Hoi F. Cheu-Cinematic Howling - Women's Films

Cinematic
Howling
A teaching guide for Cinematic Howling is available at
www.ubcpress.ca/cheu/index.html.
Hoi F. Cheu
Cinematic
Womens Films, Womens Film Theories
Howling
UBCPress . Vancouver . Toronto

UBC Press 2007
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cheu, Hoi F. (Hoi Fung), 1966-

Cinematic howling : womens films, womens film theories / Hoi F. Cheu.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-0-7748-1378-5
1. Feminism and moti on pictures. 2. Women motion picture producers and directors. 3. Women
screenwriters. 4. Feminist motion pictures. I. Title.
PN1995.9.W6C44 2007 791.43082 C2007-901880-7
Canada
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Acknowledgments / vii
1 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era:

Disneys Mulan / 1
2 Howling for Multitudes: Angela Carters The Company

of Wolves / 21
3 The Female Authorial Voice: Marguerite Duras

Hiroshima mon amour / 49
4 Beyond Freud and Lacan: Susan Streitfelds Female

Perversions / 70
5 Cathartic Meta-narrative: La Pools Lost and

Delirious and Barbara Sweetes Perfect Pie (Two
Scripts by Judith Thompson) / 95
6 Diasporic Imagination and Transcultural Identity:

Clara Laws The Goddess of 1967 / 124
Contents 7 Representing Representation: Agns Vardas

Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond) / 144
8 From Text to Context: Metadocumentary

and Skyworks / 157
9 Filling the Theory Vacuum: Marleen Gorris

Antonia / 174
Notes / 187
Bibliography / 197
Index / 203
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Acknowledgments
This book is about womens cinema and its stories of healing, survival, and
social change.
A few years ago, when I was thinking about what project to work on next,
I had two ideas in mind: one was a very narrow scholarly topic, on the films of
the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the other was on womens cinema. Lui
Sai-Tong, historian and retired publisher, gave me a simple guideline: Ask your-
self, he said, which project will benefit more people. He reminded me of my
responsibility as a writer, and I am in debt to his wisdom. I am saddened that
he did not see the completion of this book.
To Laura Sky and Judith Thompson, thanks for your inspiring works and
generosity.
I thank the Association for Bibliotherapy and Applied Literature (ABAL),
particularly its founder Joseph Gold, for introducing me to systems therapy.
For over ten years, I have attended the ABAL annual conference. Each has been
both an intellectual adventure and an emotional rejuvenation. I would also
like to thank therapist Peter Van Katwyk for compiling a reading list for me on
narrative and family therapy, and biologist Madhur Anand for clarifying some
of the scientific principles of complex systems theory.
I am grateful to Laurentian University, to the LUFA research fund for fi-
nancial support, to Donald Dennis, Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities,
for the workload relief, to Marilyn Orr and all my department colleagues for
their support. Most of the films discussed in this book have been taught in my
classes or screened at the Womens Studies Chick Flicks discussion group. I
especially thank Susanne Luhmann, organizer of Chick Flicks, and my Women
and Film students for sharing their responses.
During the revision of the manuscript, I test-screened a few of the chap-
ters. Thanks to Norman Cheadle, Helena Debevc-Moroz, Caelie Frampton,
Philippa Spoel, and all my students at Laurentian University for their construc-
tive feedback.
To Shelbey Krahn, my partner and critic, thank you for editing the raw
manuscript, for your thoughts, insights, and for your patience. We flew.
I am tremendously grateful for my editor Emily Andrews enthusiasm and
support, and the wonderful work of Ann Macklem and Deborah Kerr.
vii
This book is made possible by the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme
in the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences; for aca-
demic and artistic activities, such publicly funded support is essential if one is
to be unbound by the constraints of consumerism.
viii Acknowledgments
Cinematic
Howling
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Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era
Disneys Mulan
1
Feminism without Women
In 1998, Disney adapted a Chinese poem titled The Ballad of Mulan to the
Hollywood screen. I viewed the movie not as a specialist in film theory but as a
parent. My daughter, half Chinese and far away from my cultural origins, might
never be able to read the poem in Chinese, but she could at least know the story
through the pleasure of film. Disillusioned after seeing Mulan, I decided to
conduct a critical study of such postfeminist movies.
The Ballad of Mulan dates back to the Southern-Northern Dynasty (AD
420-589). This dynasty was a dark age; feudalism disintegrated when civil wars
and foreign invasions divided the preceding empire into small territories. The
rich and the royal retreated to the South because of barbarian invasions. Even-
tually, through relentless bloodbaths and cultural assimilations, some of the
invaders would be wiped out, some cast away to Europe, and some absorbed
into Chinas multi-ethnic mosaic. The Ballad of Mulan comes from the oral
tradition of the North, where barbarians had freed women from the oppres-
sive social codes of Confucianism. It tells the story of a young woman who
takes her sick fathers place in order to perform his military duty. It is a short
folk epic, appreciated, revised, and rewritten for various reasons throughout
the ages. In the Tang Dynasty a time of Buddhist Romanticism Mulan was
a figure of liberty; in the Sung Dynasty another era of foreign invasions she
1
represented the Chinese peoples desire to reclaim the land conquered by north-
ern neighbours; in the Ming Dynasty, she was used to resurrect the Confucian
virtue that demands that children make sacrifices for their parents sake. Dur-
ing the communist revolution, she was praised as a proletarian woman warrior
and liberator.
Each age reconstructed Mulans story to serve its own social purposes, so
there is no point in criticizing Disney simply because it appropriated this Chi-
nese folk tale. Stories have to be changed; as I advocate throughout this book,
stories are an agent of change. Nevertheless, one must guard against an uncon-
ditional surrender to the transformative power of the film art because the same
power can be used in the service of social conformity. A critical inquiry should
highlight how the source material has been changed: in Mulan, Disney reworked
the story to match what it perceived to be the belief system of its viewers; in
turn, the film itself frames the ideology of American culture.
In constructing Mulan, Disney extracted one basic element from the tale:
Mulan takes her fathers place to fight in the army. Pandering to postfeminist
America, the rest of the storyline is a battle against an American version of
Chinese patriarchy that forbids women from becoming soldiers. The charac-
terization of Mulan contradicts her physical portrait. Disneys Mulan has the
mind of a superhero; she and her comrades march to the front only to find that
invading Huns have wiped out Chinas main army, but against desperate odds,
they choose to stand against the Hun advance. Being physically the weak link
of her squad, she almost fails her training and fights only one battle. As the
heroine, she is responsible for transforming an imminent defeat into victory,
yet she does so neither by skill nor military strategy. She wins the battle by
firing one cannon at a nearby snow-covered mountain, creating an avalanche
that engulfs almost the entire Hun army. This plot development is symptom-
atic of the American perspective: a large-scale war can easily be won with pre-
cision bombing, but psychopathic terrorist groups present real trouble.
The conflict between Mulan and Chinese patriarchy comes immediately
after the avalanche. Mulans comrades discover that she is a girl and, following
the armys cruel patriarchal law, abandon her on the snowy mountain. Because
she has been left behind, she learns that a small but fierce group of Huns has
survived and plans to take the emperors city. Entering the city herself, she at-
tempts to warn people about the impending danger, but nobody believes her
because she is female. The Huns duly arrive and take the emperor hostage. The
most unconvincing scene is about border-crossing postmodern and post-
2 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

feminist in a sense. In this scene, in order to rescue the emperor, Mulan cross-
dresses her comrades as imperial concubines to infiltrate the palace where the
Emperor has been captured. They save China from the dishonourable terror-
ists with their femininity. This cross-dressing scene is certainly designed to make
girls feel good about being women by evoking a sense of poetic justice after
what the men have done to Mulan for her transgression.
Although every age reconstructs Mulan to fit its time, one central theme
seems consistent in all the Chinese revisions: the story expresses Chinese peo-
ples war weariness. Dynasties rise and fall, bringing many disastrous wars. No
matter how dramatically the people of each dynasty change the poem to fit
themselves, the devastation of war remains in sharp focus:
She fought her way through ten thousand miles,

Speeding over mountain gates.
Chill winds spread the odour of blood,
Cold sun polished her iron armour.
Countless perished in countless wars,
Yet warriors returned after many falls.
(from The Ballad of Mulan, my translation)
In all the Chinese versions, Mulan, neither romanticized nor glamorized, is

depicted as a survivor, not a superhero. In a Tang Dynasty version, she fights
beside her companions for twelve years yes, Mulan is not the ever-young
beauty presented by Disney. The Chinese lunar calendar uses twelve animals to
represent each year in its twelve-year cycle. Each cycle marks a stage of life:
childhood (1-12), youth (13-24), maturity (25-36), the age of strength (37-48),
the age of gold (49-60), and the age of dusk (61-72). The description of twelve
years, therefore, should not be taken literally. In the Chinese language, twelve
years refers to Mulans loss of her youth to war, just as ten thousand miles
means a very long way. According to the ballad, it is Mulans long and superior
service record that brings her to the attention of the emperor, who awards her
the highest honour for soldiers. The Tang poem never suggests that Mulan
wins the war for China (historically, the wars of the Southern-Northern Dy-
nasty did not cease for seven decades). Only Disneys version glamorizes its
protagonist and her victory to fulfill a heroic fantasy.
On the surface, Disneys Mulan seems to desire womens liberation by
showcasing a Chinese female warrior to accentuate the image of strong women:
Disneys Mulan 3
girls can be soldiers. Deep down, however, the film reinforces patriarchal fam-
ily values, as can be discerned by comparing its conclusion with that of the poem,
for how a story ends reveals its tellers social attitude. The Chinese version brings
up the gender issue in its comic ending. Mulan, having returned to her family
home with her comrades, puts on womens clothing and powders her face:
She came out to greet her companions,

And they were surprised:
Being with you in battles for twelve years,
We had no idea that you are female.
The he-rabbit hurts his legs,
And the she-rabbit bewilders his eyes:
In the confusion of chaos,
How can he tell of her sex?
Noticeably, the poet is proud of Mulan for confusing her companions, and the
soldiers themselves do not find her presence in the army to be offensive. Mulans
victory is a triumph over gender convention. Discussing female warriors, the
Chinese literary historian Lu Da-Zhi comments, It is unlikely that the story is
all true, but back then, a Northern Chinese woman who fought battles in her
armour could be thoroughly possible. As depicted in other folk songs at the
time, such as Sister Li Po, Northern women who rode and shot on horses were
far braver and more skilful than many male soldiers of the declining Southern
empire.1 Lus comment concurs with Chinese folk culture on the whole. Sex-
ism exists in China, but traditional Chinese society discriminates against women
in a fashion that differs from that featured in the Disney film. Confucian patri-
archal codes presuppose a very strong division between social classes. Women
are least constrained among the working class and barbarians. As a result,
Chinese folk culture is full of stories of female warriors and kung-fu masters
such as Mulan, the Maidens of Yuen, and the Fourth Sister of Loi, among others.
The characters in these stories are not always working class, but as folk tales,
the stories are created by the working class.
Disneys Mulan, in contrast, is a confused girl pretending to be a soldier.
Her decision to join the army reflects a quest to find herself as much as it does
her love for her father. Moreover, she is unsuited for the traditional female role.
Although she has a pretty face and a slim body, she can display none of the
feminine accomplishments that will please the village matchmaker. Unlike her

character in the poem, Disneys Mulan does not return home at a break and
voluntarily reveal her female identity. Instead, she is exposed after her clever-
ness and bravery bring victory; upon the discovery, her closed-minded com-
manding officer leaves her behind. Thus, she is forced to prove herself once
again, and does so by rescuing the emperor. As is so common in Hollywood
action movies, near catastrophe in war provides the circumstances for per-
sonal fulfillment.
But the films apparent advocacy of individuality is no more than window
dressing. True individuality threatens the commercial rules governing popular
culture: if it is to be a blockbuster, a story must offend no one, and thus indi-
vidualism must be approached cautiously. It can be celebrated when it concurs
with the American dream you can be anything you want if you work hard
within societys established rules and expectations. But when individualism
subverts societys general ideology the nations belief system that supports its
economic and political structures it becomes dangerous. Mulan may tempt
postmodern critics to praise its celebration of border crossing, particularly when
Mulan cross-dresses her fellow soldiers in order to infiltrate the captured For-
bidden Palace, but in the end, it re-establishes all the borders it breaks down.
To make the story fit into the formula of a Disneyfied fairy tale, the studio had
to make sacrifices; the sacrificial ceremony in Mulan takes place during the
family reunion that occurs at the conclusion of the film. Immediately after
saving China, Mulan goes home alone and shows her father the medal she has
received from the grateful emperor. As a loving father, he does not care about
her achievements because the most important thing to him is her homecom-
ing. Her handsome commanding officer, now her suitor, enters a moment later
and is invited by her grandmother to stay for dinner. With Prince Charming
now in place, the film closes on the obligatory happy note. However, the reality
of Mulans future seems bleak her feminist statement has been made; once
made, it no longer carries any significance. Father and husband now give mean-
ing to her existence. What the industry calls the balance between art and com-
merce, typically achieved through the extermination of individual rebellion, is
established at the end of Disneys Mulan: patriarchy is restored to reinforce the
family values of Americas religious right. Gone is the Chinese poems humor-
ous blurring of gender boundaries.
I believe that mechanical adaptations of literature often produce dull mov-
ies. Films based on literature must not act as simple illustrations of literary
texts, for film as an artistic medium has its own range of expression. Besides,
Disneys Mulan 5
with a folk song such as The Ballad of Mulan, originality has little relevance.
The existing form of the poem is such an artifact of rewriting that it is already
far removed from its ancient forms. The poem states, for example, that Mulan
receives the rank of the Twelve Spheres, which is a term from the Tang Dy-
nasty. We can therefore infer from the terminology that the episode of her pro-
motion was constructed after at least a century of the poems oral transmission.
The Tang Dynasty had every reason to rewrite Mulan: it produced Wu Zetian
(AD 625-705), the only Chinese empress, who took the throne of her husbands
declining empire and ignited a renaissance. In the Disney rewriting, Mulan
materializes the conflict between the demand for strong female figures in me-
dia representation and the desire to restore patriarchal social order. The plot of
Mulan offers a compromise: when the liberated warrior chooses to follow the
way of her ancestors, slavery becomes freedom. Disneys Mulan is problematic
not because its script departs from the Chinese source text, but because it is a
subversion of feminism in the name of feminism.
Mulan is a typical cultural product of the postfeminist age. Although the
term postfeminism was once a trendy little neologism,2 and is now a two-
decade-old newspeak, it captures a general change of attitude toward femi-
nism.3 In Feminist Media Studies, Liesbet van Zoonen describes a new generation
stripped of the fabric of feminist politics:
Feminism nowadays is not easily delineated or defined. As a political project at

least in the context of continental western Europe for the greater part its charac-
ter has moved from a highly visible, vital and sometimes spectacular counter-
cultural form to a customary but at times still controversial component of
established institutions such as political parties, unions, universities and local and
national administrations. Much contemporary feminism has taken on the form of
womens caucuses, womens studies and womens bureaux which often prefer to
speak of their activities as emancipatory instead of feminist. A similar reluc-
tance to associate with feminism seems to occur among women in their twenties
who feel that feminism was a battle of their mothers or older sisters and claim that
their own struggles are of a different kind.4
With Disneys Mulan in mind, I find new meaning in van Zoonens remarks on
the postfeminist age. Where do these young women get the feeling that femi-
nism was a battle of their mothers? Are they led by euphemistic subversion in
the broader culture to believe that the goal of feminism has been reached, or do

they identify with new kinds of political struggle that go beyond gender dis-
course? Every revolution has two possible deaths: by failing or by giving birth
to a new age. Feminism did not fail; nevertheless, in the period following revo-
lutionary times, those opposed to change commonly attempt to revive aspects
of the pre-revolutionary world. Examples of this retrogression can be seen in
the Roman universalization of Christianity, Bonapartist imperialism after the
French Revolution, and proletarian dictatorship in communism. Similar retro-
gression dominates the postfeminist age, a phenomenon that Tania Modleski
calls feminism without women, in the sense that the postfeminist world de-
clares the triumph of feminism to prevent women from engaging in further
discourses on social change.
To make its deceptive point that feminist struggle is no longer needed, the
post-revolutionary world mocks the past to celebrate the present. In Disneys
Mulan, a prime example of feminism without women, Chinas past is stolen
to reinforce the American ideal. When the matchmaker meets Mulan, she com-
ments that Mulans body is too skinny and therefore is not good for bear-
ing sons. Viewers are expected to laugh because the developed world no longer
uses women as breeding stock (at least we may tend to think so until, once in
a while, we encounter something like the United States federal guidelines that
suggest that the health care system treat nearly all women as pre-pregnant).5
Although Mulan may seem to rebel against ancient Chinese patriarchy, she is
a feminist figure constructed to prevent any feminist consciousness of the
present. Her body conforms to Hollywoods beauty myth, which is responsi-
ble for the subjugation of contemporary women. Her triumph is manufac-
tured through simulating and assimilating feminism and multiculturalism a
disguise that hides the retrogressive underpinnings of the film. For this rea-
son, the movie follows one general rule of Hollywood films: The good, strong
woman always returns to the mans world.6 When Mulan defeats the Huns,
her emperor recovers his power; when she returns home, her father retains
the order of his house. Disneys Mulan is a paradox: its political message con-
tradicts its own poetic motive its heroine is a transcendental postfeminist
icon; its apparent cultural hybridity erases differences; its rebellious spirit dis-
solves its viewers subversive drives. As Modleski describes, The postfeminist
play with gender in which differences are elided can easily lead us back into
our pregendered past where there was only the universal subject man.7
The term feminism has lost its political edge; as seen in Mulan, or in the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which were partially justified in the name
Disneys Mulan 7
of liberating Islamic women, feminism without women manoeuvres decep-
tively, wrapping patriarchy in the trappings of feminism in order to fortify
regressive power institutions.
Feminist Film Theory without Women-Made FilmS

The realization of postfeminist subversion could have driven me to analyze
popular culture throughout the rest of this book: Xenas cleavage, the Powerpuff
Girls sugar, spice and everything nice, Ally McBeals desperation for Mr. Right,
Buffys desire to return to the life of an ordinary girl who enjoys shopping
and cheerleading, all of Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives. However, not
long after I saw Mulan, I was assigned to teach Women and Film. To avoid
feminism without women, I wanted to exhibit films written and directed by
women. While choosing a course textbook, I came across Sue Thornhams Femi-
nist Film Theory: A Reader.8 In its collected essays, I observed an unanticipated
trend: all of its theories are feminist, but male auteurs and their silly movies
(as Pauline Kael would say) remain at centre stage, and womens film art is
literally out of the picture.9 All but one of the twenty-three collected essays
focus on mens films. Even the exception Judith Butlers Gender Is Burning
is similar to the others in terms of its critical position: questioning the valid-
ity of a white lesbian director making a documentary on black gay subculture,
Butler uses the same critical spectatorship applied to male directors on the
documentary film.10 Feminist Film Theory is a strange scenario of feminism
without women. When the bulk of theoretical writing concentrates on tackling
the patriarchal representational system, the critical enterprise falls into an abyss
of negation, unintentionally sustaining the exile of womens cinema that has
existed since the beginning of film history. Had I patterned my course after the
book, it would have focused on a list of films that varied from Alfred Hitchcocks
Rebecca to Sylvester Stallones Rocky II.
Upon this realization, I recalled bell hooks wise words: If we long to trans-
form the culture so that the conventional mass media are not the only force
teaching people what to like and how to see, then we have to embrace the avant-
garde ... Here is where well find radical possibility. We can deconstruct the im-
ages in the mainstream white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cinema for days
and it will not lead to cultural revolution.11 Therefore, I turned my attention to
women-made films to find radical possibility (even though neither the avant-
garde nor womens cinema guarantee the expression of radical possibility).

From a historical perspective, we may regard bell hooks argument as a
recapitulation of an early feminist call for the renewal of critical theory. In
Women and Film, a pioneering though short-lived American journal of the
early 1970s, the editors outline three forms of oppression of women in the film
industry:12
1 Systemic discrimination: women are mostly employed as receptionists, sec-

retaries, odd job girls, prop girls, and so on. The process of filmmaking
itself excludes women by an elitist hierarchy, destructive competition, and
vicious internal politics.
2 Cultural construction: the persistent projection of false images of women
on the screen no matter how liberal-looking some characters appear, while
in marketing, women are packaged as sex objects, victims of gangs, or vam-
pires of horror stories.
3 Academic ignorance: male critics celebrate male auteurs, which further per-
petuates the industrys male hierarchy, discouraging women from becom-
ing production students and film professors.
Women and Films editorial referred specifically to Hollywood, and with good
reason. According to Barbara Koenig Quart, only 0.2 percent of all films re-
leased by American studios between 1949 and 1979 credited women in major
filmmaking positions.13 Within this percentage, most were editors. Women had
more success in editing because, unlike the Russians, who regarded montage as
the essence of film art, Hollywood associated the task with womens patience
and willingness to follow the given storyboards. Whatever the job, women felt
that they were being pushed aside from positions demanding creative author-
ity in the heyday of Hollywood. Joan Harrison, the screenwriter of Rebecca,
told the Los Angeles Times in 1944 that the front office attitude resents a woman
in authority and it probably always will they recognize women writers but
prefer to keep us in prescribed grooves.14 When she got tired of having her
scripts changed and quit working for Hitchcock, she had to fight hard to be-
come a producer of her own film noir, Phantom Lady, at Universal Studios. The
system had room for female filmmakers, but sexism was the major barrier. In
the seventies, therefore, second-wave feminism declared war on Hollywood.
According to the Women and Film editorial, the feminist approach to film studies
has three concentrations, corresponding to the three areas of oppression: first,
Disneys Mulan 9
get more women to work in the industry as filmmakers; second, reveal how
women have been distorted in cinematic representations; and, third, change
the male-oriented critical heritage from within film studies. The three battle-
fronts are supposed to be inseparable.
Regrettably, perhaps because film theory and film production are separate
academic subjects, the former now concentrates primarily on criticism, and
the latter has become a practical program of the professional school. What
was called formal or art theory hypotheses concerning the act of writing,
the nature of film art, or the aesthetic principles of filmmaking is no longer
fashionable in the humanities. Contemporary theory and criticism are more
concerned with politics than with poetics. So-called high theory is often em-
ployed to provide critical approaches. My argument is that, though it is impor-
tant to continue developing theoretical frameworks for critical thinking, it is
urgent to bridge the gap between poetics and politics. Otherwise, we will be
left with feminism without womens films, as exemplified by Sue Thornhams
Feminist Film Theory, a situation in which critical articles and books about
womens film art will be rarer than the womens films allowed by the industry.
Nevertheless, high theory does not have to be criticism oriented. In
poststructuralisms European roots, for example, critical thinking is only a prel-
ude to a revolution in poetic language. The works of Julia Kristeva and Hlne
Cixous exemplify how theory can be preoccupied with articulating feminine
aesthetics and stimulating artistic experiments. Cixous borrows a story from
Sun Tses The Art of War to illustrate a point. Once upon a time, the emperor
asked Sun Tse to train his 180 wives to be soldiers. Sun Tse lined up the women
in two rows and, using the language of the drumbeat, tried to teach them mili-
tary drill: two beats turn right, three beats turn left, four beats about turn, and
so on. The kings wives did not follow the beats. They fell about laughing. The
masculine economy, Cixous describes, is like soldiers marching in synchro-
nized left, right, left steps; the laws of classical physics are the logic of masculine
economy. The feminine, in contrast, has no such rhythm. What, then, is the
rhythm of femininity? It is not anything specific: rather, it is what refuses to
conform to a fixed structure. It is an otherness that does not know efficiency
and does not follow orders; it cannot help but laugh at the demand for formal-
ity and obedience. Masculinity describes the characteristics of domination, of
what it values, and how it rules. From the masculine viewpoint, femininity is
disorder and chaos, weakness and unpredictability. For Cixous, radical creative
energy relies on freeing femininity from the repressive masculine gaze.

Although Cixous theory encourages womens artistic expression, feminine
aesthetics is not limited to women only. After all, Cixous herself employed the
term feminine writing (lcriture fminine) to analyze Joycean language in
her doctoral thesis The Exile of James Joyce. She advocates feminine writing as
a political act. In her famous essay The Laugh of the Medusa, she proposes, I
shall speak about womens writing: about what it will do. Woman must write
her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which
they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies for the same
reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself
into the text as into the world and into history by her own movement.15 For
Cixous, unlike the Anglo-postfeminist culture that demands girl fighters like
Disneys Mulan, the attempt to make a soldier out of a woman is considered an
act of violent silencing. As The Art of War continues, Sun Tse warned the women
that those who failed to follow his orders would be punished with death. They
laughed again. A man of his word, Sun Tse beheaded two of them and started
over. Ancient wisdom supports modern psychology: fearing decapitation (an
anxiety similar to the castration complex identified by Freud for the male), the
women obeyed the drumbeat and marched without making a single mistake,
in silence.16 Conformity is tragic in Cixous narration.
Cixous theory is literally feminine-ism; femininity is a creative force in
both women and men, which, once extricated, can be engaged to resist the
power of social conformity and the informatics of domination.17 To create radical
possibilities through art, the artist must try to shake the ground of language.
Like Sun Tses drumbeats, language (or the symbolic order in poststructural
terminology) is a tool of conformity. From the moment we begin to acquire
language, it shapes our minds deep in the unconscious. Once a soldier is trained
to march, the drumbeats will always be associated with obedience. In Cixous
argument, therefore, the artist must reject the established structure, the left,
right, left masculine symbolic order; radical political ideas require feminine
aesthetics to bypass the decapitation threat presented by the established sym-
bolic order. Feminine aesthetics, therefore, is like laughter an absurd response
to absurd authority. One must find the courage to laugh so that the heart does
not follow the drum.
Like Cixous, Laura Mulvey is deeply interested in womens artistic expres-
sion; however, she is known mainly for her critique of the male gaze. In Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey employs psychoanalysis as a political
weapon to expose the hidden gender politics of mens cinematic language. But
Disneys Mulan 11
the critique of visual pleasure in Mulveys argument is not an end. For instance,
she begins with a crucial Lacanian question that touches the heart of
poststructuralism: How to fight the unconscious structured like a language
(formed critically at the moment of arrival of language) while still caught within
the language of patriarchy?18 For Mulvey, critical consciousness precedes ar-
tistic experimentation. The main theme of Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin-
ema is the destruction of pleasure as a radical weapon. Narrative structure
and visual composition go hand in hand in the cinematic tradition to fulfill
the pleasure of looking, which is, for the male, the voyeuristic gaze, and, for
the female, submission to the role of to-be-looked-at-ness.19 An alternative
womans image within the convention of classical cinema can hardly break the
code of gender in which women remain the object of desire for the male gaze.
The stylistic tradition of classical narrative cinema itself reinforces a power
structure by providing the erotic pleasures of voyeurism (an idea certainly con-
firmed by the physical attractiveness of postfeminist girl fighters). Through
psychoanalysis, Mulvey believes, feminist critics can bring the unconscious
encoding of mainstream cinema to the surface and thus shrivel its power in the
glare of light.
The drive for feminist filmmaking is explicitly expressed (though not elabo-
rated) in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Mulvey believes there is no
way in which we can produce an alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to
make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it provides (ibid., 15). In
her subsequent writings and filmmaking, Mulvey actually tried to move away
from the destruction of pleasure toward the construction of feminine film aes-
thetics. Shortly after writing Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she co-
directed Penthesilea (1974) and Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) with Peter Wollen.
Later, in Film, Feminism and the Avant-Garde, a 1978 essay written for the
Oxford Womens Studies Committee, Mulvey summed up the forces preceding
the poststructural movement: Both film theory and feminism, united by a
common interest in the politics of images and problems of aesthetic language,
have been influenced by recent intellectual debates around the split nature of the
sign (semiotics) and the eruption of the unconscious in representation (psycho-
analysis). There has also been a definite influence from Louis Althussers Marxist
philosophy, especially his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.20
Each component of these three intellectual debates has its function: Marxist
philosophy provides the framework for ideological criticism to make the at-
tack on sexism possible; psychoanalysis reveals that conventional cinematic

language is dominated by the male point of view and, along with it, the projec-
tion of fears and fantasies of the male psyche; semiotics focuses the attack spe-
cifically on language, claiming that language, as the building block of thought,
needs radical change. Semiotics gives hope to feminine writing, suggesting that
if we study the smallest details of language, we can find traces of what has been
submerged in the process of meaning making thus, every homogeneous male-
dominant cultural product cleaves to reveal a hidden maternal plenitude. Seiz-
ing on this key idea years before Julia Kristevas Revolution in Poetic Language
was widely discussed among Anglo-American academics, Mulvey had already
made use of Kristevas poetics transgression is played out through language
itself to support feminist experimental films.21
Perhaps due to the criticism-based paradigm of Anglo-American univer-
sities, Mulveys later writings, together with her advocacy of womens cinema
and the complex debate concerning the nature of feminine aesthetics, were
overlooked and eventually overshadowed by other critical theories. Many an-
thologies of theory, including The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
and Feminist Film Theory, present Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema as
the foundational essay of feminist spectatorship, but omit other discussions of
alternative cinema. I believe that the downplaying of Mulveys avant-gardism
is symptomatic of feminist film theory without women filmmakers. In the eight-
ies, feminist film theory took two different paths: one furthered the use of
psychoanalysis to destroy male voyeuristic pleasure, and the other attacked
academia itself. In both cases, avant-garde cinema was either ignored or at-
tacked attacked because a rising interest in mass culture, accompanied by a
theory of cultural negotiations, perceived avant-gardism and the criticism of
popular culture as elitist intellectual amusement.
The principal flashpoints of this theory appear in the work of Valerie
Walkerdine and Christine Gledhill. The latter states, While the political avant-
garde audience deconstructs the pleasures and identities offered by the main-
stream text, it participates in the comforting identity of critic or cognoscente,
positioned in the sphere of the ideologically correct, and the radical a posi-
tion which is defined by its difference from the ideological mystification attrib-
uted to the audiences of the mass media.22 Instead of reading films as an
ideological apparatus, and its consumers as cybernetic drones, Gledhill main-
tains that meaning making is a process of cultural negotiations: As a model of
meaning production, negotiation conceives cultural exchange as the inter-
section of processes of production and reception, in which overlapping but
Disneys Mulan 13
non-matching determinations operate. Meaning is neither imposed, nor pas-
sively imbibed, but arises out of a struggle or negotiation between competing
frames of reference, motivation and experience.23 In a sense, Gledhill makes
use of feminist film theorys own analytic weapons to disintegrate the intellec-
tual pride of the avant-garde. Culture is dynamic, so critics should not assume
a position outside and above the public from which to cast the gaze of critical
pleasure.
Gledhills view is supported by Walkerdine, who takes the anti-intellectual
motive further. The crusade to save the masses from the ideology that dupes
them, Walkerdine warns, can obscure the real social significance of their pleas-
ures and, at the same time, blind us to the perversity of radical intellectual
pleasures. The attempt to measure culture in fixed pathological terms is, ac-
cording to her, a perversion. Her interest is in schoolgirl fiction, particularly
that of the working class; she observes that one fatal problem of poststructural
theory lies in its elitist longing for high arts. She regards the cold aesthetic of
counter-cinema as a tool of embourgeoisement, and therefore defends main-
stream cinema in the conclusion of Video Replay: Families, Films and Fantasy:
Watching a Hollywood movie is not simply an escape from drudgery into
dreaming: it is a place of desperate dreaming, of hope for transformation.24
But, as we see in Mulan, the products of mass culture are often ideologi-
cally retrogressive. Although Mulan at least tries to look pro-feminist, many
movies simply project feminism as outright madness and evil. Cruella de Vil,
epitomy of the evil, angry feminist in the 1996 version of 101 Dalmatians, is
such an example. De Vils hair stands up aggressively, recalling the mythic fig-
ure of Medusa as a matter of fact, the men around her are always stiff in her
presence. Anita, the films good-girl figure, works for Cruella as a fashion
designer. Through their conversation, the film orchestrates an overtly anti-
feminist message:
Cruella: How long have you been working for me?

Anita: Uh, two years last August.
Cruella: And you have done wonderful work [in] that time.
Anita: Ah ... Thank you.
Cruella: I dont see you socially, do I?
Anita: No.
Cruella: And you are not very well-known despite your obvious talent.

Anita: Well, notoriety doesnt mean very much to me.
Cruella: Your work is fresh and clean, unfettered, unpretentious. It sells. And one
of these days my competitors are going to suss out who you are, and theyre going
to try to steal you away.
Anita: Oh, no. If I left, it wouldnt be for another job.
Cruella: Oh, really? What would it be for?
Anita: Well, I dont know. Um ... If I met someone. If working here didnt fit in
with our plans.
Cruella: Marriage!
Anita: Perhaps.
Cruella: More good women have been lost to marriage than to war, famine, dis-
ease and disaster. You have talent, darling, dont squander it.
Anita: Well, I dont think that its something we have to worry about. I dont have
any prospects.
Cruella: Thank God.
In the 1961 animated version of 101 Dalmatians, Cruella is Anitas manipu-

lative, psychotic former classmate. The script offers no explanation for Cruellas
wealth or her relationship with Anita. Her cruelty is manifested in her obses-
sion with furs. She is full of hate but not deadly; she is not exactly a femme fatale
because she is neither seductive nor competent. She is a comic antagonist. In
the 1996 remake, the new Cruella is transformed into an evil feminist, reinforc-
ing the Hollywood perception that feminism is devilish for hating men and
traditional families. This version explains why Cruella goes to such great lengths
to get Anitas dogs: it is in revenge for Anitas betrayal of the feminist tyrant.
The widespread negative image of strong women has the power to con-
struct its illusionary Truth. In reviewing The Break-Up (2006), Johanna
Schneller observes a phenomenon of shrieking shrews: The joke in Holly-
wood used to be that there were three roles for actresses: ingnue, mom and
Miss Daisy. Well, theres now a fourth, but its hardly cause for rejoicing: Bitch
Boss to a younger, comelier woman (who is often less talented, but a bigger
star).25 Schnellers list of Bitch Bosses includes Judy Davis in The Break-Up,
Sharon Stone in Catwoman, Helen Mirren in Raising Helen, Glenn Close in
Height, Diane Keaton in Hanging Up, and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears
Prada. One need look no further to understand why many of todays young
women are reluctant to label themselves feminists.
Disneys Mulan 15
I sympathize with Gledhill and Walkerdine in their attempt to speak against
intellectual elitists simplification of popular culture as trash and propaganda.
In examining commercial products such as Mulan and 101 Dalmatians, one
must keep in mind that such films are ideologically multi-layered because their
texts arise from cultural negotiations corresponding to the complex social
reality beyond the silver screen. Nevertheless, what cultural negotiation can
we have in a cultural climate that regards film viewers as mass consumers?
The need to study mass culture does not override the call for alternatives and
experimentation.
In Reel to Real, bell hooks recalls from her teaching experiences that mov-
ies can often open up discussions of race, class, and gender more effectively
than do theory and criticism. In the same chapter, however, she also argues
that one must embrace the avant-garde to find alternatives. Her argument re-
capitulates that of Mulvey. We are invited to look toward the artists to find
visions that have been missing from our cultural discourse. But hooks is not
alone. Since the mid-1990s, interest in womens creative forces has grown, and
many extensive works now acknowledge the rich resource of womens cinema.
For example, Patricia Mellencamps A Fine Romance: Five Ages of Film Femi-
nism (1995) is pioneering in its attempt to map the development of filmmaking
under different feminisms. There are also such encyclopedic projects as Amy
Unterburgers The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia (1999). In addi-
tion, Pam Cook and Ginette Vincendeau conduct an editorial series titled
Women Make Cinema for Continuum International Publishing.
One important lesson that we can learn from these encyclopedias and his-
tories of womens cinema is that, though 0.2 percent is a small number, wom-
ens contributions to film art have been magnificent. As long ago as 1896, Alice
Guy was the first person to realize the potential of film as a storytelling me-
dium in a time when everyone else was using the moving picture to shoot live
action cars running back and forth, women walking out of factories, trains
pulling into stations. Employed as a stenographer for Lon Gaumont, Guy
imagined that motion pictures could tell fictional stories. Under the condition
that she did her silly girl thing only during her leisure time, Guy was allowed
to use the Gaumont Studio to produce, in 1896, the first commercially released
narrative film.26 In the following years, she was the Gaumont companys crea-
tive spirit, writing and directing her own films seventy years before the term
cinma dauteur was invented to describe her position. Early in 1915, Julia
Crawford Ivers became the first female general manager of a Hollywood studio,

and, at Universal Studios, Lois Weber was the highest-paid director of her day
(US$5,000 per week). From 1927 to 1949, Hollywoods dark age for female film-
makers, the industry still produced the celebrated director Dorothy Arzner. In
1967, Dede Allen, recognized for her excellent editing of Arthur Penns Bonnie
and Clyde, became the first editor to receive a solo credit. In 1972, when the
editorial in Women and Film was written, Elaine Mays A New Leaf had been
out for less than a year and Heartbreak Kid had been released. Beyond the bor-
der of Hollywood studios were even greater names such as Lina Wertmller,
Muriel Box, Marguerite Duras, Agns Varda, Shirley Clarke, and Sarah Maldoror.
Indeed, in 1972, when feminist film theory was still in its infancy, there were
enough female filmmakers for New York to hold the first International Festival
of Womens Film.
Currently, gender-motivated discourse based on the binary opposition of
the sexes has gone out of fashion. But the deconstruction of binary oppositions
does not signal the end of feminism: we have just come to realize that sexual
politics has a larger context. When feminism started its fight against the op-
pression of women, its discourse was motivated by the war of the sexes. As the
movement continued, it eventually included other dichotomies masculine
and feminine, gay and straight, rich and poor, black and white, local and glo-
bal, natural and cultural, monocultural and multicultural. For this reason, femi-
nism has grown into new prominence, joining other political movements to
cultivate multiple levels of diversity in a context of neo-colonialism and global
monopoly. The new streams in feminist scholarship (be they called post-
feminism in the words best sense or third-wave feminism) are well elabo-
rated in Angharad N. Valdivias essay Feminist Media Studies in a Global
Setting.27 The shift from the binary to the diverse is the new wave.
To a certain degree, I appreciate the postfeminist argument that we need to
deconstruct gender as an artificial category, because, after all, as Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick points out, people are different from each other.28 Why do we need
to distinguish mens cinema from womens? Unlike Tania Modleski, however, I
do not think that the intent to dissolve gender discourse is a feminist advance-
ment that undermines womens struggles in other parts of the world. Everyone
is constantly revising challenging, dismantling, establishing boundaries of
cultural identity; recognizing this endless change, one may realize that cul-
ture and identity are in themselves terms to be continually defined and re-
defined. What is women as a cultural construct? Even if we limit our discussion
to sexuality and physiology, the answer would not be black and white. If the
Disneys Mulan 17
boundaries that we have constructed are so obscure and unstable, how can we
speak of womens cinema? What motivates us to create such a category as
women filmmakers? Are there essential characteristics of womens
filmmaking? When Douglas Rowe praised Mimi Leder for adding the wom-
ans touch to her sci-fi action movie Deep Impact, Leder commented that, though
she certainly brought her own individuality to her crew, characterizing the
womans touch as sensitive and tender would not be fair to the man who
directed Terms of Endearment and the man who directed Schindlers List and
the man who directed Cinema Paradiso.29 On the one hand, as I am going to
explain through Pauline Kaels definition of the art of criticism, good critical
practice is supposed to help others see what is new and important in every
film; any attempt to generalize in essential terms whether through citing di-
rectors touch or womans touch is a mistake. On the other hand, however,
I support the feminist project of refocusing on women filmmakers; the catego-
rization is certainly motivated by gender discourse, but it is necessary for the
time being because womens cinema, no matter how we draw the boundaries,
includes a wide range of works that are not fully appreciated and studied.
With the recognition of this paradox, I treat womens cinema in this book
as an existential practice rather than an essential definition. I concentrate on
womens metafictional films stories about storytelling and films about
filmmaking to derive a theoretical practice from women filmmakers and
scriptwriters. I hope to demonstrate that womens filmmaking can provide an
active voice of imagination; far from shrieking, this active voice can help me
and others find rhythms for the film art that are not synchronized with the
drumbeats of our cultural and political domination. In the postfeminist era, it
is more imperative than ever to engage womens filmmaking, not only as
oppositional gaze, but also as howling for multitudes.

The Ballad of Mulan
(This folk poem was composed between AD 420 and 589; the version used for this
translation was written down and revised around the eighth century.)
Tsi-ek, and tsi-ek,

Mulan was weaving.
The shuttle suddenly stopped,
And Mulan sighed.
What are you thinking?
Whats on your mind?
Nothing really,
I dont know what to think.
Last night I read the order.
The king is calling many troops.
He sent out twelve scrolls,
And every one has my fathers name.
The old man has no grown-up son,
And I have no elder brother.
I want to get my horse and saddle,
And serve in the army in his place.
East, she took a horse,

West, a saddle,
South, a bridle,
North, a whip.
At dawn, she left her parents,
At dusk, she camped on the riverbank,
Where she could no longer hear her parents calls,
Only the roaring of Yellow Rivers stormy waves filled her ears.
The next day, she departed the Yellow River,

At dusk, she reached Black Mountain,
Where she could no longer hear her parents calls,
Only the neighing of Mount Yens wild mares filled her ears.
She fought her way through ten thousand miles,

Speeding over mountain gates.
Chill winds spread the odour of blood,
Cold sun polished her iron armour.
Countless perished in countless wars,
Yet warriors returned after many falls.
Disneys Mulan 19
On her way back, she met the king,
Who sat in his gleaming palace.
He honoured her with the Twelve Spheres,
And granted her a thousand treasures.
He asked her what she desired.
I dont want any high post,
but to ride a swift mount
Which will take me home.
When Father and Mother heard her,

They came out to greet the great warrior.
When Elder Sister heard her,
She stayed in to adorn herself.
When Little Brother heard her,
He whet the blade for mutton and pork.
East, I unlock my gate,

West, I uncover my bench,
Undo my wartime robe,
Unpack my old-time clothes.
Looking out the window she combed her hair,
Looking into the mirror she powdered her face.
She came out to greet her companions,

And they were surprised:
Being with you in battles for twelve years,
We had no idea that you are female.
The he-rabbit hurts his legs,
And the she-rabbit bewilders his eyes:
In the confusion of chaos,
How can he tell of her sex?
Translated by Hoi F. Cheu

Howling for Multitudes
Angela Carters The Company of Wolves
2
Atreyu stared at the werewolf with wide-open eyes.
Gmork went on:
Thats why humans hate Fantastica and everything that comes from here.
They want to destroy it. And they dont realize that by trying to destroy it they
multiply the lies that keep flooding the human world. For these lies are nothing
other than creatures of Fantastica who have ceased to be themselves and survive
only as living corpses, poisoning the souls of men with their fetid smell ...
When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless
servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make
of you? Maybe youll help them persuade people to buy things they dont need, or
hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to han-
dle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things
will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded ...
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Fantasy: Whose Lie Is It Anyway?

High art, connected to official culture and the patriarchal tradition, has
been a point of struggle for feminists. This struggle has led some, as Andreas
21
Huyssen observes in After the Great Divide, to generalize mass culture as
Woman. Huyssen argues, however, that such division is unnecessary: It is pri-
marily the visible and public presence of women artists in high art, as well as
the emergence of new kinds of women performers and producers in mass cul-
ture, which makes the old gendering device obsolete. The universalizing as-
cription of femininity to mass culture always depended on the very real exclusion
of women from high culture and its institutions. Such exclusions of women
are, for the time being, a thing of the past. Thus, the old rhetoric has lost its
persuasive power because the realities have changed.1 As a matter of fact, in
the postfeminist cultural condition (as reflected in Disneys Mulan), mass cul-
ture appears to have grown increasingly monolithic and anti-feminist; the old
rhetoric has resurrected itself, though in reverse.
Although one advocates avant-garde filmmaking and the other defends popu-
lar culture, Laura Mulvey and Valerie Walkerdine are not without common
ground. To a limited extent, Walkerdines theory of textual negotiations is even
indebted to Mulveys psychoanalytic assumptions: Walkerdine turns Mulveys
critique of scopophilia (the pleasure of looking) in classical cinema into a warn-
ing against intellectual voyeurism. Mulvey suggests that avant-garde cinema
destroys the voyeuristic pleasure of classical narrative cinema. Believing that
the power of classical cinema comes from its ability to overtly entertain while
covertly promoting its producers social and political values, feminist film theory
generally perceives mainstream cinema as an ideological apparatus of patriar-
chy. Thus, the classical Hollywood style is described as masculine text. The
mainstream cinematic style classical storyline, plot development driven by
character/action, sentimentalism, and unobtrusive filming and editing tech-
niques functions as a tool of socialization and political propaganda that pen-
etrates deep into the unconscious level of the human mind. To counteract the
domination of the masculine text, feminist cine-psychoanalysts emphasize the
metafictional aspect of the avant-garde, presuming that metafiction can help
its audience to realize the unconscious mythmaking process of the cinema.
Counteracting the masculine text, the feminine text is thought to be capable of
interfering with the drumbeats of conformity by drawing attention to the pro-
cess of reading and the construction of meaning. As Annette Kuhn explains in
Womens Pictures: Feminism and Cinema, The notion of a feminine text ...
brings to the very centre of debate the consideration of texts as ... producing
meaning in the moment of reading ... Meanings are produced for the subject
of the text the reader is inserted into the meanings produced by the text and
22 Howling for Multitudes

is thus in a sense produced by them.2 The conventional hierarchy of author-
text-reader (or producer-movie-consumer) must be overthrown and replaced
with the dynamic interaction of story making embedded in the feminine text.
By the same logic, the theory of textual negotiations attempts to use Mulveys
psychoanalytic understanding of the feminine text to study mass culture as a
dynamic process of meaning making. If a text (in any form, whether literature,
music, film, or photograph) does not have to be seen as a package with a prede-
termined message, but can be regarded as a medium for interaction between a
producers feed-forward and a consumers feedback, then popular culture can
be perceived as a model for the dynamism of the feminine text. The concept of
negotiations has many implications. It signals that cultural texts are not just
products. The communication process is neither so hierarchal that viewers
are passively receiving messages nor so simple that consumers have freedom to
choose. Instead, viewers responses to movies are active and unpredictable;
meaning is inscribed, prescribed, and proscribed, as well as post-scribed through
dynamic exchanges between production and consumption.
This postmodern hypothesis of the feminine text has shifted the theoreti-
cal spotlight from avant-garde filmmaking to cultural studies. One illustrative
story of the shift appears in Valerie Walkerdines Video Replay: Families, Films
and Fantasy. Wishing to study the power structure in a domestic environment
related to child education, Walkerdine selected a working-class family known
as the Coles.3 At first, her research focus was supposed to be six-year-old Joanne
Cole, the youngest of the familys three children. When Walkerdine sat in the
Coles living room and watched the family watching a videotape of Rocky II,
she felt nothing but revulsion for the film and its viewers. She draws on Mulveys
critique of visual pleasure to express her reaction: The voyeuristic words echo
inside my head, the typical response of shame and disgust which condemns
the working class for overt violence and sexism (many studies show, for exam-
ple, how much more sex-role stereotyping there is amongst working-class fam-
ilies). In comparison with a bourgeois liberalism it seems shameful, disgusting
(key aspects of voyeurism) and quite inexplicable except by reference to a model
of pathology. But the politics of the gaze quickly became more complex, as
Walkerdine grew conscious that her own critical viewpoint could be perceived
as a voyeuristic position. Uncertain as to whether she had seen the entire video,
she revisited it in the privacy of her office, where she did not have to worry
about watching (or being watched by) the Coles. In this different setting, her
reaction to the movie changed:
Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 23

The film brought me up against such memories of pain and struggle and class that
it made me cry. I cried with grief for what was lost and for the terrifying desire to
be somewhere and someone else: the struggle to make it. No longer did I stand
outside the pleasures of engagement with the film. I too wanted Rocky to win.
Indeed, I was Rocky struggling, fighting, crying to get out ... Someone else might
have identified with Rockys passive and waiting wife. But Rockys struggle to be-
come bourgeois is what reminded me of the pain of my own.4
Upon this discovery, Walkerdine realized that her criticism of the Coles was a
surveillant voyeurism for her own intellectual satisfaction. As for Mr. Cole,
she noticed that the violence he so enjoyed provided him with a mental escape
from the harsh reality in which the family lived. Although her social circum-
stances differed from Coles, Walkerdine too could identify with Rockys fight
for Mr. Cole, Rockys dream provided an imaginary battlefield; for Walkerdine,
a reminder of past struggle. Then she understood Mr. Cole in a completely
different manner: he did not seem to care about the films triumphant ending
because he identified with Rockys mutilated body an image of a hurt but
tenacious common man. Selectively, he had made what he wanted to make of
the fictional character.
This dynamic understanding of the viewers response helped Walkerdine
to recognize the prejudice of her initial reaction to the Coles. The reader is not
simply in the text, she realized, not then the spectator in the film, motivated
simply by a pathological scopophilia. In actuality, much of the problem lay in
her own intellectual gaze: My concern is therefore not just with the voyeurism
of the film spectator, but also with the voyeurism of the theorist in whose
desire for knowledge is inscribed a will to truth of which the latent content is a
terror of the other who is watched. Between her educated revulsion and Mr.
Coles ignorant pleasure lay class conflict. Upon this realization, Walkerdine
challenged the intellectualization of pleasures which seems to be the aim of
much analysis of mass film and television.5
Walkerdines critique of her own intellectualization of pleasure brings femi-
nist film theory into the postmodern discourse. As Andreas Huyssen points
out, a major impact of postmodernism is the collapse of modernisms great
divide between high art and mass culture.6 High modernism perceives the avant-
garde as the artistic salvation of the masses; the experimental text, by searching
for stylistic and linguistic transgressions, can redeem humanity from its maso-
chistic conformity to the money culture. Unfortunately, modernisms poetic

resistance has proven futile. The alienating and challenging experimental tech-
niques such as fragmentation, montage, self-reflexivity, stream of conscious-
ness, and dream logic have either been scorned as intellectual elitism or
assimilated into mass culture. The avant-garde is no longer subversive. Instead,
it conveys intellectual pride and authorial arrogance. Postmodern thinking
has abandoned the great divide and has turned toward popular culture for the
poetic revolution of the masses. From this intellectual perspective, the begin-
nings of feminist psychoanalytic film theory can be seen as a form of retro-
modernism in the postmodern era: the destruction of cinematic pleasure and
the demand for new film language through artistic experimentation are at-
tempts to set high art against the grand delusions of mass culture.
Since the advent of the theory of cultural negotiations, feminist film theo-
rys relation to the postmodern discourse has been a convolution of love and
hate. Love: with the help of cultural theories, feminist critics can dissect pop
culture to achieve political inspiration. Hate: postmodern theories inflict a guilt
complex on academics and cause a general paralysis of social criticism. The
concept of cultural negotiations, for example, challenges highbrow critical per-
spectives and argues that psychoanalyzing the masses in pathological terms is
in itself symptomatic of voyeurism. Love: the study of popular culture dis-
solves the tradition of high art supported by the Romantics and modernists
the very concept that safeguards the patriarchal cultural tradition. Hate: the
death of the author also means the abandonment of feminist independent
filmmaking. In the end, love has prevailed.
Consequently, along with the rise of the postmodern debate, the explora-
tion of womens filmic expression has declined. Does it matter whether a film
is made by men or women? Authorship has been a construct since the rise of
the educated class in the Renaissance; in the postmodern age, the author is,
metaphorically and practically, dead. Of course, there is a film crew behind
Rocky II, and the distributor controls the copyright. But ownership is not au-
thorship. Commercial art is not about individual artistic vision. Dynamism
used to discuss the feminine text can therefore be adapted to the study of
postmodern cultural production: the cultural meanings of the video are not
given by the film crew the viewers as much as the studio are responsible for
meaning making. The Romantic view of the author as a visionary prophet stand-
ing above the masses does not apply. As Rita Felski argues in Beyond Feminist
Aesthetics, The distinction between high and popular cultural texts cannot be
adequately grasped in terms of an antithetical opposition between exceptional

texts which liberate multiple levels of meaning and formulaic fictions which
merely serve to reinforce repressive ideological structures. Even the most overtly
stereotypical and conventional of texts may articulate moments of protest and
express utopian longings, while the most fragmented and aesthetically self-
conscious of texts cannot escape its own ideological positioning. 7 With the
death of the author, art is no longer perceived as antagonistic to general ide-
ology as a structure of repression; if such is the case, the feminist quest for
women filmmakers and feminine aesthetics becomes questionable because
women-made films would not constitute exceptions to prevailing ideology.
Rhetorically speaking, beyond feminist aesthetics is the death of the woman-
made film. The effect of erasing the dividing line between high and popular
culture is the abandonment of women as artists, which, in part, contributes to
the phenomenon of feminist film theory without women directors.
The premature death of feminist aesthetics is veiled in Walkerdines argu-
ment itself. Despite the fact that her research was supposed to focus on six-
year-old Joanne, Walkerdine expended a substantial amount of energy
defending the fantasy of Joannes father because she herself identified with his
struggle. Her sympathy for Mr. Cole translated into her concern that, from a
pedagogical point of view, the intellectual critique of mass culture might de-
prive Joanne and other school-aged children of a pleasure shared with family,
friends and their general social and cultural environment.8 From my own teach-
ing experience, I can verify Walkerdines point. When I taught at the University
of Western Ontario, a student pleaded with me, at the beginning of class, not to
trash The Lion King (I had chosen the film to explain symptomatic mean-
ings). I love this movie, she said. Please dont ruin it for me. I can see that
students who are inspired by Mulans strong character may hate my analysis of
the film as a postfeminist illusion. Nevertheless, unlike Disney films, Rocky II
was not made for children. I doubt that Joanne found much pleasure in watch-
ing the film with her family. Indeed, what is missing from Walkerdines discus-
sion can prove my point. Perhaps because I am interested in womens voices
and artistic expression, I searched through Walkerdines essay and her tran-
scripts to find descriptions of Joannes response to the film.9 However, even
though Joanne was supposed to be her study subject, Walkerdine speaks very
little of her. Neither Video Replay nor the published transcripts give any clue
as to whether Joanne enjoyed Rocky II. Walkerdine, too excited about seeing
herself in Mr. Cole, ignores the girl, just as her father does. In her household, as
in Walkerdines study, Joanne is silent and invisible. From this lack of evidence,

it seems that she never exhibited any appreciation for the film, unlike the stu-
dent who passionately defended The Lion King. In critiquing her own intellec-
tual voyeurism, Walkerdine projects her worry that criticizing the film may
make Joanne and students like her feel that they are being attacked. From what
is hidden in the essay, I question the premise: Might Joanne have broken her
silence had she understood Rocky IIs ideological position?
If Walkerdines theory is a postmodern argument for mass culture, her
defence is a paradox. There are layers of oppression. On top is the researchers
intellectual gaze, disgusted by Mr. Coles family entertainment. Inside the fam-
ily is Mr. Coles suppression of femininity. Walkerdine observed that he ridi-
culed every aspect of a musical as if he feared being seen to enjoy romantic
fantasies. He also played out his fighters fantasy in his daughters identity. He
called Joanne Dodo, referring to the extinct bird that is too stupid to live.
Joanne is his to protect; she is an extension of his masculine ego, a tomboy
whose gender appearance reflects his fight against his own femininity. Situated
at the bottom of the power chain, Joanne has no voice. What if she had the
chance to be exposed to alternatives? How would she react to Martha Coolidges
Valley Girl? 10 What is paradoxical about Walkerdines defence is that she speaks
for Joanne by attacking intellectual pleasures, but by doing so, she silences the
child. One needs a voice in order to engage in cultural negotiations, and the
pleasure of narrative films, whether modern or postmodern, is in finding the
possibilities of alternative voices.
Cinematic Howling and Narrative Spinning

Within the postmodern discourse of art and culture, Angela Carters meta-
fictional rewriting of fairy tales particularly her film script for The Company
of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984) offers constructive insights. For Carter, the tra-
dition of author worship and the domination of pop culture are both repres-
sive; however, both high art and pop culture can contain transformative powers.
The Company of Wolves is a self-reflexive illustration of how feminine folk cul-
ture functions between the two extremes. Folk culture is not pop culture. In
pop culture, heterogeneity is newspeak for melting diversity in one pot; a cul-
tural product must not offend anyone. In the postmodern economy, the mod-
ernist craving for the ingenious author is replaced by the construction of an
all-encompassing desire machine a system of production that relies on rat-
ings, negotiations, and compromises to break down the barriers of global
consumer markets. If, for the feminist movement, the ideology of high art is

too loaded with patriarchal traditions, and the expression of mass culture is
too limited by corporate demands, alternatives may be conceivable only in
multicultural folk art.
Although the building blocks of The Company of Wolves originate in Cart-
ers short-story collection The Bloody Chamber, it is not an adaptation of a
single story; instead, it elaborates on Carters study of fairy tales collectively,
dramatizing the metafictional theory that lies behind The Bloody Chamber.
Unlike the canonized literature of the Western tradition, fairy tales have no
identifiable author or original text that can be referred to as proper and au-
thoritative. The versions are many and their origins are often impossible to
trace. What attracts Carter, as both a storyteller and a theorist, is the flexibility
of the oral tradition to the customizing of the tales. In fairy tales, diasporic
imagination and transcultural interaction are the norms, as Carter herself
pointed out in her introduction to The Virago Book of Fairy Tales:
The stories have seeded themselves all around the world, not because we all share
the same imagination and experience but because stories are portable, part of the
invisible luggage people take with them when they leave home ...
Village girls took stories to the city, to swap during endless kitchen chores or
to entertain other peoples children. Invading armies took storytellers home with
them. Since the introduction of cheap printing processes in the seventeenth cen-
tury, stories have moved in and out of the printed word. My grandmother told me
the version of Red Riding Hood she had from her own mother, and it followed
almost word for word the text first printed in this country in 1729.11
Carters description is reminiscent of the postmodern project that calls for the
death of the author while perpetuating popular culture. In folk storytelling,
however, the production process is vastly different; there, personal adaptations
may be created without authorship in the modernist sense or ownership in the
postmodern world. Unlike the products of popular culture, fairy tales are not
trademarked by production companies. The brothers Grimm and Charles
Perrault can no more claim ownership of Snow White than can Disney or some-
ones grandmother. Thus, their plurality and lack of original authors make fairy
tales a worthy topic for postmodern feminism, not solely to proclaim the death
of the author (or the demise of auteurism in film studies), but also, on a more
constructive note, for the rediscovery of domestic voices and the freedom of
storytelling.

