of creations be it art, literature or films. Films are the most popular visual mediums of entertainment through which a large segment of people can be approached. Like literature, a film is also a work of art which mirrors the society, it also depicts the reality of the society though it has some fictionality in it.

    Read More

  • Sadomasochism Research Paper

    987 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sadomasochism refers to the act of giving or getting pleasure out of infliction or receipt of pain and humiliation. Prevalent among us from time immemorial, sadomasochism as a discourse originated only in the eighteen nineties with the Austrian psychoanalyst Richard von Krafft -Ebing who considered sadomasochism to be a form of subcultural transgression which offers a resistance to the hegemonic conception of sexual politics. Besides ,sadomadochism has some kind of linkage, convergence or underpinning of religion,sensuality patriarchism ,phalocentrism,liberation from the rigid body politics et al. Such instances could be found in the literature of modern and other times. (2) Key words: '

    Read More

More about Female Sexuality In Daisies, By Andrzej Zula

Open Document