By domestic, Carter does not simply refer to old wives. Though mar-
ginalized because male-dominant high art culture regards it as womanly
domesticity is genderless. Folk culture is like mass culture in the sense that it
belongs to the populace. Carter observes that folk culture is devalued for being
unofficial and anonymous: The fairy tale, as narrative, has far less in com-
mon with the modern bourgeois forms of the novel and the feature film than it
does with demotic forms, especially those female forms of romance. Unlike
mass culture, however, the oral tradition is open to adaptation without incur-
ring copyright lawsuits. Ours is a highly individualized culture, with a great
faith in the work of art as a unique one-off, and the artist as an original, a
godlike and inspired creator of unique one-offs. But fairy tales are not like that,
nor are their makers. Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a
definitive recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of the domestic arts. This is
how I make potato soup.12 Carters interest in the domestic process of story-
telling is not simply to retrieve the stories of the old wives. Instead, through
domestic storytelling, she attempts to undermine the authority of official cul-
ture while reviving a component of storytelling that is de-emphasized in the
relatively passive viewing conditions of television.
However, because women have traditionally been identified with the realm
of domesticity, these genderless others tend to be characterized as female. As a
feminist writer, Carter does not find the feminization of domesticity necessary.
At one point, perhaps in a postfeminist recognition of a possible new social
order, she apologizes for referring to the storyteller with the feminine pronoun,
justifying its use merely because the European convention features an arche-
typal female storyteller. But Carters project is feminist in the sense that the
story of how oral folk culture was assimilated into the patriarchal symbolic
order for the oppression of women offers a serious lesson to feminist cultural
workers in the postmodern age.
In the case of fairy tales, the issue of official culture is complex because
each official culture has its own collection of fairy tales, and each collection of
fairy tales serves the formation of cultural identity in its own fashion. Charles
Perraults Histoires ou contes du temps pass (1697), for example, was perhaps
the first self-conscious fixation of the untamed narrative space of the old wives.
Editing fairy tales fixes the stories in both senses of the verb the editor re-
pairs the unpolished and sometimes fragmented materials, and then, through
their publication, preserves his version in a rigid printed form. Perraults title
alone signalled that the educated classes already regarded folk culture as trivial

entertainment of the past. His collection is emblematic of the transition from
Renaissance to Enlightenment. The Grimm brothers collected their house-
hold tales as part of a nineteenth-century search for German identity. Carter
observes that collecting fairy tales was their way of establishing the cultural
unity of the German people through sharing and shared stories. Nationalism
seems to be the motivation behind many collections. After the Grimms col-
lected their Germanic tales, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjornsen and
Jorgen Moe published their own collection to help free the Norwegian lan-
guage from its Danish bondage.13 Seven decades later, during the Irish national
movement, W.B. Yeats constructed his collection of Irish fairy tales.
The Virago Book of Fairy Tales can be seen as an attempt to free the femi-
nine logic of narrative from mens improvement, which has persisted since
Perrault. His improvements included removing coarse expressions, minimiz-
ing sexual content, editing for narrative coherence, and rewriting the tales to
make them fit his political ideology, all of which consciously or unconsciously
appropriated the tales from the informants to serve in the construction of
national identity and bourgeois family values. Since the appropriation of the
fairy tale seeks to turn the wild feminine proletariat imagination into middle-
class childrens bedtime stories read by educated housewives (from whom we
inherit the idea that fairy tales are for children), the formation of identity and
the reinforcement of family values are closely linked in the male collections. In
The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, Carter attempts to present the untamed forms
of the tales.
However, her refusal to edit the stories creates a tension with the liberal
feminist paradigm that demands that social myths be rewritten to fit a unified
feminist ideal. Carter argues that women are not simply all sisters under the
skin; in her collection, therefore, she deliberately incorporates material from
many sources, and makes no attempt to support one coherent philosophy of
the feminine text, wishing instead to show the extraordinary richness and di-
versity of the tales.14 Her postmodernism cherishes true heterogeneity, choos-
ing diversity over unity, even though this means publishing the stories in
incoherent and unpolished forms.
Heterogeneity is important because it nurtures diversity in reading. Carter
disagrees with the common feminist critique of fairy tales, which condemns
the stories as myths that reinforce the norms of male-dominant society. In-
stead, she sees stories as coping mechanisms that sometimes subvert general
social values and beliefs. The norms of male-dominant society appear in old

wives fairy tales because those norms are the social context of the stories. Many
of the tales actually question their given social ideologies. Also, Carter declares,
when these stories recommend the qualities that enable the survival and pros-
perity of women, they never advocate passive subordination. In this regard,
symptomatic meanings (or ideological readings) of the stories need to account
for fairy tales as products of the social-political contexts of their times, as well
as records of peoples everyday attempts to cope with lifes obstacles. Stories are
not a form of mass deception not if diversity is endorsed but a product of
continual existential struggle.15 In reading, therefore, one does not have to per-
ceive literature as a social symptom but as an unofficial record of human strug-
gle and the dream of overcoming lifes problems. In this sense, Carters view is
not different from Walkerdines defence of mass culture.
Carters emphasis is not on viewing but on telling. She departs from the
barricades of critical negation to elevate the existential practice of narrative
diversity as a feminist exercise. In her model, storytelling is a form of heroic
optimism. Behind all forms of entertainment lie traces of public dreams. Folk
tales, in particular, are not lies but peoples imagination. Similarly, mass culture
can reveal public dreams; as Carter argues, Within that video gadgetry might
lie the source of a continuation, even a transformation, of storytelling and story-
performance. The human imagination is infinitely resilient, surviving coloni-
zation, transportation, involuntary servitude, imprisonment, bans on language,
and the oppression of women.16 Even a resilient imagination needs a construc-
tive site on which to build stories that are more than entertainment or didactic
tools. Storytelling is a strategy of survival.
Speaking to this resilient spirit, Carter constructed a script for The Com-
pany of Wolves to explain how storytelling functions as a survival technique.
Although the film contains elements from Little Red Riding Hood, it is not a
contemporary psychoanalytic or feminist version of the story; nor is it a nos-
talgic reconstruction of the tales ancient form. Instead, it is a piece of metafiction
that elaborates Carters understanding of how storytelling and story performing
relate to human growth and identity formation.
Metafiction is a form of fictional writing that self-consciously draws atten-
tion to its status as an artifact, and self-reflexively examines the process of
the fictional construct. Widely discussed in many scholarly publications, such
as Patricia Waughs Metafiction and Linda Hutcheons The Poetics of Post-
modernism, metafiction is viewed as a distinctive element of postmodernism.
It is a worthy topic for contemporary literary theory because postmodernism

recognizes language as a central element in the construction of realities. As
Patricia Waugh explains in Metafiction, The present increased awareness of
meta levels of discourse and experience is partly a consequence of an increased
social and cultural self-consciousness. Beyond this, however, it also reflects a
greater awareness within contemporary culture of the function of language in
constructing and maintaining our sense of everyday reality. The simple no-
tion that language passively reflects a coherent, meaningful and objective world
is no longer tenable. Language is an independent, self-contained system which
generates its own meanings. Its relationship to the phenomenal world is highly
complex, problematic and regulated by convention. Many literary critics cel-
ebrate postmodern metafiction because the art of metafiction deconstructs art
itself: being self-conscious regarding the process of fictionalization can create a
disturbance that helps readers see how their sense of everyday reality is con-
structed through representations. But the dilemma is that metafiction itself is a
constructed representation, so the exercise is not deconstruction but self-
destruction. Waugh remarks, The metafictionist is highly conscious of a basic
dilemma: if he or she sets out to represent the world, he or she realizes fairly
soon that the world, as such, cannot be represented. In literary fiction it is, in
fact, possible only to represent the discourses of that world.17 Language, in this
view, is a prison humans are forever lost in representation.
Indeed, most discussions of postmodern metafiction whether the em-
phasis is on self-reflexive parody or the clash between historicity and fictionality
concentrate on the aspect of fiction as a construct that helps to establish
dominant powers and social discourses. Postmodern critical theories can be
explained rather fully with reference to certain early postmodern novels (for
instance, John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman easily illustrates Waughs
characterization of metafiction as literary self-consciousness or Linda Hutch-
eons definition of postmodern writing as historiographic metafiction). In early
postmodern critical frameworks, self-consciousness and self-reflexivity were
almost equivalent to metafiction.
But Carters metafiction takes an important leap. Neither The Bloody Cham-
ber nor The Company of Wolves employs explicit self-reflexive techniques to tell
the audience that the stories are lies. By their nature, stories are constructs of
fantasies, yet they are not lies. In Carters metafiction, her constructive feminist
theory is implicit and profound, and the discourse of history or story, truth or
lie, is almost irrelevant. Her work is heterogeneously inter-referential (instead
of simply self-referential). As Nicola Pitchford observes, Carters imaginary

worlds do not point in only one direction, and this is made clear in part by the
refusal of any image to connect to one referent only. This instability of refer-
ence is emphasized by the multiple allusions Carter incorporates.18 In Carters
writing, a work of make-believe does not simply provide explicit meta-
commentary self-consciously, just to remind readers that they are dealing with
a narrative construct, as Fowles does in The French Lieutenants Woman when
he pauses in mid-flight to deliberate regarding the novels ending. Rather, the
process of fictionalization and the interrelations between storyteller and audi-
ence are so carefully developed that, from narrator to narrator, context to con-
text, frame to frame, the writing changes. In Carters work, totality disintegrates,
but through the disintegration, the sum of the shifts from point to point maps
an ecology of the mind.
The mind fictionalizes, or is itself a created work of fiction. Identity is a
story; it grows, multiplies, diversifies. Pitchford describes Carters novel The In-
fernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman as antiallegorical in the sense that
the novel warns against the reduction of any image to a single meaning.19 Cart-
ers novels often resist any simplistic formulation of characters to reflect how
complex human minds cannot be reduced to representations like the charac-
ters in Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene. But anti-allegory is not all. Alison
Lee adds that although The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is against
allegorical reading, it is, on a metafictional level, an allegory of the reading pro-
cess itself: The novel is indeed an allegory, but one of reading, of desiring, and
of desiring through reading.20 Carters work does more than speak against alle-
gorical reading: it also theorizes how diversification of meaning and variation in
storytelling play a key role in human and social development.
More elaborated than The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, The
Company of Wolves is a constructivist allegory about fiction. The prototype of
the screenplay, The Bloody Chamber, was published in 1979. Nowhere in the
books retelling of famous fairy tales is the reader given the sense that it is to be
taken as a definitive modernized version, whether feminist correction or psy-
choanalytic re-interpretation. However, the collection as a whole is deeply femi-
nist and psychological feminist in the sense that the retelling of stories
illustrates the magnificence of womens narrative resources, and psychological
in the sense that the narrative voices are so intensely correlated to the imagi-
nary narrators personal lives and socio-cultural backgrounds that the stories
can be seen as a demonstration of the function of literature as a technique for
coping with the hardship of life.

Some of the stories in The Bloody Chamber are told more than once. There
are two accounts of Beauty and the Beast and three variations of Little Red
Riding Hood. Each story has its own narrator, time period, and setting. For
instance, The Bloody Chamber (based on Bluebeards Castle) is told by a
well-educated, cultured, early twentieth-century pianist who exhibits (some-
times excessively) her artistic knowledge, rich vocabulary, complex sentence
structure, and poetic imagery: Sea; sand; a sky that melts into the sea a
landscape of misty pastels with a look about it of being continuously on the
point of melting. A landscape with all the deliquescent harmonies of Debussy,
of the tudes I played for him, the reverie Id been playing that afternoon in the
salon of the princess where Id first met him, among the teacups and the little
cakes, I, the orphan, hired out of charity to give them their digestive of mu-
sic.21 In contrast, The Snow Child is a one-page primitivist version of Snow
White. This time, the third-person narrator strips everything down to the
bare minimum:
Fresh snow fell on snow already fallen; when it ceased, the whole world was white.
I wish I had a girl as white as snow, says the Count. They ride on. They come to
a hole in the snow; this hole is filled with blood. He says: I wish I had a girl as red
as blood. So they ride on again; here is a raven, perched on a bare bough. I wish
I had a girl as black as that birds feather.
As soon as he completed her description, there she stood, beside the road,
white skin, red mouth, black hair and stark naked; she was the child of his desire
and the Countess hated her.22
The sophisticated punctuation used in this passage looks like an editorial addi-
tion. With simple sentence structure, parallelism, and narrative economy, the
narrator adheres to the style of a primordial oral tradition.
The Bloody Chamber is metafictional to the extent that, as a whole, the
collection studies how varied narrative voices affect the fabrication of a story.
None of the individual stories function as a piece of metafiction. Although the
narrators are sometimes self-reflexive, no single story explicitly speaks of the
process of story making. It is true that self-reflexivity is metafictional, but it is
only a manifestation on the surface (a sign of a self-conscious fictionaliza-
tion), not enough for a theory of the narrative process. When a traditional
Russian storyteller concludes a story with The tale is over; I cant lie any more,
the self-conscious commentary makes fun of the typical happily ever after

ending. But the self-consciousness does not stimulate metafictional discourse
by saying This is just a story and I am done. Mark Currie observes two stages
of development in metafiction. He identifies metafiction as a borderline dis-
course that places itself between fiction and criticism. This critical-literary
self-consciousness at first announces the death of the novel (or, as well, the
author): The tale is over; I cant lie any more. But then, this consciousness
brings renewal to the practice of writing. As Currie explains, The critical self-
consciousness of metafiction once seemed to announce the death of the novel,
appeared to be a decadent response to its exhausted possibilities, but now
seems like an unlimited vitality: what was once thought introspective and self-
referential is in fact outward-looking.23
Carters metafictional scheme offers an outward-looking discourse: the
clash of narrative voices and the variations of the same story show not just lies,
but lies that tell the truth the truth of narrative practice, how it relates to life,
how fiction is a reality of the story species, and how important it is to human
connectedness. Perhaps the final story in The Virago Book of Fairy Tales can
best exemplify a work of outward-looking metafiction. It is a Russian tale:
Once there was a wife of an innkeeper who so loved fairy tales that she would
not let a customer enter the inn after regular hours unless he or she could tell a
good story. Late one night, an old man, almost frozen to death, arrived at the
inn. He promised to tell stories all night long on the condition that no one
interrupted or argued with him. In fact, he had no story. He simply repeated
the same beginning line over and over: An Owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree
trunk, and drank some water. An Owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and
drank some water. Like the child in The Emperors New Clothes, the wife
finally stated the obvious: What kind of a story is this? He keeps repeating the
same thing over and over! The old man accused her of breaking the rule: I
told you not to argue with me! That was only the beginning; it was going to
change later. This interplay furnishes her husband with the excuse he needs to
deprive her of the pleasure of stories: The husband, upon hearing this and it
was exactly what he wanted to hear jumped down from his bed and began to
belabor his wife: You were told not to argue, and now you have not let him
finish his story! And he thrashed her and thrashed her, so that she began to
hate stories and from that time on forswore listening to them.24 This story
How a Husband Weaned His Wife from Fairy Tales makes a precise anal-
ogy to what has happened to fairy tales over the past three centuries of abuse.
The men in the tale one cheats by making up a bad narrative, and the other

uses the occasion to kill all stories take control of the woman by destroying
her love of stories.
In my mind, I always associate the old man with a fundamentalist preacher
whose only true story is repeated over and over until the audience is beaten
into submission. I also think this fairy tale is a near-perfect analogy of the situ-
ation of feminist film theory without women filmmakers. In Carters
postmodern and poststructural intellectual context, to choose this account to
end a collection of old wives fairy tales is to criticize literary criticism from a
story makers point of view. As the account shows, the problem of oppression
does not lie in the pleasure of narrative; on the contrary, domination is secured
through the invasion of the story space, and through the abusive enforcement
of one authoritative version of a tale. Although postmodern criticism spends
most of its energy destroying storytelling in service of its opposition to media
hegemony, Carter revives the novel to restore the pleasure of narrative hetero-
geneity. There seems to be an alternative way to fight the unconscious struc-
tured like a language: instead of counteracting language, Carter channels the
subversive power of fiction by opening multiple narrative possibilities.
Whereas there are only two layers of storytelling in The Bloody Chamber
one furnished by the narrative voice of each story, and one in Carters meta-
narrative scheme the screenplay of The Company of Wolves is multi-dimen-
sionally metafictional. Here, the layering is increased: the films main storyline
is portrayed as a nightmare experienced by young Rosaleen, the protagonist (a
story within a story); the characters in her dream also tell stories (stories within
a story within a story). Through these layers of storytelling, Carter achieves the
effect of The Bloody Chambers narrative duplication, while illustrating further
the process of narrative construction and its social-psychological significance.
Rosaleen is a pubescent girl. Her age is significant since puberty is a period
of physical and psychological disturbance. During this transformative time,
stories are crucial to the formation of identity. The path to maturity is also a
journey of story revision: converting the stories that one absorbs during child-
hood into ones own personal narrative. The films main storyline, Rosaleens
dream, mixes Little Red Riding Hood with werewolf folklore, two narrative
sources with diverse cultural meanings. Since Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood
has advocated conformity, but werewolf stories explore the wild desire of trans-
formation. By merging the two, Carter dramatizes the conflict between the pres-
sure to conform to societys norms and the desire to transform proscribed gender
and social roles.

Poststructural psychoanalysis notes that women are tools for cultivating
their childrens superego. Especially in most fairy tale collections, stories are
designed to be read by mothers and grandmothers to teach their children
morals. Little Red Riding Hood represents young girls desire to disobey their
socially predetermined paths, and the wolf represents aggressive male sexual-
ity. In telling the bedside story, women usually perform the role of the wolf
with great expressiveness: All the better to eat you with, my dear. On another
metaphorical level, therefore, the wolf is also the grandmother, which is em-
phasized when the wolf consumes and impersonates her. He takes on the grand-
mothers clothes and speaks in her voice to lure the child. Cixous analyzes:
Little Red Riding Hood makes her little detour, does what women should never
do, travels through her own forest. She allows herself the forbidden ... and pays
dearly for it: she goes back to bed, in grandmothers stomach. The Wolf is grand-
mother, and all women recognize the Big Bad Wolf! We know that always lying in
wait for us somewhere in some big bed is a Big Bad Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf repre-
sents with his big teeth, his big eyes, and his grandmothers looks, that great Su-
perego that threatens all the little female red riding hoods who try to go out and
explore their forest without the psychoanalysts permission. So, between two houses,
between two beds, she is laid, ever caught in her chain of metaphors, metaphors
that organize culture.25
Cixous psychoanalytic critique of Little Red Riding Hood, as told in the

Perrault tradition, is a way to raise awareness of how social mores are implanted
in our psyche through storytelling. Corresponding to her reading is a call for a
woman-text that can act as an affirmation of the difference to nurture an
ego no longer given over to an image defined by the masculine. If the fairy tale
is moralized to tame female sexuality, a woman-text must muddle the story by
adding conflicting materials to the filtered man-text.
Adding the werewolf elements to the appropriated tale of Little Red Rid-
ing Hood is Carters way of producing a woman-text. The werewolf compo-
nent intensifies the tale as a collective nightmare. Although horror stories are
built on threats, they also bring out forbidden thoughts. They materialize the
desire and the fear of ones wild, uncontrollable nature, where the human and
the beast are interchangeable. Transformation is acknowledged, and the un-
conscious speaks through the metaphoric transformation. In this sense, were-
wolf folklore provides an element that affirms differences.

In The Company of Wolves, the process of storytelling is presented as a
coping technique. Rosaleens dream is portrayed as a form of psychological
modelling in the sense that she comes to terms with the reality of lifes situa-
tions through the story space. The issues of puberty and sibling discord open
the film. When Rosaleens parents return home after a brief absence, her older
sister, Alice, complains that she will not come out to greet them: She said she
has tummyache. Its her age, her father says. Shes a pest, Alice continues.
So were you once, the mother defends. Sent up to Rosaleens room to wake
her, Alice stands outside her door, murmuring Pest, pest, pest in harassing
fashion. From there the film enters Rosaleens dream world, beginning with a
scene in which Alice is pursued and killed by wolves deep in the forest. Of
course, such wish-projection is childish, but it is importantly so since dreams
(and metaphorically the fictional world in general) yield emotional discharge.
Attached to Rosaleens childish wish fulfillment is a reconstruction of her
identity. Her dream quickly moves to Alices funeral, at which the officiating
priest recites Job 14:1, the funeral liturgys explanation of human mortality and
suffering: Man that is born of a woman has but a short time to live and is full
of misery. In its reference to a woman, the liturgy recalls the story of Eve,
mother of all humanity; as the first sinner, she is also responsible for the fall
of humanity. Recalling Adam and Eve is an important feminist move because
their story is the founding myth of Western patriarchy. Genesis contains two
accounts of the creation. In the first, Genesis 1, Elohim (Hebrew for divine
powers, a plural form) created the world out of dark oceanic chaos. On the
sixth day, the gods made the humans, male and female, in their image and
likeness. Elohim told the humans to be fruitful and multiply, and to rule over
every living thing. Everything was good. Genesis 2 and 3, which are not from
the same source as Genesis 1, tell a different story. There, God is a male deity,
Yahweh, who creates the world from a sterile desert. Adam, the first man, is
made of soil, and is not an image of the divine powers. Eve, subservient to him,
is formed from his rib. Unable to resist the tempting and forbidden fruit of
knowledge, she is punished to suffer in childbirth. Everything went wrong.
The Bible is an evolving story, not that different from fairy tales in the
sense of story making. In what is known as the documentary hypothesis, bibli-
cal scholars have suggested that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible,
came originally from four major documentary sources that are now lost to
us.26 According to this theory, Genesis 1, based on what textual scholars call the

Priestly, or P, Document, was composed between 550 and 400 BC. Genesis 2
and 3 come from the much earlier Yahwist, or J, Document, composed in
approximately 950-850 BC. The J Document uses Yahweh as Gods personal
name and is believed to be a work of the southern kingdom of Judah; one of
its major themes is the kingdoms imperial bloodline. Therefore, though some
biblical scholars have hypothesized that the writer of the J Document might
have been a woman, it is nonetheless patriarchal in its concerns. The P Docu-
ment was created by priests during and after the Babylonian exile. Their pri-
mary concern was not the dynastic interests of the J Document but the
preservation of Mosaic traditions. The P Document itself contains priestly
revisions of stories from earlier oral and written materials, including what is
called the Elohim Document (dating from between 850 and 800 BC, not long
after J was composed). This distinctively uses the word Elohim to designate
gods or divine powers. Genesis 1, inserted at the beginning of Genesis
about four centuries after the composition of Genesis 2 and 3, originates from
Elohist oral tradition. Although Genesis 1 was heavily revised by the Yahwist
writer and modified by the priests, some of its elements indicate that the oral
tradition from which it sprang contained ideas that were polytheistic and
pre-patriarchal.
The pre-patriarchal account of creation in Genesis 1 features a portrait of
the universe that is characterized by an interest in fertility and growth. In a pre-
patriarchal society, family is not symbolically upheld by the name of the father.
Patriarchy, in contrast, requires the concept of marriage to sustain the name of
the father. Moral codes are created to guide sexual conduct, to ensure the con-
tinuation and purity of the male bloodline. These moral codes reinforce a pa-
triarchal societys division of labour, its ideas regarding ownership and
inheritance, and, eventually, its law and order. Through the concept of obedi-
ence, the patriarchy preserves its social order. Transgression is, therefore, the
ultimate sin: women shall not be men, and men shall not be God. Eves
sin is not simply that she eats the forbidden fruit, but that she wants to become
more than a woman. Tempting her to taste it, the serpent says, When you eat
of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and
evil. Realizing that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and
evil, God evicts Adam and Eve from Eden, fearing that they will take also of
the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. With the story of the first womans
transgression, Western patriarchal religions emerged.

Little Red Riding Hood, with its cautionary emphasis on the consequences
of disobedience, repeats the message of Eden. It appears in The Company of
Wolves as well, in the didactic warning of Rosaleens grandmother (Once you
stray off the path, you are lost entirely), which corresponds to Eves transgres-
sion. But Carter does not condemn such stories as nothing but ideological lies.
From one generation to another, people learn from their lived experiences,
summarize them into manageable orders, and fictionalize them for knowledge
communication. Then, new generations build on past experience to custom-
make their own stories stories are dreams in the sense that storytellers project
alternative realities through fictional spaces. Lies are also expressions of imagi-
nation. Once put into action, the magic of stories is capable of changing reality.
As Carter explains in her introduction to The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, the
problem of mass culture (and of official culture) lies in the media industries
that do our dreaming for us.27 When people surrender their own dreaming to
mechanical reproduction, Fantastica becomes Replica.
In The Company of Wolves, the process of storytelling is described as a
survival strategy: people deduce laws from their experiences and use the meta-
phoric intensity of narrative to express the unspeakable. At one point, Rosaleen
bites into a windfall apple, only to find a worm inside. Her grandmother quickly
sees this act as a sign of inexperience (as well, the fruit signifies the girls de-
sire; her careless choice of a windfall prefigures trouble, recalling Eve and
the fruit of knowledge). Immediately, therefore, the grandmother gives
Rosaleen three precepts: never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple,
and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet. Later, to further explain the dan-
ger of relationships that maybe you are too young to understand, she tries
again, with the help of a metaphor: A wolf may be more than he seems. He
may come in many disguises ... The worst kind of wolves are hairy on the
inside, and when they bite you, they drag you with them to hell. Not under-
standing the metaphor, Rosaleen asks, What do you mean, hairy on the in-
side? The grandmother then changes her strategy, launching into a story that
begins with the traditional Once upon a time. Her tale is similar to the first
section of Carters The Company of Wolves, in The Bloody Chamber, in which
a woman unwittingly marries a werewolf. His eyebrows meet in the middle, a
telltale sign of his submerged nature. He vanishes on their wedding night, so
she remarries. Years later, he returns and finds that she has had children with
her new husband. He boils with rage, saying, If I were a wolf once more, Id
teach this whore a lesson! As he transforms into a wolf, the second husband,

arriving just in time, decapitates him, upon which his head becomes fully hu-
man again.
As these violent images play out in the film, Rosaleen and her grandmother
interact, a layering that considerably enhances the aspect of meta-narrative, as
the film reveals how the circumstances of narrator and audience can change
the connotations of the story. Rosaleen responds to the grandmother several
times during the storytelling. When the woman remarries, she concludes all
too soon, and then they lived happily ever after. This response is childish; her
thinking is by and large limited by her inexperience. But, biologically and men-
tally, she is also a woman undergoing puberty a stage at which childhood sto-
ries must be revised for adult situations. To communicate this meta-narrative,
the film medium has obvious merit. As the grandmother says that the woman
found another husband after the first one disappeared, the picture shows the
woman having fun in bed with her new man. Matched with this visual coun-
terpoint, Rosaleens childish comment seems less innocent. She is able to asso-
ciate sexual imagery with her grandmothers simple words. Since the
grandmothers agenda is to use the story to take Rosaleen on a journey beyond
childish tales, she assures her that the couple does not live happily ever after.
The womans domestic life, dominated by squalling children, is difficult. Al-
though her new husband does come to her rescue, he is not portrayed as a
hero. Gazing at her first husbands dead face, she says that he looks just as he
did on the day she married him. In response, her second husband slaps her
face. Upon hearing that ending, Rosaleen comments, Id never let a man strike
me. Naturally, her reaction leads to the moral of the story: a woman needs to
preserve her sense of self-worth and never submit to seduction. As the grand-
mother concludes, They are nice as pie until theyve had their way with you,
but once the bloom is gone, the beast comes out.
As an act of knowledge transfer, the grandmothers story can be appreci-
ated for its metaphoric commentary on womens survival. Nevertheless, this
appreciation does not override Cixous critique of Little Red Riding Hood.
Although the story disapproves of male violence and moral hypocrisy, it re-
mains primarily a product of its patriarchal social world: women are prey, and
they have limited choices between chastity and sexual submission. The story
does not lie (as the grandmother emphasizes, Its the Gods own truth), but
its truth comes from within the grandmothers own framing.
Carters metafiction makes a more important point, however: story is a
process of reframing. Reframing here does not refer to the revision of a story to

fit a certain perceived political correctness but, rather, to activating ideological
transformation by deconstructing old stories and reconstructing new ones. The
term is commonly used in counselling to describe what occurs when someone
changes his or her perception of other people, situations, or problems. Joseph
Gold provides an example:
A mother was convinced that her sixteen-year-old adopted daughter disliked her
and had no respect for her authority. For instance, when the mother, driving with
the daughter, had a little accident, and the man in the other car came around and
started yelling at the mother, the daughter fired back at the man a torrent of verbal
abuse and foul language. The mother was shocked and reported to me that she
would like her daughter to be more controlled and polite. My version of this, to
her, was that the daughter, far from being disrespectful of the mother, was taking
care of her; since the daughter knew her mother was not assertive and was likely to
be intimidated, she had to fight on her mothers behalf and model verbal karate
for her. I was helping the woman to engage in reframing, and when she could
begin to see her daughters behaviour as protective, caring and not hostile, their
relationship could change. The daughter was doing the parenting. I invited the
mother to take care of herself and in the process free the daughter to grow up and
attend to her own needs.28
For adaptation (or revolution on a larger scale), reframing changes perception.

Our perception or framing makes our stories; changing the framing alters
behaviours, relationships, and, ultimately, the stories that construct our identi-
ties. In order to reframe, we need the power of language and the freedom to
spin our stories.
Generally, puberty is the most active time during human development for
reframing and story revision; children must change the infantile and child-
hood stories that they have absorbed in order to grow up, and sexuality is often
a catalyst. As they mature physically, the rapid changes in their bodies urge
them to comprehend and relate to the world differently. At this age, perhaps
because of it, in most cultures (including our own sexually loaded one), chil-
drens access to information about sex is restricted, so they must actively seek
stories from outside their familiar sources. They begin to challenge what they
have learned in the past. After seeing her parents having sex, Rosaleen elicits
more information from her mother:

Rosaleen: Does Daddy hurt you? When he ...
Mother: No, not at all.
Rosaleen: It sounds like ...
Mother: Like what?
Rosaleen: Like the beast Granny talked about.
Mother: You pay too much attention to your Granny. She knows a lot but she doesnt
know everything. And if theres a beast in men, it meets its match in women too.
Carter is careful not to typecast parenting as a simple transmission of fixed

cultural metaphors. Rosaleens mother is more understanding and liberal than
the grandmother, disagreeing with the grandmothers gender classification. The
idea that the beast exists in women too certainly provides a piece of conflicting
information for Rosaleen to ponder.
This conversation leads directly to a scene in which a neighbour boy asks
Rosaleen to walk with him after church. During this walk, he becomes aggres-
sive and tries to force her to kiss him. As she climbs a tree to hide, she finds a
storks nest containing a mirror and several unhatched eggs. She rouges her
lips and gazes into the mirror a symbolic act of masquerading in the con-
struction of gender identity. Immediately, the eggs break open to reveal tiny
babies. In this dream sequence, the film figuratively portrays the hatching of
her sexual consciousness. Carter describes Little Red Riding Hood in her short
story: She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity.
She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space
the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed
system; she does not know how to shiver.29
The sequence of the storks nest is key because it is both the context and
the turning point in Rosaleens narrative construction and identity formation.
Throughout the film, Rosaleens revision of her grandmothers stories is shown
in her many attempts to fictionalize what she learns. Earlier in the action, when
she has only the grandmothers version of man, she dreams that she is the Dev-
ils chauffeur and that the Devil gives a potion to a young man that turns him
into a wolf. In this incomplete and incoherent dream within a dream, her sexu-
ality is passive: she is only metaphorically the driver of the vehicle that distrib-
utes the evil desires that turn men into beasts. In terms of plot development,
this sequence is inserted unfittingly into a conversation with the grandmother.
It does not make sense by itself. But if we consider the metafictional aspect of

the film, we can see that Rosaleens tale, however creepy, is her attempt to work
with the given material.30 As she develops her own thoughts, her story also
grows. As the Devils chauffeur, she is mostly a listener. Then, after the egg-
hatching scene, she takes charge of her storytelling much more comfortably
and eventually invents her own werewolf tales. In another scene of mother-
daughter talk, Rosaleen changes from passive recipient to active informant.
Obviously, the mother regards this change as a sign of Rosaleens maturity:
Rosaleen [looking insecure]: Granny says wolves might not always be what
they seem.
Mother: How can a wolf be worse than it already is?
Rosaleen: Not worse, but different. Maybe it isnt the wolves fault, Mummy.
Maybe ...
Mother: Maybe what?
Rosaleen: Maybe once upon a time ...
Mother [smiling in pride and amusement]: Are you going to tell me a story?
Rosaleen: Maybe I am.
Then she recounts a story in which a woman, impregnated and abandoned by

a son of the big house, goes to his wedding and turns all the guests into
wolves. Rosaleen tells her mother that the tale comes from her grandmother;
however, the emphasis has an obvious shift from the deceptiveness of men to
the power of women. The account ends with the woman making the wolves
serenade her and her baby every night. Rosaleens mother asks, What pleas-
ure would there be in listening to a lot of wolves? Dont we have to do it all the
time? Rosaleen concludes, The pleasure would come from knowing the power
that she had. Somehow, the mothers statement about the beast in women has
impacted her. Or, differently put, the knowledge that was already within her
has risen to her consciousness, as all versions of the stories are engaged in
Rosaleens dreamscape.
In the main storyline of the film, Rosaleen is Little Red Riding Hood. Hav-
ing rejected the neighbour boy, she walks alone toward her grandmothers house
and meets a handsome huntsman on the forest path. He is a man of science;
for him, seeing is believing. He has a pointy thing in his trousers, called a com-
pass, which prevents him from losing his way. He laughs at her old wives tales
regarding werewolves, but, ominously, his eyebrows meet in the middle. To
prove that her fear of leaving the path is superstitious, he challenges her to a

race to her grandmothers house. Using his compass, he will navigate directly
through the trees; she will take the path. If she wins, the compass will be hers; if
he wins, his reward will be a kiss. As expected, he reaches the house first, where
he decapitates and devours the grandmother. Rosaleen arrives and quickly per-
ceives what has happened, but does not condemn the huntsman for killing her
grandmother. Her failure to do so may sound disturbing, but one must keep
Cixous feminist critique in mind: the grandmother, whose stories are designed
to fit the child into the patriarchal symbolic order, is the real wolf in the figura-
tive landscape of the female psyche.
Carter takes the psychoanalytic insight further and puts postmodern criti-
cal theory to creative use. For her, as Alison Lee notes, the rewriting of fairy
tales is a way to explore female eroticism beyond womens reproductive func-
tion.31 The episode in the grandmothers house is an illustration of the transfer
in power. Fighting the huntsman, who is going to devour her, Rosaleen takes
his gun and wounds him. He then transforms into a wolf, but does not attack
her. Instead, he seems domesticated. Im sorry, Rosaleen says. I never knew a
wolf could cry. Trying to console him, she tells him a story (the imagery of
which may be closest to Wolf-Alice, the final chapter in The Bloody Chamber)
about a female werewolf who strays off her path and is wounded by a man.
Wolf-Alice is a story of subversion, not only because it switches male and
female gender roles, but because its plot development turns the horror/fairy
tale tradition upside down. The rest of the werewolf s journey is a search for
healing, not a battle between nature and culture. The beast in humanity is no
longer regarded as fearful or evil; therapeutic narrative consolation dissolves
the fear of biological transformation and the wound of social prejudice. Arriv-
ing at a church, the wounded wolf-girl seeks help from the old priest, who
states, This is holy ground. Can you speak, my child? Are you Gods work or
the Devils? Quickly, however, he realizes, Oh, what do I care whose work you
are! You poor speechless creature ... it will heal in time. Rosaleen ends her
narrative with, And the wound did heal ... she was just a girl, after all, whod
strayed from the path in the forest and remembered what shed found there.
Immediately after this story, Rosaleens family arrives, only to find that Rosa-
leen has become a wolf. She has turned from sexual passivity, engaging her
own erotic consciousness. The metaphoric meaning of the word wolf has
altered: it no longer refers to aggressive male sexuality, but to the beast (the
force of nature) in both sexes. Escaping her grandmothers house, Rosaleen
joins the other wolves to run freely through the forest.

Rosaleens dream dramatizes how the mind makes use of its narrative re-
sources to develop its own framework of experience. However, because the
appeal of nature is socially repressed, the emergence of the unconscious beast
in Rosaleen is a frightening experience for her. At the end of the film, the wolf
pack rushes up the stairs to her bedroom door. A huge wolf smashes through
her window, destroying the childhood toys from her realm of fantasy and break-
ing into her reality as she wakes in terror. At this point, the film counteracts her
horrified scream with a voice-over reciting Perraults conclusion to Little Red
Riding Hood:
Little girls, this seems to say,

Never stop upon your way.
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As youre pretty, so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Now, as then, tis simple truth
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!
Although the moral comes from Perraults Little Red Riding Hood, the po-
etic reading shares its stylistic tone with Rosaleens tale of Wolf-Alice. Also, the
sexually passive moral of Perraults conclusion is omitted: Handsome they
may be, and kind, / Gay, or charming never mind! On one level, her story
seems to revert to warning girls about the dangers of men and the need to
stay on their predetermined path; on a deeper level, since transformation has
taken place in Rosaleens dream and the she-wolf is Rosaleen the moral
also warns the audience of the power of story. In this sense, the end focus
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth! has an ironic double meaning. Through
story making, the mind can mutate repressive symbolic codes into subversive
responses.
It is not new to discuss Carters literary work as metafiction; she is one of
the most prominent British postmodern writers, and her writing epitomizes
postmodernisms historiographic metafiction. However, the discourse so far
has concentrated mainly on deconstructing certain fundamental binary oppo-
sitions (illusion versus reality, story versus history, authorship versus reader-
ship), and rarely pays attention to the constructive side of the narrative process.
My argument is that the concepts guiding Carters work are more constructive

than those of the anti-novel in early postmodern critical theory. Carters
metafiction is a sequel to the deconstruction of the patriarchy. In praising the
significance of stories to oral cultures, Trinh T. Minh-ha describes the need for
narrative non-closure: What grandma began, granddaughter completes and
passes on to be further completed.32 Carter de-emphasizes the idea of origi-
nality, not of passing on but of reframing and transforming. Seeing is not be-
lieving: instead, what the observer believes determines how things are seen.
Confronting the ever-changing natural and social environment, storytelling
frames and reframes the scope of seeing. Like the grandmothers rules, the ba-
sic belief system of the storyteller shapes the construction of stories. It is not
enough to merely pass on cultural wisdom. In telling a story, one must also
adapt and mutate its elements; through this, a belief system can be modified or
even metamorphosed. The old wives tales are more trustworthy than the com-
pass in the wolf s trousers.
Storytelling is a human method of ecological and social modelling. The
wedding at the end of many fairy tales is an expression of hope. Carter reminds
us, If many stories end with a wedding, dont forget how many of them start
with a death of a father, or a mother, or both; events that plunge the survivors
directly into catastrophe ... Family life, in the traditional tale, no matter whence
its provenance, is never more than one step away from disaster.33 Stories pro-
vide an imaginary space in which the storyteller and her audience can sort out
miseries in the sheltered land of Fantastica so as to find exit, not escape, from
the dysfunction, oppression, and confusion of reality. Reading, therefore, does
not have to be passively submissive or critically detached, but actively creative.
There are two ways of crossing the dividing line between Fantastica and the
human world, a right one and a wrong one, the Childlike Empress reveals in
Michael Endes novel The Neverending Story.34 When Fantasticans are cruelly
dragged out of their imaginary world to help manipulate people to buy things
they dont need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that
make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them, it is the
wrong way; when humans enter Fantastica of their own free will, learn from
the adventure, and return to their own world changed and rehabilitated, it is
the proper way. Carters metafiction explores how fiction works properly.
She adds a dimension to the postmodern recognition that our perception of
reality is a narrative construct. Reality is perception the process of story-
telling is a process of revising laws and the frameworks that construct reality:
we revise our belief systems in the simulated systems of make-believe. But there

is a difference between surrendering to other peoples stories as opposed to
inventing a story of ones own. In order to grow, Rosaleen cannot simply swal-
low what she is told or let others dream for her. She must invent as much as she
incorporates. She must make stories as much as she makes meanings. One who
has the power of story making has the strength to resist subordination and
assimilation.

The Female Authorial Voice
Marguerite Duras Hiroshima mon amour
3
The Death of the Author
It is relatively easy for a novelist such as Angela Carter to discuss the need for
women to reclaim the freedom of storytelling; for her, the barrier to freedom is
the rigid concept of authorial power over printed text. For film studies, the
issue is more complicated. Film production is usually a huge collaborative ef-
fort; therefore, the conventional concept of authorship does not apply to film
art in the way that it does to literature. But this ostensible freedom from con-
vention is annulled by the fact that making a film is far more expensive than
telling a story or printing a book. One can tell a story to amuse an audience any
time. Costs are negligible and fees are optional; negotiations take place only
between storyteller and listeners. Because of the astronomical cost involved in
film production and distribution, negotiations in filmmaking are mediated,
overshadowed, or even controlled by the investors. The film medium does not
usually enjoy the same kind of transformative and adaptive power that Carter
praises in folktales, not because the art form does not have the expressive po-
tential but because the mode of production does not allow for such freedom.
Advocates for women filmmakers must respond to the complex problem
of authorship in filmmaking. The fact that film is a collaborative art form does
not exclude it from the discourse of authorship. Collaboration still involves
authors; it just complicates the author-text-audience chain in interpreting ideas
49
The two embracing shoulders should look as if they were littered in ashes, sprinkled in
rain, covered in dew or sweat, to create the feeling of the transpiration deposited by the
mushroom cloud as it evaporates. (These stills are scanned from a 16mm print collected
at Laurentian Universitys film library.)
50 The Female Authorial Voice

and intentions. In contemporary critical theory, the idea of authorship is chal-
lenged because of the theological implications of the author. Traditional Judeo-
Christian thinking assumes that God is the author-creator of all things, so artistic
creation is regarded as an imitation of Gods creativity. Behind the word
authorship not limited to Western cultures is a power struggle: the author
plays God, and therefore, once established, he assumes certain authority. In
order to find room for womens writing, feminist writers and literary scholars
have attempted to shatter the glass ceiling of the literary canon, a list of classics
by predominantly male authors. As constructed by patriarchal culture, God is
male, and so is the literary canon. According to Genesis, God created man in
his image, but the cultural materialist perspective turns this process on its head:
men patterned God after their own image. Which of these versions takes prec-
edence is more than a theological debate because the materialist view is politi-
cally subversive. Conservative powers have traditionally sustained their social
values in terms of what God wants. The death of the author is a theoretical
debate initiated to challenge the theological assumptions behind the author.
Thus, the death of the author is also the death of God; through such a fracture,
the previously silenced can speak their truths.
In film studies, canonization and author worship are not as deeply rooted
as in literature. Nevertheless, when film schools tried to establish some respect
for film as a serious art form, various attempts were made to develop theories
of authorship. Since authorship is tied to authority, the pursuit of author/au-
thority resulted in nothing less than power struggles. The classic dispute of the
early 1960s between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris regarding the three
premises of the auteur theory can be understood as a sex war, even though
Kael did not explicitly identify her work with feminism. Their argument may
seem outdated today, given that we have seen the use of high theory to pro-
claim the death of the author (Roland Barthes), to deconstruct hermeneutics
(Jacques Derrida), to expose truth and knowledge as a construct of power
(Michel Foucault), and to reveal the ideological infrastructure of the arts in
late capitalism (Fredric Jameson). For feminists, challenging authorship is a
necessary step to revolutionize gendered symbolic languages (Julia Kristeva),
to analyze the fetish of the male gaze (Laura Mulvey), to problematize indi-
vidualism (Donna Haraway), to rescue mass culture from the male canon of
cultural worth (Christine Gledhill/Valerie Walkerdine), and to destabilize the
codified cultural fiction in the postcolonial world (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak).
More recently, as cultural critics see a greater need to emphasize women-made
Marguerite Duras Hiroshima mon amour 51

films or to revive avant-garde cinema and art films as an oppositional cul-
tural force the issue of authorship has returned. Projects such as The St. James
Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia (Visible Ink) and Women Filmmakers:
Refocusing (UBC Press) cannot avoid the discourse on auteurism when they
try to turn the tide to female auteurs. Certain undercurrents in the Kael-Sarris
dispute can shed some light on the idea of authorship and womens cinema.
Auteurism is a collective term for a concept developed informally by the
New Wave journal Cahiers du Cinma in the 1950s. For the most part, the con-
cept was produced by post-war youth who felt detached from French cinema,
which, at the time, emphasized film adaptations of literary classics. Reacting
against their grandfathers cinema, a group of young enthusiasts (many of
whom, including Jean-Luc Godard and Franois Truffaut, would later become
central figures in New Wave cinema) turned to Hollywood directors to experi-
ence exciting filmmaking, disparaging the rather rigid European art cinema of
the day. They noted that good directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Howard
Hawks could make great films from poor adaptations of bad novels, a phe-
nomenon that demonstrated to them that, though writing was itself an art,
filmmaking occupied its own artistic realm. Accordingly, their cinematic criti-
cism focused on film directors, their style, and their vision, rather than on the
literary elements in film. Through a series of articles in Cahiers du Cinma, the
French enthusiasts designated the director as the artist in a film production.
The critical essays in Cahiers du Cinma did not systematically construct
any theory. Instead, the American critic Andrew Sarris, later in 1962, jotted
down his structural understanding of the auteur theory and published it in
Film Culture.1 Sarris outlined three premises of the auteur theory, which can be
visualized as three concentric circles (see Figure 3.1). The outer circle stands for
the technical competence of the director. Technique is basic because critics must
ascertain whether a director is competent before they assign meaning to his
work, for all their interpretative efforts would be in vain if the identified sub-
lime moments were nothing more than accidents. The middle circle refers to
the directors distinguishable personal style. Because it is the director who ac-
tualizes the decisions made regarding a film, he is in a position to create a styl-
ized product from his co-workers labour. His personality and artistic
imagination shine through the otherwise collaborative efforts. The inner circle
stands for interior meaning, which Sarris defined as the tension between the
directors personality and the materials given to him. The last premise addresses
the fact that most productions are controlled by film studios, which often pass

Figure 3.1 The three concentric circles of the auteur theory.
down scripts to the director, appoint the crew, and sometimes even predeter-
mine casting choices. A studio director cannot indulge himself in his own fic-
tional world. In order to argue that the director is the central artistic
consciousness of a film, Sarris turned away from narrative materials to con-
centrate on technical devices. In his supposition, film art has less to do with the
story it tells than with how the director orchestrates the stage and operates his
crew. As he put it, borrowing a phrase from Truffaut, The temperature of the
director on the set is the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art; it vaporizes
and transcends the meaning of the given materials.2
In the spring of 1963, Film Quarterly published Pauline Kaels Circles and
Squares, her critique of auteurism. On the surface, Kael seems to reject the
notion of authorship in film. She insisted that filmmaking is such a combined
art form that no single contributor deserves the credit of being the artist. Nor
should technical competence be the preliminary criterion for evaluating a great
director, because an artist who is not a good technician can nonetheless create
new standards. The history of art is full of examples in which innovations were
initially criticized as technical failures or stylistic catastrophes. Against the auteur
theorys second premise, Kael suggested that what Sarris was observing was
not distinctive personality but methodology. The auteur critics tended to dis-
tinguish personality by tracing motifs that recurred in a directors work. Kael
asserted that routine was not synonymous with artistic inventiveness. If an in-
novative filmmaker did not repeat an existing formula and never made two
films that resembled each other, auteur critics would be unable to identify any
stylistic consistency. Auteurism is, Kael pointed out, like buying clothes by the
label;3 once a director advances to the rank of cinma dauteur, his bad movies

will be labelled great works merely because they exhibit watermarks of his
masterpieces.
For Kael, the most troublesome premise of auteurism was the third one,
which, as she revealed, hides the self-serving interest of male American auteur
critics. Although Sarris credited Cahiers du Cinma for shaping his thinking on
film, his adaptation of auteurism was not intended to encourage the rebellious
spirit of the French New Wave. With the three premises, Sarris pronounced, I
now regard the auteur theory primarily as a critical device for recording the
history of the American cinema, the only cinema in the world worth exploring
in depth beneath the frosting of a few great directors at the top.4 As is clear in
this conclusion, he was driven by the desire to systematize the critical practice
of auteurism for institutional purposes, to create a critical paradigm that sup-
ports a ranking scheme for film criticism a film canon that put American
films in the centre.
Underlying Kaels critique of auteurism is a discourse not far removed from
Angela Carters postmodern view of popular culture and authorship. Kaels
stance on films is comparable to Carters view of folk culture in the sense that
she speaks against the attempt to make film culture official she is opposed
to canonization and standardization in order to support authentic filmmaking.
Authenticity does not refer to the original message of the author. Instead, the
film art is a collective cultural expression. Though without much respect for
the auteur, Kael upholds film as a creative art form. In this sense, she is not
against French auteurism. In fact, she is more serious about the film arts crea-
tivity and authenticity than her counterpart.
The studio system favoured by Sarris was not what the New Wave genera-
tion wanted. In 1967, as Truffaut reminisced about his Cahiers days, he com-
mented that the New Wave was an attempt to rediscover a certain independence
which was lost somewhere around 1924, when films became too expensive. Un-
like Sarris, Truffaut clarified that his favourite filmmakers were all scriptwriter-
directors.5 Independence, though it meant less money and limited technical
support, was the genuine goal of the New Wave. The French auteur critics who
wrote in Cahiers were fascinated by a few directors in Hollywood who had
managed to develop original styles under a restrictive system. However, their
view was not that the auteur theory could glorify the American cinema but
that, in order to attack the rigid French cinematic system, the auteur argument
played on an irony: one could find the art of filmmaking even in Hollywood.
Sarris was correct to point out that many auteur critics were interested in the

tension between the director and his material; Kael, however, realized that this
commercial system brought frustration rather than glory, a point that the New
Wave filmmakers would later experience for themselves when they worked in
Hollywood (as dramatized in Godards Le Mpris). For the French New Wave,
the ultimate glory was a rebellious spirit in the twilight zone between work
and art, between tradition and creation, between personal expression and
societal expectation. Once the French auteur critics declared artistic freedom,
most of them moved on with a newfound lens. What appeared radical to the
French rebels looked very different when Sarris panned the camera to the right
on the critical platform. Not surprisingly, Sarris remarked that he suffered great
pains when Truffaut declared that auteurism, instead of being a universal
method of film criticism, was just a polemical weapon for a given time and a
given place.6
Sarris third premise is a calculated barricade designed to omit independ-
ent cinema: one has to work for a studio in order to experience any tension
with the materials. By demanding that the auteur must exhibit inner meaning
through personal conflict with given materials, auteur critics excluded inde-
pendent filmmakers, who have more control of their works. Kael observed,
What Sarris believes to be the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art is what
has generally been considered the frustrations of a man working against the
given material ... Its amusing (and/or depressing) to see the way auteur critics
tend to downgrade the writer-directors who are in the best position to use
the film medium for personal expression ... because a writer-director has no
tension between his personality and his material, so theres nothing for the
auteur critic to extrapolate from. In her reading, the auteur critics became
members of an old boys club, their theory little more than some form of in-
tellectual diddling that helps sustain their pride while theyre viewing silly
movies. As she concluded, Interior meaning seems to be what those in the
know know. Its a mystique and a mistake ... There must be another circle that
Sarris forgot to get to the one where the secrets are kept.7
Is it necessary to revisit the Kael-Sarris argument in our time, when intel-
lectual diddling has turned 180 degrees, taking the death of the author for
granted? That depends on whether we want to make a big deal about cultural
dynamics in silly movies or to articulate social conflicts in powerful film texts.
The exclusion of womens cinema from feminist film theory can be under-
stood as a reaction against the old boys club; in their efforts to challenge the
male gaze in film and film criticism, feminist critics are locked to the auteurist

list of great movies. For those who would break free, Kaels advice to Sarris is
enlightening: Criticism is an art, not a science, and a critic who follows rules
will fail in one of his most important functions: perceiving what is original and
important in new work and helping others to see.8
Kaels critique of Sarris auteurism has contemporary significance with re-
spect to the phenomenon of feminist film theory without womens films. First,
in film criticism, especially after the theory of cultural negotiations, intellectu-
als became to a large extent paralyzed by the fear that spectatorship is a form of
voyeurism. Valerie Walkerdine identifies the critic as the theorist/voyeur who
tries to monitor and regulate the false consciousness of the masses.9 Her point
is applicable to critics who regard the masses as objects of analysis, films as the
collective fantasy of the masses, and film criticism as a tool of social regulation.
But Kael sees that the role of the critic is to recognize what is original and im-
portant in new work: her criticism is not voyeuristic in Walkerdines sense be-
cause she is not elitist; however critical, she shares her readers love for the cinema
and devotes her energy to articulating what is new and relevant. This attitude
not only opens the door for alternative films, it also allows the critic to function
as an active yet not objectifying participant in cultural negotiations.
Second, for womens cinema, Kaels attitude supports the attempts of femi-
nist scholars to refocus on female filmmakers in the postfeminist era. Part of
postfeminist discourse emphasizes the need to deconstruct the binary opposi-
tion between men and women, thus dissolving the rigid gender division that
we construct through socialization. This emphasis includes an appeal to refute
any essentialist biological or cultural characterization of the sexes. Under
the gaze of this intellectual movement, the term women filmmakers raises
suspicion. Why should we isolate women as a specific category of filmmakers?
Is doing so simply another attempt to reinforce the taxonomy of sex? Does a
book on womens films and film theories reinforce essentialist discourses that
make rigid distinctions between the artistic consciousness of men and women?
What about all the struggles between and beyond the given masculine and femi-
nine genders, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick describes, in the stigma-impregnated
space10 of the sexual axiomatic? My response to postfeminist skepticism is that,
though we should constantly challenge gender as a social construct in order
to collapse any rigid divisions and characterizations of the sexes, womens
cinema is a polemical weapon for our given time and place. By fostering the
category of womens cinema in light of Kaels emphasis on originality and im-
portance in new work, we can avoid essentializing the characteristics of the

female sex. Kaels critical approach engages a way of looking into womens film
for positive and constructive visions.
The Inner Voice of Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras is a key filmmaker of the French New Wave, one whose work
can exemplify womens cinema as a polemical weapon for her time and place.
Although New Wave cinema should be regarded as a stepping stone to her
experimental filmmaking, Duras left her imprint in film history with her script
for Hiroshima mon amour. In this film, she joined Alain Resnais to create a
sophisticated piece of metafiction, one that illustrates the transformative power
of artistic expression.
In 1958, when Resnais attempted to make a documentary on the atomic
holocaust at Hiroshima, he found himself unable to work out a script. He ad-
mitted his failure to his producers and jokingly threatened to abandon the whole
project unless someone like Duras were interested in it. The joke lay in the fact
that, though he himself had not yet become important, Duras was already es-
tablished as a significant literary figure in France. Unexpectedly, the producers
took Resnais seriously, and Duras agreed to collaborate with him. Together,
they broke the blockade between literature and cinema.11
Due to Duras extraordinary status in literature, her involvement in Hiro-
shima mon amour has been analyzed as literatures invasion of the cinema. As
Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier summarizes, The film provokes a contami-
nation between literature and cinema which profoundly disturbs the generic
specificities, thus putting an end to the innocence of cinema and, also, to the
complacency of literature.12 For Ropars-Wuilleumier, contamination is a good
thing. Others, however, claim that the collaboration restrained Resnais.13 The
issue of contamination is certainly fraught with old auteur ideology, which
tries in vain to identify a single proper author in a collaborative multimedia art
form. But it was in fact Resnais himself who set the parameters of the creative
process by encouraging Duras to retain her own personal style, as if she were
writing a novel. He himself would compose a sort of poem in which the im-
ages would act as counterpoint to the text.14 In order to tighten the corres-
pondence between Resnais and herself, Duras preferred not to begin writing a
new scene until she had submitted the preceding one to Resnais and Grard
Jarlot (literary advisor) for their feedback.15 As a result of this mutual exchange,
Duras poetic imagination interacts with Resnais cinematic visualization like
voices in contrapuntal music.

Figure 3.2 The progression of a fugue for three voices.
Resnais counterpoint is a more radical concept than that of contamina-

tion with which to dissolve the dichotomy of film and literature. His concept
refers to polyphonic music. The most common form of music is homophonic,
in which one melody plays at a time, usually on the top of the harmonic whole,
and the other notes are subordinate to the melody for tuneful accompaniment.
Polyphony presents a different power structure. Diverse voices join with dif-
fering entries, crashing into each other to form an organic whole. Each melodic
line in polyphony is independent, yet each shares a certain musical theme or
subject with the others. A canon, such as Three Blind Mice or Frre Jacques,
is the simplest form of polyphony. Here, voices repeat the same melodic line at
spaced intervals, creating a round. In a fugue, the most sophisticated form of
polyphony, counterpoint is the basic technique for building a musical theme
into a contrapuntal structure (see Figure 3.2). The word fugue, rooted in the
Latin fugere (to run away) and fuga (flight), refers to a musical form that con-
tains a theme or subject that runs from voice to voice, as if the musical elements
were in pursuit of each other. For example, a theme may open with the first
melodic line (voice 1), which is then repeated (sometimes transposed) in the
second line (voice 2). During this repetition, the first voice continues singing.
Indeed, in order to create the effect of a theme fleeing from one voice to another,
the first voice must keep going by developing the theme into a counterpoint.
Similarly, when the theme jumps again, either running back to the first voice or
moving on to a third one, the second voice must develop its own counterpoint
too. This form of music may run on and on, because the composer can create
many non-synchronized voices that play together. Since each voice maintains
its own counterpoint independently, no two counterpoints sound the same.
However, independence does not mean detachment. Contrapuntal tension,
achieved through paralleling, converging, or diverging tonal progressions, dy-
namics, rhythms, and timbres, always ties the counterpoints together.

Unlike that of polyphony, homophonic structure is built on the logic of
domination and subordination: the melody is on top and the harmony is under-
neath. Polyphony is grounded in the logic of association and coordination;
every voice from top to bottom has a dynamic share of the theme. In film, the
treatment of sound and image usually follows homophonic logic. Sound, sub-
ordinated to image, functions as an extension of the visual material: synchro-
nization allows dialogue to match lip movements, sound effects enter at the
precise moment to complement the action, and music supports the emotion
of the character. In a narrative film, the story (built on the script) is compara-
ble to the melody of homophonic music, and the other cinematic elements can
be regarded as harmonies that support plot/character development.
Hiroshima mon amour takes a polyphonic approach. The two aesthetic
fields film and script interact according to the principles of the fugue. They
do not integrate, but reciprocate; together they form a counterpoint, chasing
each other in dynamic exchanges. The films opening section, for example, can
be compared to the thematic exposition of a fugue: there are, on the one hand,
images of the Hiroshima victims from Resnais antiwar project; on the other
hand, we hear the voice of a French woman struggling to express her unutter-
able impression and knowledge of the post-nuclear city of Hiroshima. Visu-
ally, the newsreel images are intercut with two pairs of bare shoulders embracing
each other, signalling the source of the womans voice, and thus acting as an
accompaniment to the voice. Audibly, her narration is constantly interrupted
by a Japanese man who denies her knowledge, making her narrative depend-
ent on the newsreels for assurance. Thematically, the two share the same atomic
motif; structurally, both are founded on the principle of interruption and jux-
taposition. Yet the two aesthetic fields are not synchronized. The womans voice
is not a voice-over interpretation of the images, and the newsreels do not illus-
trate the emotional and intellectual content of the dialogue. Although the theme
of atomic holocaust runs from one aesthetic field to another, each field devel-
ops its own counterpoint that preserves its own tonal and visual characteris-
tics. The only connection may be the films music, which functions like a bass
line, another voice added to the contrapuntal tension between Resnais dread-
ful images and Duras lyrical imagery. Hiroshima mon amour is about the con-
trapuntal interaction of voices and images corresponding to the relationship
between the Japanese man and the French woman, the films aesthetic sound
and vision are each others other, even though they are unsynchronized and
incongruous.

Counterpoint is free-flowing. But to intensify contrapuntal tension, rivalry
is also required. Each counterpoint imitates, varies, and collides with other coun-
terpoints. Interaction or contamination becomes the norm. For this rea-
son, Duras was required to write for the cinematic process and Resnais to
incorporate the reading process. Duras script specifies that the two embracing
shoulders should look as if they were littered in ashes, sprinkled in rain, or
covered in dew or sweat to evoke the feeling of transpiration caused by the
mushroom cloud as it evaporates. Her description expands upon Resnais origi-
nal plan to begin the film with a shot of the atomic mushroom. Instead of
selecting only one of Duras transpiration suggestions, Resnais included them
all, adhering to the order suggested in Duras words. The film presents a series
of visual images first ashes, then rain, dew, and sweat to materialize her
poetic imagery. By doing so, it disrupts the continuity of time and space, and is
consequently free from natural explanation. It does not imitate physical reality.
It urges viewers to bridge the missing links with their imaginations. Images
become broken hints, just as the words in a symbolist poem are suggestive and
impressionistic. Additionally, the mushroom-cloud shot was eliminated from
the final cut, leaving an even more obscure exposition. Contrapuntal montage
makes the viewing as demanding as reading. As the voices and pictures flow,
the audience must actively generate connections to make sense of the literary
and filmic phase shifts. Indeed, Resnais regarded his film as an attempt to
create a cinematic experience comparable to the reading process. Duras, not-
ing that Resnais works like a novelist, used the screenwriting experience to
pave the way for her own subsequent film productions.16
By the logic of polyphony, Duras writing is neither autonomous nor de-
pendent, neither dominant nor subservient. It is the dramaturgical parallel to
Resnais cinematic construction: her imagery and his images interact as contra-
puntal partners. This polyphonic interrelation is not just an abstract structure.
Hiroshima mon amour is a New Wave novel in the sense that, like much mod-
ern fiction, it tries to display an awareness of its own self-conscious absence.17 It
studies its own representational limitations, its own signification processes, as
well as its own voices. This modernity is inherent in Duras verbal paradoxes.
The opening dialogue of Hiroshima mon amour can be interpreted as the
womans struggle for an affirming voice.
He: You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.

She: I saw it all. All.18

In her script, Duras stipulates that the music must fade out before this verbal
exchange, and then resume to accompany the shot of the womans hand tight-
ening on the mans shoulder. Her fingernails leave marks on his darker skin to
give the illusion of being a punishment for his You saw nothing. While writing
her script, Duras already perceived how to use montage to build up contra-
puntal tension, and the result having the tight embrace inserted immediately
after the mans speech evokes the illusion of punishment.
Throughout this scene and the film itself, Duras is specific regarding the
idea of illusion. The opening dialogue is not just a fight over sexual politics,
not just about a man denying a womans claim of knowledge. It is a paradox.
Both characters are correct and both are wrong. As the woman explains how
she saw everything, she refers first to the hospital at which Hiroshima victims
were treated: The hospital, for instance, I saw it. But in the script, Duras em-
phasizes that, when the camera shows the hallways, stairs, and patients in the
hospital, it is to remain extremely cold and objective. These shots, which came
from Resnais documentary project, had already been filmed long before Duras
wrote her script. Thus, her description of the camera as cold and objective is a
comment rather than an instruction. Duras makes use of the cold shots to raise
questions about the womans perspective, noting in parentheses that one never
sees her seeing. Again, the man denies that the woman has seen the hospital.
Her voice becomes more and more impersonal as she describes what she saw
in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the newsreels. By then, it has
become obvious that her knowledge derives from media representations. She
admits,
The reconstructions have been made as responsibly as possible.

The films have been made as responsibly as possible.
The illusion, being so very simple, is so perfect that the tourists weep.
At one point, she defends herself: History tells, Im not making it up. In a
sense, of course, the man is correct that she saw nothing. She has only media-
generated fragments from which to learn history. Indeed, viewers who watch
newsreels must decide for themselves what to believe in the pictured stories pre-
sented to them because the conversation on the soundtrack of Hiroshima mon
amour invites a questioning of the images and the process of making history.
Nevertheless, the script provokes more than questions regarding truth and
belief, reality and representation. As the woman recognizes that her knowledge

comes from celluloid images, her voice changes. No longer insisting that she
saw everything, she still maintains that she invented nothing of what she saw
through media representation.
She: I invented nothing.

He: You invented all.
She: Nothing.
Just as in love this illusion exists, this illusion of never being able to forget, just as
I was under the illusion before Hiroshima that I would never forget.
Just as in love.
As she learns to use the comparison of just as in love, the film displays one of
its most shocking newsreel images a pair of surgical forceps breaks open a
womans eyelid to extract a decayed eyeball. If at this moment viewers desire to
turn away from the picture, their response proves that she is correct. With the
help of the camera lens, she did see it all, perhaps more than some who were
near the site. Although one can say that films project the illusion of unmediated,
authentic knowledge, the power of their images cannot be denied. She invents
nothing. However, she also invents all: the cold images do not have a voice; her
sadness and sympathy belong to herself.
In Hiroshima mon amour, Duras narrative voice accentuates the paradox
of time and space in film art. Cinematography preserves images and reproduces
actions of the past in the present. It cheats time and space by displacement.
Editing produces collages of shots and rearranges relations by juxtaposition. It
cheats time and space by condensation. Through this double trickery, the cin-
ema creates the illusion of reality, of objectivity, of authentic experience. In the
year following the 1959 release of Hiroshima mon amour, scholars Roland
Barthes, Jean-Louis Baudry, and Jean Baudrillard theorized this paradox as cin-
ematic simulacrum, as representation mistaken for reality. For Duras, the illu-
sion is an understatement. She took over writing the script because Resnais
was blocked by his realization that simulating reality would simply produce yet
another antiwar documentary. The aesthetics of cinematic objectivity would
mould the fragmented remains of the atomic bombing into a museum artifact.
Filmic representation is like a monument; it compresses memories into tran-
scendental meanings. But representation cannot come to terms with history,
with its madness and contradictions. Resnais solution to this problem was to
add a love story through parallel editing to evoke an event that occurred in

1944.19 Duras, however, did not give him a parallel love story simply to senti-
mentalize the montage; instead, she created a parable to explain his situation,
his sense of being lost in words, in time and space, among the reels. She turned
the love story into a self-reflexive examination of storytelling itself, to study the
issue of voicing. It illustrates the problem of being unable to speak, and it por-
trays the courage in finding ways of expressing the unspeakable. The counter-
point is not simply a two-part invention of Resnais film and Duras script.
Since Resnais and Duras worked closely together, sending the script back and
forth before planning the shots, their work is inseparable. The textual counter-
point is artificial; it is metaphoric of a more important counterpoint the rela-
tionship between the reality of story and the fictionality of history.
With Resnais self-criticism and Duras self-reflexivity, Hiroshima mon
amour tells the story of the inability to tell stories: as Duras explains in her
synopsis, Impossible to speak about Hiroshima. All one can do is to speak
about the impossibility of speaking about Hiroshima.20 Yet it is not impossible
to tell personal stories. The embracing arms in the opening sequence belong to
a French actress and a Japanese architect who are involved in a brief adulterous
affair while the actress works on a film that is set in devastated Hiroshima.
They are both happily married. However, realizing that for him the affair is
more than a one-night stand, the architect becomes attached to her:
He: You give me a great desire to love.

She: Always ... this kind of ... affairs ... me too.
He: No. Not always so strong. You know it.
As a flashback in an earlier scene reveals, her unusual feelings for him come
from her memory of a youthful love affair in Nazi-occupied Nevers, France,
her hometown. The Japanese man convinces her to stay with him merely to
kill time before her departure. That night, she tells him her story: her lover at
Nevers was a German soldier in the Nazi army who was killed during the lib-
eration of France. In punishment for her association with him, she was shaved,
paraded, and locked in a cellar by her family and community.21 She went in-
sane. She screamed. She got better. She joined the crowd in the streets when
Hiroshima was bombed. She tells her story to her Japanese lover, who, like the
German lover, fought for her countrys enemy during the war.
Durasian melodrama resists preconceived moral principles. Duras senti-
ment does not focus on finding ones true love so as to reinforce societys

general insistence on monogamy. She sets up situations to explore passions
that exist outside the norm. Her characters are marginalized; they seem to be
crazy and extreme because their social circumstances are crazy and extreme.
To shave a girls head because she has loved really loved an official enemy
of her country, Duras remarks in her synopsis of Hiroshima mon amour, is
the ultimate of horror and stupidity.22 It is important that the lovers encoun-
ter in Hiroshima is similarly against the norm. It is important that it is inter-
racial, short-lived, spontaneous, and outside their happy marriages. To her
impossible love in the present, the French woman tells the story of her impos-
sible love from the past. Near the end of the film, she stands before a mirror,
and we hear her internal dialogue (italic text indicates her voice-overs):
She: You think you know. And then, no. Never.

In Nevers she had a young German lover ...
We shall go to Bavaria, my love, and we shall get married.
She never went to Bavaria. [She looks into the mirror.]
Let those who never go to Bavaria dare speak of love ...
You were not altogether dead.
I told our story.
I was unfaithful tonight with this stranger.
I told our story.
The story, you see, could be told.
For fourteen years I had not found ... the taste of an impossible love.
Its still Nevers.
See how Im forgetting you ...
See how I have forgotten you.
Look at me.
Faithfulness is distinct from chastity. By sharing her inmost suppressed story,

she feels that she has been unfaithful to the German lover of her memory.
Her story remained a secret because it is traumatic, repressed, and, most of all,
unspeakable. But being unable to tell does not mean that she does not want to
tell. The suppressed sorrow is stuck between her sanity and insanity: she needs
to recall her broken memories, put them into words, and then put the words
into narratives; to survive the madness, she must forget by remembering in a
different form. The solace of remembering the dead lover is also her sorrow
when she tells her story to a stranger, she vanquishes the ghost that haunts her.

The interplay between voices and images is exquisite in this mirror scene:
everything falls double, and through this doubling, the film represents its own
referential mechanism. As Lynn Higgins points out, Hiroshima mon amour plays
with the possibility of endless metonymic repetition.23 She argues, in light of
the theory of mise en abyme, that there are both contrifugal and contripetal
structures at work in Hiroshima mon amour. Mise en abyme refers to the use
of a text within a text (such as a drama within a drama, or a film within a film)
to illustrate the mechanism of storytelling and meaning making. A text is a
mirror. It reflects the world. It has its own rules, its own metaphoric devices,
and its own referential logic. The audience relies on learning those rules to
decode whatever is encrypted in the text. The text within a text functions like a
mirror in front of a mirror. It reflects, either by parallelism (contripetal) or
by deviation (contrifugal), how the text itself reflects the world. Through the
mirroring effect of a text within a text, by the doubling of plots, of images, and
of voices, a writer or filmmaker can draw the audience into an abyss of infinite
self-referential mirror images created by duplication. A scene of such metafiction
is a mise en abyme.
Doubling occurs everywhere in Hiroshima mon amour: fiction mirrors docu-
mentary, memory elucidates history, inner trauma reflects exterior destruction.
The womans internal dialogue represents the doubling of the film as a whole.
Instead of calling the mirror scene an internal monologue, Duras specifies that
it is a dialogue intrieur. Resnais followed her instructions by dividing the
spoken lines into two parts. One part is recorded as a voice-over, the other is
delivered as the characters speech. As the actress stands in front of the mirror,
her internal voice speaks out and her external voice breaks in. Her confusing
use of pronouns makes the audience question what she sees and hears in her
mind. Does she see herself in the mirror? Or does she see her German lover?
When she says you, is she talking to herself? Or is she addressing the lover in
her memory? Or, especially during the voice-over, is she speaking to the audi-
ence in the cinema? Who is the audience? As is the case throughout the film,
the identification of the subject the teller, the listener, the inner voice, the
outer speech, the you, the I, the he, or the she falls into an infinite abyss of
self-duplicating reflections and echoes.
In Hiroshima, she tells her story to her Japanese lover. He is a perfect
audience because he understands completely. He too is pursuing an impossi-
ble love. However, though she tells her story to him, it is not intended solely
for his ears. In her mind, she has an imaginary audience the dead lover. The

storytelling puts her in a state of delirium. She becomes an existential, self-
reflective storyteller, and the Japanese architect becomes her essential, obses-
sive listener. As a listener, he understands too well, however. He understands
the story, as well as his position as a privileged listener:
She: Fourteen years have passed.

[He serves her a drink. She drinks. She seemingly becomes quite calm. They come
out of the Nevers tunnel.]
She: Only vaguely I remember his touch ... The pain, I still remember a little.
He: Tonight?
She: Yes, tonight I remember. But one day, I wont remember anymore. Not at all.
Nothing.
[She raises her head to look at him at this moment.]
She: Tomorrow at this time Ill be thousands of kilometers from you.
He: Your husband, does he know the story?
[She hesitates.]
She: No.
He: Then, Im the only one?
She: Yes.
[He gets up, takes her in his arms, forcing her to get up too, and hugging her very
tightly, disturbingly. People look at them. They dont understand. He is drastically
happy. He laughs.]
He: Im the only one who knows. Only me.
[At this time she closes her eyes.]
She: Hush.
His recognition of his privileged position reinforces his obsession, although, at

the same time, he is fully aware of the impossibility of their love. He clarifies,
In a few years, when Ill have forgotten you, and when other such stories, by
the repeating force of habit, will come to me again, Ill remember you as the
oblivion of love. Ill think of this story as of the horror of oblivion. But the
horror of oblivion is unbearable. He prefers to pursue her delirious voice
through the delirious nightlife of Hiroshima to stay in the moment as long as
he can. He stalks her because he cannot let go. Realizing his special role in her
story, he wants to take a bigger part in it. She walks away from him because she
has already told the supposedly unspeakable tale. Part of her wants closure to
the story, though through retelling, it has become harder to forget. Her story

opens anew. It is now transformed into another relationship a new tale
except that she does not wish to engage it further.
As Duras writes in the film synopsis, Their personal story, however brief
it may be, always prevails over Hiroshima.24 In the historical context of Hiro-
shima, their story is not only brief but, indeed, trivial, or to use Duras own
words, banale and quotidienne.25 It seems to bear no significant meaning in
the land of such massive destruction. This is made apparent in the scene where
the two unlikely lovers enter the caf Casablanca, the name of which immedi-
ately recalls the Hollywood classic. But the allusion stops there; Duras gener-
osity extends only to allowing auteurist film critics a brief, triumphal moment
of celebration. No further parallel appears. There is no Rick, no Ilsa, no Victor,
no Sam, no heroic chorus of the Marseilles in defiance of the Nazis, no sacri-
fice for love, and no beginning of an unusual friendship. Every moment in the
Durasian melodrama is anticlimactic. This caf Casablanca holds only the two
speechless characters who share the fragments of an ever-fading memory. They
have no promised land to look forward to, no vows to exchange, only senti-
ments that lead nowhere, and a night to kill. The historical city of Hiroshima is
laid bare against the images of aimless wandering. History loses its socially
constructed meaning in the domain of forgetfulness.
This sense of meaninglessness is meaningful to the New Wave; it disrupts
the official meaning assigned to history. In Ricks caf, heroism involves pa-
triotic feelings for America, the country that dropped the atomic bombs. The
war was said to be a fight against evil, against totalitarianism, against world
domination. But after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the map of
world domination changed. As the French actress sees in an anti-nuclear dem-
onstration, the struggle is against the inequality set forth in principle by cer-
tain people against other people ... races against other races ... classes against
other classes. Ironically, this reflection does not come from a history textbook
but rather from a womans stream of consciousness during a mundane, adul-
terous encounter. But the affair is not mundane, because it takes place in Hiro-
shima: in the context of Hiroshima, as Duras explains, every gesture, every
word, takes on an aura of significance that transcends its literal meaning.26
The New Wave assumes the position of being ahistorical and apolitical, not
because it has no interest in being politically responsible, not because historic-
ity is irrelevant, but because historical meaning is impermanent. The inequal-
ity set forth in principle by certain people changes over time, and the perception
of history is modified as the map of world domination shifts. When historys

baggage is paralleled with an ordinary event in life, the impermanence of
memory illuminates the emptiness of history.
Perhaps this recognition is what grounds Resnais decision to construct a
personal story to depict Hiroshima. Hiroshima is not a cultural icon, but a
poetic impression. But Duras took the idea further. She created a metafictional
script about the struggle of giving meaning to Hiroshima, so that the film did
not become just another film de commande de plus or documentaire romanc.
What she wished to achieve was a kind of faux documentaire that probed the
lesson of Hiroshima better than any made-to-order documentary.27 For Duras
and Resnais, telling a personal story was an honest way of showing political
integrity. One must demonstrate the process of storytelling to avoid creating
political propaganda through mythmaking. It is not the social-historical
milieu that makes people what they are, but the way in which they tell their
stories the way they are choked by the sorrow and happiness of their lives,
and the way they digest their past. For the French actress, Hiroshima accentu-
ates the memory that history wants to forget. She held tightly to the memory
of Nevers, denying it the freedom to change, to hurt her afresh, to fade. She
mourns because she is stuck in the contradiction. She is so free and so haunted
because she loved the official enemy of her country and was callously punished
by her people. Cultural and political forces do not dictate how she loves; they
are, however, the source of her anguish and forlornness.
In her book on creative writing, Stranger at the Door, Kristjana Gunnars
recalls Marguerite Duras essay Writing to illustrate a writers need for soli-
tude. In the essay, Duras states, The person who writes books must always be
enveloped by a separation from others. Gunnars interprets that the real sub-
ject of the required solitude is the reality of doubt:
Inside the solitude Duras is talking about is the reality of doubt. Doubt, all kinds
of doubt, is central to writing. For Duras, its a practical state in which one can be
lost and unable to write anymore ... As soon as one is lost with nothing left to
write, to lose, one writes. She is talking about the fundamental doubt a writer has
of not being able to write. Perhaps the state of mind she is looking for is the humil-
ity that is required of the monk and the solitary as well. But for Duras, the silence
she has in mind is more like being alone in a shelter during the war. Here the
image is made as stark as it could be: the cacophony and violence of the world ...
can be countered by the writer who is ... willing to be simple and still.28

Through her Hiroshima story, Duras reinvents history, speaks out its inef-
fability, and erases its effaceability. But her story goes further than speaking
the unspeakable. It also unspeaks the spoken. The story annihilates its own
meaning-making potential. Throughout the film, Resnais reinforces Duras
overlapping of identities and places by crosscutting images of the past and
the present of the German soldier and the Japanese architect, of Nevers and
Hiroshima or by overlaying a Japanese song on a French scene. Imitating the
mind, the film presents a polyphonic cluster of sounds and images. It does not
tell a story: it tells the telling of a story. With Duras self-effacing authorial
voice, the film dissolves historys authority and returns it to its primordial face
of meaninglessness and impermanence. Such is the tension between the film
and its world: when the storytellers (both Duras and Resnais) find themselves
lost, no longer writing to please the world, no longer responding to the duty of
writing for the world, they write. Leaning against the cacophony and violence
of the world, Duras stillness becomes Resnais motion, and his simplicity, her
complexity.
In the case of Hiroshima mon amour, the ultimate glory of the cinema glit-
ters, not through the tension between the director and his materials, but through
the conflict between the collaborating filmmakers and their world. As Sergei
Eisenstein puts it in dialectical terms, art is always conflict here, he refers not
only to dramatic conflicts within a film, but also to social conflicts between the
ideological content of the film and the political situation of the external world.29
Interior meaning plays out through the polyphony of art and life of story and
history. Advocating for women-made films is not an attempt to resurrect
auteurism: on the contrary, the study of womens authorial voices is a subver-
sive act, for the unsynchronized polyphony of feminine aesthetics deconstructs
the theology and the ideology behind auteur worship.

Beyond Freud and Lacan
Susan Streitfelds Female Perversions
4
Only a revolutionary filmmaker will initiate a revolution in the cinemas image
of women, which until today remains what Sylvia Plath called a disturbance
in mirrors.
Joan Mellen, Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film
Riddles of the Sphinx

Theory is never universal; it needs to be constantly reframed and readjusted to
the ever-changing culture. Like storytelling, theory is contrapuntal to the ca-
cophony of the world. For this reason, even though I comment that psychoa-
nalysis marks the beginning of the great divide between feminist film theory
and womens filmmaking, I discern that the division is an unfortunate side
effect. Before Laura Mulveys work appeared, there was feminist political theory
that talked about transforming society, and there was feminist criticism that
examined how women were misrepresented in the arts. Little effort was put
into theorizing feminist film aesthetics. Artists and filmmakers expressed the
female experience more radically than did the theorists. As Maggie Humm de-
clares, feminist aesthetics in the 1970s was indeed leading the way of feminist
film theory.1
70
Although feminist theory in the early seventies was still predominantly
represented by liberalism and realism, many women artists had already been
working for decades on the premise that subversive art forms at the intersec-
tion between sexual fantasy and textual politics could have great impact on
people. Before Mulvey made political use of psychoanalysis in theory, they chal-
lenged the unconscious structured like a language. In fact, Mulveys writings
are highly influenced by her passionate attachment to the works of Maya Deren,
Frida Kahlo, and Tina Modotti. It is unfortunate that Mulveys attempts to state
what is original and important in the art of these women have been overshad-
owed by her critical study of mens visual pleasure and narrative cinema.
With avant-garde cinema, Mulvey believes, a new practice of feminist aes-
thetics may become possible. The timing was technologically and economi-
cally appropriate, as the versatility and comparatively low cost of 16mm format
provided the economic condition for a stream of alternative films to emerge.
She lauded Maya Derens Meshes of the Afternoon (1941) as a touchstone for
avant-garde cinema. Although Deren never identified herself as a feminist film-
maker, she created many unusual subjective female point-of-view shots in this
film. These shots might be interpreted as her attempt to construct a represen-
tation of the female gaze. Meshes of the Afternoon also radically challenges the
conventional concepts of space-time unity, notably in its four-stride sequence.
This montage of five shots, close-ups of Derens foot stepping over the beach,
the grass, the soil, the pavement, and the rug, conveys the action of walking, yet
the continuity is greatly disrupted spatially by the changing locations. The film
renders a female perspective. One might even argue that it gives a momentary
view of the female unconscious. In Film, Feminism and the Avant-Garde,
Mulvey commented that Derens film was the first glimmer of an alternative
world.2 Mulveys film theory is inspiring not simply because she initiated the
first poststructuralist feminist film theory, but because she had an alternative
world in mind. As well as articulating feminist aesthetics in film analysis and
criticism, she experimented with creating a counter-cinema. Her creative side
allowed her to bridge theory and practice.
In Mulveys own films, authority is downplayed. In her first film, Penthesilea
(1974), she worked with Peter Wollen. Their collaboration continued from that
time, producing such experimental films as Riddles of the Sphinx, their best-
known feature-length piece, until their partnership ended in 1996 with Dis-
graced Monument. All their films invite active audience involvement. They are
made in a manner that resists passive spectatorship as much as possible. Mulvey
Susan Streitfelds Female Perversions 71

and Wollen often present their films in conjunction with seminars, workshops,
or group discussions, and follow up that feedback with publications, scripts,
and academic papers. New film techniques are invented. From camera angles
to editing, the films are preoccupied with reimagining the politics of the gaze.
They avoid classical techniques such as objective camera, shot/reverse shot,
spatial and temporal continuity to resist normal or realist views. Since
their cinematic language does not follow the tradition of classical cinema,
conventional narrative pleasure is not aroused. For this reason, their counter-
cinema is appalling to people who expect to be entertained by accessible film
styles.
Appropriately, therefore, E. Ann Kaplan describes Mulveys works as avant-
garde theory films.3 Expecting their audience to be familiar enough with psy-
choanalysis to appreciate their experiments, Mulvey and Wollen explore what
their critical writings demand: a new cinematic language that fights the uncon-
scious structured like a language. Therefore, their films are more appropriately
labelled Lacanian rather than Freudian. All of their counter-Hollywood tech-
niques are developed in order to establish a cinematic language that communi-
cates womens experience and desire (communication as opposed to the
spectatorship of the traditional male gaze, which always engenders a power
imbalance). But a new cinematic language does not mean new techniques. As
E. Ann Kaplan points out, many of the film techniques used in Mulvey and
Wollens films are very similar to those of the French New Wave such as narra-
tive fragmentation, directly addressing the audience, and the 360-degree pan4
so the experiments are not entirely about finding innovative techniques. In-
stead, they are about using existing radical film techniques to form new syntax.
They want to construct a new cinematic language so as to articulate what is
ineffable in theory or, perhaps more accurately, they try to avoid using any
existing formal structure so as to problematize symbolic traditions. After all, if
the unconscious is really structured like a language, a revolution in cinematic
language in Lacans sense should tackle the structural principles of filmmaking.
In order to understand these avant-garde theory films, one must be aware
of the basic assumptions of psychoanalytic criticism in the seventies, which, in
a nutshell, concentrate on the politics of the gaze. In Hitchcocks Vertigo, Scottie
attempts to transform Judy into his lost love by changing her dress, shoes, and
makeup. In psychoanalytic tradition, such a change of appearance, made to
satisfy perceived external pressures, is called a masquerade.5 The masquerade
is a part of the sexual ritual: although it is superimposed on a womans core
72 Beyond Freud and Lacan

self-image, it is external and impermanent. An ironic moment in the film oc-
curs when Judy refuses to kiss Scottie because she fears the kiss will mess up her
face. Mulvey condemns classical narrative cinema for promoting the masquer-
ade and indulging the male gaze by projecting its sexualized image of women
through the cinema; therefore, she admires Hitchcock, as exemplified in Ver-
tigo and Rear Window, for his illustration of how the male gaze functions as
womens psychological oppressor.
Although Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) alludes explicitly to the Oedipus myth,
Mulvey does not follow Freuds analysis of the Oedipal triangle. Instead, the
film explores the repression of mothering. By referring to the Sphinx, she places
her questions onto the Oedipus myth. Archaeology reveals that mythologies
transform as social structure changes. The myth of the Sphinx is a founding
myth of Western civilization, old enough for Sophocles to consider it a given.
Expecting his audiences to know the story, he opens Oedipus the King by
stating, very briefly, Many years have passed since Oedipus solved the riddle
of the Sphinx.6 Between the older variations of the myth and Sophocles plays,
as Mulvey explained in a seminar at New York University, is a shift of interest
through cultural development from an earlier maternal stage to a later pa-
ternal or patriarchal order.7 In Sophoclean drama, the Oedipus myth be-
comes a family chronicle, reflecting and reinforcing a moral value driven by
paternal paranoia regarding bloodline contamination. Mulvey and Wollen
employ the findings of archetypal criticism: the riddle of the half-woman, half-
animal Sphinx, and her death after he solves her riddle, are the distorted resi-
due of a matriarchal society. The films mythological allusion reconstitutes the
voice of the pre-Oedipal mother.
As Mulvey interprets Lacan, mothering in the patriarchal context is a job
in which women are responsible for nurturing children into the male symbolic
order. Motherhood is mute: the Oedipal mother acts as an image, a point of
reference, or as a signifier of castration. If she does have a voice, she speaks on
behalf of the symbolic order as a mediator. Riddles of the Sphinx begins with a
classic technique from the early age of adaptation films shots of a book being
opened which recalls the time when filmmakers felt compelled to relate their
cinematic presentation to the formerly dominant narrative medium, that of
print literature. However, the book does not turn out to be a novel that the
subsequent film adapts. It is a collection of photographs in a book entitled
Midi-Fantastique. As its pages turn, the book unfolds a photograph in which
Greta Garbos face has been superimposed upon that of the Great Sphinx at

Giza. An icon of modern mass culture is artificially merged with an ancient
mythic figure of mystery and threat; manifested is a semiological elucidation
of culture and symbolism.
Nevertheless, the film does not simply display the icon. Next, Mulvey ad-
dresses the idea that the Sphinx does not represent the voice of truth. The
riddles of the Sphinx are unlike Oedipus answer: the Sphinx projects a ques-
tioning voice. In Lacanian terms, she presents an image of the castration threat
to phallocentric culture, but Mulvey does not describe the image in psycho-
analytic terms, as she would have done in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin-
ema. Instead, she reconstructs the Sphinxs poetic identity to function as an
icon for womens liberation. She herself appears, tape-recording what seems to
be a lecture presentation: The sphinx is outside the city gates; she challenges the
culture of the city, with its order of kinship and its order of knowledge, a cul-
ture and a political system which assign women a subordinate place. The shots
of Mulvey taping her speech are crosscut with various images of Egyptian and
Greek sphinxes. Then, the speech fades into a musical montage of sphinx monu-
ments around the world. The sequence is a mythic reversal: Oedipus is outside
Mulveys sphinx mysterium, and the Sphinx represents not a threat, but the
inner feelings of womanliness emerging from underneath the male discourse.
Mulvey and Wollen take every opportunity to question cinematic devices.
The section of Mulveys speech sounds like a lecture, which is, of course, a voice
of truth. To compensate for the appearance of making truth claims, she speaks
into a tape recorder (sometimes replaying the tape) to reveal the medium as a
messenger of truth.
The core depiction of the film is a mother, Louise, whose thoughts are
presented as a contrast to the lectures on the mythic icon. Louise is an ordinary
woman who also questions the world she lives in. Sometimes, her words as
well as those of others are interfused in fragments, incoherent but lyrical. At
times, they invoke James Joyces Penelope episode in Ulysses and Virginia
Woolf s stream of unconsciousness in Mrs. Dalloway. Indeed, like Molly Bloom
and Clarissa Dalloway, Louise lives the way she is supposed to be, but retains,
nevertheless, an edge of insubordination. She is trained, not tamed. She ap-
pears to be a victim of contemporary capitalism and ancient patriarchal ideol-
ogy, but she is still capable of asking questions. She wants to be a good mother
as well as a good worker, but finds it difficult to balance the two. At her childs
nursery, she makes friends with Maxine and reveals to her that she worries
whether her daughter will be safe when she herself is at work. Maxine suggests

that she raise the issue with the union. As their conversation continues, they
remain unable to resolve the conflict between working and mothering. They
even feel unsure of themselves because, if the daycare issue were really impor-
tant, the union would have brought it up already. Unknowingly, Louise has
adopted the voice of postfeminism; out of her economic and social insecurity,
she eventually formulates a series of questions: Should womens struggles be
concentrated on economic issues? Is patriarchy the main enemy of women?
And so on. Through Louises struggles, Mulvey and Wollen seem to be imply-
ing that, in denouncing the domestication of women, feminisms social modi-
fication has somehow helped patriarchy further repress motherhood by
stigmatizing the feminine. As well, it has assisted capitalism to increase pro-
ductivity by romanticizing women in the labour force. When patriarchy and
capitalism collide, mothering crashes.
Louise is a modern-day Sphinx outside the city gate, one who is both alien-
ated labourer and castrated woman. She cannot comprehend what the world
imposes on her hence the riddles. General ideology does not engulf Louises
identity, however. Her thoughts are responses to (rather than driven by) social
expectations. Naturally, her questions receive no answer. Or, more precisely,
any attempt to give a one-truth analysis becomes an intrusion in her process
of self-discovery. This process of self-discovery is important to feminist psycho-
analysis because, based on Lacanian theory, women in a patriarchal society are
not silenced. Womanliness is a voice a signifier that symbolizes and rein-
forces the dominant social order. But this voice is not hers; instead, it is ac-
quired through socialization. There is an episode in which Chris, Louises
husband, shows her and Maxine a film of Mary Kelly, a British artist, who reads
from her diaries. During this episode, Mulvey and Wollen forcefully insert a
Lacanian analysis of the artists childhood into the film, explaining how the
mothers words enter into the childs mind as a reference to the authority of the
imaginary father.
For poststructural feminism, a crucial step toward womens liberation is in
the deconstruction of patriarchal societys symbolic order. To do so, one must
begin by questioning the Word as logos, namely, the Truth or the Way. This
episode is, therefore, also designed to problematize symbolic language. Louises
interior voice collides with the rhetoric of truth. Among Mulveys contempo-
raries, Julia Kristeva may provide the most stimulating theory for the linguistic
layering in Riddles of the Sphinx. Kristeva distinguishes two modes of significa-
tion: the symbolic order and the semiotic imprint. The symbolic order is the

system of meaning. It is semantics, spoken in the name of the father by prede-
termined definitions and connotations of words (this part is covered in Lacans
theory). Kristeva relates the word semiotic to its Greek origin, meaning dis-
tinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign,
imprint, and figuration.8 If Freud is correct, thoughts cannot be totally filtered
out by repression. The primary processes of thought control condensation
and displacement are mechanisms of distortion; they never permit complete
erasure. Therefore, the symbolic order always contains traces of that on which
it is superimposed. According to Kristeva, the traces of repressed femininity
exist in the semiotic chora. Kristeva borrows the term chora from Platos Timaeus
to indicate a kind of expression that does not depend on an established system
of representation. The chora is rupture. It is derived from the semiotic space
that precedes the establishment of signs.9 Because language is developed in
the context of patriarchy, the symbolic is associated with masculinity, and the
semiotic with femininity.
Louises inner voices preserve much of the semiotic chora; it is presented
in a broken, dreamlike state because of the primary processes. The flow of her
words is poetic and fluid; however, as her internal monologue flows, a dry,
analytical voice of authority suddenly intrudes, trying to impose law and order
on Louises poetry in motion. This scene dramatizes the two layers of language,
the symbolic and the semiotic: the symbolic order speaks of truth by super-
imposing its interpretative power, while the semiotic chora, broken into pieces,
tries, incoherently, to break free and find a pattern for articulation, however
impossible. The imposition of paternal language over the primary maternal
aesthetics in Riddles of the Sphinx is, to an audience trained to desire consistent
meaning and style, unpleasurable. Theory and interpretation become a force of
silencing a way of not listening.
If the semiotic chora is the unreachable zone of femininity, its function as
rupture means poetic power. Mulvey quotes Kristevas Signifying Practice
and Means of Production to support her own promotion of avant-garde cin-
ema: Julia Kristeva, in her work on modernist poetics, has linked the crisis
that produced the language of modernism with the feminine. She sees femi-
ninity as the repressed in the patriarchal order and as standing in a problem-
atic relation to it. Tradition is transgressed by an eruption of linguistic excess,
involving pleasure and the feminine directly opposed to the logical language
and repression endemic to patriarchy. Where Kristeva most influences Mulvey
is in her basic thesis that transgression can be played out through language

itself. The unconscious is structured like a language, so language can unlock
the unconscious. But Mulvey criticizes Kristevas appraisal of modernist poet-
ics in that it relies mostly on the male poets relation to femininity and speaks
little of womens own experience. Revolution in poetic language through redis-
covering the semiotic chora in the symbolic order is beneficial, yet more im-
portant is to have women speak of themselves beyond a definition of femininity
assigned by patriarchy.10 To hear the voice of the chora to experience femin-
initys primordial form one must use language to break down language.
Similarly, cinematic language is broken down in Riddles of the Sphinx. The
slow-moving 360-degree pan shots used in the film are comparable to Louises
stream of consciousness in the voice-over. Here we have film language devel-
oped to problematize film language. The panning must be slow, so that the
scene can be gradually revealed. The syntax of classical editing such as estab-
lishing shot, shot/reverse shot, point-of-view shot, eyeline match, match-on-
action, fast-pace montage is constructed to satisfy the desire for quick meaning.
Timelines are often condensed, and space rearranged to give the best perspec-
tive in the shortest time. Classical editing fabricates its cinematic syntax for
voyeurism. Slow panning takes away the pleasure provided by pacing and cut-
ting, and thus demands that the audience itself make meaning of the scene.
But the challenge involves more than having the audience fill in the lack of
meaning. The composition of the scenes in Riddles of the Sphinx is carefully
controlled to dismantle visual pleasure. In one of the 360-degree pan shots, the
scene is about womanliness as masquerade: woman, the shots opening title
explains, takes the form of masquerade, locked into a world of images where
each needs to feel sheltered within anothers gaze. In this scene, the panning
camera first reveals a woman reading. As the panning continues, the edge of a
mirror appears, signalling that we are actually looking into the mirror. Then,
there is a bust of a woman in front of a mirror that reflects the image of another
mirror. Next to the mirror is one more mirror, in which we see a woman doing
her makeup. Dialogue comes in at this point. It is between two women talking
about deciphering the riddle of the Sphinx. The camera continues to pan, re-
vealing more mirrors, but never the source of the reflections. The audiences
desire to see the two women the real is not gratified until near the end,
when the two women finally appear not as a reflection in a mirror. Ironically, at
this point, we see the camera filming the women because it is reflected by yet
another mirror. The real is still an image, as the face is always a mask. The
real face of femininity is unreachable in the world of representation, but we

can imagine it through the deconstructive projection of the reflection upon
reflection.
In Riddles of the Sphinx, the hope to achieve a primordial experience with
femininity is represented by the images of acrobats with which the film closes.
Near the end of the story, Louise and her daughter, Anna, visit the British Mu-
seum and look at the mummies in its Egyptian collection. The films inner
voice shifts to Anna, who is obviously trying to apply reason to comprehend
the mysterious wrapped figures on display. She achieves little success until she
slowly recalls a childhood memory her own experience that is genuinely hers.
She remembers a drawing of acrobats that she created in early childhood, and,
in a state of jouissance, finds the voice of the Sphinx. Upon Annas discovery of
creativity, the film begins its closing montage, a sequence that echoes its initial
shots of sphinx monuments. This time, however, the visual effect is more full
of life because the sequence depicts colourful female acrobats. Why Mulvey
and Wollen chose acrobats is unexplained. These images are then crosscut with
pictures of sphinxes from around the world; the bodies of acrobats and sphinxes
the physical and the fantastic complement each other with a heightened
sense of freedom. Perhaps the acrobats are Annas ego-ideal. Their bodies do
not seem bound by rules as ours are; certainly, they are not as bound up as the
mummies.
Riddles of the Sphinx contains the two major components in English-
speaking feminist cinema of the late 1970s: an intense critique of film as a so-
cial medium, and an energetic experiment with new film aesthetics, discovering
fresh views of femaleness, femininity, and feminism. The film relies on mod-
ernist aesthetics, assuming that new content cannot revolutionize visual cul-
ture by itself. Through avant-garde aesthetics, Mulvey prioritized formalism
and reacted against mainstream culture. For her, feminist film could only func-
tion as counter-cinema because women did not have their own language of
desire (or so it appeared at the time).
Collective Hallucination and Susan Streitfelds

Narrative Perversions
The most applicable concept in the psychoanalytic study of classic narrative cin-
ema must be that concerning the issue of the masquerade. Looking back from
the twenty-first century, we can easily see that the problem has become worse.
Increasingly, the masquerade invades the body to become more permanent:
modern medicine can insert implants to make bigger breasts, inject poison to

minimize wrinkles, suck fat from the body, make new faces out of plastic. The
research, technology, and training of the beauty industry require the invest-
ment of billions of dollars. To create demand and ensure the best return, the
industry places its stars on an increasingly higher pedestal. When people at-
tempt to imitate such high standards, the beauty industry feeds on their inse-
curity and fetishism. The film industry, in turn, needs to exceed the standard of
beauty that normal people can afford and imagine in order to create fantasies
and idols. The appetite of the masses becomes its inspiration. The symbiosis
between film and beauty industries generates a social myth, which, as Naomi
Wolf sums up, is a collective reactionary hallucination.11
This reactionary hallucination demonizes feminism because feminists want
to awaken women from mass deceptions so that they can make conscious, in-
dependent decisions. Anyone who watches television is familiar with the femi-
nist. In an episode of the sitcom Just Shoot Me, when a graduate from Womens
Studies is employed by the fashion magazine Blush, everybody speculates that
she will be hairy. She turns out to be a manipulative femme fatale and a master
of the masquerade. Most commonly, the mass culture factory feeds the stereo-
type that feminists are angry, ugly, and judgemental. Sometimes it celebrates
the postfeminist era, proclaiming that equality has been achieved, or, once in
a while, it reminds us that women are not treated properly in the developing
countries. Our cultural factory projects an enlightened image of ourselves in a
dark cave where we do not see our own faces in our civilizations crooked screen.
Susan Streitfelds Female Perversions (1996) updates feminist psychoana-
lytic theory by way of a narrative film. Instead of condemning voyeurism and
visual pleasure, the film employs psychoanalysis in a comfort zone where the
cinematic spectacle generates erotic heat. A new psychoanalytic theory stands
side by side with the narrative to find new expressions for womens struggles.
Although, according to the films credits, it is based on Louise J. Kaplans Fe-
male Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary, the story is Streitfelds own.
Far from being fictional, however, Kaplans book is in fact the screenplays theo-
retical framework. If Riddles of the Sphinx is an avant-garde theory film, Fe-
male Perversions is a meta-theory narrative film.
Crediting Kaplan in this manner is unconventional. Usually, films credit
only those books from which they adapt stories; they do not cite the theory
that lies behind an original narrative. In fact, the act of theorizing art is against
classical cinema: classicism assumes that the fictional space is a mimicry of
what is true and natural, so theory is an unnecessary supplement. Female

Perversions is self-conscious of its theory, and this self-consciousness is pro-
jected through cinematic devices apart from the narrative. It is innovatively
metafictional indeed, meta-theoretical in the sense that the film projects its
theory into the foreground to remind its viewers of Kaplans writing through-
out. Its prologue quotes from the conclusion of Kaplans book: For a woman
to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her emotional and intellec-
tual capacities, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly
revolutionary alteration of the social conditions that demean and constrain
her. Or she may go trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby
consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal feminin-
ity a perversion, if you will.12 Throughout the film, Kaplans words intrude
visually on the fictional space, like graffiti. The film opens with a dream se-
quence of its main character, Evelyn, an ambitious prosecuting attorney. As she
moves away from her pillow, an embroidered inscription on the pillowcase
reveals the first theoretical premise: Perversions Are Never What They Seem
To Be. When she comes out of the courthouse, she sees herself being inter-
viewed on television, and hallucinates that her teeth look dirty onscreen. As
she walks away, the news stays on, and the news scroll states that Perversion
keeps despair, anxiety and depression at bay. Stopping at a traffic light, Evelyn
takes the slightest free moment to touch up her appearance. Simultaneously,
an elderly woman sitting on a bench by the sidewalk applies her lipstick. On
the bench, an advertisement reads:
In A Perversion,
There Is No Freedom
Only A Rigid Conformity
To A Gender Stereotype.
The film exposes the effects of the male gaze and female to-be-looked-at-ness
(to borrow from Mulvey) on womens identities, and it takes many opportuni-
ties to disclose its theoretical motivation.
Streitfeld was a student of the New York Film School in the seventies, the
decade in which feminist cine-psychoanalysis began. But she was sensitive to
the theme of the masquerade for a professional reason. After she graduated,
she began to work in the theatre and the film industry. She co-founded the
Hothouse Theatre Company and became a high-powered theatrical agent, rep-
resenting such stars as Daniel Day Lewis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Hunt, and

Juliette Binoche. Streitfeld knew what succeeding in the business world was
like. She also knew the stress and the therapy that she herself went through to
stay sane. Although in practice a woman can enter all sorts of high-end occu-
pations (whether lawyer, medical doctor, university professor, astronaut, or
administrator), the new woman still pays her dues to gender stereotypes. When
power combines with a tradition of female subservience, perversion results.
Female Perversions portrays the complex inner conflict of professional
women. The two main characters Evelyn and her sister Madelyn are well
educated and ambitious. Evelyn (whose name is often shortened to Eve in the
film, signifying her role as an archetypal metaphor) is a successful lawyer who
has been nominated to the judicial bench. Madelyn is a doctoral candidate; she
possesses knowledge. Both women appear to be liberated. Nevertheless, re-
pressive patriarchal codes and paternal laws remain functional even within these
two women, who are supposedly empowered and confident in their success.
Streitfeld uses psychoanalysis to provide a scope with which to look into wom-
ens postfeminist conditions; the most fearful oppressive force is now a collec-
tive delusion written deep inside peoples unconscious through media glamour,
rhetorical spin, political fundamentalism, and pressure from family and peers.
The old patriarchal forces and the new feminist pressures are like winds com-
ing from two directions to cause tornadoes. Female perversions are psycho-
logical shields built to protect oneself from the disturbances.
In the films professional world, the effect of the feminist second wave has
been reduced to an almost fundamentalist execution of political correctness,
which, seemingly, gives women an advantage. According to Eves boss, as he
analyzes her chances of being awarded the judgeship, the governor will favour
her for the job because first of all, politically, he must appoint a woman. Un-
fortunately, the advantage comes with a condition. The fact that she is a woman
is no more than a political diversion: in executing her role as judge, she is ex-
pected to be manlier than a man. Her reputation for having an iron fist has
made her the obvious choice. The boss continues, Secondly, [the governor is]
perceived to be soft on crime because of the recent budget cuts, so he needs to
appoint a killer, and your win over Rock makes you high profile right now.
In a sense, Eve fulfills a womans role as Laura Mulvey defines mother-
hood in patriarchy: she is a signifier, to be looked at as a symbolic threat, a
reminder of the fathers power. But in her postfeminist world, this woman is
not simply a signifier to a child (Eve has no children): she is a political message
to society. She takes on the power of discipline and punishment in the name of

the law. In a Victorian family, the woman is regarded as the moral guardian of
the domestic realm, protecting the family from the corruption of the world
outside; now, she expands her territory outside the home, rigidifying the law to
keep society in order. To fulfill this job, she must have a womans body dis-
guised in the masquerade of a masculine killer.
What Kaplan calls perversion intersects with the widely discussed concept
of the masquerade in feminist film theory. The common link between Kaplan
and other psychoanalytic film theorists is Joan Rivires article Womanliness
as a Masquerade (first published in 1929).13 Masquerades refer to personas or
appearances that people put on when meeting other people. They are part of a
social strategy constructed unconsciously through socialization. Although Vic-
torian women might have hidden behind their womanliness a little more eas-
ily, professional women in the early twentieth century had to confront the
uncomfortable feelings rising from their conflicting social personas. In Wom-
anliness as a Masquerade, Rivire observes the contradiction in the identity of
professional women: in the male-dominant world of work, professionalism
requires that they be ambitious and aggressive; at home, however, they are ex-
pected to retain their womanliness as loving wives and nurturing mothers. Since
Victorian women were taught to be meek and mild, and not to trespass in the
public domain, the early generations of professional women often developed
guilt complexes. In order to be women (as projected by societal expectations),
they had to conceal their masculine potential under the disguise of womanli-
ness. Such a woman felt the need to hide the possession of masculinity and to
avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it.14
Kaplan finds Rivire relevant, especially in her refusal to distinguish be-
tween genuine womanliness and the masquerade, her insistence that the two
cannot be distinguished by appearance. Womanliness can be an unconscious
masquerade. Men also put on a masquerade of masculinity to hide their femi-
ninity. With gays and lesbians, the gender role variations can complicate the
discussion to an unmanageable scale. The act of masquerading is the important
point, which is what Streitfeld adopts for her creation of Eves character.
Eves ambition, as her sister spells it out, is driven by her longing for the
big daddy dick. Her desire for her fathers love is unfulfilled, so she transfers it
to the possession of the fathers masculinity. She shifts from passivity (wanting
to be loved by the power figure of the family) to aggressiveness (wanting to be
powerful). Unlike Rivires professional women of the 1920s, Eve finds her ag-
gressiveness and intellectual strength to be welcome qualities in her profession.

She may even have to intensify her ruthlessness as a judge another level of
masquerading because the governor requires a killer. Both her feminine ap-
pearance (her clothes and makeup) and her masculine value (her further-
ance of law and order) are masquerades which give her security and simplicity,
helping her turn away from psychological complexities. As she tells her lesbian
lover Rene, a psychiatrist to whom she is attracted, she prefers the law to psy-
chology because law is black and white. She enjoys the power and reassurance
that the law has to offer. While she is seducing Rene, the scene shifts into Eves
dream world. In the dream sequence, her feminine body is tied up by a rope.
The juxtaposition of the dream with her performance of the traditional male
role of seducer suggests that, though she takes refuge in her masculine mas-
querade, its performance requires the repression of her femaleness. At this
moment, Rene calls out, Where are you? Eve comes out of her dream world
and finds herself on top of Rene in the traditional male position.
Womanliness is not Eves femaleness. Instead, it is a mask on a mask, an-
other layer of masquerade coating her masculinity. To reveal how Eve presents
her masculinity in a pretty package, Streitfeld employs classical film aesthetics.
For example, near the beginning of the story, Eve argues her case against Rock
(the case to which her boss refers later in the film). Her language is sharp, her
attitude strong, and her gestures decisive. She displays authority and power. In
designing this courtroom sequence, Streitfeld deliberately separates the films
plot (Eves speech) from its aesthetics (the arrangement of images). The se-
quence consists of twenty-one shots, fourteen of which contain close-ups and
extreme close-ups of Eves body parts. The rest are shots of mens gazes. The
shots work together to reveal the mens fetishistic scopophilia, dramatizing what
Laura Mulvey describes as the erotic instinct focused on the stylized and frag-
mented figure of the body.15
All small gestures count. In the fifth shot, Eve punches her palm with her
fist, and in the reaction shot, the judge caresses the shaft of his gavel. Eve, who
is fully aware of the importance of her appearance, exhibits constant anxiety
about how she looks. In the eleventh shot, she tries to hide a loose thread on
the seam of her jacket. The shot is composed of Eves underarm in the fore-
ground, her back to the camera, and the defendant, Rock, facing her. The next
shot is a close-up of the judge, suggesting that the previous shot was taken
from his point of view. A guard is also looking on. Indeed, Streitfelds irony
reaches its dramatic climax when the guard turns off his hearing aid, leaving
only Eves muffled voice and the fragmented images of her movements. Eve is

powerful, but behind her power lies her fear of losing power. Psychologically,
she is still under the male gaze. For this reason, she worries about her perform-
ance, but especially about her looks.
The film discloses more than Eves masquerades, however, because Kaplans
study of female perversions has a broader implication. In defining perversion,
Kaplan clarifies that the common usage of the word, referring to abnormal or
bizarre sexual behaviours (such as fetishism, transvestism, exhibitionism,
voyeurism, pedophilia, zoophilia, sado-masochism, and kinky sex), is not real-
ly perversion itself. Behaviour is symptomatic. A perversion is a psychological
strategy, Kaplan describes. It differs from other mental strategies in that it
demands a performance. Male perversions tend to manifest themselves in sexual
behaviours, but female perversions are often less sexually oriented. What makes
all the difference between the male and female perversions, Kaplan continues,
is the social gender stereotype that is brought into the foreground of the en-
actment.16 Perversions are strategies for survival: by taking on a persona so as
to symbolically and ritualistically act in correspondence with social ideals, one
experiences a sense of triumph over childhood traumas.
What are the traumas? Kaplan explains that the traumas result from early
childhood socialization, which she identifies as Little Soul Murders. Psycho-
analysis assumes that every person is born with both masculine and feminine
potential. Babies, male or female, are so dependent on their parents that they
willingly conform to whatever the parents want them to be. Unlike the Freud-
ian castration complex, which is grounded in anxiety, Little Soul Murders are
committed, not by means of fear, but through the expression of affection. As
Kaplan dramatizes, A mothers trilling voice and glowing eyes tell her baby:
Oh what a beautiful baby you are. You are the best baby. See how my eyes light
up when I hold you in my arms. The baby looks deep into the mothers eyes,
coos and gurgles in harmony with her voice and sees herself mirrored as all the
spectacular and powerful things that a best baby is.17 Such glowing eyes and
trilling voices are the subtle and not so subtle indoctrinations that well-
meaning parents use to produce well-adjusted, normal children.18 In con-
ventional homes, the indoctrinations presuppose stereotypically feminine girls
and masculine boys.
Sometimes, I must add, the gender stereotype is not enforced at home but
rather socialized in school. I know a six-year-old boy who went to school a
gentle and balanced child, one who enjoyed playing quiet games with my daugh-
ter and building Lego structures with the boys. But because playing with girls

marginalized him with the boys, he has now let go of his feminine side and
plays only boy games. To meet the gender stereotype, children learn to hide
their core personalities and act out the gender ideals expected of them. Mas-
querading is one of their strategies.
Kaplan observes from her clinical experience that women have become
increasingly confused about their sexuality because the social structure no longer
supports the rigidly dichotomized gender ideals that, however unbalanced,
do provide a model of conduct. With womens liberation movements, that model
has been challenged and changed; disturbance follows. Part of the confusion
arises from the fact that patriarchal codes, still operating in our cultures col-
lective unconscious, call women back to the shelters of motherhood and sexual
purity. Another part of the confusion, perhaps more significant to Streitfelds
construction of Eve, is derived from womens own anxiety: Women, unaccus-
tomed to commanding their own bodies and destinies, also tremble before the
cryptic powers they discover within themselves.19
Eves complex confusion is the result of a life-long struggle to conform, to
please, and to meet the expectations of others. Two streams of false conscious-
ness exist within her: virile professionalism and womanly to-be-looked-at-ness.
She is cold, obsessional, narcissistic, competitive, sensual. She speaks with au-
thority in the courtroom, but feels little security in private. Her masculine self
becomes extremely irritated and even verbally abusive with a gas jockeys sexist
small talk. But when she demands attention from her lover while he discusses a
$300 million business deal over the phone, she is a sex kitten. She feels insecure
about her success and her transgressions, constantly hallucinating that she is
being immobilized and strangled by angry looming figures. On one occasion,
the imaginary strangling is done by the defendant in the Rock case, who tells
her, Nothing about you is genuine; everyone knows that you are a fraud. Kaplan
explains that womanliness is the bondage of some stereotype of normal femi-
ninity (as quoted in the beginning of the film). Because it is twisted and ag-
gressively enforced, it is a perversion of a natural, unique personality killer
lawyer, great philosophers daughter, rich businessmans girlfriend, carefree les-
bian lover, all are illusionary masquerades. Eve feels guilty for possessing power
and empty without her masquerades.
Madelyn is a contrast to her conformist sister. Finishing her doctoral thesis
on a matriarchal village in Mexico, she utilizes a stereotypical granola femi-
nist style. Her appearance is in reaction to the womanly masquerade. She wears
frumpy old shirts and jeans, eschews skin-care products, and probably cuts her

own hair. Womanliness is not her masquerade (unless we regard the granola
feminist look as her anti-masquerade masquerade). Like Eve, however, she is
unsettled by her femaleness. Eve seizes power to fulfill her phallic fetish; Madelyn
steals from stores to satisfy her kleptomania. As a graduate student, she is not
well off financially, yet does not need the goods she steals. Its erotic, she says.
She reads from books on psychoanalysis to explain to Eve that theft is an es-
cape valve for her penis envy. I have been deprived, she justifies. I steal to
stop me from killing myself or anyone else. But what is she deprived of ? Does
the Freudian concept explain her problem? Or does it help to articulate her strug-
gles in Freudian terms? Even though she is able to intellectualize her behaviour,
she is not healed.
The roots of Madelyns problem can be found in Kaplans chapter entitled
Stolen Goods.20 In this chapter, Kaplan expands the psychoanalytical approach
with a socio-economic explanation. Traditional psychoanalysis interprets klep-
tomania to be a consequence of penis envy. The kleptomaniac feels deprived
and neglected, and perceives the stolen goods as phallic trophies. The theft is,
therefore, symbolic vengeance. However, this explanation does not account for
the dramatic rise in incidents of kleptomania during recent years. Instead of
blaming everything on childhood trauma, Kaplan believes that another social
problem must be the cause of the increase. She observes that kleptomania in-
creases following the construction of mega-malls. Marxists suggest that the use
of material goods to substitute for feelings and relationships is a capitalist act
of fetishism. Now global consumerism has developed to the point at which it
replaces cultures and communities with homogenized commodities. With this
observation, Kaplan concentrates on the transference from sexual desire to com-
mercial fetish. If the penis is a symbol of patriarchys possession of power, a
commodity can replace it as an idol to be worshipped, because money symbol-
izes the power of ownership. Theft is erotic because, like any perverse sexual
activity, stealing fulfills, in a small way, the fantasy of disrupting a maladjusted
social precondition. In the shadow of consumerism, such transference whether
through buying or stealing is a form of wish fulfillment in the mundane lives
and harsh realities of our contemporary economy.
If masquerading is an attempt to hide from social tornadoes, shoplifting is
a psychological escape. If Madelyn is deprived, she is deprived not only of her
familys attention, but, more seriously, of human connections in a society that
is moving toward total alienation. Kleptomania, for Madelyn, is a way to ex-
press her despair stemming from capitalisms hollowness the irony is that,

economically, she also buys into the system. Her perversion relies on the shop-
ping malls as much as do the consumers who pay for their purchases. Kaplan
concludes at the end of the chapter, Pleasure is in, and in every variety and
shape, and anyone can buy it, or steal it, at a megamall (ibid., 320).
Kaplans analysis of shoplifting and the mega-mall phenomenon is a good
example of her departure from Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis. She does
not consider infantile experience to be the determining factor for female per-
versions; indeed, she entirely rejects the traditional psychoanalytical overem-
phasis on infantile trauma. She argues that, in human mental development,
the social experiences of puberty are more influential than those of infancy. In
Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood, she contextualizes: When Freud an-
nounced his discoveries of infantile sexuality and the infantile Oedipus com-
plex to a reluctant and disbelieving scientific community, it was partly to
demonstrate that the sexual life of human beings did not commence at pu-
berty or sexual maturity. It was far from Freuds intention to diminish the im-
pact on adult mental life of the unique sexual and moral changes that occur at
puberty. But, as Freuds attempt to shock succeeded, the scientific community
turned its attention away from puberty and adolescence. Kaplan clarifies:
Freuds revolutionary emphasis on the influences of the infantile past had the
long-term effect of obscuring the monumental changes that occur during the
adolescent years, changes that may, in fact, have a more decisive and immediate
impact on the evolution of the human mind than the events of infancy.21
Instead of submitting to the recapitulationist myth of early psychoanaly-
sis, Kaplan focuses her attention on adolescence. Infantile fantasy is significant
because the gender ideals that children develop are based on their family lives.
At puberty, however, they grow, both biologically and socially, into physical ma-
turity and into larger cultural structures. At this stage, radical modification of
infantile ideals occurs. What happens during puberty, according to Kaplan, de-
termines a persons mental well-being more directly than do distant infantile
events. A perversion is not a perversion until puberty, she pronounces.22 Based
on her theory, Streitfelds filmic dramatization does not bother tackling film
language but instead reveals how story revision can stimulate change.
This critical point is important to the appreciation of Streitfelds film: Fe-
male Perversions does not attack narrative pleasure, because Kaplan regards
story as a survival strategy. To deflect the oppression of the male gaze, one
must reconstruct ones identity through the story space so as to see a different
self-image. Freudianism does not apply in this case. Psychologists may have

gotten over Freuds shocking revelations and moved on, but somehow, avant-
garde art and the intelligentsia remain fixated on Freuds mysterious portrait
of the infantile unconscious. Focused sharply on Freud and Lacan, post-1968
feminist film theory asserts the need to revolutionize cinematic language; it
rejects visual pleasure. If a perversion is not a perversion until puberty, how-
ever, language itself does not cause perversions. Then, there may be no reason
to reject visual and narrative pleasures. Kaplans psychoanalysis, in this sense,
frees revolutionary filmmakers from the duty of using counter-cinema as a
political weapon. Aesthetically, Female Perversions does not strive for experi-
mental unpleasure. It does not try to conduct a revolution in cinematic lan-
guage, not because it compromises its feminist politics to please public taste, using
sex and nudity to attract an audience, but because, theoretically, Lacan and
psycholinguistics are not in the picture. Thematically, Kaplans re-emphasis on
mental changes at puberty also makes a difference. Unlike Laura Mulveys Rid-
dles of the Sphinx, which is a Freudian exploration of the mother-child relation-
ship, Female Perversions characterizes an adolescent girl, Ed, who fights her
way through the jungle of masquerades. For feminist film theory, Ed is par-
ticularly interesting because her character is very similar to that of Joanne in
Valerie Walkerdines Video Replay. Although neither Kaplan nor Streitfeld
seem to be aware of Walkerdines work, Eds character development addresses
what Walkerdine omitted from her study of Joanne.23
In terms of screen time, Ed may seem to be a minor character, but she is in
fact the key to unlocking the psychological drama of female perversions. When
Madelyn is caught and detained for shoplifting, Eve goes to her desert town to
rescue her. Of course, Eves real mission is to prevent the scandal that would
destroy her chances of winning the judicial appointment. She stays in Madelyns
room and meets her landlady, Emma, a single mother who runs a bridal shop.
Ed is Emmas adolescent daughter. Visiting Emma is her aunt Annunciata, who
greets Ed with, You are a woman, you are a goddamn woman. What are you
doing hiding the goods under the muumuu, eh? Then, handing Ed a teddy
(not a bear), she adds, I brought you something, something to show off your
assets. Upon learning that Ed has got the curse for the first time, Annunciata
regards her visit as a serious mission to show Ed the way to womanliness. In
Emmas household, Eve witnesses Eds struggle with social conformity.
Kaplan has clarified that it is often socially acceptable for a girl to play at
boyish roles and to dress up like a boy (the reverse is a much bigger taboo).24 In

childhood, a girl has more freedom than a boy to develop her own self-image
between and beyond the socially preconditioned versions of femininity and
masculinity. At puberty, however, expectations change. She must then learn to
hide her masculine characteristics and conform to a womans role female
perversions take place during adolescence. Ed is torn at this transition point.
She prefers Madelyn as a role model, though Madelyn expresses explicitly that
she does not trust her and does not seem to like her. Ed has snooped through
Madelyns possessions and must realize that she is also emotionally damaged.
Ed is surrounded by perversion. She rejects her mothers dependency on men,
as well as her great-aunts vamp sexuality.
It is Eds struggles, not Madelyns Freudian books, that reflect Eves inner
turmoil. One night in Madelyns room, Eve turns on a home movie of her fam-
ily. The film elicits the haunting memory of her fathers violent rejection of her
mothers seduction. This childhood memory is one of the films recurring motifs.
In a sense, it is the key to Eves psychological darkness. In her childhood, Eve
witnessed her mother attempting to seduce her father. Angry at her for dis-
tracting him from his work, he pushed her, causing her to fall on the floor. Eve
then goes to Emmas house for a drink and finds Ed taking pictures of
Annunciata so that she can land a job as a body double. During the shoot,
Annunciata delivers her key speech to Ed: Now, you can learn to be feminine
too. Its not something that comes to you naturally. You got to work at it. When
I was at your age, I had the grace of a truck driver. But I trained myself to be
feminine and sexy by studying other women. You just have to practice every
day. Youll get it, believe me. Then Eds mother returns. Dumped by her boy-
friend, Rick, she is in despair. Eve tries to make her feel better by reminding her
that now she can have more time for her business. For Eve, hard work is a way
to fill her emotional vacuum. Yet Emma believes that her business will never
amount to anything. Annunciata, to console as well as to defy Emmas nave
view of love, demonstrates her dance routine:
This is all men care about. Now watch closely girls. Cause if you do this well, any
man will want you. First thing you got to remember its all about power ... [Ed,
looking away from the performance, takes out a pair of scissors.] You got to make
them believe that you got whatever they desire. You got to be everybodys dream.
Everything ... to everybody. You got to erase yourself. [Ed cuts her hand.] You got
to become like ... [Ed turns to cut holes in a wedding veil.] ... generic.

At this point, Emma is completely absorbed by Annunciatas dance.
The sequence of Annunciatas dance is carefully designed. The establishing
shot assumes an objective camera angle, slightly low in height, playing with the
audiences voyeuristic appetite. The composition of the shot includes a man-
nequin dressed in full wedding finery in the foreground, Ed hiding behind the
mannequin at screen right, Annunciata dancing in the middle, and Emma
watching in the background with Eve at the far left of the screen. Interrupting
the establishing shot are a few medium shots that show Eds reaction. She turns
her back to the performance and acts out her own self-mutilation routine. Shots
of Eve looking at Annunciata also interrupt once in a while, causing the viewer
to anticipate shots from Eves viewpoint. But those point-of-view shots never
occur. Instead, intercut into the sequence, we see Eves memory of her father
pushing her mother away. His academic work was more consuming than the
sexual allure of his wife (played by Marcia Cross Kimberly in Melrose Place
and Bree in Desperate Housewives an actress famous for conveying characters
who exude the look of domestic perfection while concealing dark psychologi-
cal undercurrents). The shot is from Eves point of view, immediately behind
her fathers armchair, and she sees her mother fail to get her fathers attention.
Eve, disturbed, asks Ed to walk her home.
In the dance scene, Streitfeld puts Eve and Ed at the edges of the screen to
dramatize their alienation and their refusal to identify with Emma and Annun-
ciatas womanliness.25 The repulsed reactions of Eve and Ed do not come from
the wisdom of a positive self-image, however. On the contrary, self-erasure oc-
curs for each in her own manner. Ed chooses mutilation. As a teenager who has
just got the curse, Ed is growing into a woman: the female appearance of her
body has become increasingly undeniable. Self-cutting is a way for her to assert
control over her body. The mannequin, which covers one-fourth of the screen
in the establishing shot, symbolizes the psychological disturbances of the women
in the room, particularly Eds identity crisis. Its wedding dress is poorly fit,
suggesting a work in progress, which reflects Eds ill-adapted womanliness. The
mannequins posture and the shadow cast on its face are also haunting, making
it look like a zombie rather than a bride. The wedding dress, of course, is the
central icon of the feminine myth that is imposed by societys gender stereo-
types and entrenched in the princess fairy tales. It is the holy grail of female
perversion: it claims that even a common woman can fulfill herself in the pow-
erful arms of her prince; the all-white dress represents virginal purity, waiting
for the phallic power to write its law. Traditional marriage is a construction of

patriarchal law: the man requires the womans sexual loyalty in order to ensure
the continuity of his bloodline; in exchange, he provides economic security for
her. Although marriage no longer functions so rigidly in our time, the political
unconscious still expresses itself through societys symbolic customs.
In her own way, Ed wants to vanquish the haunting ghost of this symbolic
womanliness. She is angry and confused. From the cutting of her own body to
the cutting of the mannequins veil, she expresses her anger. Symbolically, she
also expresses her resistance: the veil covers the brides face so that she cannot
see and must depend on the father to give her away. Ed hates the wedding
dress; she cuts it just as she cuts her own body. Later, when Eve catches her
cutting herself in Madelyns bathroom and asks for an explanation, Ed shows
her the cut. It is the word LOVE. But she tells Eve that she wanted to carve
HATE. Rather than integrating her own identification with the feminine and
masculine aspects of social roles, Ed maintains, as Kaplan puts it, an infantile
either-or version of femininity and masculinity.26 Her tomboy appearance
functions as a rejection of the feminine, or, more precisely, as a rejection of
what she perceives to be feminine the womanly masquerades that Annunciata
and Emma impose on her. Perceiving her body as an unwanted misrepresen-
tation of herself, she mutilates it in a defensive devaluation of the femininity it
represents.
Eve, too, devalues the feminine, although her struggle is more deeply en-
tombed in the burial ground of the unconscious. Somewhere along the way
she learned the tricks of womanliness, but remains masculine in her ambi-
tion. Both her professionalism and her feminine glamour disguise the deval-
ued female sexuality in her engendered self. She believes that the proper
presentation of her womanliness can win her the judgeship. Preparing for the
governors interview in connection with the position, she thinks she must wear
her lucky suit and presumes that he will want to hear that she has a family.
When Madelyn steals the suit, Eve is forced to wear something else. During the
interview, her anger at Madelyn prompts her to tell the governor that she has
no time for family, and she concludes that she has blown the interview. The
feminine masquerade is what she despises; however, she also relies on it. All the
anxieties and fears that result push her toward a psychotic outburst. For Eve,
observing Eds adolescent trauma is therapeutic because she relives her own
adolescence in Ed. Both have witnessed maternal failures: Ed sees Emmas col-
lapse after Rick dumps her (he is just the last of many); Eve observes her moth-
ers fall after her father pushes her away. They both know that Annunciata is

correct to say that role-playing is all about power. For Eve, the only way to
secure survival is to possess power itself, and, from her point of view, she learns
that she has to be a man. When Eve fully recovers her memory of her mother
being pushed away during her seduction attempt, she tells Madelyn that her
initial reaction was to help their mother. Then, she corrects herself: I went to
him. There is no penis envy, no compassion for the mother, only attraction to
the fathers power.
Upon this realization, Eve dreams a new dream. On her way to some un-
seen destiny, she walks along a tightrope that is suspended above a cruciform
swimming pool. In the scene, which is patterned after a traditional crucifixion
picture, her parents stand to the left and right of the pool, waving up at her
from below. The rope is symbolic of Eves perversions. It appears to prevent
her from falling, but it also ties her up in other dreams. Bondage constraining
her femaleness is a strategy for survival, but it chokes her to death all the
same. This time, Ed appears as an element in the dream to cut the rope. The
cutting of the rope insinuates a new freedom from her previous rigidly
dichotomized gender separation. Eve falls into the pool, drowns, and wakes up
in tears.
The alternative direction that Kaplans psychology takes has serious impli-
cations for film studies. Cine-psychoanalysis, limited to childhood events due
to the theories of Freud and Lacan, ignores the wandering years of confusion,
rebellion, compromise, and change through growing up. Psychoanalysis at-
tracts film scholars for artistic reasons, because it reveals the need for a radical
aesthetic leap from conventional cinematic language. However, for womens
liberation, which is essentially a socio-political matter, aesthetic experiments
should not be mistaken for social action: the two often work together, but they
can also detract from each other.
According to Mulveys political use of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis,
since the unconscious is structured like a language, reinventing a new language
of desire becomes a crucial revolutionary act. Kaplan proposes, in contrast,
that human psychology is more adaptive to change than it is predetermined by
linguistic preconditions: Very little of the human being, except eye color and
blood type, is unalterable.27 Language may be a device through which the op-
pressive codes of perversion are communicated, but it can function as an agent
of change as well. Social transformation does not rely on some weird way of
storytelling, but on the stories that a language, new or old, tells.

Based on Kaplans psychotherapy rather than feminist cine-psychoanalysis,
Streitfelds film is more interested in exploring the minefield of contemporary
womanhood than in bombing the aesthetic frontline. Female Perversions main-
tains, by and large, a classical narrative structure; it focuses on a few distinct
characters, has a goal (to find out what happens to Eve), a closure (an unambig-
uous resolution and explanation), and an allegorical anatomy of the human
condition. Stylistically, with the exception of a few intrusive theoretical state-
ments and strange dream sequences, the film stays well within the tolerance of
established conventions.
The film is provocative, nonetheless. Through its story and characters, it
animates Kaplans political spark. Ed and Eve connect because they share the
same social condition. Seeing Eds struggle gives Eve a chance to recognize her
own; Ed is Eves mirror of disturbance. The final scene of the film portrays
the new Eve and her bond with Ed. The morning after Ed cuts Eves rope in her
dream, Eve steals her sisters picture of a naked iguana woman, a Mexican ma-
triarch, from her wall. The image of the woman is symbolic of Madelyns dis-
sertation her dark complexion and wrinkles indicate a life of hard work, the
iguanas on her head confirm her connection with nature, the shape of her body
and the dignity of her face exhibit a beauty unrecognized by modern society.
As Eve takes the picture to her car, she learns from her voicemail that she has
been awarded the judgeship. Her lack of wedding ring and lucky suit seems not
to have affected the governors decision. Nevertheless, Eve does not seem to
care about the position as much as before. Her attention has shifted to Ed,
whom she follows to her secret burial ground for her babies. Ed has been
performing a burial ritual for her menstrual waste. When Eve discovers her at
the burial ground, Ed reveals her inmost sorrow. She shows Eve the scar from
her self-mutilation LOVE yet she tells Eve that what she really wants is to
cut HATE in her bone. Then she runs toward a cliff. Eve runs after her and
pulls her back from the edge. If there is a happy ending, it is not that Eve achieves
her career goal. The outcome of her quest is unexpected: power no longer seems
important; upon hearing her good news, she does not even cheer for her suc-
cess. The final shot is an image of Eds face enfolded in Eves lap. For the first
time in the film, Eve demonstrates an act of human compassion.
Female perversion is a psychological reality rooted in the grand illusion of
gender ideals. Since the illusion is transmitted largely through the channels of
media images and is written deeply into every consumers identity, transforming

this reality is more difficult than changing a discriminatory law. It is always
easier to struggle with an identifiable external enemy than against the enemy
within. Without reducing the complexity or undermining the difficulty,
Streitfeld dramatizes Kaplans psychology to project possible alternatives.
Change is inevitable because identity is perpetually in flux; perversion is re-
versible because self-perception is revisable; and, above all, a new beginning is
possible because new self-images can be superimposed on childhoods mental
imprint.

Cathartic Meta-narrative
La Pools Lost and Delirious and Barbara Sweetes
Perfect Pie (Two Scripts by Judith Thompson)
5
Its only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it creation story,
love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I.
The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told.
I have to tell it myself.
What is it that I have to tell myself again and again?
That there is always a new beginning, a different end.
I can change the story. I am the story.
Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook 1
Imagination versus Hallucination

The first film theory can be dated back to 2,300 years before the invention of
the movie projector, in Book 7 of Platos Republic, where Socrates hypothesizes
a cave in which chained prisoners are forced to watch a show. The Republics
set-up strikingly resembles a movie theatre: the caves screen is a wall before
which the prisoners are located; from a hidden chamber behind them, firelight
projects the shadows of all sorts of artifacts onto the wall. As Socrates com-
ments, The shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this
situation would recognize.2 In his analogy, one prisoner, set free, is suddenly
95
able to see the hidden firelight. He tries to return to his seat because looking
directly into the fire hurts his eyes, but is dragged out of the cave and into the
sunlight. This light causes him great pain and distress, but it shows him the
realm of truth and knowledge. The solitary critic/philosopher in the Western
philosophical tradition has often considered himself to be a prophet whose
obligation is to drag people from the cave of their illusions.
Although contemporary thinkers question Platos definition of reality as
the formative essence of all physical beings, many of them are amazed by the
way in which The Republic prefigures our media culture. Everything we know
everything we perceive as real and true is mediated and constructed through
language (or, more precisely, through codes, which include words, images,
sounds, etc.). Language is a symbolic universe that runs according to its own
rules. It does not simply reflect objective reality; instead, it constructs subject-
ive ideology. With multimedia technologies that make sound and image feel so
real, our truths are increasingly representations which we mistake for reality.
More than ever, our minds are locked in the cave of symbols. In postmodern
circles, metafiction has been praised because it reminds us that our perception
of reality is fictional, and our stories are collective hallucinations. Realizing the
artificiality of fiction, some postmodern critics hope, may cause people to ques-
tion reality. The deeper we sink into the discourse, however, the more metafiction
becomes a clich. It has become standard fare in action movies, for example,
where the main character discovers that he or she is nothing but a character in
a computer game or human livestock plugged into a giant dream machine.
These movies often exploit the wit of postmodern metafiction yet eliminate its
political wisdom: everything will be all right because the hero or heroine the
Chosen One can transcend illusion, be it real or hyper-real. Like postfeminism
in Disneys Mulan, postmodern metafiction is no longer a subversive tool of
social awakening: instead, it has become a misguided metaphor for the human
condition in the digital age. Although the characters in the metafictional space
awaken from their cybernetic opium dream, the viewers themselves stay hooked.
The films discussed in the previous three chapters are attempts to break
from the philosophical dichotomy of truth and fiction (or reality and ideology).
They exult in the process of fiction to generate frameworks of experience (as
outlined by Carter), counterpoints of cacophony (as voiced by Duras), and re-
version of perversion (as theorized by Streitfeld). Each in her own fashion under-
mines Platos critical paradigm: Plato prefers philosophers over artists because
he believes that only pure thought can reach the essential Truth; diversified
96 Cathartic Meta-narrative
expressions of feelings and experiences are lies. But what if the viewers were
not chained? What if they knew very well that firelight lay behind the artifacts?
What if they had a life outside the cave, and they entered the cave every now
and then for the amusement of the play? What if more than one group of art-
ists could stand behind the screen, telling different stories about life? What if
everyone could produce a show? Why would anyone experienced with reality
outside the cave still find the shadows amusing?
Jeanette Winterson, speaking of the benefit of all art forms, remarks that
the relationship between audience and text is a paradox of active surrender.3
The audience willingly enters a fictional world to be challenged and changed.
Her view does not invalidate Platos cave. But her paradox distinguishes art
from trash; some puppet shows are better than others. She believes that art
offers a way into other realities and personalities. True art, she insists, chal-
lenges the I that we are. Strong texts, she adds, work along the borders of
our minds and alter what already exists.4 Since language is the medium through
which we process our knowledge, it is also the medium which we may use to
reconfigure our perceived realities. When we change our stories, we change our
lives. It is, therefore, vital for art to do more than imitate. Reality, Winterson
argues, is continuous, multiple, simultaneous, complex, abundant and partly
invisible.5 In order for the cave of art to provide a space in which people can
anticipate change, it needs artists whose imagination is complex and multi-
faceted, free from the limitation of preconceived reality.
Wintersons view is supported by a shift of scientific paradigm from classi-
cal deductive thinking to complex systems theory. Through Streitfelds Female
Perversions, we have a glimpse of how Louise Kaplans revision of psychoanaly-
sis leads to a modification of feminist narrative cinema; by introducing the
systems paradigm, I would like to open a new discourse of metafiction for film
theory.
The concept of complex systems can be explained through the well-known
story of Edward Lorenzs discovery of the butterfly effect. In 1961, using a few
interdependent equations, Lorenz tried to create a computer program to pre-
dict long-range weather patterns. One day, to verify his data, he reran his simu-
lation. To save time, he entered numbers from the middle of his printout and
rounded off six decimal places to three. He believed that such minimal changes
would have no effect on the end result. To Lorenzs surprise, however, the dif-
ference was enormous. The computer produced weather patterns that moved
further and further away from his earlier results until all resemblance to his
La Pools Lost and Delirious and Barbara Sweetes Perfect Pie 97

previous calculations disappeared. Learning from his mistake, he realized that
minor, unnoticeable factors can have major repercussions. With this realiza-
tion, he made his famous postulation that the flapping of a single butterflys
wing in Rio de Janeiro, influencing the atmospheres systemic interrelation,
could, in time, trigger a devastating tornado in Texas.6 Nature operates beyond
our deductions and predictions because complex systemic reality is irreducible
and nonlinear.
The knowledge of the butterfly effect has had both direct and indirect in-
fluence on postmodern thinking, which also emphasizes nonlinearity, multi-
plicity, and uncertainty. However, although complex systems theory speaks of
uncertainty and chaos, its primary concern is actually order. Life is order built
out of chaos; order is a temporary and mutable pattern. All systems in nature
change to adapt to the changes of others. But the change does not always occur
as a steady progress or part of dynamic equilibrium; sometimes an existing
order of things just ceases to be. Nature is, in systemic terms, a self-organizing
critical system. A critical state is a point of catastrophe at which the structure
of a system collapses. In How Nature Works, Per Bak illustrates this criticality
through an analogy of the grain-by-grain creation of a sandpile. While the
sandpile is being constructed, it is a dynamic self-organizing critical system,
accommodating each new grain of sand. The pile grows until, suddenly, one
final grain induces an avalanche this is the critical point at which things fall
apart and the centre cannot hold. Through his observation regarding the
sandpile, Per Bak realizes an epistemological view of history: the evolution of
the sandpile takes place in terms of revolutions, as in Karl Marxs view of his-
tory. Things happen by revolutions, not gradually, precisely because dynamical
systems are poised at the critical state. Self-organized criticality is natures way
of making enormous transformations over short time scales.7 With his theory
of criticality, Bak proposes two important ideas in How Nature Works. One,
science must embrace storytelling to explain complex systemic interrelations
because a systems emergent property is the result of its evolution its history
one damned thing after another.8 No two sandpiles collapse in the same
way; experiments and statistics can outline a range of possibilities but cannot
predict when a specific avalanche will occur, or whether it will be large or small.
Second, the brain may be the most complex self-organizing critical system of
all because it can form a representation of the multifarious outer world.9 At
first glance, these two ideas may seem unrelated, but in fact they follow the
same line of thought: the brain is humanitys organ for self-organization, and
its ability to cope with changes and catastrophes relies on its narrative-based
interconnection of trillions of neurons. If science cannot accept narrative as a
legitimate method of modelling, it will fail to understand natures composite
structure, especially humankinds enormously complex neuro-social networks.
Among the pioneers of complex systems theory, including physician Julian
Bigelow, psychologist Kurt Lewin, and anthropologists Gregory Bateson and
Margaret Mead, there has always been interest in the human mind as a com-
plex system. Bateson, for example, titles his study Steps to an Ecology of the
Mind. Arguing that the development of the human brain is not simply geneti-
cally predetermined, he states that the brains neural network is capable of
making new connections in response to new experiences. This understanding
of the brain explains why Louise Kaplans adolescent psychology is more open
to change than is Freuds psychoanalysis of infancy. According to the principles
of systems theory, the brain is an organ of systems connection, not only within
itself as a network of neurons, but as a processor for human adaptation to the
world. Bateson believes that identity what we call self is the minds strat-
egy of organization, a way of modelling our interrelation with the world.10
Humans need to organize life experience into manageable, sensible patterns.
The human mind is organized like the feedback system described in ecol-
ogy; it is order out of disorder. In human terms, it is a story. Through the use
of storytelling, humanity highlights relevant relationships for comprehension:
this is a strategy we use to sort out our connections to the world. We organize
ourselves through storytelling; sometimes, while inventing new stories, we make
new connections and renew relationships that transform our lives and our com-
munities. A story, Bateson defines, is a little knot or complex of that species
of connectedness which we call relevance.11 Batesons view presents an episte-
mological challenge to the pathological approach to psychotherapy (symptom
relief or social adjustment) in terms of repression and trauma. Thus, the com-
plex systems approach is also a positive addition to feminist film theory, which
has been finding its way beyond its psychoanalytic foundation since the 1980s.
With a systemic framework, therapists identify growth rather than cure as
the primary goal of therapy.12 Growth, in this regard, refers to an individuals
psychological development as well as to familial and social transformation.
Since relevance and connectedness are its key concepts, the systems frame-
work inspires a radical break from individual-centred psychoanalysis.
Other important contemporary writings strengthen the systems approach.
In A Blessed Rage for Order: Deconstruction, Evolution, and Chaos, Alex Argyros

argues that the human brain functions in such a way that it can project alterna-
tive futures and alternative pasts. The relative stability of the cognizant past
stability lent by our biochemical inheritance, long-term memory, cultural
knowledge, and language is part of an apparatus that facilitates shrewd guesses
about a future that is, in large measure, created by the very choices human
beings make. As Argyros clarifies, A narrative is a hypothesis about the nature
of an existing slice of reality or about the potential consequences of certain
variations on a model of the world.13 For complex systems thinkers, narrative
as a description of the world is a more advanced complex modelling practice
than are the laws of physics in projecting how the world works.
In greater depth, Joseph Golds The Story Species: Our Life-Literature Con-
nection provides a biological approach to literature, arguing that humanity is
a species that depends on storytelling as a survival strategy. The books title
alludes to Terrence Deacons The Symbolic Species, in which the biological an-
thropologist finds that symbol making is a species specific feature of humans:
our brains grow, forming new neural connections as we acquire language.14
Although Deacon does not make the connection between symbols and stories,
Gold theorizes in The Story Species that the linguistic process is part of a bigger
system of story making. Recalling Bateson, Gold recognizes that the human
brain needs language to connect with its natural and social environments: it
makes stories to process its comprehension of the world. He calls this larger
system Literature (its forms include stories in print, in song, in films, in the
oral tradition, etc.). Literature is not simply an educational tool or a form of
entertainment, but a vital device for the formation of identities (essential to
the self-organized criticality of the human species). Because Literature creates
order out of chaos, it has the power to mutate and transform.
If we are a story species, our ability to change and adapt, and our societys
capacity to transform and evolve, will depend on the diversity of our narrative
construct. Narrative complexity in all forms of cultural production provides
the imaginary space for simulated fluctuations, which are decisive to what Per
Bak calls a decentralized self-organized critical state. For Joseph Gold, our ca-
pability to process complex stories is important to our survival. The problem is
that our consumer world is driving humanity toward reductionism. Gold takes
a neo-Romantic stand against our late capitalist philistinism. He speaks against
the media madness that reduces narrative complexity to digital binaries. He
rejects Marshall McLuhans famous statement that the medium is the message.
If so, he asks, Whose medium is being messaged?15 For Gold, the information

age is, ironically, misinformed, and the mediated misinformation diminishes
humans into borgs by controlling stories through the screen, by collective
delusion, and by standardizing storytelling for commercial purposes. Such con-
trol reduces our species ability to recalibrate our brains, to accommodate or
reject new information.16 He therefore calls for a Literature Revolution to resist
the hegemony of materialism and advertising.17 His argument, like that of
Jeanette Wintersons Art Objects, is a passionate endorsement of Literature in a
destoried world, a world that is losing the life-support of diversified stories.
Winterson postulates, the inexhaustible energy of art is a transfusion for a
worn-out world;18 Golds systems approach explains how the transfusion works
and why it has psychological as well as social-political significance for human
survival.
Citing the ecology of the mind, Gold demonstrates that the brain func-
tions that decode Literature into mental representations are the same func-
tions used to create identity/story out of first-hand world experience.19 Stories
are pleasurable because, in making, receiving (reading, listening, viewing), and
remaking them, we exercise our brain, increasing its ability to construct and
reconstruct our own identities. Narrative pleasure is the sublime moment when
one finds in storytelling the language to break silence, the metaphor to re-
organize the disorganized, the wisdom to make sense of the ever-changing pat-
terns of life, and the courage to be free and hopeful. In systems theory, life is
emphasized as a process of self-organized criticality our stories are signifi-
cant records, and sometimes stimulants, of lifes evolution.
Womens storytelling stands out as a systemic challenge at this critical point
in history. We are at a crossroads. The old paradigm of white-male-capitalist
hegemony is collapsing, but the shape of the new world order remains uncer-
tain. As Donna Haraway elucidates, It is no accident that the symbolic system
of the family of man and so the essence of women breaks up at the same
moment that networks of connection among people on the planet are unprece-
dentedly multiple, pregnant, and complex. Advanced capitalism is inadequate
to convey the structure of this historical moment. In the Western sense, the
end of man is at stake. It is no accident that woman disintegrates into women
in our time.20 The new epistemology, according to Haraway, is about know-
ing the difference while exulting in the confusing task of making partial, real
connection. Satirically, adding to Golds reaction to postmodern media tech-
nology, Haraway remarks, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.21 The
cyborg is a metaphor: because it is organic and artificial, gender ambiguous
and marginalized, it signifies the possibility of boundary breaking and the need
for interconnectedness.
Psychoanalysis speaks for women against a political system of power im-
balance. Film, with its scope of spectatorship, is often examined as a medium
of newspeak; typically, women in film are victims. Under psychoanalysis, the
answer to Laura Mulveys question of how to fight the unconscious structured
like a language can, at best, realize womens avant-garde cinema as a counter-
acting force in a hopeless battle with the dominant culture. With systems theory,
we can revise the story. Although language works deeply in our psyches on the
unconscious level, it is not deterministic. Change can take place with every
word and every story that enters into the brain. Variations and deviations of
stories are, therefore, not ineffectual counter-culture, but are a part of a sys-
tems self-organizing criticality. In this sense, the great variety of womens films
provides invaluable polyvocal models of critical change. If, as Winterson be-
lieves, reality is continuous, multiple, simultaneous, complex, abundant and
partly invisible, womens cinema is more than an active force of disturbance.
It is a necessary part of a structure that destructs and constructs invents and
organizes our complex relations. Its effects on our cultural climate are cer-
tainly more invigorating than a butterfly stirring the air.
Catastrophe versus Catharsis

Scientists are beginning to value what great artists have been practising for
millennia telling stories to anticipate life stories as imagination, as forma-
tion of identity, as modelling, as border-crossing, as self-organizing criticality.
Sometimes, a film with a classic structure can contain the most radical view of
storytelling. A tragedy, for instance, can be regarded in a systems framework as
an anticipation of catastrophe: we willingly surrender to the sadness of trag-
edy because the fictionally induced depression can help us model strategies
to cope with lifes difficulties and to develop compassion for others. Our story
species needs compassion and sympathy to identify and to dissolve loneliness
and isolation.
La Pools Lost and Delirious has the theatrical magnitude and metaphoric
intensity of classical drama. This 2001 film illustrates a most intense moment
of identity formation through story. Based on Susan Swans novel The Wives of
Bath, the screenplay was written by Judith Thompson, a great Canadian play-
wright. Director La Pool, sensing the magnitude of Thompsons script, ex-
ecuted the films mise en scne from a larger-than-life perspective, creating a

powerful coming-of-age film with the operatic magnitude of tragedy. Set at a
girls boarding school in rural Ontario, the story tells of a secret lesbian rela-
tionship between two students, Tory and Paulie. When their relationship is
discovered, Tory, fearing the rejection of her family and peers, denies it and
breaks up with Paulie. At the films conclusion, Paulie, heartbroken, leaps from
the school roof to take flight from the unfathomable darkness of her psycho-
logical abyss.
It is too reductive to limit the film with the label of lesbian cinema. Lost
and Delirious is not a lesbian film. Strictly speaking, a lesbian film should focus
on lesbian sexuality and the culture that surrounds it (Rose Troches Go Fish is
a good example). Although Lost and Delirious makes use of societys homo-
phobia as a context for its dramatic conflict, it does not focus on lesbianism. At
one crucial point, through a conversation between Paulie and her roommate
Mary (or Mouse), the script self-reflexively erases the label:
Mary: Paulie, listen to me, Tory is not a lesbian, so you should just forget about
her. OK?
Paulie: Lesbian? Lesbian? Are you fucking kidding me? You think Im a lesbian?
Mary: Youre a girl in love with a girl, arent you?
Paulie: No, Im Paulie in love with Tory.
For Paulie, the term lesbian boxes her into a collective type of sexuality, whereas
she is an individual in love with an individual. Paulies refusal to reduce her
passion to a stigmatized category may perhaps be the films strongest state-
ment against homophobia. The anti-gay social force that transforms the story
to tragedy is no different from that exercised by the gods in a classical work
such as Virgils Aeneid. There, Dido, queen of Carthage, falls in love with Prince
Aeneas of Troy. Although both know that his destiny is to found the city of
Rome, he lingers in Carthage to stay with her. Finally, on instructions from
Mercury, he regretfully abandons her and sails for Italy. Hurt and betrayed,
Dido commits suicide. As is the case in any classical tragedy, the audience is
invited to sympathize with the main character, to contemplate the possibilities
of a different outcome, a different fate, or a different world.
The tragedy of Lost and Delirious requires a larger-than-life setting to prop-
erly present Paulies overflow of powerful emotions. Ordinary living space, where
normalcy is expected, is too sane, too orderly, and too confined for the spatial
displacement of this psychological drama. The architecture of the boarding
school (actually the campus of Bishops University) is far from ordinary.22 The
majestic, awe-inspiring buildings contrast with the nearby lush, chaotic forest
to form the films symbolic sets. Time freezes. Although the story must span
months of the school year, the seasons do not change, coordinating with the
fulsome spring of the young womens burgeoning sexuality rather than the
academic calendar. Paulies inner feelings have the heightened intensity of art
such that she needs a stage to express her explosiveness. Dressed in protective
fencing costume, she practises with a foil on the stage of the school gymna-
sium; two of her teachers, playing the role of audience to her emotional erup-
tion, look on at her. Later, in despair after Tory abandons her, Paulie also turns
the cafeteria into her stage to express her desperation.
Her love also requires a stage. Before their relationship is discovered, Paulie
and Tory participate in school choir practice in an Anglican cathedral-scale
church. As the choir sings Hosanna in excelsis, Mary, also participating, sees
that Paulie is secretly holding Torys hand. This scene is set in the chancel, that
part of an Anglican church that traditionally contains the altar and seats for
clergy and choir. Thus, the chancel is a stage for performing art as well as a
passage of spiritual transformation between the altar rail and the congrega-
tion, between holiness and earthliness. When members of the congregation go
to the altar to take communion, they pass through the chancel of music for
purification. The symbolism of an adolescent choir in this space contains an
intelligible double meaning: because marrying couples stand in the chancel as
they publicly exchange their vows, Paulie and Torys secret handholding in the
ritualistic space before the altar is a transcendental proclamation of love, a se-
cret in public.
In Lost and Delirious, the spatial metaphors that I observe in La Pools
visual composition are screenwriter Judith Thompsons trademark. A decade
before Thompson took on this film project, Robert Nunn published an essay
on her early plays that argued, Metaphor in her plays is specifically theatrical
in that the dominant metaphors are always spatial, like the image of the screen
door ... These spatial metaphors are vehicles with which the plays penetrate
two specific areas: social structure and the structure of the psyche.23 Nunns
comment is also applicable to the film. In Lost and Delirious, the school is a
metaphoric space in which the two structures collide: when external socializ-
ing forces intrude on the sphere of friendship and intimacy, emotional out-
bursts infringe on the public realm. Together, they form the stage of tragedy.

In The Wives of Bath, which is set in the 1960s, the teachers function as
oppressive vehicles of socialization and represent a power that terrorizes the
girls, though the male gaze outside the institution is the actual socializing force.
Swans Mouse believes that, in the eyes of the boys, and no matter how hard
every woman struggles to play by her own rules, the school is nothing more
than a fiefdom in the kingdom of men.24 In Lost and Delirious, which has a
contemporary setting, the teacher-student dynamic has changed. Throughout
the film, the teachers make no attempt to temper Paulies love for Tory. The
English teacher, in particular, attempts to convince Paulie to try psychotherapy
to deal with her emotional crisis, understanding her passion and appreciating
the insight that Paulies feelings bring to her literature class. But the social dy-
namics of the novel have not changed in the film. Peer pressure functions in-
side the school as a force of conformity and marginalization; the expectations
of Torys family exert enormous power, creating a fearful control of the girls
psyche.25 The school remains a fiefdom; its awe-inspiring buildings stand guard
for societys mores.
The intimate dormitory room shared by Tory, Paulie, and Mary, the only
space in the film that does not feel larger than life, forms a marked contrast to
the rest of the school. Here, the girls share their thoughts and feelings, and Tory
and Paulie sleep together. When Tory brings Mary to their room for the first
time, she explains, This is much more home to me than home. Like the lost
boys in Peter Pan, right? Except were the lost girls, right? Lost and delirious.
In the intimate space of the bedroom, the roommates share their letters to
their mothers. Paulie, an adopted child who hopes to trace her birth mother,
shares the letter she has written to her:
Dear my real mother,

Dont be scared. Its totally OK that you gave me up. You were only a kid. I
totally understand. Dont be scared of me. Im not scary. I know you had a hard
life, and I had a pretty good one, comfortable, you know, if a little chilly.
Well, I imagine you living in some basement around Gerard and Parliament
selling your ass for a living, and I just thought I would get in touch and we could
go for a beer sometime.
Your loving daughter,
Paulie
P.S. Janet, my fake mother, she smiles without her eyes, and her hands are cold.
The style is consistent with Paulies public persona, deviant, independent,
worldly, and wittily forthright. But then she tells Mary and Tory, When she
[her mother] is old, Im going to carry her around on my back. The line touches
another dimension of her personality, making her character so lovely, vulner-
able, and contradictory. As the conversation continues, Torys submissive per-
sonality is revealed. She refuses to write to her mother because she can never
say what she means. Should she write one, her letter would read something
like, Dear Mummy, I hate you for multiple reasons. But when she goes on to
fill in the details, her verbal composition opens up her inmost oppressed feel-
ings, without artifice or protective shielding. At the end of the scene, their at-
tention turns to Mary, whose mother died three years ago of cancer:
Dear Mother,
Remember you asked me when you were sick, well, dying. It was fall, October.
It was still hot that year and your room smelled like sweet, rotten apples. And I was
holding your head in my arms and your breathing was so fast and, like, shallow.
You said, Mary, please remember me. And the thing is, I do sometimes forget
what you look like.
At this moment, Paulie realizes that Marys nickname, Mouse, is not true to her
character. She calls her Mary B. for Brave, perhaps for her bravery in facing
such a sad truth or for sharing her pain. Such moments of intimate exchange
leave the director little choice but to film in close-up and shallow depth of field
to compliment the intimate language, which is why the space seems cozy, even
though it is an oversized dormitory room with a lofty ceiling.26 When Torys
sister, Alison, bursts into the room one morning and discovers Paulie and Tory
in bed together, the chain of falling action is initiated. The invasion of the pri-
vate space exposes their intimate world to the public gaze, igniting catastro-
phes fuse.
All the spatial metaphors, nevertheless, are set up for the theatrical exposi-
tion of Paulies hidden psychological darkness, or, to use Thompsons own de-
scription, the abyss.27 This abyss, psychologically and sociologically analogous
to the unconscious, is unspeakable. I believe, nevertheless, that all serious art is
about breaking the silence, or, in the terms of complex systems theory, about
peeling away lifes extrinsic lucidity and order for a glimpse of its intrinsic opacity
and chaos. The abyss is present in Thompsons script as well as in Swans novel.
La Pool is also an expert in this regard. One of the most memorable moments

of my cinematic experience occurs in Mouvements du dsir (written and di-
rected by Pool in 1994). In the film, a young man sits quietly in a corner of a
train car listening to a Walkman. He appears to be an introverted person, to-
tally absorbed in his music and with little awareness of the world outside. At
one point, however, he shares what he is listening to with a passenger. As the
passenger puts on the headphones, a womans recorded voice emerges. She is
taping a love letter to the man as she drives to see him. Suddenly, while she is
still in mid-letter, the sound of a car crash ends the tape. Not a word is neces-
sary. The long silence and near-frozen image that follow the sound of the crash
create a shockingly surreal disclosure of the mans emotional abyss. In
Mouvements du dsir, the abyss is disclosed through freezing time at a moment
when silence sets emotion free from the barricade of words.
Pool applies a similar approach in Lost and Delirious. After Alison discov-
ers Tory and Paulie in bed together, Tory seeks her out and convinces her that,
far from being a lesbian, she is actually boy-crazy. The scene ends as she walks
away from the conversation weeping in despair, sad and guilty for betraying
herself, her lover, and their love. To capture the complex emotion of this mo-
ment, Pool uses slow motion. In addition, she deletes the on-site soundtrack,
replacing the sound of Torys weeping with Me Shell Ndegocellos song Beau-
tiful, which has already appeared during a love-making scene between Tory
and Paulie. Pool highlights this particular passage in the song: Such pretty
hair, may I kiss you, may I kiss you now, so beautiful you are, so beautiful,
beautiful, please, dont move. The lyrics do not illustrate the picture on screen,
and the language has no semantic value. Instead, it is poetic. It is an audio
counterpoint to the picture. It freezes the conflicting emotions in time by evoking
the impression of the girls tender love at the very moment of its destruction.
A filmmaker has no choice but to photograph with light; therefore, film
cannot employ darkness to represent psychological darkness. To resolve this
contradiction, La Pool often silences her characters to intensify her cameras
point of view. Silence is her way of representing darkness. Indeed, Pool has
illustrated her artistic philosophy through her semi-autobiographical charac-
ter in Emporte-moi (1998). This film contains a moment of meta-cinema in
which Pools character, Hanna, a girl who is coming of age, watches Godards
Vivre sa vie repeatedly and quietly in the movie theatre. The moment alludes to
Vivre sa vie itself. In that film, Godard depicts a troubled young woman who
decides to live her life while watching Carl Theodor Dreyers La Passion de Jeanne
dArc. Like Godards character, Hanna projects her own misery and her desire
for freedom onto the images of Joan of Arc. Generation after generation, women
find the strength and courage to live rebelliously and dangerously in the heroic
images of other women even though the stories attached to the images have
tragic endings. Both scenes by Godard and Pool are presented in complete si-
lence, as if dark emotions can be illuminated more effectively when they are
freed from a soundtrack.
Judith Thompsons approach to the abyss differs from that of Pool. Her
work is about finding a voice. When language fails and human opacity cracks,
time also freezes in Thompsons theatre. But, instead of silently glimpsing into
the abyss, she screams. According to Thompsons own testimony, her compul-
sion to scream is what initially drew her to live theatre. In I Will Tear You to
Pieces, she tells the story of her life-theatre connection.28 At age eleven, she
played Helen Keller in an amateur production: I had, as a child, the constant
and overwhelming sensation of being excluded from the world, of living in
somebodys dream; the child who met the outside world was faceless and voice-
less, and so I was typecast, in a way, as a girl who was blind, deaf, and dumb.
Helen Keller helped her realize the connection between touch and language: I
felt pure, dizzying joy and freedom being on stage, screaming and throwing the
forks and knives to the floor; snorting like a pig, writhing and moaning, clutching
the sweaty hand of the faculty wife who played Annie, the teacher. Her hand
became my whole world during that time, the hand was language, my door to
the outside world and my protection from it.29 Kellers autobiography is a docu-
ment fundamental to the study of systems bibliotherapy. It proves that lan-
guage is a tool of consciousness, crucial for the formation of identity. Humans
need language to bring sensations into organized consciousness. A complete
neuropath of consciousness requires a bridge from the right hemisphere of the
brain (sensation) to the left hemisphere of the brain (language). Without lan-
guage, in a manner of speaking, we can sense but we cannot feel (referring to
the formation of conscious opinions of what we sense). After Keller went deaf
and blind at nineteen months, she lived with pure sensations. About six years
later, with the help of Anne Sullivan, she was awakened to the mystery of lan-
guage. Unlike other people, whose linguistic consciousness is opened at a much
earlier age, she retained the memory of her first experience of connecting her
touch to a word. Soon after the catalytic moment of the first word, Keller be-
gan to register her sensations and to gain consciousness of her social behav-
iour. On returning to her room, she remembered a doll she had broken there,
and the manner with which she connected to the external world changed: I

felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them
together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for
the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.30 Not coincidentally, Thompson
uses the word sensation to describe her childhood before the play and felt
to express her experience onstage as Helen Keller.
Kellers story illustrates how language gives order and meaning to our lives
and our world, but it does not explain why screaming is important. Screaming
is a prelinguistic form of expression an outlet for a wild child, so to speak.
Language tames wildness. It creates order out of chaos. It makes screaming
unnecessary. But, for an artist to break through silence, to find expression for
unspeakable or unconscious social and psychological undercurrents, she needs
to return to the state of the wild child to discover new tools of consciousness
new language. Thompsons next big theatrical moment was her experience of a
grand mal seizure during her grade six graduation assembly: In this seizure,
there was, again, a horrible kind of freedom; not only was I free to scream, I
had to scream to save my life, to breathe; my face turned purple and I became
incontinent; my dress was soaked in front of every student in the school ... The
seizure had the force of a great volcano erupting, the bubbling, white hot lava
trammelling over the fragile, spindly structures that make up a conscious self.
Building on her experiences, her next role, that of ten-year-old Betty Parris,
who feigns demonic possession in Arthur Millers The Crucible, allowed her to
scream the scream to end all screams. Years of rage, and of feeling invisible,
she adds, came out in that scream.31
Naturally, Helen Keller and Betty Parris inform Thompsons work as a play-
wright. She revisits her senses, just as Helen Keller met the world through her
fingers, and she has to believe, like Betty Parris, that she can fly, and scream
until she passes out: Betty Parris is in a trance just as I am, she believes she can
fly, she believes she is the devil just as I believe I am in the play I am writing, and
I am all the characters. To write, I have to become, basically, a child who is a
wild animal.32 It is important to reserve the cinematic space for Paulies theat-
rical scream of anguish: it is a scream for survival.
Catharsis may be an ancient concept, but it may also be the best expla-
nation especially combined with complex systems theory of how the scream
of anguish can be pleasurable to watch. In Poetics, Aristotle states that tragedy
employs language that has been artistically enhanced to dramatize pitiable
and fearful incidents; through the representation of pity and fear, the cathar-
sis of such pitiable and fearful incidents occurs.33 Aristotle never defines what
he means by catharsis. From the context of his writing, three streams of inter-
pretation have arisen. One stream traces the Greek origins of katharsis and
argues that the word means clarification: this stream relates catharsis to Aris-
totles definition of recognition as a change from ignorance to knowledge.
Tragedy brings cognitive awareness and clarification to human suffering. The
second stream, dating from the Renaissance, suggests that catharsis is an act of
purification. The purification theory rationalizes that, through catharsis, trag-
edy can temper or harden the audiences emotions so that they can discern the
proper objects of pity and fear. In this view, tragedy has the desensitizing effect
of the evening news. The third stream, a more emotive understanding, con-
nects the word to Aristotles portrayal of the effect of other art forms healing
and purgation, as he put it. Purgation releases negative emotions and unpleas-
ant feelings so that the soul can be lightened and delighted. This understand-
ing of catharsis is the oldest of the three, but it is also the most widely adopted.
It redeems Aristotle from his seemingly sadistic statement, The poet should
provide pleasure from pity and fear.34 As Susan Sontag summarizes, Art has a
certain value according to Aristotle because it is a form of therapy. Art is useful,
after all, Aristotle counters, medicinally useful in that it arouses and purges
dangerous emotions.35 For this reason, catharsis is pleasurable because it lets
out unpleasant feelings. All three streams can be true to Aristotle at the same
time. Tragedy can educate the mind, temper the psyche, and purge dangerous
emotions.
Sontags therapeutic understanding of catharsis may be the most mean-
ingful, even though Aristotle does not seem to fully understand his point. Dare
I suggest that Aristotle does not know what he is talking about (after all these
pages, am I learning to write like an immodest wild child)? His defence of trag-
edy is too caught up by Platos conviction that literature is an imitative decep-
tion. Susan Swans favourable response to the films modification of her plot is
an interesting contradiction. In Poetics, Aristotle prioritizes plot over charac-
ter, character over thought, and, in the end, thought over diction, as if language
is just a matter of flowery rhetoric. In Swans novel, Paulie kills a taxi driver,
cuts off his penis, and glues it to her own body. Mary has an anti-Freudian
thought near the end of the novel: Paulie wasnt a penis cutter because she
envied men. It was because she didnt respect women.36 This climactic episode
was excluded from the film, but Swan agreed with the change. She explains,
The crime in the novel was a device to reflect on the characters thoughts and
feelings about themselves as girls, but La Pools camera didnt need the crime

to convey these same things. To stick with my ending might have tipped her
powerful drama over into the genre of film horror because cinematic effects
are so much more visceral and immediate than words on a page.37 If, from one
medium to another, we can change the plot to preserve thoughts and feelings,
the plot should be lowest in priority.
In contrast, language deserves greater attention. It is key. Thompsons con-
nections with Helen Keller and Betty Parris help her realize the significance of
language and feeling over plot. In Thompsons plays, the pleasure of her dra-
matic art comes in and through language, spoken or unspoken. She remem-
bers herself playing Betty: I would lie on the stage bed in the first act, and
listen to all that exquisite, musical language and then try to fly Mama, Mama,
I want to fly to MAMA and scream until I passed out.38 Drama is not an
imitation of life. It is an extension of life. We use the imaginary space called the
stage to organize and reorganize our perception of reality. We change life by
changing our perception of it. Poetic language is not decorative. We use it as
the connector between the I and the world. Since language mediates thoughts
and feelings, diction, sound, and rhythm are responsible for transforming
theatrical sensations into thoughts and feelings.
Lost and Delirious depicts two English classes on Shakespeare, one focus-
ing on Antony and Cleopatra and the other on Macbeth, which inherently illus-
trate the power of poetic language. In the first scene, the teacher, Miss Vaughn,
analyzes the passage from Antony and Cleopatra in which Cleopatra mourns
the death of her lover Antony. When Vaughn invites the class to comment on
its imagery, no one identifies with Cleopatras passion and heartbrokenness
except Paulie, who has just been deserted by her Tory. Even though the Shake-
speare plot has very little in common with Paulies situation, she fully identifies
with Cleopatras words: Shall I abide in this dull world, which in thy absence is
no better than a sty? (Antony and Cleopatra 4.15.60-62). She basically hijacks the
class discussion to articulate her feelings to Tory, who sits quietly in the class.
Here, the poetic transference is not plot motivated; it is a linguistic projection.
As the film progresses, Paulie begins to reject feminine passivity and to
identify with the masculine. As she feeds the injured hawk which she is nursing
back to health, she imagines a situation in which another hawk has stolen its
mate. She says to the raptor, You wouldnt just lie there and take it, like a girl.
The bird of prey seems to be a replacement for the taxi drivers penis in the
novel, a projection of Paulies psychological pursuit of freedom and strength.
The class on Macbeth, introduced by a transitional raptor-training scene in
which Paulie stretches out her arm to call the bird, takes her transference a step
further. During a lap-dissolve, Miss Vaughns recitation of a Lady Macbeth so-
liloquy resonates. Having resolved to murder her king, Lady Macbeth sum-
mons the spirits of hell to her aid:
Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood;
Stop up th access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose ...
Come to my womans breast
And take my milk for gall, you murdring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on natures mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry Hold, hold!
(Macbeth 1.5.38-52)
By using the recitation as a sound bridge, Pool reinforces the thematic signifi-
cance of Macbeth to Paulie. The lines Come, you spirits and Come to my
womans breast tie Lady Macbeths psychological crisis tightly to Paulies own
desire to summon the spirit of transformation. Noticing her engagement with
the passage, Miss Vaughn invites Paulie to speak, but Paulie is so attached to the
text and detached from the class that she refuses and walks out, telling the teacher
to fuck yourself sideways. Understanding the source of her pain, Miss Vaughn
simply comments that Paulie is going through a difficult time and resumes the
lesson. Mary interrupts her interpretation of Lady Macbeths words and offers
her own: She wants to get up the guts. To do what she has to do. Only the girl
part of her doesnt have the guts. So she says turn my milk to gall. And I think
gall is poison. But then what would happen to the baby? The baby would die,
and she wants not to care about that. She wants not to care, to be like a guy, like
a man. This response parallels the scene in Swans novel where Mary inter-
prets that Paulie steals the mans penis because she does not respect women.

The classroom scenes in Lost and Delirious not only dramatize what is in
the novel; they also illustrate the magic of theatre as a space for psychological
transference. Not everyone embraces the magic: Cordelia, who claims that love
is a chemical high induced by your body so that youll want to make babies,
tunes out completely from such emotional engagement. In contrast, Marys
reading of Macbeth reflects her understanding of Paulie, as well as her own
awakening to gender politics. After the class, Tory follows Mary to express how
much she likes Marys interpretation I wish I could be unsexed or whatever
... it all just causes so much trouble which is consistent with Torys inclina-
tion to avoid conflict. For Tory, Lady Macbeths scary speech arouses fear,
which reinforces the self-regulation necessary to live by her parents standards.
Fearful the speech may be, but it speaks to her guilt for hurting Paulie, her wish
that they had never fallen in love. Her wish to be unsexed demonstrates her
desire for freedom from gender barriers, especially when Mary points out the
transgression. Paulie finds power in words to support her struggle. She is not
afraid of madness, seemingly at one with the soon-to-be-insane Lady Macbeth.
Mary, drifting in the contradiction of passion and detachment, becomes the
commentator of the text. Her function here parallels her narrators role in the
novel, as she is in the critical position to make clarifications.
Yet Mary cannot stay half-engaged forever. When her father agrees to at-
tend a school banquet but stands her up instead, she falls into her own emo-
tional abyss. Paulie, who takes her into the forest to help her deal with her deep
sense of abandonment, teaches her how to expunge the girly girl by repeating
and internalizing Lady Macbeths speech. Perhaps Freuds paradigm does not
apply at all. Paulie acts neither from penis envy nor feminine disavowal, but
from a desire to undo the social indoctrination of female perversions. In this
sense, the raptor is not a symbol of masculine power; rather, it represents a
desire for freedom from the bondage of gender. Screaming Lady Macbeths
words helps Mary and Paulie embrace, not purge, the dangerous emotions that
are necessary to break free. In the deep abyss of the lost and delirious, they
need to scream to breathe. They need the creative force from the impulse of
madness to change their lives.
If Paulie does have the necessary language, why does she fall into the deep?
Her language comes from Shakespeare; she has adapted his expressions with-
out being able to integrate his words into her own narrative resource. Her Shake-
speare is, in this sense, stolen. Even in her final speech, made on the school roof
before she leaps, a fragment of Shakespeares Twelfth Night takes over her own
voice. In this speech, Viola, disguised as a gentleman and sent by her master to
court Olivia on his behalf, tells her that, if she herself loved her, she would
Make me a willow cabin at your gate

And call upon my soul within the house;
[Whispering] I rush into the secret house.
Paulie also recites a longer version of this speech while standing on a desk in
the school library. In both instances she is cross-dressed, as is Viola in Shake-
speares play. Like Olivia, who becomes enamoured with the disguised Viola,
Paulie hopes to rekindle Torys affections. She chooses to perform the speech
in public, positioning herself so that everyone looks up at her, as if she were
onstage. The performative aspect of Paulies act is important. Although she
turns her school into her stage, she is not a theatrical creator. She acts. She is
the shadow of art, metaphorically speaking; she acts out her extreme love and
pain so that her spirit will haunt her audience. What is most important, how-
ever, is hidden. Paulie omits two lines from Violas speech: O, you should not
rest / Between the elements of air and earth / But you should pity me (Twelfth
Night 1.5.260-61). Her omission foreshadows her tragic flight.
Catharsis is a psychological effect. In order to achieve it, the tragic hero
must confront the cruelty of the human condition. In his Poetics, Aristotle
maintains that the tragic hero should be good, appropriate, life-like, and con-
sistent. He must be superior to average people so that his fall can spark pity and
fear. Since pity and fear are emotional responses, audience recognition of them
is better driven by the plot rather than explicitly spelled out by the writer. Un-
like Olivia, who is a comic character, Paulie does not talk about pity; she haunts
her audience with her heroism. However, Thompsons heroine is not Aristo-
telian in every way. According to Aristotle, although the tragic hero can come
from any class, he is preferably someone of high regard in his society. Any hu-
man being can be good, Aristotle argues, but the tragic hero is better not a
woman or a slave because the former is inferior and the latter is completely
ignoble.39 Aristotle also suggests that, if the main character must be a woman,
she should not be manly or clever, as such characteristics are inappropriate
in a woman. Paulie is a woman in love with another woman, and she is both
manly and clever. The fact that she is a successful tragic heroine demonstrates
Thompsons skills as a writer who is able to use the classical genre to challenge
its own heterosexual and patriarchal social norms norms to which Aristotle,

and many of us, subscribe. Pity and fear is a gross limitation on our possible
reactions to tragedy. From my own viewing experience, I certainly feel sorry
for Paulie and fear falling into her emotional abyss; however, I also admire her
courage, passion, and forthrightness, and I identify with her sadness, isolation,
rebellion, and delirium. There is a human connection that lies beyond class,
race, gender, culture, and age. She takes me to a fictional world in which I feel
mixed emotions I never knew I had. Through her, I look beneath my own san-
ity for that horrible alluring freedom. The experience of the film has changed
me. When I turned off the projector, I did not connect to the world as I had
before. The change might be subtle, but I knew that I was another I. I became
more eager to listen, more ready to stand up against prejudice, and more care-
free primed to scream.
Catharsis achieves its therapeutic effect by reconciliation reconciliation
with the audiences stories. Clarification, purgation, and purification are parts
of the process. Nevertheless, more than these parts, there are also adaptation
and coping. In Lost and Delirious, I am invited to identify with three young
women whose social experiences are beyond my reach. Their stories, previ-
ously unknown to me, are now adapted in my brain. They become myths, as
Jay E. Harris defines the term in How the Brain Talks to Itself: Myths are social
narratives, among other things. Semantic and iconic, and true to the brains
way of communicating with itself as it solves vital problems, they record sur-
vival strategies. Their method is a mythopoeisis of history.40 Since a personal
narrative is a construct developed out of ones social and physical environ-
ments, adapting a new story also requires coping. In complex systems terms,
tragedy is a text that challenges the I to the point of catastrophe, but it does
so in the safe environment of mythopoeisis. In the fictional space, life can be
visited and revisited, imagined and reimagined, then, ultimately, merged and
emerged for the transformation of identities. Catharsis is a learning process,
not just about purging negative emotions for clarification or purification, but
also about inducing compassion and sympathy. To cope with Paulies tragedy, I
have to revise and regenerate my own narratives personally, socially, and po-
litically. Tragedy induces fictional trauma to prepare the mind for coping, and
catharsis is the result of our mythic revision.
Beyond reconciliation is transformation. The fictional space, whether it is
onstage, onscreen, or in print, is a safety zone in which we can experiment and
explore possibilities. The greatest narrative pleasure is the poetry of healing; it
is in the language (cinematic and/or symbolic) that revitalizes the audiences
own stories. In Lost and Delirious, Mary is the metafictional narrator who takes
on the poetic role: she demonstrates to the audience how catharsis can be
achieved. Her final voice-over narration describes her poetic discovery in the
form of a letter to her mother, who lives in her memory and imagination:
Dear my mother:
I almost got lost too, didnt I? But the pure love you gave me till you died its
like a flame always there, burning. And just like the raptor, that little flame was all
I needed in order to see in the dark. You saved me, Mama, from that deep dark.
Paulie, she didnt have that. The darkness took over her, so she had to fly away. I
still dream of her every night. And I think I always will. And you know, I can
always remember your face now. Any time I think of you, I look up, and I can see
your face, my mothers face, like a flame across the sky.
What saves Mary from self-destruction is her success in integrating her own
story with that of Paulie. To cope with losing Paulie, she ignites the memory of
her loving mother to illuminate hope and freedom; she reinvents her story by
regenerating her fading memory into a poetic narrative.
As in all great tragedies, the final recognition serves the purpose of de-
lighting and lightening the soul. La Pools cinematic vision supports
Thompsons theatrical world. Marys voice-over does not close with a tradi-
tional sign off such as Your loving daughter, and thus there is no sense that
her letter ends. The cathartic process must continue beyond the temporal and
spatial boundaries of the film. Corresponding to the insinuation that Marys
story is neverending, a sequence of shots gives us a view of the flying hawk, of
Paulies flight. The bird flies straight toward us until a close-up of its face domi-
nates the screen, whereupon it sails past the cameras range of vision and into
its unknown future. Paulie doesnt fall: she flies, and we fly with her. The bird
of prey is Paulies spirit. It is freedom. To Mary, it is also mothers love. Free-
dom is mothers love. The unsexed become sexed again, while I, the audience,
learn to recover milk from gall. Catharsis is reconciliation through the imagi-
nary through image-in-poetry.
Imagery versus Image

The collaboration between Thompson and Pool builds on their strengths to
create an exquisite tragedy. Such a level of success, however, is not easy to achieve.
The filmmakers understanding of the story species is a key factor. Important

political issues such as class, race, and gender, interwoven with all of the hu-
man struggles and emotions, can provoke nonlinear, irreducible conflicts within
a film text. Sometimes the result of systemic interaction is image-in-poetry; at
other times, it is disaster.
Thompson won high acclaim for her play Perfect Pie, which investigates
deeply the issues of memory, reconciliation, and regeneration. In his preface
to her Late 20th Century Plays 1980-2000, Ric Knowles comments that Perfect
Pie is perhaps best read as a revisionist memory play.41 The play is a meta-
drama that illustrates the process of catharsis itself. It tells the story of Patsy
and Marie, two friends who have been estranged since adolescence but who
reunite when they are middle-aged. Their reunion triggers fragmented memo-
ries of their childhood friendship: although Patsy comes from a comfortable
Anglo-Protestant background and Maries family is poor Irish-Catholic, their
friendship steps past the barriers of class and religion. We see their sexual awak-
ening and their fight against exclusion and schoolyard bullying. The play re-
quires only four actors, two for the Patsy and Marie of the present and two for
their youthful past selves. All events are communicated through monologues
and dialogues.
The play, set up as a homecoming narrative, focuses on Maries return to
her town after she has become an actress. The whole play, however, is moti-
vated by the gradual unfolding of painful memories of a traumatic event that
has separated the two women for three decades. They refer to a crash, which is
revealed near the end to be a train accident that severely injured both of them.
For Patsy, the crash is a physical trauma that takes away her ability to cry, and
replaces that ability with regular seizures. Both of these post-traumatic symp-
toms are symbolic her inability to weep is an emotional inefficacy, and the
seizures relate to the scream, the need to find a voice to breathe. For Marie, the
crash is the catalytic event that prompts her decision to leave town: Lying in
that hospital bed for all those weeks, with broken bones, I stared at the ceiling
and I knew how I would end up if I stayed. I would end up the way they all
thought of me because you cant keep fighting the way people think of you,
eventually, you have to give into it, and become it. She changes her name to
Francesca in order to invent a new life, leaving Marie behind, just as the Thou-
sand Island Rat Snake leaves behind his skin.42 Her name change is symbolic
of her resistance to the self-image imposed on her by her familys abuse and
her schoolmates bullying. What leads to the crash that night, after all, is the
disease of bullying and male violence.
This occurs after a school dance, Maries first, which she attends with a boy
she likes. In the middle of the dance, the bullies around her start to cough
pointedly. As Francesca later interprets, the coughing makes her date realize
that she is the school dog, and so he abandons her. When she walks home by
herself, the bullies go after her. Gang-raped and traumatized, Marie is too in-
articulate to tell Patsy what has happened. She runs to the railway tracks, and
Patsy follows her. The train hits both of them as Patsy tries to pull her off the
tracks. Even after thirty years, Patsy does not know what really happened that
night.
I saw the film first. On 13 June 2003, the Association for Bibliotherapy and
Applied Literature invited Judith Thompson to give a speech at a conference in
Kingston, Ontario. Knowing that a psychiatrist, Robert Oxlade, would also give
a paper on Perfect Pie as a useful therapeutic resource for the treatment of post-
traumatic stress disorder, I watched the DVD a day before I went to Kingston.
Initially, I found the film to be quite riveting. In it, Francesca, a famous opera
diva, has been invited by Patsy to come back to town to give a benefit recital.
Although they have not seen each other for nearly thirty years, Francesca agrees
to come. At the recital, which ends the movie, she sings Didos Lament, an
aria from Henry Purcells opera Dido and Aeneas. This piece of music, which,
before the train accident, Marie had planned to sing in a competition, is used
to link the storys past and present. At the end of Purcells opera, the heart-
broken Dido tells her companion Belinda of her sorrow as she lies dying:
When I am laid in earth may my wrongs create

No trouble in thy breast,
Remember me! but ah! forget my fate.
With a cyclic use of the sigh motif in the orchestration, the music provides a
tragic tone to the film, and the lyrics themselves effectively reflect Maries emo-
tional death and long absence. I loved the beauty of the beginning montage.
But not long afterward, I became disenchanted. I found the young Maries ap-
pearance particularly inappropriate: she seemed too clean, too healthy, too
content, and too beautiful for the plot. The director doesnt seem to have a
good grasp of the issues of persecution, class consciousness, and poverty, I
thought. By the end, I felt that I was watching just another high-budget Rhom-
bus TV movie for music promotion.

At the conference, I expressed my criticisms of the film to Thompson (I
can see myself failing a therapists practicum for my loose tongue). Unexpect-
edly, she was happy to hear my comments because she had fought with the
director on those very issues. Since then, we have exchanged e-mail. Thompson
disclosed that the choice of Purcells Dido and Aeneas was her own idea be-
cause she wanted Rhombus to make the film.43 Barbara Sweete (the director)
loved the idea of incorporating the opera, but, according to Thompson, took
the idea too far. Every scene is subordinated to the musical culmination of the
recital. As Thompson explains,
In the scene when the kids on the bleachers are mocking Marie, I wrote it to be in
a corner of the schoolyard, she is trapped, they are throwing pennies and spitballs
and sticks at her, calling her rude terrible names, crowding her, very very scary and
threatening for her, and Patsy wades through the crowd and rescues her. This scene
became a very pallid, tame scene in which we didnt see her fear at all, so there were
no stakes and Patsys rescue didnt mean much. One of the reasons was her
HEADPHONES which are of course a refuge for her, a parachute it is essential
in that scene that she has no parachute.
And the scene before she drives into town in the middle of the night to see her
old house, I wrote that scene taking place right after the scene of the boys calling
her whore dog etc. so that it could have been a dream-memory and she wakes
up and in her nightgown, runs to town, to the place they persecuted her, and to her
old house. Barbara had her all dressed, and had her take the tape recorder, and
with her hostess sleeping in the next room, play that initially glorious, but now
irritating Dido piece, and then get into her car and leave. So the mystery and
poetry of a woman in barefeet and a white nightgown running down an empty
town street is gone! Credibility is lost because of her rudeness.
All in all, Thompson summarizes, Sweete didnt catch the spirit of the play, of
the story. She cut all references to the Protestant/Catholic divide, the class is-
sues, etc.44
Barbara Sweete makes films of operas and concerts. Her work includes the
third episode of Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach, which clearly demonstrates her
talent for filming performing arts. Perfect Pie was her first attempt at directing
a fictional film. She has an excellent spatial imagination. In Perfect Pie, her use
of mirrors is clever and multi-layered. Even with all the writer-director conflict,
Thompson still appreciates the episode in which Patsy experiences a seizure,
and believes that the train scene has preserved the theatricality of the play.
The film also has many fans, including psychiatrists such as Robert Oxlade,
who judges from a clinical point of view that Perfect Pie is far superior to The
Hours in offering therapeutic insight. Yet the film has not fulfilled the artistic
potential of the script. As producer Niv Fichman indicated to Thompson, Sweete
did not bring enough edge to her interpretation to make the film as adventur-
ous and radical as the script.
With all her technical competence and visual imagination, Sweetes tem-
perature on the set kept her from functioning as an auteur. In the same e-mail
message, Thompson expressed that she herself was treated like a rebellious
housemaid and that her words were used like duct tape. Danny Irons, an-
other producer of the film, reported that Sweete would ask, What should they
talk about here? and would move the dialogue around arbitrarily as filler. Al-
though Thompson tried to rescue the script before shooting started, the di-
vide between director and writer was too wide for resolution: the director
downplayed the social-political context and softened the psychological dark-
ness of the script. Sweete sacrificed the sublime power of Thompsons language
in her pursuit of soothing beauty.
I feel compelled to tell their story of conflict because it reveals that
filmmaking depends heavily on literary comprehension. Teaching in a film pro-
duction program, I have emphasized film aesthetics over plot and character. I
draw students attention to film language, teaching them about colour tem-
perature, screen forces, motion and index vectors, focal length, depth of field,
principles of montage, sound-picture interface, and so on. But I am beginning
to doubt my separation of media aesthetics from literary and theatrical writ-
ing. All of the audio-visual devices that we proudly call cinematic language
cannot express complex human emotions without the filmmakers compre-
hension of symbolic language, of metaphor and its connection to psychologi-
cal and social experiences. Literary intelligence is crucial to the creation of visual
nuance. Whether writer-director or just director, the filmmaker needs to know
how to bridge the gap from sensation to feeling: creative insights require look-
ing inside oneself for the touch of Helen Keller and the scream of Betty Parris.
One of the most radical elements in the play, the acknowledgment of which
would have significantly affected the style of the film, occurs at the beginning
and the end, in Patsys first and last lines: I will not forget you, you are carved
in the palm of my hand. At the end of the film, Francesca waves goodbye to

Patsy as she drives back to her life in the city. In the play, this does not occur.
Instead, Francesca disappears into the dark. She embraces Patsy from behind
and then slowly extricates herself and backs out of the set, looking at Patsy
until she disappears. As she is disappearing, Patsy realizes, Its going to be like
you were never here. Like you were a dream. Ill be sitting here six months from
now and making my pastry and the snow will be falling and this afternoon will
all seem ... unreal. Before Francesca completely disappears, the idea is re-
inforced: I will feel the pastry dough in my hands and I will knead it and
knead it until my hands they are aching and I think Im like making you. I like
... form you; right in front of my eyes, right here at my kitchen table into flesh.
Lookin at me, talking soft.45 The idea is ambiguous. The play deliberately makes
the audience speculate that Francesca may be Patsys construct. This possibility
explains why Thompson emphasizes the dream-memory aspect of the mys-
tery and poetry of a woman in barefeet and a white nightgown running down
an empty town street.
Indeed, images of the women walking down to the railway tracks while
wearing white nightdresses do exist in the film (though the film does not em-
phasize the dreamy quality of the idea). In the play, ambiguity is key because
the play is a theatrical illustration of Francescas language acquisition, her at-
tempt to find the words to tell Patsy about the rape. Revisiting the town brings
back fragmented memories and emotional pain for Francesca. The script is
true to peoples experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder, that they re-
tain fragments of their memories and sensations but cannot make the broken
story coherent for communication. Often, like Francesca in the play, they black
out as they get close to articulating their trauma. The search for a voice is an act
of self-healing. In trying to tell Patsy what happened, Francesca must embrace
her abandoned past, reconcile herself with it, and bring it to light. So, when she
succeeds in telling the story to Patsy, it is both a devastation and a triumph. In
the film, the storytelling takes place by the tracks, which leads directly to a
flashback of the crash. Sweetes experience with filming musical performances
serves this scene imaginatively. The use of 360-degree camera dolly shots around
the adolescent Patsy and Marie, with the adult Patsy and Francesca standing
on each side of the tracks, adds unsettling motion, augmenting the intense
emotions. After the crash, only the two adults remain in the scene, in quietness
and in their white nightclothes: We flew ... through the air. They embrace
each other. To my ears, the short phrase we flew contains all the joy and be-
nevolence of friendship, reconciliation, and healing.
At the end of this climactic moment, the haunting power of the theatrical
version emanates. A few mysterious lines come from the embracing women:
Patsy: If it wasnt for you, I would be dead, Marie.

Francesca: Me too.
Patsy: But you always had ... saved my life.
Francesca: I had?
Patsy: Youll never know.
Francesca: You saved me more.
They walk hand in hand into the darkness while the camera tilts up. When the
camera tilts back down, the poetic ambiguity is gone and the scene has shifted
to Francescas benefit recital of Didos Lament. She, who had been suffering
from asthma and unable to sing during rehearsals, has now regained the power
of her voice. Patsy also sings in the chorus. Remember me, Dido sings, but,
ah! forget my fate. Keep here your watch and never part, the chorus prays to
the Cupids, asking them to guard Didos tomb. The singing carries the film to
its finale, in which Francesca waves goodbye, driving through the past and the
present of the town into the future. This ending is reminiscent of the phoney
sentimentalism of Hollywood melodrama.
The film never explains why Patsy tells Marie, You saved my life. Instead,
its scenes always show Patsy saving Marie. In the defining moment before the
crash, the play tells a different story. As the memory returns, the plays stage
instructions indicate that Patsy gets off the tracks and tries to pull Marie off.
But then, the adult Patsy narrates, I guess maybe it was my temperature of 104,
and my thinking was muddled but suddenly I looked at the moon and I thought,
Yeah. Me and Marie, me and Marie. At this point, the young Patsy gets back
on the tracks behind Marie to embrace her. The adult Patsy recalls her thoughts
and explains, I felt this deep yearning, Marie, this yearning for - for - for noth-
ing I could ever name. The staging changes again: MARIEs thinking clears, she
gets off tracks and tries to pull PATSY off.46 The crash occurs. In the play, mem-
ory is edited and re-edited, covered and recovered, as Patsy revises her post-
traumatic memories along the way.
Gregor Campbell identifies Patsy as a poet of touch and human contact,
and Marie as an artist whose task is less self-realization than communication.
As an artist, Marie struggles to find a language that would choke in the throats
of the oppressors, while those of us who wander the earth at a distance from

rape and violence might know how to listen and feel.47 How can Patsy be a
poet if all she has is touch? William Wordsworth states that a poet must half-
perceive and half-create. Perhaps Francesca is projected, like a ghost, a haunt-
ing memory of a lost friend. She is carved in the palm of Patsys hand. In Patsys
artistic space, the poet tries unceasingly to find Maries voice because it is too
important to forget: You saved my life ... but you always had ... saved my life,
Marie. Ever since we were little girls ... Ever since you looked at me. With those
eyes, like the bottom of Mud Lake. And spoke, with your mouth, all those
thoughts. You will never ... know. Or perhaps the whole play is catharsis in
action, and healing in reconciliation: Marie, Patsy adds, I am so sorry. You
feeling guilty all these years. Did I say I was sorry? No no no, Francesca re-
plies, we were there together and we both wanted to fly away, thats all we
wanted, to fly away, to .48 Perhaps it is Patsys haunting guilt that is stalking
her. Perhaps she relies on the memory of friendship to flash light into the dark-
ness of her seizures as she struggles to breathe. Perhaps Marie is dead and Patsy
creates Francesca as an alternative ending. This revisable memory is the radical
metafictional edge of the play that Sweete did not manage to augment for an
adventurous film.
The stories and meanings that we attribute to ourselves and others are
constantly in flux and in revision for adaptation. In dealing with crisis, story
revision is particularly vital because narrative reconstruction is a human sur-
vival strategy. For this reason, the shadows of life projected by the cinema have
generative functions: the cave of art provides the space where we rewrite the
past and reimagine the future. A constructive feminist film theory needs to
defend womens narrative space, for film art, by Wintersons theory, is not about
representing reality. Nor is it about perpetuating social myths or sustaining
patriarchal domination. Film art is about reconfiguration and transfiguration
along the borders of our minds. This complex systems understanding of the
story species explains why Sweetes film freefalls in the flight of Patsys imagi-
nation while La Pools elevates her audience during Paulies tragic fall. Simply
recognizing reality as a construct is not enough: like the best of theatre, cinema
can engage active story revision.
Diasporic Imagination and Transcultural Identity
Clara Laws The Goddess of 1967
6
The prison is the imagined future, not the (imagined) history.
Harlene Anderson, Conversation, Language, and Possibilities1
The howling for multitudes in womens cinema is not just a gender issue, for
the female sex includes a complex assemblage of people from a great diversity
of nations, cultures, social backgrounds, economic classes, political ideologies,
sexual orientations, and so on. Globalization further complicates the issue be-
cause world trade accelerates the interaction and dissolution of these different
categories. Postcolonial critics are sensitive about cultural appropriation be-
cause of concerns regarding identity erasure. Identity or ones story can be
stolen.
I grew up fascinated with the history of the Silk Road, so I am accustomed
to thinking about one culture adopting stories from another. Cultural appro-
priation is an unavoidable process. Identities are always in flux, and bounda-
ries are artificial. In the context of globalization, diaspora is perhaps a more
useful concept. Diaspora from to scatter (diasperein) or to sow (speirein)
specifically refers to the dispersion and settlement of the Jews after the
Babylonian exile. The word is used to describe any group of people that lives
124
beyond the borders of its nation. Sometimes, diaspora implies a dislocation of
place, a loss of culture, or a crisis of identity. But diaspora is not limited to
immigration: it is a common experience of people in a global economy that is
increasingly international and interdependent. It captures peoples sentiment
in a world that is rapidly dissolving boundaries. Behind the celebration of dif-
ferences in multiculturalism lies a diasporic condition the fading of cultural
identity on an international scale. Even if people do not migrate physically,
they experience diaspora when multinational corporations buy out local busi-
nesses, mega-malls transform commercial downtowns into ghost towns, inter-
national e-trade sweeps over local economy, and emoticons replace words. Any
cultural distinctiveness can be assimilated and simulated preserved and per-
verted in the global village.
The concept of diaspora has led to two major tactics in textual analysis: the
first, as seen in the works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, with respect to the
dominant or host culture, employs deconstruction to destabilize the rhetoric
of postcolonial propaganda;2 the second, on a more positive note, searches for
subaltern cultural materials as alternative visions. In Women Filmmakers of
the African and Asian Diaspora, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster remarks that
in all of its many manifestations, the women filmmakers of the diaspora have
contributed a unique vision of the world and its inhabitants for viewers who are,
perhaps, more accustomed to participating in the vision offered by the dominant
cultural machine of the Hollywood cinema. Working outside the traditional image-
making system, these women have created powerful and moving images that tell
the stories of their shared experiences together, and bind the respective visions of
their works to the consciousness of their projective audience. These films all begin
the very important work of decolonizing the gaze, and articulating fresh and flex-
ible diasporic modes of subjectivity in the cinema.3
In my view, both approaches are reactions against a rapidly changing world

that nonetheless retains a hidden nostalgia for some century-old discourses.
Foster, for instance, regards diasporic film texts as violently opposing view-
points in conflict with a mainstream cinema that is white, Eurocentric, and
male dominated.4 Her argument relies on a division between cinema and coun-
ter-cinema, which is the modernist sentiment modernist in the sense that
mass culture is viewed as a univocal dominant force. This force is identified as
Clara Laws The Goddess of 1967 125

white, Eurocentric, and male dominated. In the present postcolonial situa-
tion, however, Hollywood is neither Eurocentric nor white male dominated (at
least not on the surface). By and large, it is hostile to Europes high art and
intellectual traditions, and its cultural and ethnic composition is not always
white male. Although contemporary Hollywood cinema is still predominantly
Jewish and Italian, it is exceptionally open to other cultural materials African,
Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Maori, and so on. Female directors and
producers have also emerged as a powerful force in Hollywood. Hollywood,
as Philip Green contests in Ideology, Gender, and Visual Culture, denotes a
style even more than it designates a location. He states, This style, manifestly
aesthetic but underneath resolutely ideological, is now instantly recognizable
anywhere in the world, and can be produced by film industries thousands of
miles from the United States.5 If this global superstructure called Hollywood
can no longer be defined by geography, it should also not be confined by gender
or racial limits. Hollywood is a factory of hybridity actively melting any profit-
able cultural resource into its global monopoly. Its success has much to do with
a structure that allows the studio system to absorb the best talents of the world
to work on its terms. Diaspora can be about the misplaced or appropriated
cultures within Hollywoods circumference. In the context of globalization,
Hollywoods circumference is large, encompassing everyone in the world who
can afford a television or a home theatre. In other words, Hollywood is the
worlds multilane cultural highway.
In contrast, independent films and national cinemas are more apt to draw
boundaries of language and culture in order to nurture distinctiveness. Counter-
cinema can be seen as an entity of special interest or as a resistance to the
irreversible amalgamation of the global market. If we study diasporic film
because we want to destabilize the fiction of the postcolonial world, we should
acknowledge that mass culture is not so uniform. The diasporic discourse is
not about rejecting the white male; it is about resisting assimilation. It is not
about the assertion of indigenous cultures; it is about every global citizens
multicultural experience and dislocation of cultural identity. Consequently,
the definition of diasporic texts may be more evocative if it does not limit itself
to films distinctively isolated by specific ethnography or gender boundaries; as
well, it does not have to be an oppositional gaze of the mainstream culture.
Diaspora is about a relentless struggle for identity formation in a stream of
global consciousness.
126 Diasporic Imagination and Transcultural Identity

Transcultural Exile and The Goddess of 1967
Many books about women filmmakers devote a page or two, usually near the
end, to Hong Kongs feminist cinema. Such marginalization is understandable.
Why should an American or British scholar give a Hong Kong director promi-
nence when most of her films are not available in the West? I yearn to teach
Ann Huis Boat People (1982), yet her distributor has not even bothered to put
English subtitles on her VCDs or DVDs.6 Fitting a discussion of Hong Kong
films into ongoing academic discourse is also a problem. If we want to study an
auteur, we automatically think of the Europeans. If we wish to talk about im-
migration and culture, we may choose films that are ethnically distinctive, such
as the works of Mira Nair or Deepa Mehta. If we want to examine postcolonial
issues, the Aboriginal documentaries of Alanis Obomsawin are obviously ap-
propriate. If we want to talk about Third World politics, we have Argentinian
Mara Luisa Bemberg and Kenyan Beatrice Wanjiku Mukora. Hong Kong film
is too urban and modern, and much of its cinematic style has also been appro-
priated by Hollywood. So we have a hard time fitting it into our contemporary
cultural discourse, which tends to identify culture in a more narrow and tra-
ditional sense. In terms of global diaspora, however, Hong Kongs cinema pro-
vides a unique perspective for transcultural discourse and diaspora in the context
of globalization and neo-colonialism.
Hong Kong films are a bit of everything, yet do not quite fit into anything.
The citys people, in general, trust the illusion of democracy implanted by
Britains colonial government more than Chinas capitalistic communism, so
they are caught in a double political contradiction. Whether they stay in Hong
Kong or emigrate to other countries, they always feel dislocated. In fact, most
people in Hong Kong come from somewhere else in China, and usually retain
the knowledge of their geographical origins, just as many Canadians know
their familys country of origin. It remains a general practice in official docu-
mentation, as well as in everyday conversation, to ask people to identify them-
selves by their hometown. If Canadians ask me where I come from originally,
I will say Hong Kong, just to omit details they do not need to know. But if a
Chinese person asks me what my hometown is, I will say Po-an (south of
Canton). In that sense, even though I was born in Hong Kong, I know very
well that my family does not originate there. This diasporic identity of non-
identity is what makes filmmakers such as Ann Hui and Clara Law multi-
fariously complex.

Many Hong Kong art films are Eurocentric in their strong ties to the
New Wave movement. As a matter of fact, Hong Kongs New Wave movement
started in the fifties, as it did in France, but the focus was on the literary side.
Hong Kongs local culture was formed in the seventies: its television studios
made their first generation of soap operas, its music industry started to sell
Cantonese pop songs, and its writers developed Hong Kongs own style all of
which made New Wave (translated into Chinese as New Tide) a household
term. In film, an important development occurred when the British govern-
ment publicly funded Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), which employed
a group of directors educated in England to produce such television series as
Under the Lion Rock. The series title referred to the Lion Rock, the highest hill
on the citys Kowloon peninsula; from below, it resembles a noble lion guard-
ing the land. The show was about its time, Hong Kongs rapidly rising economy,
its urban attitude, and its New Wave. The sensibilities of the seventies were full
of contradictions: between westernization and tradition, between consumer-
ism and socialism, between multicultural exchange and cultural dislocation,
between populism and elitism. Contradictions can take the shape of intellec-
tual stubbornness, reluctant compromise, and sometimes a spiritual vacuum. I
was a young child during the seventies, but some of the episodes from Under
the Lion Rock have left me a sea of fragmented impressions. Ann Hui and Clara
Law were both nurtured in RTHK during this time. Many years later, while
studying cinema in Canada, I was introduced to the films of Jean-Luc Godard
by a professor who promised that they would be something fresh and new. Yet,
on viewing them, I felt nostalgia for the New Wave of my childhood.
Clara Laws films have been referred to as diasporic multicultural cin-
ema,7 a particularly suitable description of her first Australian film, Floating
Life. Law herself has had a floating life. Born in Macao, she studied English
literature in Hong Kong, attended National Film and Television School in Eng-
land, returned to work in Hong Kong, and then emigrated to Australia. Her
diasporic character was not formed after her relocation to Australia, for she
contemplated the themes of immigration and cultural dislocation even in her
early films. Her diasporic multicultural cinema is a product of Hong Kongs
unique social-political situation. Anyone who watches Hong Kong movies,
particularly those made between 1982 and 1997, the years before the British
returned the city to China, will find that Clara Laws films are thematically
connected to the citys postcolonial transition. As an international city, Hong
Kong is full of immigrants. Its executives are often British or American; Indians

and Filipinos are its cheap labourers. Most local people are, in fact, not na-
tive: they are immigrants/refugees from China who moved to the city during
the fall of the empire, the Japanese invasion, the communist revolution, or the
Cultural Revolution. In anticipation of the citys 1997 handover to China, a
large wave of Chinese immigrants (legal and illegal) entered Hong Kong seek-
ing a more prosperous life; meanwhile, another wave emigrated from Hong
Kong to other parts of the world in fear of the communist takeover. For the
Chinese who moved into Hong Kong, life there came as a cultural shock be-
cause of the citys century of British rule and thirty years of rapid growth in
local popular culture. Those who moved out (or who contemplated doing so)
were more in tune with modern lifestyles, but their dislocation presented im-
mense challenges nonetheless. Diaspora floating life was a common sensi-
bility reflecting the preoccupation, as well as the anxiety, of the citys entire
population.
As a filmmaker, Law seems most at home in Australia. As she herself re-
veals, she moved to Australia for its artistic space; Hong Kong was too stressful
for her, and its commercial film industry reserved too little space for artistic
exploration. Unfortunately, she continues, even in Australia it is getting harder
to make art films. The increasing difficulty of independent production is, as
she experiences, a trend in modern cinema. Nevertheless, Law and her writer/
husband, Eddie Fong, struggle to work on things that we feel are important.8
With this sentiment, she is always diasporic, not as a Chinese woman in a for-
eign land, but as an artist in a business-based industry.
The Goddess of 1967, released in 2000, winning Best Actress (Venice Film
Festival) and Best Director (Chicago Critics Award), manifests Laws diasporic
identity on a level far more complicated than that of her ethnographic back-
ground. Unlike Floating Life, the film has no Chinese characters; the narrative
content is detached from Laws ethnic background. In The Goddess of 1967, the
diasporic sensibility is transferred into otherness and morphed into metaphor.
The theme of cultural dislocation comes forth through a meeting between a
young Australian blind girl (BG) and a Japanese man (JM) who has come from
Tokyo to Australia to buy the car of his dreams from Greg Hughes. Upon arriv-
ing in Australia, JM discovers that Greg has killed himself. BG, Gregs cousin,
tells him that she knows the real owner and suggests that they drive to his home
so that JM can purchase the car from him. In actuality, the owner is her grand-
father, who sexually abused her when she was a little girl. In travelling home,
she hopes to find closure to her story of incest and neglect. The two take the

car, and the film follows their five-day trip through the Australian outback to
the grandfathers opal mine.
The vehicle for this unusual journey is a Citron DS, the Goddess (desse)
of the films title, a classic French car that promises the future. Throughout the
film, Law interrupts the flow of the story by inserting footage of real advertise-
ments for the DS. The interruptions are always in contrast to corresponding
episodes in the storyline. Before JM gets into the car for the first time, a quota-
tion from Roland Barthes appears on the screen: It is obvious that the new
Citron has fallen from the sky. The line comes from Barthes Mythologies, a
collection of short essays that exemplifies his semiotic analysis of cultural sym-
bols. In his 1957 essay The New Citron, he argues that the Goddess is a
spiritualized petit-bourgeois advancement a transformation of life into
matter (matter is much more magical than life).9 Juxtaposed with the ad for
the Goddess is the scene in which JM test-drives the car, commenting, This is
not driving; this is flying. Thirty minutes into the film, a mini-documentary
explains the suspension technology that makes the Goddess fly. Attached to
the interlude is a shot that reveals the contemporary technology that JM packs
into the car: MP3 player, satellite guiding system, and so on. The Goddess is
the car for the future, the interlude declares. Obsessed with cutting-edge tech-
nology, JM buys it: the car is his future. For him, it is also a spiritual replace-
ment and a sexual fulfillment. In the films introductory episode, as JM types
an e-mail to Greg, Law playfully displays his first, incomplete message, I want
to buy god, which he quickly corrects to I want to buy a Goddess. Between
shots of their exchanged e-mail messages are expositions of JMs spiritual void.
In the initial images, Tokyo is introduced with a monorail train rolling up to an
aboveground station in the city. One of the shots creates the illusion that the
train can fly. Perhaps the particular nature of Tokyos transit system partially
explains why Law chose a Japanese man over a Chinese one. Transportation
a metaphor for the rite of passage is the central motif of the film, and Tokyos
monorail train is an icon of mega-city transportation. JM sits inside the train,
motionless and emotionless. Outside, everything is a cold blue (an effect
achieved by manipulating the discrepancy of colour temperature between in-
door film stock and outdoor sunlight). The train may seem able to fly, but it
does not. Its passengers have no control over its destination, for the routes are
predetermined by the rail. The freedom of modernization is an illusion; the
train cannot fly away from the cold blue light.

JMs void is neither material nor relational. Financially able to support his
obsessions with exotic reptiles, technology, and underwater diving, he is not
poor. He has a stereotypically submissive Japanese girlfriend, who bows to him
and expresses her gratitude for letting her visit his apartment. Later, the film
reveals in a flashback that he saw the dead body of his friend at the scene of a
traffic accident. But the loss of his friend does not explain the emptiness of his
life. The two friends share their hollowness together; their friendship is intro-
duced to the audience with their attempt to break their previous record for
gorging on noodles. However, had the accident not occurred, JM would none-
theless have lost this friend. Their noodle-eating competition is a nostalgic
revisitation of a silly ritual, during which JMs friend tells him that he is about
to get married. His accident pushes JM to the edge of the abyss a discon-
nected, floating life at the verge of collapse.
Nor is JM empty of culture. In the opening scene, for every activity he per-
forms in his apartment, he listens to a different type of music, varying from
chamber music, symphony, electric guitar, flamenco, and big band, to rap. He is
a postmodern, multicultural man. But his cultures are stolen through digital
and mechanical reproduction. Although he listens to many types of music, Japa-
nese music is not included. He owns all kinds of cultural products, but owner-
ship is not belonging. His toys are novelties for covering up his emptiness.
Owning the Goddess will allow him to achieve another level of consumer satis-
faction another level of spiritualized petit-bourgeois advancement. This ad-
vancement gives him a more hyper-realistic illusion of flying than does the train.
Besides, for JM, the Goddess is not just one more technological product. As he
tells BG, he fell in love with the car upon seeing it in a French film of the sixties.
The Goddess comes out of the past. It has a legacy, representing the achieve-
ments of modern civilization: From 1959 to 1973, as one of the advertising
interludes explains, when men began to explore the universe and successfully
landed on the moon, the Goddess won all the major rallies on earth. When
Greg accepts JMs offer to buy the Goddess, JM immediately travels abroad to
pick up the car. Although he is a product of Japan, he has nothing in Japan to
hold him back from his flight. He is an urban consumer in a global diaspora.
Unlike JM, who lives in urban isolation, BG has been isolated from the
city. Indeed, she has been isolated from civilization altogether. With only her
mother and grandfather for company, she grows up at their remote mining site
far from the city. Her grandfather believes that he is free to do whatever he likes

out there, including having sex with his daughter, Marie, and BG herself. In
fact, he is both BGs father and grandfather. Her story, in a way, retells the Oedi-
pus myth, or, more precisely, revises that of Antigone, daughter of the incestu-
ous union between Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. Although BGs character
does not exactly parallel those of the Oedipus family, it echoes many of them.
Like Antigone, she is a social outcast. Her father/grandfather needs to remove
the family from civilization in order to possess the freedom to do what he wants.
Unlike Oedipus, who tears out his eyes in horror when he discovers Jocastas
true identity, he feels no remorse. He sees his behaviour as being heroically
counter-cultural. He tells Marie, BGs mother, Who says I cannot make love to
my daughter? Who says I cannot make love to my granddaughter? We are free
to do anything here. Dont listen to that filthy, ugly, hypocritical world ever
again! To a limited extent, he is correct. People often accept the moral taboo
against incest without thinking about the reasons behind it. Jocasta and Oedi-
pus are both adults; if they do not care what the hypocritical world thinks,
their relationship does not harm anyone. All their children are healthy
Antigone, in particular, is loving and loyal. Had no one discovered the truth of
Oedipus and Jocastas relationship, Oedipus would have been forever hailed as
a hero of Thebes. But Laws version is more pragmatic; she focuses on the physi-
cal issue of sexual abuse, rather than the moral issue of incest. When BG, who
is about seven years old, sits in the Goddess with her mother to escape a dust
storm, she says, He [the grandfather] touched me. He took my nightie off. I
didnt like it. In the wild, open space of Australia, where common moral codes
do not apply, the child makes no judgement regarding right or wrong. She
simply knows that she does not like it. On the surface, BGs father/grandfather
challenges the hypocrisy of morality, but he is no liberator. His desire is to push
his power to a narcissistic extreme. His sexual abuse of his children seems to
arise from the self-pity and subsequent alcoholism that stems from the loss of
his wife. His hippie liberalism deceptively covers a rotting interior of alcohol-
ism and abuse. The problem is not just incest; it is sexual abuse. The outcome is
not just BGs genetic deficiency; it is her suffering, the betrayal of her trust, and
the violence used against her. Laws revision is sensitive to the victimization of
women and the consequences of incest. BGs father does not put out his own
eyes in remorse; BG is born blind. She takes on the Oedipal punishment and
lives in exile.
In his play Antigone, Sophocles presents the title character as a figure of
political resistance. When her brother dies in battle and his enemy, Creon, the

regent of Thebes, refuses to allow him to be buried, Antigone defies his orders.
She tells Creon that her civil disobedience follows the unwritten laws of the
gods. For challenging his authority, the tyrannous Creon has her imprisoned
in a cave to die. Antigone is loyal to her family: Sophocles never questions the
validity of family values; in his opinion, the patriarchal family is part of the
unwritten laws of the gods. Laws story deviates from the core of Sophocles
family myth in order to portray BG as a survivor of family violence. Antigones
expression of her feelings after her unjust trial is suitable for BG:
No one to weep for me, my friends,

no wedding-song they take me away
in all my pain ... the road lies open, waiting.
Never again, the law forbids me to see
the sacred eye of day. I am agony!
(Antigone, lines 963-67)
Unlike that of Antigone, however, BGs agony comes from her family. She is
not loyal to her father she wants revenge.
Family conflict cannot be reduced so easily to moral polarity. The emo-
tions attached to the conflict always embrace the contradiction of simultane-
ous love and hate. Indeed, morality often adds to the abuse, intensifying the
suffering of the victim. Many children who are sexually abused by their adult
relatives confront this problem: they had no idea that they were engaged in a
social taboo, but once they discover this, the trauma resulting from the societal
gaze can be more damaging than the sexual interference. BGs mother, Marie,
exhibits an unbearable inner conflict because of the moral judgement that she
inflicts on herself. The moment before she dies in a fire that she herself has set,
she tells BG, I love you, I love him, too, were all sinners. In accord with many
family therapy case studies of sexual abuse, Marie blames her own sexuality for
the violation. A devout Catholic, she twists a Catholic indoctrination that la-
bels the female body as a temptation to inflict guilt upon herself. It is her way of
making sense of it all reducing her confusion and pain into a more manage-
able package. She has no power to change her fathers behaviour, but she does
have control over her own soul. If she regards her female sexuality as original
sin, she can ask for Gods forgiveness without her fathers involvement. When
she realizes that BG is her fathers next target, she takes her to an abandoned
chapel and tries to teach her this coping strategy: Youre growing up now, OK?

Soon youre going to have a body like mine. Hey, youre not a child anymore.
You are full of temptations. Full of sins. Youve germs in your body and weeds
in your head. God created us but we always betray him. We sin. Of course, the
religious refuge cannot really resolve all the conflicting feelings. It only covers
the anger and the hatred by adding an irreconcilable layer of guilt. When BG
refuses to play along with her mothers confessional prayer, Marie says to her,
You hurt me a lot, you know. You break my heart. Why do you do that? BG
breaks her mothers heart not because she disobeys, but because her rejection
exposes the inadequacies of Maries blind faith.
The conflict between BG and Marie is a vehicle through which we can see
their pain and dysfunction. Sexual abuse is not the victims fault. Cognitively,
this well-understood fact may sound at once like a clich of sex education;
practically, however, especially in a cultural context that remains full of images
of female sexuality as a dark force and a fatal attraction, self-blame is a natural
psychological reality for women who suffer sexual violation. As well, blaming
the mother for mismanaging the family is also common. In The Goddess of
1967, BGs sensible rebellion is a dramatized version of an awakening, a recog-
nition that the problem is an exercise of masculine power. Later, when her
mother washes her, BG complains again: He hurt me. He ripped me open. He
crashed me. Showing more anger and agony this time, she runs away from her
mother. She does not blame her mother for what has happened to her, but she
is frustrated with Marie for failing to listen and act. Maries attempt to wash the
germs off BGs body also signifies the formers ongoing blaming of her sexual-
ity. BGs refusal to blame herself is denoted in her words the simple sentence
structure is repeated three times, and the subject is always he.
Law has long been delving into the victimizing effect of demonized fe-
male sexuality in a patriarchal social context. In one of her most commer-
cially successful Hong Kong productions, The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus
(1989), she tells the story of Golden Lotus, an ancient Chinese woman who
reincarnates into the modern world and suffers the same fate as in her past
life. Golden Lotus is a famous fictional character from two classic Chinese
novels, All Men Are Brothers (a title translated by Pearl S. Buck) and The Golden
Lotus. In All Men Are Brothers, Golden Lotus is a minor character. A beautiful
servant in a rich household, she is raped by her master. She is then married off
by the lady of the house to a poor, ugly man. Unsatisfied with her life, she has
an affair with another man and together they poison her husband. When her
brother-in-law finds out, he kills her. The brother-in-law is portrayed as a

heroic figure, famous for battling a tiger with his bare hands. All Men Are Broth-
ers focuses on his life as a fugitive after he slaughters his brothers murderers.
By contrast, The Golden Lotus is an erotic novel built on Golden Lotus love
affairs.
Laws Reincarnation of Golden Lotus refers to Chinese mythology, which
suggests that before people reincarnate, their spirits must walk over a bridge
between the underworld and the living world to meet a woman who will give
them a potion of forgetfulness. In Laws film, the spirit of Golden Lotus refuses
to drink the potion, so she is reborn with fragmented memories of her past.
The pattern of her previous life reincarnates as well.
Golden Lotus wants to retain the memory of her past life in order to avenge
her death. But the repetition of her destiny has nothing to do with her retained
memory. She spends her childhood in communist China during the Cultural
Revolution. Raped by her supervisor in her ballet school, she is expelled for
seducing the rapist (ironically, the ballet she is rehearsing is a model commu-
nist drama about a woman who joins the army to fight against the old Chinese
patriarchy). Bearing the mark of a counter-revolutionary, she works in a fac-
tory where she expresses her affection for a young man (a reincarnation of the
tiger hunter). For her innocent desire, she is criticized once again and con-
demned as counter-revolutionary because she is perceived as a slut. Although
the revolution overthrew the old China that shaped her fate in her previous
life, the new China has preserved its old societys patriarchal values. Deep in-
side the proletarian revolution that vows to liberate women, female sexuality
remains demonized. Later, she marries a rich, ugly man so that she can move to
Hong Kong with him. In the capitalist city that is open to sex as a commodity,
her tragedy continues. The film clearly dramatizes the concept that womens
personal destinies are connected to political context but the mere change of
political outlook (economic modes or governing bodies) cannot change the
context enough to prevent Golden Lotus tragedy.
In The Goddess of 1967, Laws investigation continues. Unlike Golden Lo-
tus, who drifts with her fate predetermined by her social environment and per-
sonal passion, BG is more powerful because she can identify her problem with
a he. She refuses to confess as a sinner, consoling her victimization by taking
responsibility for her trauma. Like Tiresias the prophet, who foresees the fates
of empires, she sees the tragic flaw of her family. Her blindness averts the con-
fusion caused by appearances. She has her own psychic radar, which helps
her see clearly. Nevertheless, she does not see into herself. Like Golden Lotus,

she wants revenge. Her journey with JM is a backward journey a return to
unceasing violence. Her vengeance locks her future to the past.
JMs search for a future is no more liberating it is an erasure of the past.
Without a functional story of his past, he has no direction for the future. To
pay for his dream car, he embezzles money through the Internet and runs off
to Australia. He does not consider the long-term consequences of his act, be-
cause he sees no further than the immediate future. Throughout their journey,
he keeps trying to convince BG to abandon the trip so that they can go to the
beach. He is a typical urban hero (or, more precisely, non-hero) who disregards
history and lives only for the dream of his next pleasure of purchase. His
unfulfilling urban life cannot be compared with BGs horrific past (indeed,
voicing his dissatisfaction would seem like complaining of a toothache to a
cancer survivor). Yet through their chiasmic meeting one loops to revenge
the past and the other seeks to trap the future they set each other free from
imprisonment.
The meeting of JM and BG seems like a clich of first contact between two
alien species. BG is in every way a surreal character. Even an Australian audi-
ence should identify more with JM than BG the Australian girl. She lives with
violence and death as if they were no big deal. When JM arrives at the house,
she points out the splattered brains and blood remaining from Gregs murder-
suicide as if showing him the tedious highlights of the house. In one of the
comic episodes, she fires a gun at a driver who has pulled up beside the God-
dess and is trying to shoulder it off the road, then tells JM, calmly, I hate vio-
lence. Her blindness gives her a unique perspective. When asked of her
experience with movies, she defines the cinema as people laughing and kiss-
ing and fucking each other in the dark. Initially, JM distrusts her. Like that of
many raised in our media culture, his most terrifying fear is the psychopath, a
fear he applies to her during their first night in a motel. Awakened by strange
rummaging noises, he gets out of bed, points a knife at her, and spells out his
thoughts: Youre going to kill me, dump my body somewhere, I knew it. It
turns out that BG, hungry in the middle of the night, was merely consuming
the junk food in his luggage. In a flashback to Maries suicide, we see the child
BG escaping the fire and running alone in the vast desert. Intercut into this
scene is an image in which she gorges herself on food; the juxtaposition of
these shots implies that her strange behaviour may be a disorder arising from
the trauma of witnessing her mothers death and the unattended hunger after-

ward. Realizing that BG is not a serial killer, JM relaxes. BG takes her turn to
check him out:
BG: Tell me something about yourself.

JM: Im a man, a Japanese man.
BG: Cant imagine what a Japanese mand look like.
JM: I look like a human being.
BG: Can I touch you?
JM lets her touch his face so that she can get an impression of his appearance,
but when she employs her other senses, licking and sniffing him, he recoils. BG
concludes, Youre an unhappy human being. BG touches his soul his lone-
liness and his estrangement from his home. JM does not identify with his race,
his culture, or his city. Laws diasporic experience and urban unbelonging speak
through BGs character.
BG: Whats Tokyo like? Can you describe it to me?

JM: Its ... its just a mega-city.
BG: Do you enjoy it?
JM: Its ... its like living in Mars. You know. Mars.
The meeting between JM and BG is not cultural intercourse. They do not rep-
resent their own worlds. They are aliens to each other as well as to their own
social milieus. For this reason, they make a suitable metaphor for the
postmodern diaspora, in which cultural identity is sheer illusion.
Instead of drifting with incongruity in a hopeless absurdity that Jean-Paul
Sartre calls No Exit, Law mellows her existential sensibility to reach a thera-
peutic denouement. Searching for an exit is Laws primary motivation for the
journey in The Goddess of 1967. Her approach to this search is neither moraliz-
ing nor didactic. She avoids cause-and-effect relationships. She believes that it
is important for her to focus on creating an atmosphere. In an interview, she
discloses:
I love stories that stimulate my imagination ... to feel that I am going away bring-
ing with me something that actually opens up more of my world or opens up
more in me, or something that I felt had been hidden for a long time and is now

uncovered ... thats the kind of books I like to read and thats the kind of films I like
to make ... Great poetry will give you that feeling, I suppose, that kind of thought-
process and emotional response. It can be an intellectual and also spiritual and
emotionally rich experience.10
Laws approach is poetic: she turns action into aesthetic experiences, leaving
the audience to ponder the missing links that lead to the resolution. In the
context of the storys family violence, damaged childhoods, compulsive con-
sumerism, and cultural disorientation, Law is correct not to dramatize any
moralizing resolution. Her audience must make the connections from scene to
scene, and, at best, from the film to the world.
Although revenge is BGs motive, and sexual abuse is the source of her
pain, the resolution of the film does not focus on the moral justice of either
issue. Instead, BG finds an exit from both. Perhaps finding is the wrong word
because it implies that an exit is already there, waiting for discovery. BGs exit is
in her mind. Physically, she escaped her grandfather three years ago; now she
returns to silence the vengeful thoughts in her mind: Theres a voice inside my
head and its yelling at me. It says kill him, kill the bastard, shoot him, kill the
fucking bastard. Its been yelling at me for many, many years, day and night, kill
the bastard, chop him to pieces. I have to do it. To calm this voice, she must
confront her abuser.
Arriving at the opal mine, BG climbs down the mineshaft, finds her grand-
father, and demands an explanation: I want to know why, she says. Did I do
something wrong? Why? This scene does not play out like a typical climactic
confrontation, because BGs father/grandfather, his mind destroyed by dec-
ades of alcohol abuse, is mentally incapable of revealing his reasons he is
locked in the past, in madness, waiting for the return of his little girls. BGs
question is an unanswerable riddle for him. Socially and geographically iso-
lated from human civilization, BG is comparable to the Sphinx as much as to
Antigone. In Riddles of the Sphinx, Laura Mulvey describes the Sphinx as a
representation of mens perception of femininity: she stays outside the city gates
and challenges the patriarchal culture that has assigned women a subordinate
place; her question is always in the form of a riddle, and Oedipus answer is
the voice of truth. In Laws revisionist version, BG asks her questions down in
the hell of her father/grandfathers mine/mind. What we hear from the man is
not the voice of truth. We hear nothing more than his nonsensical muttering.
In the mine, we see the other side of Oedipus, his opacity and darkness. BGs

riddle is not about the life cycle of mankind, but the senseless cycle of abuse.
According to Sophocles, Oedipus triumphs over the Sphinx by solving her rid-
dle; in The Goddess of 1967, the incestuous father in his underworld fails even to
comprehend the question.
At the end of the verbal exchange, natural dialogue ceases. The grandfa-
ther mutters something about music at this point and a piece of choral music
takes over the soundtrack from the disconnected dialogue, as BG, who has
brought a gun, walks toward him to carry out her execution. The music is
Lacrymosa, an excerpt from Giuseppe Verdis Requiem:
Lacrymosa dies illa,

Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:

Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem.
(Ah! That day of tears and mourning!

From the dust of earth returning,
Man for judgement must prepare him;
Spare, O God, in mercy spare him!

Lord, all pitying, Jesu blest,
Grant them Thine eternal rest.)
This liturgical text contradicts the theology that Marie invents for her victimi-
zation. Marie thinks that the sin comes from the temptation of her body. It is a
way to feel in control; if the sin is inherent in her body, she repents on her own
behalf. In contrast, Verdis Requiem, a prayer for mercy and forgiveness on Judge-
ment Day, asks God to spare him. Used in the film context to empower BG,
the text works on many levels. It reflects BGs anger as well as her need for rest
and peace. She is not the sinner: she is the judge. She must decide whether to
spare the man who abused her, her mother, and possibly her grandmother too.
But I think the music is spiritually and emotionally more empowering than the
text. Verdi wrote the Requiem for the revolutionary Alessandro Manzoni, who
was prosecuted by the church and whose death was mourned by workers.
Charles Osborne comments in a program note that the primitive imagery of

the medieval Latin text, filtered through Verdis humanist imagination, emerged
transformed into music which, ostensibly celebrating the dead, is more des-
perately concerned with the situation of the living.11 Law uses almost the en-
tire passage of Lacrymosa to accompany her four-minute visual poem. The
music begins with a mezzo-soprano, whose solo part runs from That day of
tears and mourning to in mercy spare him. Then, one by one, the bass, the
soprano, and the choir join in the subsequent repetitions of the stanza. In this
passage, Verdi uses ascending semitones in the harmony to create a mournful
atmosphere. In the film, Law matches the music with high contrast and gener-
ally dark pictures, while BG progresses, in a seemingly ritualistic journey, from
a cold sky blue to a lifeless purgatory green, and finally, to an inferno red. Tremu-
lously, she feels her way toward her father, and the camera follows her search-
ing hand as it touches the remains of dead rats on his dining table. At the musics
climax, BG finds her father and, standing behind him, points the gun at his
head. The dynamic of the music falls (shifting to the chanting of grant them
Thine eternal rest); BGs gun falls to the ground. She spares him, and exits
from the red into the green at JMs side.
From Golden Lotus to BG, Laws characters illustrate a paradox. The past
is inescapable because it shapes the way we are; however, to transform our lives,
we must escape the past. The Chinese myth of the underworld conveys wis-
dom: a life exiting hell needs forgetfulness, but even in forgetfulness, the cycle
of suffering persists. Law is careful with this mythic implication. Forgetfulness
does not transform life. It is unlikely that Golden Lotus would escape her fate
even if she had forgotten her past because the communist China into which
she is reborn retains the old dirt of patriarchy. Nor is it likely that BG could
have rid herself of the voice in her head even if she had killed the bastard
the shadow of the abusive man would stay in her mind, turning her anger into
guilt, locking her permanently in his shadow. Healing is not forgetfulness, not
ignorance, not revenge, but the transformation of memory into action, mend-
ing fragmented stories of misery to change social reality. We can escape the
past only by changing the future.
In a manner of speaking, the film illustrates how story revision works as
an agent of change. Systems family therapy distinguishes two kinds of trans-
formation: first-order change and second-order change. The former refers to
change that occurs within a system and follows the rules of that system. The
latter involves a change in the rules of the system itself. It is a systemic change.
Second-order change is important for people who live in a hostile context

Figure 6.1 The nine-dot problem. Without lifting the pencil,
connect the dots using only four straight lines.
Figure 6.2 Five lines are required if the player instinctively

ends every stroke at the dot.
Figure 6.3 A solution to the nine-dot problem requires a leap

of thought.
where the rules put them in a no-win situation. Dorothy and Raphael Becvar
use a game called the nine-dot problem to illustrate the paradox of second-
order change (see Figure 6.1).
The rules of the game are simple: without lifting the pencil, connect the
nine dots using only four straight lines. The task is actually impossible. The
minimum number of lines needed to connect the nine dots without lifting the
pencil is five. This is because people naturally end the line at the dot. They
produce a result resembling that in Figure 6.2 and conclude that the task is
impossible to complete with only four straight lines.
Of course, we can stop playing (which, in real life, would be equivalent to
committing suicide). However, if terminating the game is not desirable, we must
find a solution that reframes the problem. The Becvars describe such a solu-
tion, pictured in Figure 6.3, as a leap of imagination or an illogical response
to the hostile context.12
Although the portrait of BG is in many ways surreal, her situation reflects
the struggle of many women who cope with abuse. Such victims often find
themselves turning denial into awareness, then assessing, planning, and exiting
the abusive relationship, only to return themselves to the same or another similar
relationship. Dealing with the repeated return is the most frustrating part of
family therapy. In milder cases, a therapist can guide the woman and her

family into rebuilding their relationship on non-abusive terms. Often, how-
ever, building a new life is the only option. Unfortunately, as Bonnie Burstow
summarizes, the fear of loneliness is a major problem.13 In the terminology of
systems therapy, imprisonment is not in the past but in the future if one can-
not invent possible stories for a different life. Failing to take a leap of imagina-
tion, one returns to family stories that control, rather than moving forward to
authoring stories that enable freedom. If BG has any responsibility, it is not to her
unredeemable family, not to blame the mother or to kill the father, but to
herself, to find an exit.
JM is the first to recognize the paradox, thanks to BG. Her story inspires
him to reframe his own story in his floating life, he searches for security.
When BG suggests that he drive with his eyes closed and trust her to go on with
her quest, he refuses, explaining, Its not I dont trust you. Its just that I dont
want to see someone, someone I care, dead, gone, leaving me alone, you know,
alone in a world without noodles. His reply, as the flashback of his life reveals,
relates to his best friends fatal traffic accident after their ridiculous noodle-
eating contest. During that meal, the friend gave him the password that en-
abled him to embezzle money through the Internet. JM, too, has a story, though
it is not as dramatic as BGs, and he understands that sharing stories will allow
him to dissolve the loneliness that keeps him imprisoned in an unimaginative
future. He tries desperately to deter BG from her plan to shoot her father, pro-
posing that they leave the past behind and find a caf where they can enjoy
cheesecake and cappuccino: Look, I have a story to tell you. Its a long story,
you know, my story, a very, very long story. He matures during the films five-
day journey: he learns that stories have meaning, and that restorying is a con-
structive response to a hostile context. Freedom from the imprisonment of the
past necessitates a profound reconstruction of the self in the future.
So, in the end, it is JM who takes Antigones role, leading the way for the
blind survivor of incest and abuse. But he is not a saviour. BG does not escape
from her father/grandfathers underworld just to fall into another mans con-
trol. In the films final scene, BG and JM, having left the mine, sit in the car.
BG: What do you want to do with the Goddess?

JM: Ah, I dont know.
[Pause]
BG: Where are we going?
JM: I dont know. What do you think?

[Pause. Then JM closes his eyes and covers them with BGs hand.]
JM: Stop me before I crash, OK?
BG: Honestly, Im as blind as you.
[The car moves forward, staggeringly.]
Laws construction of JM and BG materializes her diasporic imagination. Surely,

the new journey is uncertain and the vision of new life, unseen. In blindness,
however, they learn that the leap of imagination can transform the past and
vitalize a life not lived.
In Cultures In-Between, Homi Bhabha observes that people have the
capacity to construct meaning through narratives while remaining open to
change for possibilities of a better future. He calls this capacity retroaction,
which has the ability to reactivate the past to work through the present. In a
postcolonial situation, narratives of retroaction are significant components
of a constructive process for resolving cultural differences and dissolving ideo-
logical boundaries.14 If Laws film is a metaphor for the diasporic experience of
the global village, what she demonstrates in The Goddess of 1967 is the process
of diasporic retroaction in a transcultural setting. National boundaries and
ethnic differences do not comprise the core of Laws transcultural diasporic
space, however. In The Goddess of 1967, the sorrow of exile is internal, and there-
fore transcultural exchange is played out through the imaginary space of sto-
ries. The story of BG and JM deflects the desire to assert any stable identity out
of the past because their past imprisons the imagined future. Although the past
is always free for retroaction, it is paradoxically imprisoned by our perception
of ourselves. The transcultural exchange between JM and BG allows them to
reframe their hostile contexts, and subsequently breeds a new story through
their collaboration.

Representing Representation
Agns Vardas Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond)
7
When politics and art meet in a feminist framework or in any politically
charged art criticism debate regarding art as representation always occurs.
Because of the politics lying behind a critical paradigm, criticism becomes a
projection of the critics idealism: the critic demands that films measure up to
the expectations of his or her political models. Whatever the demands may be
perhaps for a strong female figure that projects a positive image, a lesbian rela-
tionship that ends happily ever after, a camera angle that does not heighten a
womans body to fulfill male desires, a revelation of womens living realities to
provoke political action, or a feminine aesthetic that is free from the patriar-
chal tradition judgements of filmic representation often rely on certain lim-
iting and limited belief obstacles to provide a standard.
Several years ago, I taught a seminar class on eroticism and film. In the
first class, I projected two slides: one was a close-up of a womans genitals down-
loaded from a pornographic website; the other was a picture of a plate with a
design that resembled an open vulva. I asked the students how the two pictures
differed. They agreed at first that the pornography was realistic and the plate
was symbolic. When one of them pointed out that the images were really the
same in the way they exploit women, they settled with the argument that
both were actually sexualized representations of women. By this time they
were no doubt wondering why their professor was displaying such politically
144
incorrect images in a classroom. Then I told them that the vulva plate was
designed by Judy Chicago to pay tribute to Margaret Sanger, an activist for
womens reproductive rights. With that piece of information, they changed their
minds and decided that the design of the plate was a more realistic represen-
tation, symbolizing a self-contained female sexuality, and that the woman in
the photograph was posing for Internet voyeurs.
I let the students go at this point, but I stayed behind, thinking. What if the
picture I downloaded had been taken by a photographer who wanted to dis-
rupt mainstream societys concept of a good girl? I had forgotten to check
whether the site was run by someone like Annie Sprinkle, a feminist porn star
who has a PhD in sexology and who advocates womens sexual liberation in
and through pornography. We do not always have the luxury of knowing the
context. If our own belief obstacles are not examined, criticism cannot func-
tion as an art: it would be shaped into a dough of critical clichs. Whether the
cookie cutter is ideologically left or right, it ends up becoming a form of in-
tellectual restraint, if not censorship. In her defence of Chantal Akermans films,
Angela McRobbie observes a similar problem in film criticism: The search for
good theory in film practice narrowed the focus of film scholarship, since so
few films measured up to the expectations of theory ... At its worst, the shift a
few years later to endorsing a postmodern practice led to a neglect of all the
feminist art, feminist filmmaking and other examples of serious cultural pro-
duction that did not fit that mould. McRobbie describes this narrow scope of
critical practice as a crisis that reduces academics to counter-productive cul-
tural legislators.1
The narrow scope evolves from the assumption that art is a mimesis (rep-
resentation or imitation) of reality. Back in ancient Greece, as seen in Platos
Republic, intellectuals already argued that not only does art imitate Truth, it
also distorts it; therefore, a philosopher king striving to govern an ideal state
should ban its poets from spreading lies. Throughout the ages in Western civi-
lization, this Platonic assumption as well as its variations has been a major
motif in moral and political criticism. For example, in the beginning of the
fifteenth century, one of the great-grandmothers of feminist criticism, Christine
de Pisan, used the assumption of mimesis to engage a critique of Jean de Meuns
misrepresentation of women in Le Roman de la Rose. Reacting to the tradition
of allegorical poetry that projects the female figure as the evil seductress, de
Pisan interrogates, Do [women] go into your house to woo, pursue, or rape
you? ... Does one not know how men normally behave with women? ... Al-
Agns Vardas Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond) 145

though you call [the Roman] a mirror of good living and, for men of all classes,
an example of good social conduct, and of the wise, moral life ... I call it an
exhortation to vice, a comfort to dissolute life, a doctrine full of deception.2 In
defence of the critics, it is important to raise awareness of the discrepancy be-
tween fiction and reality, especially when fictions can be used to perpetuate
political lies and misconceptions. Nevertheless, with postmodernism and com-
plex systems theory, we also recognize that the human brain cannot compre-
hend reality without encoding and organizing its experiences in the forms of
stories: what we perceive as reality is, indeed, a mental construct, and so, in
other words, we approach reality through fiction. How, then, can we judge
whether a piece of fiction reflects reality? Whose truth/reality?
A film that provides much insight into the issue of representation is Agns
Vardas Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi, 1985). Vardas Vagabond is a work of meta-
cinema that examines the correlation between representation and reality, as
well as interpretation and truth. Although the film is fictional (and meta-
fictional for that matter), it is founded on the wisdom Varda gathered from a
lifelong commitment to feminist documentary filmmaking. From the early 1950s
to the 1970s, she participated in two major social movements: first, the legaliza-
tion of contraception, and then of womens right to choose abortion. Many of
her films, especially LUne chante, lautre pas (1976), have prompted conflicting
reviews: some feminists criticize her films for being too sentimental and apo-
litical; some male critics reject them as works of feminist propaganda. Vardas
political activities are not limited to gender concerns. In 1955, she accompanied
Chris Marker to communist China as an advisor for Dimanche Pekin. In 1967,
she was involved in the collaborative antiwar film Loin du Vietnam. She has
worked comfortably with many rebel filmmakers, and lived with one, Jacques
Demy, from 1958 until his death in 1990. Her works in the 1990s, including
Jacquot de Nantes, explore her grief and memories. Her interest in merging
social documentary with fiction, real people with unnatural acting, to create
a kind of metafictional realism against realism a practice that she would not
give up, even when she was trying to secure a studio contract in Hollywood3
makes her a particularly interesting filmmaker for obscuring the apparent fine
line between reality and representation.
As a director, Varda herself is a vagabond, a homeless wanderer of femi-
nist filmmaking who goes without roof and without law (sans toit ni loi) in the
land of feminist criticism. Being a vagabond is a New Wave mentality an
assertion of independence from any kind of institutional preconception. Varda
146 Representing Representation

is the grandmother of the New Wave. Because Resnais edited Vardas first
feature, La Pointe Courte (1954), before he made his debut, La Pointe Courte is
considered the precursor of the New Wave. But her label as the grandmother of
the New Wave can be contested because, technically and aesthetically, her style
owed a lot to Resnais and his New Wave friends. Through Resnais, she met the
men who would soon be New Wave filmmakers (Chabrol, Truffaut, Rohmer,
Brialy, Doniol-Valcroze, and Godard) in the early fifties. At that time, Varda
had neither the knowledge nor the inspiration to lead a cinematic revolution,
and Resnais circle of friends were young film enthusiasts but not yet film-
makers. One evening, joining the New Wave circle and listening to them quote
countless films, she could not even follow their conversation. I seemed to be
there by mistake, Varda recalled in 1994, feeling small, ignorant and the only
woman among the guys from Cahiers.4 But what she brought to this group of
young cinema enthusiasts was a perspective that took them beyond their tech-
nical and aesthetic talk.
Like Alice Guy, the mother of narrative cinema, and Marguerite Duras,
who rescued Resnais first feature, Varda realizes the film mediums limitations
and uses her literary background to provide her with the resources to push the
mediums expressive limit: I had the feeling that the cinema had got lost in
cinematographic fiction and that it didnt approach either the problems which
the novel did, or the problems of existence ... I had the feeling that living, im-
portant things werent discussed, and on the other hand that the cinema wasnt
free, especially with regard to its form, and that irritated me.5 Vardas doubts
about the film medium were exactly what Resnais needed to hear. In 1954, his
career hit a low. His documentary Les Statues meurent aussi was banned be-
cause of its socialist sympathies, and from 1953 to 1955, he received no propos-
als from producers. Editing Vardas La Pointe Courte, as Roy Armes observes,
Resnais gained consolation and stimulus.6 Later, when Resnais asked Duras to
add a narrative counterpoint to his Hiroshima documentary, Vardas influences
her motivation to establish a cinema in which the filmmaker can exercise as
much freedom as does a novelist surely played a role. He came to be aware of
the cinemas limitations and the need to experiment by broadening filmic ex-
pression through literary imagination.
Vardas critique of the cinema did not stop her from entering the world of
filmmaking; rather, it helped her become more experimental. Her cinema is
counter-cinema in her own formalist way (not counter-Hollywood cinema as
demanded by cine-feminism in the United States and the United Kingdom).

Her feminism is counter-cultural in the larger context of politics and art (not
just gender and sexuality). Due to these qualities, interest in her films has in-
creased since the 1990s, led by the research of Susan Hayward, Sandy Flitterman-
Lewis, and Alison Smith. As the feminist third wave seeks ways to join other
political struggles in the global context, Vardas political irrelevance turns out
to be more than relevant.
Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and honoured as
the Best Foreign Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Sans toit ni
loi (1985) is Vardas best-known film other than Clo de 5 7, her 1961 New
Wave classic. Not long after the films release, Barbara Koenig Quart wrote,
For us in the United States with a film industry that is all compromise and
box office, a director like Varda who works out all of a larger vision of what
filmmaking is about, that she has lived out all these years, with all the difficul-
ties involved, in itself represents a most important kind of survival and tri-
umph.7 Despite her admiration of Vardas success, however, Quart does not
see Sans toit ni loi as much more than a film about the unprotected woman.
She believes that Varda herself does not recognize the female wanderers free-
dom as in any way enviable.8 She remarks, For all her apparent unconven-
tionality, she is one of the pioneer generation still very much shaped by
traditional gender roles and values.9 Quarts expectations are common in cine-
feminism: she prefers a fantasized role model of a strong woman who lives in
freedom from patriarchal society and survives in triumph. When Vardas strong,
independent female character, Mona the vagabond, freezes to death in a ditch,
Quart does not know what to make of the film, except to feel betrayed.
But the film never misleads its viewers to any high hopes for an exalted
ending. It begins with Monas frozen body being found in the ditch. The rest of
the film flashes back to show how Mona arrived at her death. Recent studies of
Varda raise the question of how the womens movement can reconcile itself to
Monas death. The solution is intriguing: the film is not about the figuration of
a liberated woman, but it is about the process of figuration. Alison Smith ar-
gues, The film investigates not Mona herself but the traces she has left in
others.10 The reconstruction of Monas life, as Smith points out, comes from
subjective witnesses who do not know much about her; each witness projects
his or her own desire onto Mona or uses her to live out an alter ego.11 In Smiths
interpretation, Mona is not Vardas heroine created to represent a feminist ideal;
instead, her character is created to study the process of idealization.

For example, after we see Mona asking a woman for water, we see how the
woman combines her vague memory of Mona with her desire to break free
from her family. Id rather go away, she comments. The girl who wanted
water ... she goes where she wants. During this scene, we also see her mother,
whose head is cut off (because the camera is level with the tables height). She
walks back and forth as she serves her daughter and husband. Maybe she does
not have enough to eat every day, the mother replies. At times itd be better
not to eat, the daughter says, looking at her mother. I would like to be free.
Then she turns to her father, who is also being served at the table, and reiter-
ates, To be free. It is obvious that she does not wholeheartedly mean what she
says.12 She would like to be free, even not to eat, but only occasionally in her
fantasies. She sits too comfortably at the table, being cared for by her decapi-
tated mother (an image that recalls Hlne Cixous description of the threat
of decapitation as a device to train women to submission in the patriarchal
social order). She expresses her dissatisfaction only by idealizing Mona, by add-
ing the romance of the vagabond to her daydream, while idling under her fami-
lys roof and law.
Sometimes, a witness can become totally self-deceived by his or her preju-
dice. At the auto shop, the owner testifies, I would have let her pump gas, but
I didnt trust her. Female drifters are all alike, just loafers and men-chasers.
Juxtaposed to his statement is a scene of Mona diligently washing a car for the
auto shop, distracted only by the gaze of two men a garage worker and the
shop owner himself. What we do not see is Mona acting like a man-chaser. She
seems to be more attracted to the worker and his litter of puppies, but it is the
owner who comes out of Monas tent with his pants undone.
Most of the time, the witnesses say what they think. Yet what they think
reflects what they want Mona to represent more than what Mona is actually
like. Yolande initially finds Mona asleep in Davids arms. In her testimony, she
projects her own desire through the narration: I wish Paulo would dream
with me like the lovers in the gallery in each others arms. Much later in the
film, she elaborates, Being alone is rough. But being a lonely couple is no bet-
ter. In Paulos arms I feel alone. He likes to go out with me, to go to bed with
me. Thats all he wants. Im the romantic type. Ill never forget that girl in the
arms of the guy with that chain. In Yolandes mind, her quick glance at Mona
and David is like still photography; she captures an ephemeral moment in the
couples lives and makes it an icon in her supplication for eternal love. This

aspect of Yolandes appropriation of Monas image is illustrated by a false
point-of-view shot juxtaposed with a true one. In this scene, we follow Vardas
objective camera, which watches Yolande break into the empty house where
Mona and David have taken shelter. As Yolande looks into the room, the scene
is cut into a long shot of the couple sleeping together. For a few seconds, the
shot appears to be taken from Yolandes point of view. But then Yolande herself
walks in front of the camera. Immediately, a true point-of-view shot is cut into
the scene. It is a medium shot of the couple in perfect golden-ratio framing,
almost totally still, except for a very slight shaking, which suggests a hand-held
camera. The shot lasts for two and a half seconds before cutting back to the
false point-of-view shot that shows Yolande walking away. Yolande takes two
seconds of intimacy and magnifies them into eternity.
Later in the film, when Yolande learns that Mona is no longer with the
guy with that chain, her romantic idealization of Mona is disillusioned: You
know, she tells Mona, Ive often thought of you two asleep. I saw it as eternal
love. To cope with the loss of her dream, Yolande reinvents Mona, transform-
ing her from an unreachable figure of her transcendent ego into a helpless child
under her protection:
Yolande: Now youre alone like the old lady ...

Mona: Not as rich.
Yolande: Poor kid. Ill spoil you for a change. Youll keep me company. Im so lonely.
I pamper her ... Ill pamper you.
As a lonely, dissatisfied woman, Yolande wants either to fix Mona in a frame so

that she can look up to her for romantic inspiration, or to fix her in the house-
hold under her care and protection. Mona is subordinated to Yolandes ego
reassurance (even though in both figurations, Yolande puts herself into servi-
tude as worshipper or servant).
The shepherd also offers Mona a chance to settle down. His nomadic life-
style is much like hers, so he does not romanticize life on the road. Choosing a
middle ground between loneliness and freedom, he identifies with Mona as a
vagrant. But he is different from Mona. He has a masters degree in philosophy,
and he made an intellectual decision to be back to the land. He considers his
lifestyle to be a political statement. When Mona says she would like to have her
own piece of land to grow potatoes, he thinks she wants to follow in his foot-
steps. He grants her wish. He offers her a piece of land, agrees to help her plow

and harrow it, and teaches her how to ride a horse. In some ways, he is a
divine incarnation. The manner in which he outlines the boundaries of her
promised land recalls God giving Abraham his promised land. He wants to
make Mona in his own image. But he is just a wise man. His grace is not free,
and his mercy is conditional.
From the beginning, Mona seems to understand what the shepherd stands
for, and thus never touches his land. When he tries to connect with her by
saying that he knows what it is like to be on the road, Mona comments that his
migration is more like moving house with a wife and a herd. In their conversa-
tion, she even makes him admit that perhaps she is freer than he is. Mona refuses
to follow his path and be like him: Do I have to be a shepherd like you? she
questions. Naturally, we see that Mona behaves badly stealing cheese from his
wife, messing up the place, refusing to work, and so on. In her opinion, he is a
dropout like herself: If Id studied, I wouldnt live like you, she explains. I
hated being a secretary. I quit those bosses but not to find another boss in the
country. Failing to convert her, the shepherd finally decides to kick her off his
promised land. He proclaims his final judgement: Youre no dropout, youre
just out. You dont exist. Monas response is simple: I dont give a fuck about
your philosophy.
Sans toit ni loi questions the appropriation of others into ones own self-
image. The dramatic tension of the film is constructed through the desire to
fix Monas drifting character into an image of representation. When the pimp
at the bus terminal tells Mona that he could get her connected to a job in
pornography, she finds the idea both sad and hilarious. Moi, poser? Reposer?
(Me, pose? Rest?) she laughs. The French expressions moi, poser and re-
poser sound almost indistinguishable because Mona mumbles in drunken-
ness. The English subtitles on the DVD translate the words as I must pause,
possibly interpreting the mumble as dois pauser. In any case, Mona finds the
question funny. With the repetition of poser and reposer, for her to pose would
be to rest. The French words suggest that to rest is to remain posing. Simi-
larly, with the pun poser and pauser in the context of being asked to pose for
pornography, pause also refers to the fact that, once the video is made, her
image can be paused for others voyeuristic pleasure. The rest she needs re-
quires that her image be paused. Refusing to compromise in a world where
everyone tries to freeze her into a frame, she ends up freezing to death in a
ditch. If, at the beginning of the film, the sight of her dead body makes us
question how she died, we must also ask what alternatives she had.

Is it possible to avoid constructing a representation that does not freeze
the subject being represented in the frame of our own beliefs and desires? As
Alison Smith reminds us, this question applies not only to the characters in the
film, but also to the filmmaker and the audience.13 We are, after all, watching a
work of representation, and we are interpreting. Vardas perspectives and our
own beliefs all contribute to freezing Mona. For the film to be honest, there-
fore, it must provide a mirror in the text to reflect the filmmaking and the
spectatorship at work.
Vardas film is so carefully constructed that it not only reveals how the
witnesses try to freeze Mona into a fixed meaning, it also makes it difficult for
viewers to fit the characters into any reductive categorization. Smith, though
she expands the question of representation to the filmmaker and the spectator,
struggles herself with the temptation of reductive categorization. She believes
that the witnesses can easily be divided into two types, one of the male gaze,
referring to those who see Mona as a possible sexual partner or companion in
any other sense, and the other of the female gaze, including those who see her
as a revisable or corrected self-reflection. But as she elaborates on her proposi-
tion, Smith must first admit that Mme Landier is an exception to it. Then she
must also explain that the category is not really a neat male/female split but
nonetheless gendered.14 What I see, however, is that the entire binary opposi-
tion of male and female gazes does not work at all. What makes the desire for a
companion more male than female? And what makes the appropriation of
other peoples identity into ones own self-image more symptomatic of women
than of men? The shepherd tries to transform Mona into a farmer in his own
image. Yolande first idealizes Mona for achieving her hearts desire, but when
she says she will pamper Mona, she makes her into a subordinate companion.
Mona walks away from Yolande and the shepherd because of their gaze, male
and female alike.
This collapse of binary categorization is what prevents Vardas films from
winning the approval of some feminist critics: Vardas feminism not only chal-
lenges the patriarchal social structure, it also complicates early feminisms own
male and female divisions. In a manner of speaking, her challenge of patriarchy
is more up to date. She observes that beyond feminisms gender struggle is the
issue of domination itself, and in this sense, postfeminism begins. In Sans tout
ni loi, the problem does not lie in the male gaze or the female gaze; Mona
problematizes the act of gazing itself.

Assoun, the Tunisian agricultural labourer, is perhaps the most unusual
witness in the film in terms of the politics of the gaze. He does not seem to
want anything from Mona and does not attempt to transform her into his own
self-image or make her fit his desire, even though he teaches her the skills she
needs to become his co-worker. Of all the characters, only he does not question
Monas past. He does not wonder about her lifestyle or ask her why she chose
it, unlike the other witnesses, who either ask her directly or make up stories
based on their perceptions and prejudices. Mona, in response, works with him.
In fact, the only place we see Mona working willingly and happily is with Assoun.
From the beginning, he accepts her for what she is and simply does his best to
give her what she needs. Mona seems to understand his simplicity and feels
comfortable with him. Although she refuses many times to tell others about
her past, she speaks of it to Assoun, and we learn that Mona is not her original
name: Mine was Simone, she says to him. Now Im Mona.
Working in a poorly paid job, Assoun, like Mona, is of low social status,
though in a very different manner. He treats Mona as his partner in the vine-
yards, yet he makes no effort to change her character to fit his own preferences.
Nor, when the other workers object to her presence, does he try very hard to
keep her, which becomes the problem at the end of their relationship. During
one scene, the audience is tempted to project sexual interest onto Assouns be-
haviour regarding Mona. In this scene, Mona and Assoun eat together, both
sitting with their backs to the camera and facing a mirror that is so dirty it
barely reflects them. Suddenly, Mona realizes that they are sitting in line, like a
snack bar, so she turns to take a right-angle position to Assoun. Now she can
see his face clearly (rather than his cloudy reflection in the mirror). For some
reason, perhaps to clean some food off his face (which the viewers cannot see),
she rubs his chin with her knuckles. Assoun then takes her hand and looks at
her palm. For anyone who expects a romantic interlude to follow, what actu-
ally occurs must come as a disappointment. Assoun asks, You hurt yourself?
Learning my trade, Mona replies, and they continue eating. Do you know
what the foremans wife said to me? she asks after a short period of silence:
Vine-cutting isnt a womans job. The end focus of the scene is a shot of the
sores on Monas hand.
For viewers who wish to apply romantic expectations to this relationship,
supportive clues do exist Assouns scarf on Mona, Monas strong desire to
stay, and the simple fact that a man and a woman are living in solitude under

the same roof. Assouns proposal that she work with him in the vineyard can
also be read romantically: If you want, you can stay. You help me and work the
vines, and Ill take good care of you. When the others come, Ill handle it. Are
you not answering? Varda carefully leaves this episode ambiguous enough so
that viewers can project their own desires onto the film. Assoun is successful
with Mona, however, because he does not do what others would do. He does
not impose his ideas on her. After his proposal, without even waiting for a
reply, he immediately observes Monas desire to go outside, saying, Want to go
out? Its cold. Bundle up. He just lets her be. But he just lets the others be as
well. When the other workers return and refuse to accept Mona as a co-worker,
he does not fight hard for her to stay. For Mona, his flexibility at this point is a
betrayal of her trust.
Assoun does not fix Mona in a frame. He even refuses to speak of her. He is
the only witness who remains speechless during his interview. For me, the most
emotionally charged point of the film is the eighteen seconds of Assouns si-
lence when he kisses the scarf that Mona leaves behind and looks wordlessly
into the camera. His silence shows his understanding of the limitation of words.
The one who knows the most does not speak.
Mme Landier, the botany professor, is a contrast to Assoun. Between Mme
Landier and Mona lies a critical social barrier. Driving to her research site, she
sees Mona hitchhiking at the side of the road and gives her a ride. During one
of their stops, she takes a relaxing bath and telephones a friend to describe her
travelling companion. Speaking on the telephone as she enjoys being clean and
naked in her bath, she complains about Monas smell: You have no idea how
she stank! When she got into the car, I nearly choked. Nevertheless, Mme
Landier gives Mona quite a ride, spanning days and nights, taking her all the
way to her research site. What perpetuates her interest in Mona, at first, is a
scientists curiosity. She is a tree specialist, breeding a species resistant to a
fungus brought to Europe in 1944, in the wooden crates that held US weapons.
Rotting tree and rotting human alike seem to switch on her research-and-
rescue mode: she desires to stop the disease as much as she later wishes to find
Mona and help her. It is in Mme Landiers car that we learn how much Mona
hates talking about her background. All drivers talk to their rides, so I make
things up, she tells the professor. She goes on to speak about her interest in
taking care of children and houses. We who have seen Mona with the shep-
herds family and with Yolande realize that her words are simply another story
intended to entertain a driver who has picked her up. Mme Landier does not

even learn Monas name during their long trip. Mona is her amusement, a
weird and wild creature in her car. On some level, Mona boosts Mme
Landiers bourgeois ego by giving her the opportunity to demonstrate her good
will toward Monas otherness. Mme Landier exhibits a sense of moral triumph
for befriending Mona and being able to bear the smell and the chain-smoking,
just as she feels good about trying to save the trees. At her research site, she
describes Mona to her student, Jean-Pierre, using words of scientific exactness
as if Mona were a new study subject: Shes taken root in the front passengers
seat of my car. Responding with his own matching specialist vocabulary, Jean-
Pierre asks, Do you want me to go convince her of a prophylactic uprooting?15
Each witness plays an essential role in the film because the image of Mona
is fashioned from their differences regarding her. As we observe them describ-
ing her, we learn how people construct their representation of the real Mona
(whom we never know). Mme Landier is, however, more important than the
others. Her presence takes the paradox of representation a step further, for her
character represents Varda herself. Her character reflects Vardas own experi-
ence with road people. Vardas initial idea, as Susan Hayward summarizes, was
to make a film about road people/vagrants (male and female) in the winter,
who perish from the cold.16 But as she researched and made the film, Varda
developed a friendship with a young hitchhiking vagabond, Settina, who stimu-
lated a revision of the entire concept of the film. As Alison Smith observes,
Mme Landiers appearance, complete with Vardas own hairstyle and manner
of dress, parallels that of the filmmaker herself.17
If Mme Landier is Agns Vardas fictionalized self, her presence adds a
metafictional self-reflexivity to the film, suggesting a work in progress, or as
cincriture (cinematic writing) in action. Cincriture, a term invented by Varda
herself, refers to both scriptwriting and filming. According to Varda, a well-
written film will be well filmed. Although the literary aspect is an important
element of a well-written film, the choices of actors and locations, their ap-
pearances, the execution of the scenes, the use of lenses and camera move-
ments, the cutting, the rhythm, and the point of view are all part of the writing.
All contribute to the depth of meaning and the style of expression.18 Mme
Landier is a character of mise en abyme: she reflects the logic of the films
cincriture within the film. In fact, she realizes that what we know as Mona is
an image. After she is nearly electrocuted by a pair of sconces, she describes the
experience to Jean-Pierre: I saw moments of my life flash by ... images ... it
took ages ... I was fighting all those bits of images ... Its weird. That hitchhiker

I picked up, she kept coming back, like a kind of reproach. The electrocution
scene is conducted in an interesting manner. It begins with a strange off-screen
sound, followed by a reaction shot of Jean-Pierres realization that something
is wrong. Next comes a close-up of Mme Landier shaking between the two
lights. For a second, we think that we see Mme Landier herself, but a jump-cut
into a medium long shot reveals that we are actually looking at a mirror reflec-
tion of her face. And she looks into the eyes of her own mirror image. The bits
of memory and the recurring image of the hitchhiker she sees while strug-
gling for her life come through the looking glass into her own eyes.
Representation is a reflection not a reflection of reality but a reflection of
perception, that of both messenger and recipient. It always requires a medium.
But mediation betrays because perception distorts. Recognizing that she does
not even know the hitchhikers name, Mme Landier, who wants to find Mona,
sends Jean-Pierre to look for her. Or she just wants to pursue the image, as
Varda herself does as a filmmaker. Sending Jean-Pierre to find Mona is a sym-
bolic gesture. Later, when Jean-Pierre does find Mona in the terminal, he re-
ports to Grard on the phone: If you could see her, she is revolting, a wreck ...
makes me sick ... Im telling you, but Ill never tell Mme Landier. Of course, the
mans hideous report echoes Mme Landiers first phone call, in which she ex-
presses her superiority, her horror, and her curiosity.
Representation is death. It freezes life into a frame. The film uses Monas
death as its bookends because freezing Mona into an icon of womens freedom
freezing the vagrant onto the imagination of the intelligentsia is a meta-
phoric death for Settina the real woman. Nevertheless, Varda does not project
a Platonic skepticism of art. If she did, she would, like Assoun, fall into the
abyss of speechlessness. The filmmaker made Mona; Mona is at her mercy. But
Mona refuses to be fixed in a representation, and the filmmaker wants to avoid
her representation being mistaken for reality. As Jeanette Winterson declares in
Art Objects, Art must resist autobiography if it hopes to cross boundaries of
class, culture ... and ... sexuality.19 But we cannot resist autobiography unless
we realize that all writing is, knowingly and often unknowingly, autobiographi-
cal. We represent ourselves while representing others. In Sans toit ni loi, Varda
finds life in her art by representing representation itself. If we, the spectators,
see ourselves reflected through Vardas own self-reflexivity, the film succeeds in
helping us cross the ultimate boundary of our self-knowledge. When a story
helps us acknowledge the fictionality and functionality of narrative construct,
it tells the truth about being human.

From Text to Context
Metadocumentary and Skyworks
8
From Work to Text, from Text to System
In Feminine Fascinations: Forms of Identification in Star-Audience Relations,
Jackie Stacey redefines spectator beyond the terms usual reference to cinema
audience. Spectatorship, when considered as an aspect of cultural consump-
tion, she suggests, should no longer be seen simply as an extension of a film
text replicating infantile misrecognition, nor as an isolated viewing process,
but rather as part of a more general cultural construction of identities.1 This
broadened understanding is a more active approach; however, within Staceys
subject of the star system, cultural construction is still quintessentially pas-
sive. Of course, women in the postfeminist era are involved in cultural con-
structions, but within the entertainment business, women filmmakers and stars
are often just a symbol of womens liberation; despite their obvious appear-
ance of power and creativity, their works are still marginal in the larger cultural
context. Stacey points out, therefore, identification itself has been seen as a
cultural process complicit with the reproduction of dominant culture by re-
inforcing patriarchal forms of identity.2 If this type of identification is all we
have, the future, as Leonard Cohen sings, is murder. It is murder because,
without change or adaption, nothing can alter the human races drive toward
conquest and destruction. From observations of schoolyards to international
battlefields, I am afraid that Cohen and Stacey have a strong case.
157
I would really just like a day, then
Id want two, then I would want a
week, then Id want a year, and it
would go on ... That freedom to just
live my life is gone and that is frustrat-
ing to me and makes me angry and
sad and scared at various times and
various levels.
When I was a little girl, I used to

spend hours on our backyard swing.
And as I soared back and forth with
the wind in my hair, I could be anyone
or anywhere I wanted to be. That
swing was my freedom.
You will sense that the play is making

a difference, and thats what kept us
going.
(Courtesy of Skyworks Charitable

Foundation)
158 From Text to Context

My attempt to integrate the complex systems paradigm into feminist film
theory is not just a way to advance from psychoanalysis: I am also trying to
move beyond textual analysis. Complex systems thinking involves racking the
focus from text to society story to life. A film is neither a self-contained sys-
tem nor a naturally evolved self-organizing structure; rather, it is a mental con-
struct that is like an ecological model, an expressive system created by our
brain to organize our conception of social and natural systems. We need these
models to survive, as well as to envisage change.
When we say film studies, the centre of discourse is obviously the film
text. By text I do not refer only to the general concept of a text as a subject
under the scope of spectatorship, the film text referring to the movie being
studied. In light of Einsteins theory of relativity and the poststructural view of
interdisciplinarity, Roland Barthes expands the meaning of the word from its
reference to the physical text to the process of textual production. In his essay
From Work to Text, Barthes capitalizes Text to indicate a process that is
experienced only in an activity of production (emphasis in original). According
to Barthes, distinguished from a Text, a work is the product of the textual activ-
ity. The metaphor of the Text separates from that of the work: the latter refers
to the image of an organism which grows by vital expansion, by development
(a word which is significantly ambiguous, at once biological and rhetorical);
the metaphor of the Text is that of the network; if the Text extends itself, it is as
a result of a combinatory systematic (an image, moreover, close to current bio-
logical conceptions of the living being).3 Barthes elaboration is complex, sys-
temic, and avant-garde, most notably in his citation of post-serial music, in
which a composer deliberately creates open works that allow performers or
sometimes even the audience to participate: for instance, the notation may ask
each performer to improvise within a given range of bars and notes so that,
within the composers framework, the music can change from time to time.4
The Text is very much a score of this new kind, Barthes clarifies. It asks of
the reader a practical collaboration.5
Unlike music, however, the cinema is not usually a performing art; although
theatrical components do exist in filmmaking, film as a medium is static. Viewers
can change very little of a motion pictures content; the best they can do by way
of feedback is through their customer reviews. Nevertheless, this limitation does
not mean that film cannot function as an open text. On the level of interpreta-
tion, the cinema is no less open than the performing arts. The cinema is a
multimedia space for narrative expression. The ecology of the mind suggests
Metadocumentary and Skyworks 159

that the human brain is the text, and that stories the brains models for mak-
ing sense of its connection to the world are the work. Joseph Gold elaborates,
In science these stories are called models and the history of scientific theory
appears to have unity and continuity because it returns to models that it can
modify and adjust. The human brain requires models to organize and so make
sense of otherwise incoherent data. Stories give pleasure because they organize
information into manageable and applicable units of connected information
out of a symbolic code, for storage and integration, one story joining with an-
other and growing into a larger whole, but detachable as a distinct unit when
needed.6 By the ecology of the mind, we perceive that, since humanity as a
story species uses story making for information management and identity for-
mation, story and story revision can act as stimulants of change. But change
requires social action, so text needs to be understood as a network in a sys-
tem, not as a self-contained artifact.
This complex systems approach suggests that metafiction does not have to
reside in a consumable product (work) but can be incorporated into a con-
sciously designed network (open text). Laura Skys documentary filmmaking
is developed out of such a network model: the operation of her Skyworks Chari-
table Foundation is built on the belief that film production can collaborate
with the audience to achieve social transformation.
The founding of Skyworks is an important pretext for understanding
the organization as a text. Beginning her career in 1972 in the National Film
Board of Canadas (NFB) Challenge for Change program, Laura Sky is one of
Canadas most distinguished activist filmmakers. The Challenge for Change
program was, in its activist manner, a version of the NFBs pan-Canadian
philosophy: however, though the pan-Canadian approach concentrated on film-
ing influential citizens, Challenge for Change was developed to allocate repre-
sentational voices to the previously voiceless. In the seventies, the NFB
underwent a significant power transformation. The hierarchical authority of
the past was slowly dissolved, giving power to somewhat independent stu-
dios.7 Particularly relevant to womens cinema was Studio D, formed in the
mid-seventies specifically to enable women to film womens issues. As a pro-
ducer and a director, Sky was partly responsible for establishing autonomous
documentary filmmaking for women in Canada. However, Sky did not iden-
tify herself with Studio D, partly because her interests did not always lie within
the relatively narrow definition of womens issues, and mostly because she
was already established in other programs before Studio D was founded.

Sky eventually left the NFB because the government agency, no matter
how decentralized, still had a limited tolerance for politically subversive mate-
rials. The question of tolerance was amplified in the late seventies when Sky
was filming working-class issues that directly challenged Canadas economic
and political structures. As Sky testifies,
We worked in video Portapak, then later in film. I was part of the Challenge For
Change program, which we saw as a kind of political caucus within the Board. We
were both renegades and participants at the same time. Working in video allowed
us more freedom from the institution since it was so much cheaper. Perhaps the
best tape we did was the one on the Artistic Woodworking Company strike in 1974.
We tried to use the apparatus as best we could, but we didnt trust it either. For
example, my last film at the Board, Shut Down, was held up by the Board for being
too anti-government.8
In 1979, while maintaining a partnership with the NFB, Sky decided to estab-
lish her own agency. The issue of the working class and multinational corpora-
tions, which she explored in Shut Down, for example, is re-examined in
Houdaille (1981), a film dealing with the closure of an American-owned factory
in Oshawa, Ontario, and focusing on the failure of the corporate economy from
the workers point of view. In 1983, she founded Skyworks Charitable Founda-
tion, a network model of independent documentary filmmaking.
Perhaps, in practice, the operation of Skyworks may even constitute a lar-
ger network than Barthes conception of text because, notwithstanding its em-
phasis on the limitations of authorial intention and the significance of the
interpreters contribution, Barthes Text stays within the subsystem of the
hermeneutic network (author-work-audience). In Skyworks, the text is part of
a social process; it participates not just through passive consumption taking
place, but through active community coordination taking effect. Usually, inde-
pendent documentary filmmakers devote most of their time to fundraising;
their remaining time is devoted to research and production. Once the film is
made, it passes into the hands of its distributor or broadcaster. This model of
production poses many problems, especially in the case of television program-
ming, given that the commercial aspects of distribution almost always over-
shadow the production, from the selection of topic to the choice of aesthetics.
Laura Sky is known for her work with Peter Watkins, who criticizes the rapid-
fire TV style based on the belief that viewers short attention spans need a jolt

every few seconds.9 She taught with Watkins at the Swedish Film Institute for
over ten years while experimenting with alternative documentary film styles.
But the aesthetic issue is secondary to Skys passionate desire to reach her audi-
ence. As of 2005, Skyworks had produced nineteen feature documentaries; many
of them have been televised on such channels as CBC Newsworld, TV Ontario,
Bravo!, Knowledge Network, and Vision TV. Sky has also won numerous na-
tional and international awards at film festivals. For many years, however, she
has refrained from entering competitions because she no longer believes in the
process. Instead, she believes that filmmaking and screening are community
events: she makes films to inform and to engage community-based social change.
She prefers touring with her films so as to reach different communities. She
applies for grants or connects with relevant agencies and activist groups so that
she can facilitate screening and panel discussions. In a sense, this model of
distribution expands the filmmakers authorial control far beyond production.
This amplified control is administered in resistance to the broadcasters pro-
gramming structure and marketing strategy so as to return the power of story-
telling to the subjects of the films.
Ideally, Sky tours with the storytellers in her films. Aesthetically, in response,
the filming and editing are shadowed, not by the marketing interests of the
broadcasters, but by the responsibility to the storytellers and the communities
that the films confront. Crisis Call, for example, is a feature-length film about
the misuse of violent means during crisis situations involving the mentally ill.
The film is cut in such a way that it can be watched in sections, which makes it
a flexible tool for skills training and sensitization in police colleges and serv-
ices, mental health facilities, legal education programs, psychiatric survivor
organizations, public forums, and anti-discrimination programs. Instead of
simply showing how the police force mishandles various cases, the film takes a
constructive approach. It includes the story of a policewoman, Andria Cowan,
who, with two other colleagues, shot a homeless man dead during a 1997 alter-
cation on a city transit bus. As Sky explains, the goal of the film is to facilitate
an exchange of ideas and information amongst everyone involved in crisis in-
terventions.10 Cowans story was chosen because she was willing and ready to
share her story publicly. When Crisis Call goes on tour, Cowan accompanies
the crew whenever possible, hoping that she can take leadership in changing
the system. This model of filmmaking is an exemplar, demonstrating that films
do not have to be passive and compromised. Instead, as a medium of expression,

films can orchestrate conversations within communities, and, consequently,
they can function as active ingredients in social and cultural negotiations.
In the postmodern/poststructural atmosphere of academia, such a politi-
cally active production ideology certainly raises suspicions. In the academic
context, reality and truth are often associated with oppressive power and
mass delusion. As Carl R. Plantinga observes in Rhetoric and Representation in
Nonfiction Film, In film and literary studies, notions such as Truth, Objectiv-
ity, and Fairness are often thought to be bankrupt. Indeed, in todays academic
environment, speaking of truth or impartiality sounds archaic. It is important
to be critical of truth claims so that our culture can keep up a self-critical or
even self-correcting system (at least in its intellectual consciousness). Plantinga
explains, One can see the suspicion of Truth in worthy sentiments in a
desire to respect the belief systems of other cultures, ethnicities, and individu-
als, and to combat the imperialism that has characterized much of Western
history. In addition, when we recognize the power of discourse to create social
reality, and to influence interaction with our complex world, one can see how
claims for truth might actually become strategies in a struggle for power. In
practice, however, the critical gaze cannot always combat imperialism or any
other form of ideological hegemony if it recognizes stories only as lies. How
can one respect others thoughts and cultures while disregarding any statement
that elaborates a lived experience? Plantinga continues, If there exist no truths
and no facts of the matter, then we have no basis for disputing the claims or
perspective of any nonfiction film, and no basis for choosing one moral or polit-
ical representation over another, aside from the sheer narcissistic faith that our
beliefs or methods are superior.11 Plantinga describes this postmodern critical
dilemma as a discrepancy between pragmatics and the limits of theory; Joseph
Gold calls it, more boldly, the theory vacuum.12 In feminist film theory, as I
observe, the theory vacuum shows in the lack of engagement of womens films.
If anything, our present academic environment is saturated with theories.
So what is the theory vacuum? To understand the vacuum, I think we need to
distinguish between two kinds of theory. In film and literary studies, the inter-
disciplinary theories that we employ are, by and large, critical theories: each in
its own way supports a specific critical paradigm used in textual examination.
Usually, these paradigms are politically motivated, and so the theory is often
about the construction of discourse and power: feminism against patriarchy,
socialism against capitalism, gay and lesbian against homophobia, and so on.

The thrill of the postmodern theory of metafiction lies in its rejection of real-
ism in fiction, and thus it joins the critics in the deconstruction of such con-
cepts as Truth, History, and Objectivity. Critics praise historiographic
metafiction because it self-reflexively deconstructs the process of narrative con-
struction; by doing so, it raises the recognition of our contemporary world as a
construct a web of interlocking semiotic systems. Language, in this regard, is
a self-contained system which generates its own meanings. Then, ironically,
the conversation ends in silence and inaction because, under the scope of the
intellectual spectator, any attempt to make language relevant to life seems con-
servative and logocentric. The deconstruction of truth is mistaken as a funda-
mental Truth. The critique that representation merely serves the establishment
of power does not go far from the Platonic censure of poetry as a lie. The frus-
tration of postmodern metafiction is in the vacuum that the critical activity
leaves behind.
The other kind of theory not exclusive to the first is what we tradition-
ally call poetics; that is, ideas about what literature (in any form and medium)
is and how it works. In film studies, we tend to think of this kind of theory as
aesthetics, but I think it is more than that because storytelling is also part of
cinema. Film theory should have a component of poetics.
Over the course of this book, therefore, I have postulated that another kind
of metafiction is exhibited in womens narrative cinema one that explores the
constructive potential of storytelling. Fashioning my argument along the lines
of systems narrative therapy, I suggest that critical consciousness is only a be-
ginning, that constructive story making should follow. However, since the hu-
man brain encodes experiences in narrative form for modelling and processing
its relations with the world, the traditional division between fiction and non-
fiction does not apply. All stories imagined or lived are fictionalizations.
They do not merely re-present a single proper physical Reality, they also frame
and reframe, organize and reorganize, our perceptions of life. They sometimes
express a need to articulate or change the circumstances of reality. In stories
there are truths that lie ahead. Film is a great medium for reframing and re-
organizing: while framing is a large part of cinematography, montage is all about
organizing relations from shot to shot.
With my focus on stories, the film examples in my previous chapters are
chosen from what is traditionally called narrative or fictional cinema. This
background creates an interesting scope for investigating Laura Skys docu-
mentary filmmaking. Documentaries are usually identified as non-fiction

because they are not imaginary narratives. The categorization is seriously prob-
lematic in light of complex systems theory. We certainly expect a documentary
to have its subject based on reality. But the film must narrate, and in narrat-
ing, it has to set up its framework and edit its story: it fictionalizes. As a result,
there is no such thing in filmmaking as non-fiction.
For Sky, storytelling is vital. There is a commitment to the truth, and this
truth is peoples stories from the heart.13 Perhaps her 1999 feature documen-
tary How Can We Love You? can illustrate this point. If we define metafiction
literally as fiction about fiction, How Can We Love You? is a work of metafiction
because it illustrates how people fictionalize in order to express their truth. The
film follows a community theatre group touring Canada and the United States
as it dramatizes issues concerning women living with metastatic breast cancer.
Its subtitle is Behind the Scenes with the Play Handle with Care? Since most of
the cast members in the play have the disease themselves, the documentary
presents the stories of the storytellers.
In How Can We Love You? Sky takes every opportunity to play with the
rhetorical devices of documentary filmmaking to emphasize storytelling on a
personal level. The issue of voice is significant in the film. Traditional docu-
mentaries use third-person voice-over commentaries as a rhetorical device to
accentuate authority. This technique has been criticized by rebel filmmakers
since the sixties. In cinma-vrit, or direct cinema, for instance, voice-over is
avoided whenever possible, so that the audience is left alone to interpret the
images being projected onscreen. Sky is not unfamiliar with the cinma-vrit
movement: her early work uses the NFBs expository pan-Canadian techniques
to show life as it is lived. The NFB house style exhibits the basic realist qualities
of cinma-vrit. Later, she furthered the cinma-vrit experiment with a
greater degree of self-reflexivity, in which, as Peter Steven notes, interviews are
cut uninterrupted, allowing the presence of the director and the camera to
appear onscreen and act as a catalyst.14 Anti-realist critics are generally pleased
to see self-reflexive images: for example, in Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig and Ro-
man Kroitor, 1960), the shot in which the cameraman is reflected in a mirror as
he films Paul Anka in his dressing room is praised as a defining moment in
radical documentary filmmaking. In reflexivity, critics see an ideological crack
that crumbles the illusive objectivity of mainstream cinema. Nevertheless, such
reflexive techniques have been normalized. Considering the adaptation of
cinma-vrit techniques in reality TV, we can easily see that self-reflexive strat-
egies alone are no longer challenging: we are so desensitized to the nuances of

the self-reflexive camera that the reminder of its presence no longer has much
subversive effect.
In How Can We Love You? the basic self-reflexive strategies are still en-
gaged, though with more subtlety: hand-held camera shots, jump-cuts, inter-
viewers presence. At one point, Sky even appears in a picture with the cast
members of the play. These techniques are implicit in the film to undercut the
directors objective stance. But the resistance to authorial power goes one step
further. In its outset, the film surprisingly employs a voice-over narrative to
introduce the play and its cast members. The narrator presents two impor-
tant cast members, Mary Sue Douglas and Jan Livingston (whom the camera
will follow), and then introduces the play itself: The play was based on inter-
views with women who have metastatic breast cancer and on a series of inter-
views with cancer specialists. Of course, Mary Sue and Jans experiences wove
through the entire thing as well. Many of the words in the play are exactly
what women and doctors said in our interviews with them. But what the women
said was just too important for the research to sit on a shelf gathering dust. As
it turns out, the voice-over narrative is a personal story of another cast mem-
ber in the play. My name is Chris Sending, she says. We created this play
that toured across the country and we figure weve performed this play about
two hundred times. And, you know, the feeling of connecting with an audi-
ence was just an extraordinary thing, the feeling of people with you and you
really had a sense of it really making a difference. Chris is an inside-outsider:
she does not have breast cancer, but she became involved in the research and
the play because she works with women who struggle with the disease. By
letting her take over the narration, Sky demonstrates in the beginning of the
film that the subject is not just being observed; instead, the subject plays an
active role as part of the filmmaking crew. Her voice (which at the beginning
speaks of the importance of having a voice) reflects the films respect for the
storyteller.
The metafictional element in How Can We Love You? is, however, not merely
its rhetorical form. The first-person narrator has her story, and the filmmaker
communicates her own metafictional commentary through cinematic language.
Sky intentionally chooses clips that concern storytelling. The way in which the
film crosscuts between interviews with the cast and scenes from the play itself
creates revealing contrasts. In one episode, for instance, Sky asks cast member
Jan Livingston what she would like in a good day. She replies:

I would like a day without cancer. I would like to be able to get up in the morning
and not have it be the first thought because as I roll out and put my feet on the
floor, I have to be careful how I do that. Not have to take those pills. Not have to
look at one breast instead of two. Not have to make that decision, do I wear my
prosthesis or not? Do I really care what people think? I would really just like a day,
then Id want two, then I would want a week, then Id want a year, and it would go
on ... That freedom is gone. That freedom to just live my life is gone and that is
frustrating to me and makes me angry and sad and scared at various times and
various levels.
Without the refinement of poetic language, the narrative works on a personal

level, but is not altogether heart-wrenching. I wonder why she feels she has lost
her freedom just because she knows that she has an incurable disease. Dont we
all have to die some day? We all age, get lumpier and frumpier, and take more
pills. Later, however, when the film shows how she represents herself in the
play to make the same point, the audience can immediately see the difference.
The speech is now fictionalized. Jan becomes Grace:
Hi, my names Grace. At least thats what my friends call me. My mother still has to
call me Gracie. You know, when I was a little girl, I used to spend hours on our
backyard swing. And as I soared back and forth with the wind in my hair, I could
be anyone or anywhere I wanted to be. That swing was my freedom. Now, if I
could choose my ideal day, it would start with a late breakfast, including a visit
from my nieces and nephews where Id get lots of hugs. Lunch, with my brother,
my sisters, and my parents. A front row ticket at a Mandy Patinkon concert with
my best friends at my side. Dinner at my favourite restaurant, with my husband
and my perfectly behaved children, followed by a rich, gooey dessert that wed all
share. At night, Id slip between my fresh, line-dried sheets and into the arms of
my loving husband. Later, Id sleep cradled in his arms, and tonight, tonight, he
wouldnt snore. Tomorrow, theres a family reunion and I hope that my sisters let
my nieces and nephews run into my arms. I hope that the conversation flows
freely. I hope Uncle Lou is there with his dirty jokes, because I could hear our
laughter now. I hope my mother brings her to-die-for chocolate cake and nobody
looks at me strangely when I help myself to a large piece. But if anybody looks at
me with pity in their eyes or looks at my chest before my face, or says, Oh, Grace,
or, God forbid, starts to cry, I hope I can find that backyard swing.

The speech in the interview lacks the imagery and metaphor to materialize her
thoughts, and thus the communication has a shallow depth of field. Polished
in the theatrical performance is the poetic language. Storytelling works like
montage in film; it brings metaphoric images to life. When Jan says that the
freedom to just live her life is gone, the word freedom is ambiguous. When
she compares the concrete images of a carefree child on a backyard swing to a
sick woman under anothers pitying gaze, the desire for freedom to live her life
becomes deep and tangible.
Since poetic language brings life to everyday expressions, the play enlivens
the mechanical language of the research, rescuing it from a shelf gathering dust.
The effectiveness of the performance is shown in the film by crosscutting be-
tween shots of Jan acting and images of her audience, male and female, young
and old, with smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. Nevertheless, as the
film demonstrates, such an effective performance is not unproblematic. What
the cast members say behind the scenes has its metafictional significance. When
they recall their feelings for Mary Sue, who had to leave the group at one point
for treatment, Jan acknowledges her urge to contradict what she tells people in
the play: And that real urge to do all the things that we say in the show not to
do: call too much, be in your face too much, worry about you too much, give
you space. And thats what I said at the airport: we need a signal so that were
not overpowering you, but we want to love you. As Chris Sending realizes in
the same conversation, reality is much more chaotic than the ordered param-
eters in the theatre: Its such a mass of contradictions, though. I mean weve
got this play. Weve got this all worked out. We can tell people how to do this.
Then ... how do we love Mary Sue? Uhhhh, maybe we can ask her?
The mass of contradictions that Chris recognizes is a central concept in
Laura Skys own art of documentary filmmaking. Speaking to a group of stu-
dents about her film My Son the Tattoo Artist, Sky points out, For me, the most
interesting storytelling happens when things are not at all tidy, when there are
very severe and interesting contradictions. To explain, she adds:
Most things in life that are important to us are not neat and tidy. They are in
conflict. In dramas, you can write the story neatly or you can complicate it, but
you always have control over the material. Do you think I knew what would hap-
pen when we had Stephen and his two mothers in the one room at the same time?
I had no idea. Absolutely none. All that I hoped was that Stephen would talk to us.

I had no idea that the central tension between his mothers is a complete contradic-
tion. One mother has given up her child for adoption, which is one of the hardest
things a person can do. Shes in the room with the other mother, who says, I was
so worried that when you saw Stephen, with all his piercings and all his tattoos, I
was so worried that you would think I had failed. But, in fact, Sandra, the biologi-
cal mother, is so grateful to the adoptive mother for having done such a good job.
It is so chaotic, and so important. And, not only that, but they are prepared to
share that with us. Well, isnt that a miracle? Could I have predicted that? Not in a
million years. Documentary takes you to territory you could never predict.15
This understanding of contradictions is compatible with Hlne Cixous de-

scription of the feminine textual body. According to Cixous, the feminine
text is not about closure or definitive resolution; it does not succumb to the
masculine myth of originality and teleology. Instead, it begins with all sides at
once. For this reason, Cixous illustrates, a feminine text cant be predicted,
isnt predictable, isnt knowable and is therefore very disturbing.16 The reality
of Skys documentary filmmaking is the heterogeneity of the feminine text. I
also think, however, that Skys textual practice goes beyond the feminine or
poststructural text of Cixous or Barthes. Although Sky values the concept of
contradictions, she does not stop at merely revealing the disturbing chaos of
unpredictable reality. Ideological disturbance can stimulate story revision; when
people become aware of lifes contradictions and the insufficiency of their ver-
sions of reality, they seek new expressions and story revisions, which in turn
may lead to action and social transformation. Hope lies in the process of revi-
sion; for Sky, therefore, it is important to facilitate community discussions
through the screening of her films: I try to work with models of community-
based leadership, where people had difficulties but they are committed to play-
ing a role as an agent of change.17
A large segment near the end of How Can We Love You? shows various
audience members responding to the play, revealing the emotional power of
theatre. As one faces metastatic cancer, and mortality and loss begin to domi-
nate, the issue of nurturing hope through art meets its ultimate test. The drama
speaks of the ineffable:
Im Hormonal Therapy and I have nothing more to offer here.

Im Radiation and I have nothing more to offer here.

Im Chemotherapy and I have nothing more to offer here.
Im your friend and I am so distressed by what is happening to you that I have
nothing more to offer here.
Im seven years of training, internship, residency, fellowships, medline searches,
research articles, your white coat, and your stethoscope and I have nothing more
to offer here.
Im Hope. Is there still room for me here?
The performance that appears in the documentary was staged for a group of
doctors and health workers. Their response to the question of hope is positive.
A doctor agrees that he has a big struggle in expressing human emotion to
patients; another reveals that the play succeeds in addressing the issues of how
we deal with the pain of it and providing some hope for us as well in the midst
of the sea of all that pain. Chris Sending comments, Sometimes the perform-
ances for doctors and other health workers are just amazing. There are mo-
ments when they let us see how hard their work is and they show that to their
colleagues as well. You would sense then that the play was making a difference
and thats what kept us going. The play is rewarding to the cast members. Part
of the reward comes from being in a position to make changes. Mary Sue en-
joys being an advocate:
I was in a committee meeting with all the doctors from across Ontario who were
breast cancer specialists in different fields and one of them who is head of one of
the cancer centres said, Well, when the patient fails this treatment and hes say-
ing, you know, and the patient fails and then the next treatment and the patient
fails and I sat there and I sat there and I said, Youve seen the play. You cant say
that. And he says, Well, what do I say? I said, The patient doesnt fail it. The
treatment fails. He couldnt get his head around it. And now when I see him, I
remember. He says, I remember. And he does. And Im sure he does when he
sees his patients.
Yet perhaps an even more rewarding aspect of acting is in the establishment of

human connection. Mary Sue remarks, I love the response from the audience.
I love it when people, whether they have metastatic disease or whether they
have other things, say that it made them feel not so alone. It validated what
they were feeling. I really like that because sometimes people feel so alone go-
ing through anything that is miserable. Hope is possible because the play puts

the unspeakable pain and fear into comprehensible words. And with language,
people connect. Surely the health workers are aware of the suffering, but being
able to cope with it is a different matter. Isolation is scarier than death itself.
Through the reminders and revelations of the play, health workers and the
audience in general move from being distanced visitors to the pain of others
to gaining larger and more compassionate perspectives on the frustrations of a
frightening and miserable situation.
However, the most radical metafictional element of How Can We Love You?
does not lie in the film itself. In fact, the metafictional qualities of the film are
less important than the meta-narrative expectation of the production. In-
stead of simply relying on the impact of its stories, the film counts on what is
to happen outside the film in the community-based discussion period. Sky
chooses to tell stories about people who are marginalized. Out of the Chal-
lenge for Change tradition, yet giving more care to the subject, she attempts
to give marginalized people the power of storytelling. To do so, she informs
and involves her participants at a far higher level than do most documentary
directors:
There is always a power differential between the director and the people in the
film. I try to give my power back to the people. The problem is still that the power
is mine to give, but the participants do have the power of giving the story or with-
holding the story. I work with them a lot before the filming so they can determine
what they want to talk about. Then the conversations happen. When we finish
filming, we will work with the material in the editing room and then go back to
the participants before I complete the film. They have the chance to say, You know
what, I dont really want to tell that part of the story. Or I want you to represent
me in a different way. The editing room is a very powerful place. A documentary
director or editor can use the technology to make you invisible and make you say
things that you didnt mean. The more advanced the technology, the more ad-
vanced the possibility for manipulation. So we ask our participants to contribute
through the editing process. I invite them to participate in the decision-making.18
Informed participation is vital because, often times, people who appear in a

Sky film accompany her to its screenings. This inclusion means that the foun-
dation must prepare the participants to confront the audience. For this reason,
the standard ethical protocols used in documentary filmmaking (primarily le-
gal procedures) are insufficient. Standard protocols, similar to the informed

consent used in medicine, state that a filmmaker must supply potential
participants with enough information to reach their own decisions. However,
once participants sign the agreement and complete their interview, the film-
maker has no further obligation to them. Because Sky sees her work as her
participants stories, she goes beyond the standard. She explains:
Informed consent can be illusive. Often people agree to be in my films because

something hard has happened to them and they want to make sure it doesnt hap-
pen to other people. Or they want to help other people who are facing similar
circumstances. In the beginning, this is a transaction between you, the partici-
pant, and me, the director. We will spend time to talk, to get to know each other. Ill
learn where I can go, where I cant go, and then finally the crew arrives, the
cameraperson, the sound, very small crew, and we do our job together. And thats
fine, as long as its a private process. But because you have never gone through the
whole process before, you actually dont know whats going to happen when the
story goes from the private realm to the public realm. You dont know what it is
going to be like when you sit with 500 strangers who are going to hear about an
important part of your life that you were only prepared to share quietly, only theo-
retically realizing that the personal story will go public one day. The process of
becoming public is harder than most people can imagine.19
The storytellers are not the subjects of Skys films; instead, they are cared for as
the hosts of the film. In the NFB Challenge for Change model, film (a product
to be aired) is perceived as the agent of change; in the Skyworks model, the
storytellers are always the centre of attention, whether in actuality during com-
munity screenings or in the minds eye when they appear on television. The
participants are the medium, and their stories inspire others to take leadership
in the process of social transformation.
While commenting on her earlier film about tattoo artists, Sky discloses
that documentary filmmaking must be engaged as a learning experience, so
that the filmmaker learns from her participants: In making My Son the Tattoo
Artist, I learned that tattoos are the images people put on themselves. The tat-
too on a person might signify a person remembering who they are while they
are in perpetual change. Their lives are pretty chaotic and tattooing helps them
through the chaos.20 Like tattoos, films often appear to be static, fixed and
stored as images on a piece of plastic or signals on a disc. But filming and showing

films can be a way of finding change and order out of chaos. Upon this recog-
nition, film text as Roland Barthes or Laura Sky define it is always more
than a work of art. It signifies people in perpetual change. Far from being pas-
sive, the cinema can orchestrate conversations within communities, and, con-
sequently, it can function as an active ingredient in social transformation. The
text is never a self-contained artifact. This chapter is not about Laura Skys
works: it is about Skyworks. As well, this book is not about a few examples of
womens metafictional films: it is about engaging womens cinema in a world
that is changing perceptually and perpetually.

Filling the Theory Vacuum: Marleen Gorris Antonia
9
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on
the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels
like an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the
memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between
man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All
healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further
explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing
for death.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus1
Antonia: Nothing dies forever. Something always remains, from which something
new grows. So life begins, without knowing where it came from or why it exists.
Sarah: But why?
Antonia: Because life wants to live.
Sarah: Isnt there a heaven either?
Antonia: This is the only dance we dance.
Marleen Gorris, Antonia
174
Sometimes, we find ourselves in a difficult position when we engage womens
cinema in the academic environment. A colleague from Womens Studies or-
ganized a screening of Marleen Gorris Antonia (or Antonias Line) for her femi-
nist film club, which consisted mostly of faculty and upper-year students in
Womens Studies. Afterward, she told me that everybody loved the film but
nobody had anything to say. This result contradicted my teaching experience. I
could always count on my first-year students loving Antonia and talking non-
stop about it. Having attended some of my colleagues screenings and admir-
ing the way she taught, I knew that she could lead a good group discussion.
Maybe the film lacks intellectual controversy, I suggested. Her eyes lit up and
she replied, Maybe we just dont have the words for positive feelings. Perhaps
this accounted for the difference between her film club and my first-year classes.
It seems to me that the more we become educated in critical thinking, the more
we feel guilt when we express the joy of experiencing a work of art.
The silence of the film club is consistent with academic writing on Gorris
films. In the academic world, her less mature first film A Question of Silence (1983)
gained much more attention than Antonia (1995). A Question of Silence de-
serves all the attention it receives. Inspired by a news headline about a female
boutique owner being beaten to death by two women, Gorris rewrote the story
into a feminist questioning of womens silence in society. She changed the vic-
tim into a man, and created the character of Janine, a psychiatrist assigned to
evaluate the psychological status of the accused women. At first, the women
refuse to speak, but eventually Janine comes to understand their silence and
sympathizes with them. The legal system, however, expects Janine to proclaim
their insanity. The court assumes that women who kill must be mad. Janine
sees something deeper. The womens apparent insanity is a chosen strategy with
which they react to an insane society. Because of her disagreement with the
court, the same social force that silences the other women now attacks Janine.
The film does not end with Janine winning the argument: instead, at the height
of the prosecutors interrogation of her, other women in the courtroom dem-
onstrate their support for Janine with disruptive, unpredictable laughter. Il-
logical as their actions may seem, laughter is the proper response to a truly
ridiculous situation. Janine states in court that the accused women are sane.
Most prosecuting attorneys, upon being furnished with expert testimony such
as this, would use it to press for a guilty conviction. This prosecutor, however,
challenges her conclusion, arguing by implication that the women are inno-
cent by reason of insanity. Blinded by ideology his belief that women cannot
Marleen Gorris Antonia 175

be violent unless they are crazy he would rather support his belief system
than win his case. Arguing with him is pointless: the question of silence is
silenced.
Gorris film is not anti-feminist for suggesting that women can be violent;
on the contrary, it demonstrates that violence is an outcome of an oppressive
system in which womens social struggles and disobedience are regarded merely
as hysteria. Although Gorris point is obvious, the idea did not prevent some
reviewers from condemning the film. After its successful release, it inflamed a
sex war among the critics. Milton Shulman accused it of being an argument
that would have justified the Nazis exterminating the Jews, Herods slaughter
of babies and the lynching of blacks. John Coleman suggested that the film
tried to trap males in a Catch-22. To hell with it, he wrote. Philip French
commented that the film was the unacceptable face of feminism.2 Feminist
critics all over the world felt the urgency to break the silence. For example,
among the twenty-three chapters in Films for Women, a book designed to bring
together a range of articles on womens new cinema, A Question of Silence is the
only film that garners more than one chapter.
Antonia, in contrast, raises substantially less controversy, less hostility from
male critics, and consequently less feminist discussion. The film is generally
loved, winning many international awards. Critic Lawrence Schubert ranked it
the best film of the year, and other male reviewers were similarly enthusiastic.
Yet, in academia, little has been said of its achievement. Even in the rare excep-
tions, such as Maggie Humms Feminism and Film, in which a full chapter is
devoted to Gorris to exemplify feminist auteurism, Gorris two earlier films are
studied in far greater length. In fact, in the whole Gorris chapter, Humm men-
tions Antonia in only a few lines here and there, a treatment that is neither
coherent nor substantial enough for me to summarize her view beyond re-
marking that she understands the film to be a comic vision.3 Sometimes it
seems that Antonia has been punished for winning Best Foreign Film at the
1995 Academy Awards. Once again, just as in the seventies, feminist aesthetics
has run ahead of the theorists: through Antonia, Gorris moved from cynicism
to constructivism, leaving the critics behind in their questions of silence.
Antonia is more mature than Gorris earlier films in the sense that her
cutting-edge social criticism has turned inward, illuminating positive meta-
phors of power, friendship, and support. Instead of drawing on a dichotomized
male-female conflict, Gorris imagines an alternative social order. Set in a Dutch
village, the film is a family chronicle revolving around a matriarch, Antonia,
176 Filling the Theory Vacuum

her female offspring, and her community. After the Second World War, Antonia
returns to her conservative hometown to raise her family; she remains there
until her death several decades later. Telling the story of five generations of
women in a film of only 102 minutes has required that the characters be types
(but not stereotypes); they are diverse and, most of them, abnormal. The
film opens with a third-person (apparently omniscient) voice-over narrative
that continues throughout only at the end do we learn that the voice belongs
to a character in the story: And I, Sarah, her great-granddaughter would not
leave the deathbed of my beloved great-grandmother because I wanted to be
with her when the miracle of death parted Antonias soul from her formidable
body.
Gorris attempt to imagine positively is a sign of artistic maturity. Her femi-
nism is no longer caught in the binary opposition between male domination
and the struggle against patriarchy. The struggle is not diminished, however: in
Antonias village, her family and their associates still battle against violence,
rape, moral oppression, political ignorance, and social conformity. In A Ques-
tion of Silence, the sexes are divided into two opposing social forces, but here
Antonias line encompasses all kinds of marginalized people who come together
because Antonias open-mindedness provides space for the growth of a hetero-
geneous community. Her matriarchy is socialism without a hierarchical re-
gime. It stands at the peripheral border of feminism and patriarchy, challenging
both to enfold multitudes.
Critical theory is stalemated by Antonia, not merely because the film lacks
clear controversial polarities, but also because it divorces itself intellectually
from a kind of existentialist negativity in contemporary criticism. The laughter
at the end of A Question of Silence makes the film eligible for the cinema of the
absurd: patriarchy is mocked, the legal system destabilized, and Janine walks
out of the courtroom seeing the world around her from an alienated perspec-
tive. Janines liberation from the system is an exercise in existential freedom,
the consequence of which is anxiety. Antonia is more humorous, but it is not
absurd. The existentialist view of life is, nevertheless, addressed in the films
allegorical scheme. The character of Crooked Finger represents the awakened
existentialist. He detests bad faith: The tragedy of those who believe in a God
is that faith rules their intellect. He loves Schopenhauer and agrees with
Sophocles tragic revolt against humanitys absurd creation: The best thing of
all is not to be born, not to be, to be nothing; the next best thing is to die. In
Antonia, Crooked Finger is the intellectual mentor of the family. Like some

intellectuals who isolate themselves in the ivory tower of the university, Crooked
Finger hides in his house. Detachment allows him to see the absurdity of the
world. When Antonias family needs his wisdom, they go to him; however, his
solitude is also a form of paralysis rejecting life, not to be, means being
unable to act.
Consequently, the women in Antonias family never take his advice. They
learn from him and agree with him about the world. However, they diverge
from his choice of inaction and his rejection of life. For example, when Antonias
granddaughter considers having an abortion, he says, Have you no pity for
this child? Wouldnt you rather save it from the misery of life? Or at least not
burden yourself with the cold-blooded crime of giving it life. Antonia speaks
out: This is no time for Schopenhauer. This is important. The next sequence
of shots, which are without dialogue, reveal the actions taken against Crooked
Fingers dark existentialism: a close-up of the mother, contemplating; a close-
up of the father, looking mischievous; a shot of the mother smiling; a close-up
of the newly born Sarah.
But the film is not opposed to Crooked Finger as a philosopher. His soli-
tary space plays an important role in the womens intellectual awareness and
freedom. Everyone is, more or less, a prisoner of the world through socialization
and indoctrination. Crooked Finger represents an intellectual activity that is
central to self-awareness; in order to be self-aware, as Hlne Cixous recom-
mends to women writers, one must give up the masquerades engraved on ones
selves: Let yourself go! Let go of everything! Lose everything.4 Crooked Fin-
gers detachment from the rotten world gives Antonias family members the
intellectual support to exercise their freedom so that they are not afraid of so-
cietys gaze. However, they do not take his path. Existentialism is a reaction
against rationalism and a rejection of indoctrination. It is sentimentally Ro-
mantic, intellectually nihilist, and socially rebellious. It departs from Marxism
to focus on the individual (though some existentialist thinkers such as Jean-
Paul Sartre returned to socialism after their assertion of individual freedom). It
distrusts any social values and mores imposed on people, suggesting that the
world has no inherent meaning given by God. The universe is absurd because
the alienated man is destined to be free, and this paradoxical freedom is
tragic. When life has no meaning given by the Divine, meaning becomes rela-
tive. Conformity to society, as explained in psychoanalysis, is a kind of uncon-
scious self-deception. Once one realizes that God is a social construct (or,
metaphorically, as Nietzsche states, that God is dead), what remains is a

floating life in a sea of suffering. In existentialism, the arts are vehicles of awak-
ening: the fictional stage defamiliarizes the world and alienates its audience,
making obvious the absurdity of human existence. And the awakened man is
always an outsider.
Existentialism is an unacknowledged cornerstone of contemporary criti-
cal theory. Mixing it with the Marxist theory of ideology, contemporary critics
take on the responsibility of disillusioning the masses. In this mixture, the arts
are regarded as manipulative vehicles: existentialisms social rebellion becomes
the agenda of political correctness, its nihilism annihilates the purpose of the
arts, and its Romantic sentiments fade away. In this intellectual context, femi-
nist film criticism becomes an enterprise of negation, not knowing what to do
with life after women regain the lost garden thus feminist film theory with-
out womens films. Life, for Crooked Finger, is a curse.
For Antonia, life must not drown in negativity. Near the end of the film,
when her great-granddaughter, Sarah, asks her about Crooked Fingers death,
Antonia tells her that nothing dies forever: Life wants to live. This conversa-
tion comes up after Crooked Finger hangs himself. He is trapped in his own
existential paradox; even though he feels free to kill God and himself, he is not
free enough to transcend human suffering. To him, life is an inescapable trag-
edy (so it is better not to be born), and he cannot bring himself to turn the
divine tragedy into human comedy. Antonia is a fairy tale that dismisses the
paradox: if there is no divine meaning, so be it: This is the only dance we
dance. But we do not make meaning individually. We make meaning with
mutual respect for each other, and with Nature. The unbearable lightness of
being can become bearable, or even joyful, when the curse of heaven and hell is
dissolved.
A powerful image of human comedy takes place during the scene of
Antonias alfresco lunch. The scene begins with a shot of the moon, which dis-
solves into a shot of blooming trees. The narration introduces the cycle of na-
ture: The seasons repeated themselves. Time gave birth again and again, and
with complete contentment produced nothing except itself. There is an ex-
treme long shot of Antonias front yard. We look through her gate at a long
table full of people enjoying their lunch. The soundtrack has no dialogue, only
music and peoples laughter. Then Letta, a woman whom Antonia met in the
city, arrives at the gate with her children. Letta! Pregnant again? Antonia greets
her. What numbers this one? Ive nowhere else to go, Letta replies, stand-
ing outside the tall wrought-iron gate, which makes her look imprisoned.

Children of the future, remember that I did my best, says Antonia in invita-
tion. Lettas daughter pushes open the unlocked gate, and they walk into
Antonias world without closing it again.
My appreciation of this scene connects to my personal experience, even
though nothing in Antonia should appear relevant to me. Antonia is Dutch; I
am Chinese. She returns to her rural village after the Second World War; I
moved to a foreign city in northern Ontario at the end of the millennium. She
is a magnanimous and elegant extrovert; I am an introvert incapable of small
talk. Nevertheless, I appreciate every bit of the film: Antonias nonconformist
character makes her an outsider in her native village; her living space rests on
the edge of the villages tolerance, and her community is a gang of misfits. These
misfits do not even fit in among themselves. Some enjoy children; some think
that bringing children into a world of suffering is an act of cruelty. Some are
ultra-intelligent, some retarded, some heterosexual, some lesbian, some pes-
simistic, some optimistic. They also have various interests: farming, teaching,
thinking, writing, painting, music, mathematics, social work.
My parents sent me to a communist primary school in Hong Kong to learn
about serving the people. One day, my teacher asked me to draw five bal-
loons, following the model that she had on the blackboard. I was in grade one
and did not yet understand perspective, so my balloons did not overlap prop-
erly. For not following instructions and for my subsequent rebellions, I was
given detention for the rest of the week and was eventually expelled from the
class. In the end, I was still unable to copy the picture. From that time on, my
art teacher stood for all that I detested in authority. Ironically, she unintention-
ally saved me from the Maoism of the East, as well as from the hegemony of the
popular culture of the West. Perhaps I should thank her for stirring up the
nonconformist sensibility in me that led to my success in university. From her,
I learned through pain that my artistic incompetence could be subversively
creative. Creativity has the power to resist any repressive ideology or dictator-
ship. My frustration with her authority was transformed into a desire to be
different. Of course, I was not able to articulate such a thought so clearly at the
time. But as far as I can remember, my rebellious consciousness came into being
with that catalytic event. When I became a professor, I suddenly realized that I
now held the authoritative position against which I had fought all my life.
I did not want to rely on authority, as my art teacher had. I knew that
academic and artistic freedom was necessary, yet I also knew that anarchy does
not work in a classroom. Ironically, despite my belief in a non-authoritative

classroom, I received a lecture award, a symbol of my mastery of the authorita-
tive voice. Although I had some ideas of how to coordinate a learning environ-
ment in which leadership would not call attention to itself, I imagined what I
wanted only through negating what I did not want. In my mind, the art teacher
was a figure of authoritarianism; my impression of Antonia dissolves that fig-
ure. Antonias multitudes and acceptance is Gorris visualization of the best of
leadership. Neither in reality nor in fiction have I seen a model of leadership
like Antonia.
The lunch scene in Antonia helped me visualize an alternative structure
call it Taoist or feminist. Antonias line is a community unpolluted by the uni-
formity of shopping malls and suburban architecture. It does not try to per-
suade the whole world to follow its path. The Chinese classic Tao Te Ching
suggests that the best leader is one whose people do not know that leadership
exists in their community because its organizing structure allows them to live
out their natural paths. Those who do good deeds for their people and strive
for political legacies are only mediocre. If Antonia is Gorris fantasy of a matri-
archal leader, her political imagination meets the highest standard of Taoism.
When I was fascinated by existentialism in high school, I once read a comment
suggesting that existentialism is a Western form of Taoism. The only difference
is that, though Taoism finds liberation in the absurd, meaningless universe,
existentialism is trapped in its mourning for the loss of the promised land. But
even Taoism is a philosophy of detachment and solitude. Beyond Taoism,
Antonia explores a greater freedom the freedom to connect. Both Taoism and
existentialism are trapped, not by absurdity, but by alienation. Asceticism and
individualism prevent the philosophers, East and West, from dancing lifes only
dance.
Antonias lunch is full of laughter. The laughter is of joy, not of derision,
cynicism, or hysteria (like that in A Question of Silence). Among the guests at
the table is a priest who left the church because he could not resolve the contra-
diction between his love for life and the churchs obsession with death. Antonia
presents a choice that is not existentialist, but a complex systems approach to
meaning making. It is, therefore, important for the film to reveal that the whole
story is Sarahs chronicle. The film is a metafictional illustration of how story-
telling functions as a way of ordering the chaos of the living.5 This organizing
process creates patterns out of confusion and order out of disorder; some call
it meaning making, though this meaning definitely does not mean the sta-
ble and fixed author-intended message of classical hermeneutics. Mary Baird

Carlsen elaborates, Meaning-making ... is about the journey of development
and the creation of self the activity of each person who is both shaping a self
and shaping a coherent, meaningful life. This journey constitutes our life project
... Here are enacted our evolutionary tendencies toward greater order, inter-
relatedness and complexity ... In this process are the movements of personal
knowing that can take a person into more epistemologically powerful (inclu-
sive, viable, integrated) ways of making sense of the world.6 Storytelling is a
process of meaning making. It is transformational because of the temporary
pattern-and-order that it empowers the storyteller to imagine.
Unlike the fixed meaning that contemporary critical theory challenges, this
meaning making refers to a continuous deviation from the norm and a
neverending struggle to encapsulate differences. Decoding a good film is pleas-
urable not because of sexual visualization, as in the voyeuristic-scopophilic look,
but because of the human survival instinct that finds pleasure in making sense
of stories. Indeed, in systems narrative therapy, sickness is a dysfunctional story
that is too fixed to change, too broken to grow, and too numb to feel. In Antonia,
traditional society is portrayed as dysfunctional; it is stuck in its rigidity, un-
able to accommodate differences. When Antonias daughter chooses to bear a
child without marrying the father, the priest of their local church condemns
both her and Antonia in his sermon: The kingdom of the Jews fell through
Jezebel and her cursed daughter. More the shame that these are women! They
should be an example by humility and obedience, and teach their daughters
chastity. Let them repent, lest they be cast into hellfire at the day of judgement.
Later, when Antonias friend Farmer Bas finds that the priest sexually assaulted
a girl in the confessional, he is forced to give a different sermon: Our Lord said
unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
... So we must think of our own transgressions before condemning others. Let
us also remember that salvation came into the world through a woman. No
one seeks her protection or help in vain. Nor should we forget the lesson read
on the feast day of a holy woman: she openeth her mouth with wisdom; in her
tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household,
and eateth not the bread of idleness. This episode is a powerful illustration of
how the sacred texts can be manipulated: words of repression and words of
liberation can both be found in the Holy Bible. The Word of God has been
used by political and religious leaders to rule; as well, the same book can be
used as a life resource in time of human suffering and social revolution. Antonia

saves the community from its rigidity by challenging the ordained interpreter
of the sacred texts.
Antonia is a liberating feminist film about what happens when one takes
on the power of storytelling. The ambiguous distinction between a work of art
and a piece of collective delusion lies in the practice of poetics, both in writing
and interpretation: artistic consciousness is an intermix of creation and per-
ception. As William Wordsworth elucidates, it is the mighty world / Of eye,
and ear, both that they half-create, / And what perceive.7 Individual or col-
laborative, art is a way of creative seeing, on the makers part as well as from the
viewers participation. In an essentialist, psychoanalytic line of critical think-
ing, the aspect of half-create is often thought of as distortion and the pleas-
ure of perceiving as voyeurism. Nevertheless, it is the creative aspect of
perceiving that keeps the mind from the pathology of perversion; it is the stimu-
lation of imagination through art that diversifies the perception of cultural
and social complexity. As Teresa de Lauretis argues, active reception that the
audience is a films primary concern and that it has to be conceived as a hetero-
geneous community participating in cultural discourse needs to be the new
focus of feminist filmmaking and spectatorship.8 It is, therefore, vital that Gorris
adds the following line before the films credits come up: And as this long
chronicle reaches its conclusion, nothing has come to an end. The film text is
only part of the story; the rest must be completed by the audience. If the half-
create portion is lost, the imagination will become increasingly inactive. As
complex systems theory suggests, the fading of the imagination is a serious
human crisis. Joseph Gold explains, What the human imagination would nor-
mally do is to assemble and connect images, words, representations of objects
in the not-I world, colours, textures, ideas, all the data material of brain and
sensory processing and mould them into some kind of composite story or pic-
ture. The consequence of losing this creative mental ability is a growing sense
of alienation, of displacement, and of disempowerment, not merely at a polit-
ical level, where it is obvious, but at a neural level where it is more profound
and less obvious.9
The pleasure of story is often attached to literature, which is why I have
been writing about language, metaphor, and story. To give meaning to a word,
a reader accesses the emotional and intellectual experiences that he or she at-
taches to it. The word tree, for example, is an abstract symbol. When you read
it here, what comes to your mind as a tree must differ from what I imagined

when I typed the word. Were I to include a photograph of a tree, you would see
nothing other than the tree I meant to show you. Thus, one could argue that
cinematography communicates more directly than does print. But viewing a
movie also involves less work than reading a book, and it gives less freedom for
imagination at reception. What if, for instance, what I have in mind is the tree
under which I spent the solitude of my childhood? Now you may see a different
tree. You may recall some melancholic moments of your life. The tree and the
memory are yours, not mine. Symbolic language is effective because I can use it
to communicate my thoughts through your memory. You do not decode the
meaning of my words: you recollect your memory to visualize your connection
to my words. The words are mine; the visualization is yours. You reconstruct
your memory through reading or listening.
Film is already visualized; therefore, viewing it does not engage as much
brain activity (at least this is true of mainstream cinema). Identification with
visual representation is customarily an exercise of recognition. Unless a film-
maker chooses complex subject matter and/or resists reductive interpretation
through abstraction and defamiliarization, images do not demand the same
kind of active reading that symbolic languages do. People are habitually lazy
when they encounter visual art. Ah, its a tree, and they leave it at that. Essen-
tially, this passivity of viewing is why a viewer has lower intellectual status
than a reader, even though we live in a predominantly visual culture. For
complex communication, precision and objectification are limitations. Not
accidentally, many filmmakers try hard to make films function like literature
(Agns Vardas theory of cincriture is an obvious example). Literature has the
formal advantage of involving readers in a relatively holistic experience of in-
tellectual cognition and emotional recognition.
Film is not inferior to literature, however. We live in a visual culture and
cannot ignore that film is our dominant medium for storytelling. Besides, the
less demanding nature of viewing film is not always a shortcoming. In 2003,
I attended a conference of the Association for Bibliotherapy and Applied Lit-
erature.10 The psychiatrist Robert Oxlade presented a paper discussing Barbara
Sweetes Perfect Pie as a resource for the treatment of post-traumatic stress dis-
order. Since Judith Thompson also presented at the same conference, I asked
Oxlade whether he would consider using her script as a therapeutic tool. He
laughed, replying, Most of the people I work with are not in the condition to
read a play.

Although the visual aesthetic field has its limits, it also has strengths. The
old saying does not lie: A picture is worth a thousand words. The film me-
dium can function more effectively than literature as an agent of change be-
cause visual representation is more intrusive. As the following anecdotes reveal,
it does not rely on viewer recollections to communicate. One day, as I listened
to CBC radio, I heard a woman tell the story of her childhood in an isolated
community in Canadas Far North before the age of television. She said that
her English teacher presented the same materials over and over until her class
memorized the words. There are merits to the memorization method that we
seem to have lost in todays education, she commented. The children learned
to make sense of a lot of poetry by making words a vivid part of their memory.
But sometimes they could not connect with what they were memorizing. One
such poem, she recalled, was Wordsworths Daffodils:
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze ...
I gazed and gazed but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.11
As a child who grew up in a land of snow and tundra, she could not visualize
Wordsworths poetic landscape. Before I saw snow, I learned Chinese poetry
about winter in northern China. Nonetheless, comprehending snow was not
very difficult for me because my family had an old-fashioned refrigerator with
an icy freezer. In Cantonese, we called it the snow cabinet because the white
ice that coated it resembled snow. I also knew what snow looked like from film
and television. When I first experienced real snow in Canada at the age of twenty-
one, I was excited but not surprised. I thought to myself, Its just like the mov-
ies. The high art of poetry relies on imagery to unfold ideas that cannot be
seen or have never been seen. Onscreen, every frame is imagery.
Humankind is a story species; to be healthy, a human society needs art-
ists to substantiate new possibilities in images and words. The wisdom in wom-
ens cinema has motivated me to write this book because of the fresh perspectives
that it projects. Womens cinema does not generate only a subversive drive that

we need if we are to survive cultural assimilation, but also fresh, relevant sto-
ries and images to rehabilitate the self that loses itself. I hope that one day we
can truly dissolve womens cinema as a category. But we are far from that
postfeminist world. For now, we shall celebrate womens cinema as an emerg-
ing cultural force, both critical and constructive. For now, we shall establish a
theoretical paradigm that encourages us to half-perceive and half-create wom-
ens cinema. The films discussed in this book are invitations to the only dance
that we dance. Dance, both public and private, engages relationships: in danc-
ing, people respond to each other, coordinate with each other, touch each other,
feel each other. Dance is a metaphor for sharing lives and stories in the com-
plex systematic web of human connectedness.

Notes
Chapter 1: Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

1 Lu Da-Zhi, A History of Chinese Literary Development (1941; rev. ed., Shanghai: Shanghai Historical
Books, 1957), 337, my translation from Chinese.
2 Trendy little neologism is Deborah L. Siegels description. See her Reading between the Waves: Femi-
nist Historiography in a Postfeminist Moment, in Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Femi-
nism, ed. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 75.
3 As Susanne Luhmann describes, Three decades after its inauguration, womens studies as a field of
academic study and research appears deeply troubled. For details, see Ann Braithwaite, Susan Heald,
Susanne Luhmann, and Sharon Rosenberg, Troubling Womens Studies: Pasts, Presents and Possibilities
(Toronto: Sumach Press, 2004), 149.
4 Liesbet van Zoonen, Feminist Media Studies (London: Sage, 1994), 3.
5 Forever Pregnant, Washington Post, 16 May 2006, HE01.
6 Robin Wood observes this trend in Papering the Cracks: Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era, in
Movies and Mass Culture, ed. John Belton, 203-28 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996),
esp. 213-15. As exemplified in Mulan, the ideology continues beyond the Reagan era.
7 Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Postfeminist Age (New York:
Routledge, 1991), 163.
8 Sue Thornham, ed., Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
9 Critiquing the director as auteur, Kael wrote, A competent commercial director generally does the best
he can with what hes got to work with. Where is the tension? And if you can locate some, what kind of
meaning could you draw out of it except that the directors having a bad time with lousy material or
material he doesnt like? ... Are these critics honestly (and futilely) looking for interior meanings or is
this just some form of intellectual diddling that helps sustain their pride while theyre viewing silly
movies? See Pauline Kael, Circles and Squares, in Film Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Gerald Mast
and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 677.
10 The film is Jennie Livingstons documentary Paris Is Burning.
11 bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (New York: Routledge, 1996), 107.
12 Women and Film 1 (1972), 5-6. The writers of the editorial, Siew-Hwa Beh and Saunie Salyer, actually list
six points, but since the points overlap, I have integrated their ideas in three categories.
13 Based on the statistics summarized in Barbara Koenig Quart, Women Directors: The Emergence of a New
Cinema (New York: Praeger, 1988), 1.
14 As quoted in Lizzie Francke, Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood (London: British Film
Institute, 1994), 55.
15 Hlne Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vin-
cent B. Leitch (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 2039.
16 Hlne Cixous, Castration or Decapitation? in Contemporary Literary Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Robert
Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer, 479-91 (New York: Longman, 1989).
17 The term is employed by Donna Haraway, who identifies a paradigmatic shift in postmodern politics
from White Capital Patriarchy to the Informatics of Domination. See her A Manifesto for the
Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s, in Leitch, The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism, 2281-82.
18 Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989), 15. The essay was originally published in Screen 16, 3 (1975): 6-18. Lacanian
theory states that children acquire language simultaneously with infantile traumas. Through revising
Freud (utilizing the knowledge of Roman Jakobson and Ferdinand de Saussure), Jacques Lacan observes
Notes to pages 4-12 187

that the basic mechanisms of dream distortion, condensation and displacement, are comparable to the
fundamental principles of language, metaphor and metonymy. Condensation is like metaphor (trans-
ference); it is the compression of what is absent or what needs to be repressed into a signifier. Displace-
ment is like metonymy (change of name); it refers to the use of a chain of signifiers to dislocate thoughts.
The unconscious the process of repression and distortion is structured like a language. If we apply
Lacans idea to Sun Tses scenario, we can see Cixous point more clearly. In training the kings wives,
Sun Tse reconstructs what is missing in women: the infantile experience of boys (the fear of losing the
penis) through which male children learn to suppress their femininity. This psychological scenario
namely, the castration complex is unconsciously imprinted on mens mental process and is written in
the military language of the drumbeat. Therefore, in order to make soldiers of the kings wives, Sun Tse
has to establish the castration fear by way of the decapitation threat. Mulveys question is that, if the
masculine symbolic order is so deeply inscribed in the cinematic tradition, how can women fight the
unconscious process of socialization using cinematic language that is itself the tool of conformity?
19 In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey writes, In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,
pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze
projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist
role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual
and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Ibid., 19.
20 Laura Mulvey, Film, Feminism and the Avant-Garde, in Visual and Other Pleasures, 120.
21 Ibid., 121.
22 Christine Gledhill, Pleasurable Negotiations, in Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television, ed.
E.D. Pribram (London: Verso, 1988), 66.
23 Ibid., 67-68.
24 Collected in Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, eds., Formations of Fantasy (London:
Methuen, 1986), 196. I am indebted to Sue Thornhams Feminist Film Theory for introducing me to
Walkerdines essay. Although published two years before Gledhills Pleasurable Negotiations, it ap-
pears after Gledhills piece in Feminist Film Theory. I agree with Thornhams arrangement because
Gledhills argument provides the anthology with an effective transition from textual analysis to recep-
tion theory; thus, I preserve her order of presentation. Thornham, however, has edited out most of
Walkerdines personal narrative, which is, in my view, crucial to properly understanding the theory.
25 Johanna Schneller, Shrieking Shrews? Give Me a Break, Globe and Mail, 2 June 2006, R4.
26 Certain film historians argue that Louis Lumire and Georges Mlis made the first story-film, but
there is no existing record of any commercial release before Alice Guys La fe aux chous.
27 The essay is collected in Feminism, Multiculturalism, and the Media: Global Diversities, ed. Angharad N.
Valdivia, 7-29 (London: Sage, 1995).
28 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Axiomatic, in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (New York:
Routledge, 1993), 247. Originally published in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990), 1-66.
29 Douglas J. Rowe, Dont Call Mimi Leder Action Woman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12 May 1998.
Chapter 2: Howling for Multitudes

1 Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 62.
2 Annette Kuhn, Womens Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (London: Verso, 1982), 12.
3 Valerie Walkerdine, Video Replay: Families, Films, Fantasy, in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin,
James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (London: Methuen, 1986), 188.
4 Ibid., 169.
5 Ibid., 167-68.
6 Huyssen, After the Great Divide.
188 Notes to pages 12-24

7 Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1989), 177.
8 Walkerdine, Video Replay, 196.
9 The first publication of Video Replay includes a five-page annotated transcription of the sequence,
which records what Walkerdine observed in the family when the video was played. Walkerdine, Video
Replay, 174-79.
10 Released in 1983 while Walkerdine was writing Video Replay, Valley Girl is a teen romantic comedy, a
commercial breakthrough for Coolidge which led to her big-budget sci-fi Real Genius. Joannes response
to Valley Girl would have provided an interesting follow-up for Walkerdines research had she tracked
Joannes development as far as her rebellious teen years. I followed up my question of how girls of her age
react to films made specifically for them in a study of Sailor Moon, the animated series. See my Imported
Girl Fighters: Ripeness and Leakage in Sailor Moon, in Seven Going on Seventeen: Tween Studies in the
Culture of Girlhood, ed. Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, 294-310 (New York: Peter Lang, 2005).
11 Angela Carter, Introduction, in The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, ed. Angela Carter (London: Virago,
1990), xiv-xv. The book was reprinted in the United States as The Old Wives Fairy Tale Book (New York:
Pantheon, 1990).
12 Ibid., x.
13 Ibid., xvi.
14 Ibid., xiv.
15 Ibid., xviii.
16 Ibid., xx-xxi.
17 Patricia Waugh, Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (London: Methuen, 1984), 3.
18 Nicola Pitchford, Tactical Readings: Feminist Postmodernism in the Novels of Kathy Acker and Angela
Carter (London: Associated University Presses, 2002), 112.
19 Ibid., 113.
20 Alison Lee, Angela Carter (London: Prentice Hall International, 1997), 62.
21 Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (London: Penguin, 1979), 13.
22 Ibid., 91-92.
23 Mark Currie, ed., Metafiction (London: Longman, 1995), 2.
24 Carter, The Virago Book, 227-29.
Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer (New York: Longman, 1989), 482.
26 For further details on this complicated topic, see Stephen Harris, Understanding the Bible, 5th ed. (Moun-
tain View: Mayfield Publishing, 2000), 82-115; Anthony Campbell and Mark OBrien, Sources of the
Pentateuch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); and Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978).
27 Carter, The Virago Book, xxi.
28 Joseph Gold, Read for Your Life (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1990), 39.
29 Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 114.
30 I would like to thank my copy editor, Deborah Kerr, for making this observation.
31 The rewriting also relates to Carters study of sadism. See Lee, Angela Carter, 126.
32 Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 144.
33 Carter, Introduction, in The Virago Book, xviii-xix.
34 Michael Ende, The Neverending Story, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Penguin, 1984), 148.
Chapter 3: The Female Authorial Voice

1 Andrew Sarris, Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962, Film Culture 27 (Winter 1962-63): 1-18. The essay
has been reprinted in many anthologies of film theory, including Film Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed., ed.

Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, 650-65 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). I chose to cite this
edition because Pauline Kaels Circles and Squares, her article on auteurism, follows immediately
after the Sarris piece (pp. 666-79).
2 Sarris, Notes on the Auteur Theory, in Mast and Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism, 663.
3 Pauline Kael, Circles and Squares, in ibid., 673.
4 Sarris, Notes on the Auteur Theory, 660.
5 Franois Truffaut: Evolution of the New Wave: Truffaut in Interview with Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean
Narboni, in Cahiers du Cinma: 1960-1968: New Wave, New Cinema, Re-evaluating Hollywood, ed. Jim
Hillier (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 108.
6 Sarris, Notes on the Auteur Theory, 661.
7 Kael, Circles and Squares, 679.
8 Ibid., 669.
9 Valerie Walkerdine, Video Replay: Families, Films, Fantasy, in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin,
James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (London: Methuen, 1986), 194.
10 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Axiomatic, in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (New York:
11 My narration of the Duras-Resnais collaboration is based on Roy Armes, The Cinema of Alain Resnais
(New York: A.S. Barnes, 1968), 66-87.
12 Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, How History Begets Meaning: Alain Resnais Hiroshima mon amour,
in French Film: Texts and Contexts, ed. Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (London and New York:
13 In LEncyclopdie du cinma (Paris: Bordas, 1980), for instance, Roger Boussinot considers Duras writ-
ing a texte logorrhique and a hindrance to Resnais cinematic freedom (1069).
14 Resnais revealed his process in an interview with Gilbert Guez, Cinmonde, 14 March 1961.
15 As Duras explained in her preface to the published script, Hiroshima mon amour: Scnario et dialogue
(Saint-Amand: Gallimard, 1960), Je livre ce travail ldition dans la dsolation de ne pouvoir le
complter par le compte rendu des conversations presque quotidiennes que nous avions, A. Resnais et
moi, dune part, G. Jarlot et moi, dautre part, A. Resnais, G. Jarlot et moi, dautre part encore. Je nai
jamais pu me passer de leurs conseils, je nai jamais abord un pisode de mon travail sans leur soumettre
celui qui prcdait, couter leurs critiques, la fois exigeantes, lucides et fcondes (19-20).
16 Resnais explained his intent in Un Cinaste stocien: I wanted to create the equivalent of a reading,
to give the spectator as much freedom of imagination as a reader of novels has. Quoted in Lynn A.
Higgins, New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France
(Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 24.
17 Regarding the film, Duras comments, What is shown is surpassed by what is not shown. Why? Because
by only showing one aspect among hundreds of aspects of a single thing, Resnais wanted to be conscious
of his failure in being able to show no more than one one-hundredth. Quoted in Higgins, New Novel,
New Wave, New Politics, 24. Higgins interprets her remark to mean that Resnais attempts to use film as
certain novelists use language: to signify art as a self-conscious absence, even as loss of the world (ibid.).
18 The script is published in French (see note 15 above). My translation is based on the film and the
printed French script. There is also an English translation of the script: Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima
mon amour, trans. Richard Seaver (New York: Grove Press, 1961). However, I do not follow this English
translation because it does not always reflect the poetic rhythm of the film because Seavers is a literal
translation of the printed script.
19 As Resnais recalls in Tu nas rien vu Hiroshima, translated and quoted in Armes, The Cinema of
Alain Resnais, 67. The original was from an interview with Resnais by Le Sminaire du Film et Cinma
on 7 January 1960. See also Tu nas rien vu Hiroshima! Un grand film Hiroshima, mon amour, ed.
Ernest Solvay (Paris: Institut de Sociologie, 1962), 212-13.
20 Duras, Hiroshima mon amour, trans. Richard Seaver, 9.

21 This story is based on historical fact. Nazi soldiers fathered more than 200,000 French offspring. Their
mothers were persecuted, shaved, and paraded through the streets in disgrace. The children still suffer
from discrimination. See Doug Saunders, Children of War, Globe and Mail, 21 May 2005, F3.
23 Higgins, New Novel, New Wave, New Politics, 53.
25 In her script synopsis, Duras describes their affair as an histoire banale, histoire qui arrive chaque jour,
des milliers de fois ... Cette treinte, si banale, si quotidienne, a lieu dans la ville du monde o elle est le
plus difficile HIROSHIMA. (A banal story, a story that happens thousands of times every day ...
Their embrace, so banal, so mundane, happens in the one city of the world where it is hardest to
imagine it: Hiroshima.). Duras, Hiroshima mon amour: Scnario et dialogue, 9.
26 Ibid., 19.
27 Ibid., 10.
28 Kristjana Gunnars, Stranger at the Door: Writers and the Act of Writing (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Uni-
versity Press, 2004), 15.
29 The dialectic system is only the conscious reproduction of the dialectic course (substance) of the
external events of the world. Sergei Eisenstein, A Dialectic Approach to Film Form, in Film Form:
Essays in Film Theory (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949), 45.
Chapter 4: Beyond Freud and Lacan

1 Maggie Humm, Feminism and Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 11.
2 Laura Mulvey, Film, Feminism and the Avant-Garde, in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989), 116.
3 I am referring to the title of E. Ann Kaplans chapter The Avant-garde Theory Film: Three Case Studies
from Britain and the USA, in Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, 142-70
(New York: Methuen, 1983).
4 She attributes most of these techniques to Godard, but some of them were also used by Agns Varda
and other New Wave filmmakers. Kaplan, Women and Film, in ibid., 174.
5 In the study of cinema, perhaps the most elaborate discussion of masquerade is Mary Ann Doane,
Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991).
6 Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays (New York: Penguin, 1982), 159.
7 Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 177.
8 Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1984), 25.
9 Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, 26-27.
10 Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 121. See also Julia Kristeva, Signifying Practice and Means of Pro-
duction, Edinburgh 76 Magazine: Psychoanalysis, Cinema and Avant-Garde. This rare source, pages not
specified in Mulveys text, is a translation of Pratique signifiante et mode deproduction, Tel Quel 60
(Winter 1974): 21-33.
11 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women (Toronto: Vintage Can-
ada, 1990, reprint 1997), 16-17. Since Wolf s argument demonstrates only minimal interest in psychol-
ogy, it does not directly connect to Susan Streitfelds film Female Perversions. Nevertheless, her books
success (the New York Times praised it as one of the most important of the twentieth century) reveals
the cultural significance of the issue in the industrial world. In addition, Louise Kaplans Female Perver-
sions and Streitfelds film seem to make the same connection between global consumerism and the
beauty myth, though, unlike Wolf s book itself, from a psychological perspective. Louise J. Kaplan,
Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
12 My quotation comes from my own transcription of the film. Although this passage is from the book (its
discussion of Emma Bovary, protagonist of Gustave Flauberts Madame Bovary), the film has omitted a

few words. These words make no sense when taken out of context. Kaplan, Female Perversions, 528.
13 Joan Rivire, Womanliness as a Masquerade, in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald,
and Cora Kaplan, 35-61 (London: Methuen, 1986).
14 Ibid., 38.
15 Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 22.
16 Kaplan, Female Perversions, 10.
17 Ibid., 454.
18 Ibid., 453.
19 Ibid., 491.
20 Ibid., 284-320.
21 Louise J. Kaplan, Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 81-82.
23 See Chapter 2.
25 Because the film puts Eve and Ed at the extreme edges of the shot, they may be cropped out of the
picture in a VHS version shown on a 4:3 television screen. Therefore, viewers may not notice their
marginalization in this scene.
26 Ibid., 387.
27 Ibid., 522.
Chapter 5: Cathartic Meta-narrative

1 Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2001), 4-5.
2 This translation by Robin Waterfield is taken from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed.
Vincent Leitch (New York: Norton, 2001), 65. The line can also be translated as the following: Such
men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things. The Republic of
Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 194.
3 Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1996), 6.
4 Ibid., 15 and 26.
5 Ibid., 151.
6 This famous story is told in many introductions to chaos theory, including James Gleick, Chaos (New
York: Viking, 1987). Edward Lorenzs own narration originates from his Chaos in Meteorological Fore-
cast, Journal of Atmospheric Science 20 (1963): 448-64, and The Problem of Deducing the Climate from
the Governing Equations, Tellis 16 (1964): 1-11.
7 Per Bak, How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality (New York: Copernicus, 1996), 60.
8 Ibid., 7.
9 Ibid., 5.
10 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of the Mind (1972; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000), 317.
11 Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (New York: Bantam, 1980), 14. My thanks to Dr.
Joseph Gold for alerting me to this quotation and introducing me to Batesons work. See also Joseph
Gold, The Story Species: Our Life-Literature Connection (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2002), 12-14.
12 Michael P. Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods (New York: Gardner Press, 1984), 272.
13 Alex Argyros, A Blessed Rage for Order: Deconstruction, Evolution, and Chaos (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1991), 316.
14 Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1997).
15 Gold, The Story Species, 163.
16 Ibid., 167.
17 Ibid., 163.
18 Winterson, Art Objects, 65.

19 Gold, The Story Species, 180-81.
20 Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,
in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001),
2281.
21 Ibid., 2299.
22 In her preface to The Wives of Bath (1993), Susan Swan reveals that the story reflects her experience as a
boarder at Torontos Havergal College in the early 1960s. See her A Novels Journey into Film, in The
Wives of Bath (Toronto: Vintage, 2001), v-ix.
23 Robert Nunn, Spatial Metaphor in the Plays of Judith Thompson, Theatre History in Canada 10, 1
(Spring 1989): 4.
24 Swan, Wives of Bath, 217.
25 This point recalls the work of Laura Mulvey: in psychoanalysis she sees that, by acting as the bearer of
the male gaze, the mother is responsible for raising her child into the patriarchal symbolic system. See
Chapter 4 for details.
26 By suggesting that the director must use filmic devices to complement the script, I am by no means
downplaying La Pools film art. On the contrary, one of Pools auteur qualities is demonstrated in her
art of collaboration. Collaboration is not just a division of labour. It is not about everybody doing his or
her job hoping that in the end a coherent piece of art will emerge through some industrial scheme or
divine intervention. Creative collaboration is like improvising music in a jazz quartet. Assembling the
worlds best soloists in a quartet will not create the best ensemble, because soloists are used to standing
in the spotlight, not blending with others. Musicianship requires the players to rise and fall together, to
dialogue with each other; they have non-uniform parts to play, but they play with a uniform heart.
Similarly, a collaborative film crew needs a mutual understanding of the heart of the film. A writer-
director has the advantage of working out the symbolic and metaphoric details on her own, so the
complexity of the collaboration is reduced (not diminished). Some directors avoid working with other
peoples scripts altogether. Deepa Mehta, for one, commented that she would send back any detailed
script she might receive and tell the writer to direct the film personally (Excerpts from a Master Class
with Deepa Mehta, moderated by Sharon McGowan, in Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, ed. Jacqueline
Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul [Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003], 291). Yet, for directors who
work with scriptwriters, great directing sometimes means allowing the script to speak to the heart of
the subject.
27 Thompson uses the description to explain her first play, The Crackwalker (1979). See The Happy Ves-
sel, an interview with Robert Nunn, in Personal Stories by Queens Women Celebrating the Fiftieth Anni-
versary of the Marty Scholarship, ed. Joy Parr (Kingston: Queens Alumnae Association, 1987), 133.
28 Judith Thompson, I Will Tear You to Pieces: The Classroom as Theatre, in How Theatre Educates:
Convergences and Counterpoints with Artists, Scholars and Advocates, ed. Kathleen Gallagher and David
Booth, 25-34 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
29 Thompson, I Will Tear, 25.
30 Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (New York: Signet Classics, 1988), 18.
32 Ibid., 27.
33 Aristotle, Aristotles Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature, trans. Leon Golden
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 11.
34 Ibid., 23.
35 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, in The Critical Tradition, 2nd ed., ed. David Richter (Boston:
Bedford Books, 1998), 691.
36 Swan, Wives of Bath, 234.
37 Swan, A Novels Journey into Film, ix.
39 Aristotle, Aristotles Poetics, trans. Leon Golden, 26.

40 Jay E. Harris, How the Brain Talks to Itself: A Clinical Primer of Psychotherapeutic Neuroscience (New
York: Haworth Press, 1998), 163.
41 Ric Knowles, Reading Judith Thompson, in Judith Thompson: Late 20th Century Plays, 1980-2000 (To-
ronto: Playwrights Canada, 2002), iii.
42 Judith Thompson, Perfect Pie (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 1999), 37.
43 Rhombus Media is a studio that focuses on classical music and has produced such wonderful works as
Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould and The Red Violin.
44 Judith Thompson, e-mail message to author, 9 July 2003.
45 Thompson, Perfect Pie, 91.
46 Ibid., 88.
47 Gregor Campbell, Introduction, in ibid. The three-page introduction is not numbered.
48 Thompson, Perfect Pie, 89.
Chapter 6: Diasporic Imagination and Transcultural Identity

1 Harlene Anderson, Conversation, Language, and Possibilities: A Postmodern Approach to Therapy (New
York: Basic Books, 1997), 231.
2 See, for instance, Gayatri C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1999).
3 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the Gaze,
Locating Subjectivity (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 9.
4 Ibid., 6 and 3.
5 Philip Green, Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood (Amherst: University of Massa-
chusetts Press, 1998), 16-17.
6 This lack of subtitles is actually rare in Hong Kong commercial cinema. However, the unavailability of
Ann Huis work may change in the years to come because, as I understand, the distributors ownership
of some of her older films has expired.
7 See Cynthia Felando, Clara Law, in The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia: Women on the
Other Side of the Camera, ed. Amy L. Unterburger (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1999), 233-34.
8 As Law also commented during this 2001 interview, We were more able to concentrate and relax here
[in Australia]. Because Hong Kong was very stressed and pressured and there were a lot of distractions
all the time. Also, in Hong Kong, films are more like entertainment and I felt that here you had more
space. Kathryn Millard, An Interview with Clara Law, Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May 2001), http://
www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/law.html.
9 Roland Barthes, The New Citron, in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Paladin, 1973), 95.
10 Millard, An Interview with Clara Law.
11 Charles Osborne, Verdi: Requiem, program note to CD titled Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem, Ber-
liner Philharmoniker/Herbert von Karajan (Berlin: Deutsche Grammophon, 1972), 6.
12 For further explanation, see Therapeutic Intervention and Strategies, in Family Therapy: A Systemic
Integration, by Dorothy Becvar and Raphael Becvar, 85-106 (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1988).
13 Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence (Newbury Park, CA: Sage,
1992), 161.
14 Homi Bhabha, Cultures In-Between, in Questions of Cultural Identity, 6th ed., ed. Stuart Hall and Paul
du Gay (London: Sage, 2002), 59.
Chapter 7: Representing Representation

1 Angela McRobbie, Chantal Akerman and Feminist Film-Making, in Women and Film: A Sight and
Sound Reader, ed. Pam Cook and Philip Dodd (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 201.
2 Christine de Pisan, La Querelle de la Rose, in La Querelle de la Rose, ed. Joseph Baird and John Kane
(Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, 1978), 128-30. Collected in
David Richter, ed., The Critical Tradition, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 125-30.

3 Vardas husband, Jacques Demy, signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1967, and the couple stayed
in the United States for three years. Varda had a few near misses in finding film deals of her own. In
1979, she went to America once more to sign a contract with EMI to make Maria and the Naked Man.
The project was abandoned because the studio wanted to cast a star in the leading role.
4 Agns Varda, Varda par Agns (Paris: Cahiers du cinma, 1994), 13, quoted and translated in Alison
Smith, Agns Varda (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 6.
5 As Varda reveals in Cinma 61 60 (October 1961): 8, quoted and translated in Smith, Agns Varda, 6.
6 Roy Armes, The Cinema of Alain Resnais (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1968), 48.
7 Barbara Koenig Quart, Women Directors: The Emergence of a New Cinema (New York: Praeger, 1988),
145.
8 Ibid., 144.
9 Ibid., 136.
10 Smith, Agns Varda, 115.
11 Ibid., 118. Here, Smith uses Edgar Morins theory that fans relate to stars in two ways: projection-
identification and identification with an alter ego.
12 I owe this observation to a viewer at a screening of the film who spoke out loud during the scene: This
is bad casting; she obviously doesnt look like she wants to be free. I would argue that it is not bad
casting or acting: it is good directing.
13 Smith, Agns Varda, 120.
14 Ibid., 118-19.
15 Jean-Pierres response prefigures his later revulsion regarding Mona. As Susan Hayward argues, his
relationship with Mona represents a kind of male gaze that involves the castration complex: to him,
Mona is a Medusa figure whose look is frightening. See Susan Hayward, Beyond the Gaze and into
femme-filmcriture: Agns Vardas Sans toit ni loi, in French Film: Texts and Contexts, ed. Susan Hay-
ward and Ginette Vincendeau (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 286-87.
16 Ibid., 285.
17 Smith, Agns Varda, 127-28.
18 Varda, Varda par Agns, 14, as cited in ibid., 6.
19 Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1996), 106.
Chapter 8: FROM TEXT TO CONTEXT

1 Jackie Stacey, Feminine Fascinations: Forms of Identification in Star-Audience Relations, in Feminist
Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 199.
2 Ibid., 197.
3 Roland Barthes, From Work to Text, trans. Stephen Heath, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 1473.
4 Post-serial music is a convenient example because it makes the process of music-making explicit. None-
theless, the freedom that Pierre Boulez gives his musicians and audience is not even comparable to that
of an impromptu played by a jazz quartet. Conversely, even the most author-dictated music cannot be
performed without the practical collaboration of its interpreters. For example, Beethoven, famous for
his large ego, always included one or two sections of cadenza in his concertos, allowing the soloists to
improvise.
5 Barthes, From Work to Text, 1475.
6 Joseph Gold, The Story Species: Our Life-Literature Connection (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside,
2002), 288.
7 One of the most reliable accounts of this power shift can be found in David Jones, Movies and Memo-
randa: An Interpretive History of the National Film Board of Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Film Institute,
1981).
8 Interview with Laura Sky, collected in Peter Steven, Brink of Reality: New Canadian Documentary Film
and Video (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1993), 217.

9 Quoted in Steven, Brink of Reality, 215.
10 The Laura Sky quotation comes from my transcript of a master class that Sky gave at Laurentian Uni-
versity on 11 March 2003. Susbsequent references to this source will be noted as Sky, master transcript
by author.
11 Carl R. Plantinga, Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 219.
12 Gold used this term in Reading Brain and Theory Vacuum (paper presented at the Congress of Hu-
manities and Social Sciences to the Association for Canadian College and University Teachers of Eng-
lish [ACCUTE], Edmonton, 28 May 2000). A revised version of his paper appears as an appendix in
Gold, The Story Species, 282-92.
13 Sky herself used the phrase stories from the heart in a speech which she gave during a 4 June 2004
graduation ceremony at Laurentian University, when she received her honorary doctorate.
14 Steven, Brink of Reality, 29.
15 Sky, master transcript by author.
Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer (New York: Longman, 1989), 489.
17 Sky, master transcript by author.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
Chapter 9: Filling the Theory Vacuum

1 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin OBrien (New York: Vintage Books,
1955), 5.
2 A more detailed summary of the critics reaction to A Question of Silence can be found in Jane Root,
Distributing A Question of Silence A Cautionary Tale, in Films for Women, ed. Charlotte Brunsdon,
213-22 (London: British Film Institute, 1986).
3 Maggie Humm, Feminism and Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 108.
4 Hlne Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays, ed. Deborah Jenson, trans. Sarah Cornell (London:
Harvard University Press, 1991), 40.
5 Much discussion of storytelling as order out of chaos has been generated in psychotherapy and neuro-
science. A good place to start is Mary Baird Carlsen, Metaphor, Meaning-Making, and Metamorpho-
sis, in Constructing Realities: Meaning-Making Perspectives for Psychotherapists, ed. Hugh Rosen and
Kevin Kuehlwein, 337-68 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996).
6 Ibid., 352.
7 William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, from Lyrical Ballad, col-
lected in The Northern Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period (New York: W.W. Norton,
2000), 237.
8 Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 141.
9 Joseph Gold, The Story Species: Our Life-Literature Connection (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside,
2002), 180-81.
10 The conference took place at Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario, on 13 and 14 June 2003.
11 William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud, collected in The Norton Anthology of English Lit-
erature: The Romantic Period, 284.

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202 Bibliography
Index
101 Dalmatians (1996), 14-16 Carlsen, Mary Baird, 181-82, 196n5

Carter, Angela, 27-49, 54, 96; Bloody Chamber,
adaptations of literature, 5 28, 32-34, 36, 40, 45; Company of Wolves,
adolescence, 87-88 32-33, 36-48; constructivist allegory, 33;
Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood (Kaplan), Infernal Desire Machine of Doctor
87 Hoffman, 33; Virago Book of Fairy Tales,
Aeneid (Virgil), 103 28-29, 34-36, 40, 47
After the Great Divide (Huyssen), 22, 24 catharsis, 109-11, 114-15
Akerman, Chantal, 145 Challenge for Change, 160, 171
All Men Are Brothers, 134-35 Cheu, Hoi F., 189n10
allegory, 33 Chicago, Judy, 145
Althusser, Louis, 12 Cixous, Hlne, 10-11, 37, 41, 45, 149, 169, 178,
Anderson, Harlene, 124 188n18
Antigone, 132-33, 138, 142 Clarke, Shirley, 17
Antonia (Gorris, 1995), 174-86 Clo de 5 7 (Varda, 1961), 148
Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare), 111 Cohen, Leonard, 157
Argyros, Alex, 99-100 Coleman, John, 176
Aristotle, 109-11, 114-15 Company of Wolves (Carter/Jordan, 1985), 32-33,
Art Objects (Winterson), 101, 156 36-48
Art of War (Sun Tse), 10-11 complex systems, 97-102, 123, 159-60, 165, 181, 183
Arzner, Dorothy, 17 Confucianism, 1; patriarchal codes of, 4
Asbjornsen, Peter, 30 Coolidge, Martha, 27, 189n10
auteur theory, 52-57 counter-cinema, 71, 78, 102, 125-26, 147
authorship, 50-51 counterpoint, 58-59, 96, 107
avant-garde, 8, 25, 52, 71-72, 88, 102 Crawford, Julia, 16
Crisis Call (Sky, 2003), 162
Bak, Per, 98, 100 Cross, Marcia, 90
Ballad of Mulan, 1-4, 6; revision of, 3, transla- cross-dressing, 3
tion of, 19-20 Crucible (Miller), 109
Barthes, Roland, 51, 62, 130, 161, 173; From Work cultural appropriation, 124
to Text, 159; Mythologies, 130 Currie, Mark, 35
Bateson, Gregory, 99-100
Baudrillard, Jean, 62 de Lauretis, Teresa, 183
Baudry, Jean-Louis, 62 de Pisan, Christine, 145-46
Beauty and the Beast, 34 Deacon, Terrence, 100
Becvar, Dorothy and Raphael, 141 Deep Impact (Leder, 1998), 18
Bemberg, Mara Luisa, 127 Demy, Jacques, 146
Beyond Feminist Aesthetics (Felski), 25-26 Deren, Maya, 71
Bhabha, Homi, 143 Derrida, Jacques, 51
Bigelow, Julian, 99 Desperate Housewives (TV series), 8, 90
Bitch Bosses, 15 diaspora, 124, 129, 137; diasporic identity of non-
Blessed Rage for Order (Argyros), 99 identity, 127; diasporic imagination, 28,
Bloody Chamber (Carter), 28, 32-34, 36, 40, 45 124-26, 143; diasporic multicultural cin-
Bluebeards Castle, 34 ema, 128
Buck, Pearl S., 134 Dido, Queen of Carthage, 103; Dido and Aeneas,
Burstow, Bonnie, 142 118-19, 122; Didos Lament, 118
Butler, Judith, 8 Disney, 1-8, 22, 28, 96
butterfly effect, 97-98 Dreyer, Carl Theodor: Passion de Jeanne dArc,
107-8
Cahiers du Cinma (journal), 52, 54-55, 147 Duras, Marguerite, 17, 96, 147, 190n17, 191n25;
Campbell, Gregor, 122 Hiroshima mon amour, 57-69; melodrama,
Camus, Albert, 174 67-68; personal vs historical, 67; solitude, 68
203
ecology of the mind, 33, 99, 101, 159-60, 183 Hiroshima mon amour (Duras/Resnais, 1960)
Eisenstein, Sergei, 69, 191n29 57-69
Emporte-moi (Pool, 1998), 107-8 Histories ou contes du temps pass (Perrault), 29
Ende, Michael, 21, 47 Hitchcock, Alfred, 8, 52; Rebecca, 9; Rear Window,
Exile of James Joyce (Cixous), 11 73, Vertigo, 72-73
existentialism, 178-81 hooks, bell, 8-9
Houdaille (Sky, 1981), 161
Faerie Queene (Spenser), 33 How a Husband Weaned His Wife from Fairy
Felski, Rita, 25-26 Tales, 35
Female Perversions (Streitfeld, 1996), 79-94 How Can We Love You? (Sky, 2001), 165-72
feminine aesthetics, 11, 13, 25-26, 69-70, 144, 176 Hui, Ann, 127
feminine text, 22-23, 30 Humm, Maggie, 70, 176
feminine writing, 11, 13 Hutcheon, Linda, 31-32
feminine-ism, 11 Huyssen, Andreas, 21-22, 24
femininity, 3, 10, 76-78
Feminist Media Studies (van Zoonen), 6 ideology, 5, 12, 26-27, 30, 69, 96, 126, 163, 179, 180
Fichman, Niv, 120 Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 12
Film, Feminism, and the Avant-Garde, 12, 71 Ideology, Gender, and Visual Culture, 126
Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy, 148 Infernal Desire Machine of Doctor Hoffman
Floating Life (Law, 1997), 128 (Carter), 33
folk culture vs pop culture, 27-29, 54 informed consent, 171-72
Fong, Eddie, 129 informed participation, 171-72
Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey, 125
Foucault, Michel, 51 Jacquot de Nantes (Varda, 1993), 146
Fourth Sister of Loi, 4 Jameson, Fredric, 51
Fowles, John, 32-33 Joyce, James, 11, 74
French, Philip, 176 Just Shoot Me (sitcom), 79
French Lieutenants Woman (Fowles), 32-33
Freud, Sigmund, 73, 76, 87-88, 92, 99 Kael, Pauline, 8, 18, 51-57, 187n9
From Work to Text, 159 Kahlo, Frida, 71
fugue, 58 Kaplan, E. Ann, 72
Kaplan, Louise J., 79-80, 84-89, 92-94, 97, 99;
gaze, critical, 163; decolonizing, 125; female, 43, adolescence, 87-88; defining perversion,
71, 152; male, 11-12, 51, 55, 73, 80, 83-84, 87, 84, 87; kleptomania, 85-87; on Freud, 87
152, 193n25; intellectual, 14, 24, 27, 56; Keller, Helen, 108-9, 111, 120
oppositional, 18, 126; voyeuristic, 10-12, kleptomania, 85-87
23-24, 77 Knowles, Ric, 117
gender, 5, 36, 56, 92, 117, 124, 126, 152; discourse, Kristeva, Julia, 10, 13, 51; chora, 76-77
17-18; ideals, 93; identity, 43; politics, 113 Kuhn, Annette, 22
Genesis, 38-39, 51
Gledhill, Christine, 13-14, 16, 51, 188n24 Lacan, Jacques, 12, 72, 87-88, 92, 187n18
globalization, 124-27 Law, Clara, 128-29, 194n8; diasporic
Godard, Jean-Luc, 52, 55, 107-8, 128, 147 multicultural cinema, 128; Floating Life,
Goddess of 1967 (Law, 2000), 129-43 128; Goddess of 1967, 127-43; Reincarnation
Gold, Joseph, 42, 163; Story Species, 100-1, of Golden Lotus, 134-35, 140
160, 183 leap of imagination, 141
Gorris, Marleen: Antonia, 174-86; Question of Leder, Mimi, 18
Silence, 175-77, 181 Lee, Alison, 33, 45, 189n31
Grimm brothers, 28, 30 lesbian cinema, 103
Gunnars, Kristjana, 68 Lewin, Kurt, 99
Guy, Alice, 16, 147 Lion King (Allers and Minkoff, 1994), 26-27
literary intelligence, 120
Haraway, Donna, 51, 101-2, 187n17 Little Red Riding Hood, 31, 34, 36-37, 40, 43, 46
Harris, Jay E., 115 Lonely Boy (Koenig and Kroitor, 1960), 165
Harrison, Joan, 9 Lorenz, Edward, 97-98
Hawks, Howard, 52 Lost and Delirious (Pool, 2001), 102-16, 123
Hayward, Susan, 148, 195n15 Lu, Da-Zhi, 4
Higgins, Lynn, 65, 190nn16-17 Luhmann, Susanne, 187n3
204 Index
Macbeth (Shakespeare), 111-12 177; account of Genesis, 39; codes of Con-
Maidens of Yuen, 4 fucianism, 4
Maldoror, Sarah, 17 Perfect Pie (Thompson), 117-23, 184
Manzoni, Alessandro, 139 Perrault, Charles, 28-30, 36, 46
Marker, Chris, 146 perversion, 84-87, 183; Female Perversions, 79-94
Marx, Karl, 98 Phantom Lady (Siodmak, 1944), 9
masquerade, 43, 72-73, 77-91 Pitchford, Nicola, 32-33
matriarchy, 177 Plantinga, Carl R., 163
May, Elaine, 17 Plato, 76, 192n2; cave analogy (Republic VII),
McLuhan, Marshall, 100 95-97, 110; Republic X, 145
McRobbie, Angela, 145 Poetics (Aristotle), 109-11, 114-15
Mehta, Deepa, 127, 193n26 Poetics of Postmodernism (Hutcheon), 31
Mellen, Joan, 70 Pointe Courte (Varda, 1954), 147
Melrose Place (TV series), 90 Pool, La, 193n26; Emporte-moi, 107-8,
Mpris (Godard, 1963), 55 Mouvements du dsir, 106-7; Lost and
Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, 1941), 71 Delirious, 102-16, 123
metafiction, 31-36, 41, 43, 46-48, 68, 96, 123, pornography, 145
164, 171 postcolonial, 124, 126-27, 143
Miller, Arthur, 109 postfeminist, 2, 6-8, 11, 18, 22, 29, 56, 79, 81, 96,
Minh-ha, Trinh T., 47 157, 186, 187n2
mise en abyme, 65, 155 postmodern, 2, 24, 27-28, 30-32, 36, 45-46, 54, 96,
modernism, 24, 125 98, 101, 131, 137, 164, 187n17
Modleski, Tania, 7, 17 post-serial music, 159, 195n4
Modotti, Tina, 71 poststructural, 10, 12, 36-37, 71, 159
Moe, Jorgen, 30 post-traumatic disorder, 121
Morin, Edgar, 195n11 PowerBook (Winterson), 95
Mouvements du dsir (Pool, 1994), 107 Purcell, Henry, 118
Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), 74
Mulan (Bancroft and Cook, 1998), 1-8, 22, 96 Quart, Barbara Koenig, 9, 148
Mulvey, Laura, 11-12, 23, 51, 70-74, 81, 88, 102, Question of Silence (Gorris, 1983), 175-77, 181
188nn18-19; Riddles of the Sphinx, 12, 70,
73-74, 79, 138 Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954), 73
Mukora, Beatrice Wanjiku, 127 Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), 9
My Son the Tattoo Artist (Sky, 1999), 168-69 reframing, 41-42, 164
Myth of Sisyphus, 174 Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (Law, 1989),
Mythologies (Barthes), 130 134-35, 140
Republic (Plato), 95-97, 110, 145, 192n2
Nair, Mira, 127 Resnais, Alain: Hiroshima mon amour, 57-69;
National Film Board of Canada (NFB), 160 editing Pointe Courte, 147
Ndegocello, MeShell, 107 Rhombus Media, 118, 120, 194n43
negotiations, 49, 188n24; cultural, 13-14, 16, 23, Riddles of the Sphinx (Mulvey/Wollen, 1977), 12,
27, 56; textual, 22-23 70, 73-74, 79, 138
neo-colonialism, 17 Rivire, Joan, 82-83
Neverending Story (Ende), 21, 47 Rocky II (Stallone, 1979), 8, 23-27
New Wave, 52, 54-55, 57, 60, 67, 128, 146 Ropars-Wuilleumier, Marie-Claire, 57
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 178
nine-dot problem, 141 Sanger, Margaret, 145
Nunn, Robert, 104 Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond) (Varda, 1985), 146-56
Sarris, Andrew, 51-57
Obomsawin, Alanis, 127 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 178
Oedipus, 73-74, 132-33, 138-39 Saunders, Doug, 191n21
Old Wives Fairytale Book (a.k.a. The Virago Book Schneller, Johanna, 15
of Fairy Tales) (Carter), 28-29, 34-36, 40, 47 Schubert, Lawrence, 176
Osborne, Charles, 139 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 17, 56
Oxlade, Robert, 118, 120, 184 semiotics, 12-13, 75-77
Sex in the City (sitcom), 8
Passion de Jeanne dArc (Dreyer, 1928), 107-8 Shakespeare, William, 111-14
patriarchy, 2, 5, 7-8, 12, 22, 28, 75-76, 81, 149, 163, Shulman, Milton, 176
Index 205
Shut Down (Sky, 1980), 161 Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi) (Varda, 1985), 146-56
Signifying Practice and Means of Production, Valdivia, Angharad, 17
76 Valley Girl (Coolidge, 1983), 27
Sister Li Po, 4 Varda, Agns, 17, 195n3; cincriture, 155, 184; Clo
Sky, Laura, 160-86; Challenge for Change, 160, de 5 7, 148; Jacquot de Nantes, 146; Pointe
171; Crisis Call, 162; Houdaille, 161; How Courte, 147; Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond),
Can We Love You? 165-72; My Son the Tat- 146-56; LUne chante, lautre pas, 146
too Artist, 168-69; Shut Down, 161 Verdi, Giuseppe: Requiem, 139-40
Smith, Alison, 148, 152 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), 72-73
Snow Child, 34 Video Replay: Families, Films and Fantasy, 14,
socialism, 128, 163, 177-78 23-27, 88
Sontag, Susan, 110-11 Virago Book of Fairy Tales (a.k.a. The Old Wives
Sophocles, 132-33, 139, 177 Fairytale Book) (Carter), 28-29, 34-36, 40, 47
Southern-Northern Dynasty, 1, 3 Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 12
spectatorship, 8, 13, 56, 71-72, 102, 152, 157, 159, 183 Vivre sa vie (Godard, 1962), 107
Spenser, Edmund, 33
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 51, 125 Walkerdine, Valerie, 13-14, 16, 23-27, 31, 51, 56, 88,
Sprinkle, Annie, 145 188n24
Stacey, Jackie, 157 Watkins, Peter, 161-62
Stallone, Sylvester, 8 Waugh, Patricia, 31-32
Statues meurent aussi (Resnais, 1954), 147 Weber, Lois, 17
Steps to an Ecology of the Mind (Bateson), 99 Wertmller, Lina, 17
Story Species (Gold), 100-1, 160, 183 Winterson, Jeanette, 95, 97, 101-2, 123, 156
Stranger at the Door (Gunnars), 68 Wives of Bath (Swan), 105
Streitfeld, Susan, 78-94, 96-97 Wolf, Naomi, 79, 191n11
Sun Tse, 10, 188n18 Wollen, Peter, 12, 71
Swan, Susan, 102, 105, 110, 112 Womanliness as a Masquerade, 82-83
Sweete, Barbara: Perfect Pie, 119-23, 184 womans touch, 18
symbolic order, 11, 29, 45, 73, 75-77, 81-82 woman-text, 37
Symbolic Species (Deacon), 100 Women and Film (American journal), 9-10
systems therapy, 140, 142, 164 Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian
Diaspora (Foster), 125
Tang Dynasty, 1, 3, 6 Womens Pictures (Kuhn), 22-23
Tao Te Ching, 181 Woolf, Virginia, 74
Thompson, Judith, 102-23; the abyss, 106, 108-9; Wordsworth, William, 183, 185
Lost and Delirious, 102-16; Perfect Pie, Wu Zetian (Empress), 6
117-23, 184; spatial metaphor, 104
Thornham, Sue, 8 Yeats, W.B., 30
transgression, 3, 13, 24, 39, 76, 113, 182
Truffaut, Franoise, 52, 54-55, 147 Zoonen, Liesbet van, 6
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), 114
Ulysses (Joyce), 74
LUne chante, lautre pas (Varda, 1976), 146
206 Index

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1 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era:

2 Howling for Multitudes: Angela Carters The Company

3 The Female Authorial Voice: Marguerite Duras

4 Beyond Freud and Lacan: Susan Streitfelds Female

5 Cathartic Meta-narrative: La Pools Lost and

6 Diasporic Imagination and Transcultural Identity:

Contents 7 Representing Representation: Agns Vardas

8 From Text to Context: Metadocumentary

9 Filling the Theory Vacuum: Marleen Gorris

2 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

She fought her way through ten thousand miles,

In all the Chinese versions, Mulan, neither romanticized nor glamorized, is

She came out to greet her companions,

4 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

Feminism nowadays is not easily delineated or defined. As a political project at

6 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

Feminist Film Theory without Women-Made FilmS

8 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

1 Systemic discrimination: women are mostly employed as receptionists, sec-

10 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

12 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

Cruella: How long have you been working for me?

14 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

In the 1961 animated version of 101 Dalmatians, Cruella is Anitas manipu-

16 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

18 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

Tsi-ek, and tsi-ek,

East, she took a horse,

The next day, she departed the Yellow River,

She fought her way through ten thousand miles,

When Father and Mother heard her,

East, I unlock my gate,

She came out to greet her companions,

Translated by Hoi F. Cheu

20 Feminist Film Theory and the Postfeminist Era

Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

Fantasy: Whose Lie Is It Anyway?

22 Howling for Multitudes

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 23

24 Howling for Multitudes

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 25

26 Howling for Multitudes

Cinematic Howling and Narrative Spinning

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 27

28 Howling for Multitudes

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 29

30 Howling for Multitudes

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 31

32 Howling for Multitudes

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 33

34 Howling for Multitudes

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 35

36 Howling for Multitudes

Cixous psychoanalytic critique of Little Red Riding Hood, as told in the

Angela Carters The Company of Wolves 37