Copyright (c) 2011 California Polytechnic State University All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac Recent documents in English en-us Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:32:28 PST 3600 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/90 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/90 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:26:15 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/89 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/89 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:26:10 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/88 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/88 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:26:06 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/87 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/87 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:26:01 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/86 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/86 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:57 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/85 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/85 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:51 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/84 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/84 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:47 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/83 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/83 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:42 PST Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/82 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/82 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:37 PST This article undertakes a close reading of Catherine Breillat’s recent film Une vieille maîtresse (2007) to show why this, her first heritage film, is nevertheless strongly relevant to the gender politics of today. The author argues that Breillat’s cinematic deconstruction of differences between women is designed to undo the polarising effect of patriarchal representations of women as madonnas or whores — media images still prevalent even in these days of mixité and parité. Despite a tendency on the part of some reviewers to take the film’s gender images at face value, the author argues that Breillat’s interest lies not in the predictable (and socially conservative) contrast between fixed polarities, but in the uncertain outcome of a dynamic internal conflict, in the (progressive) possibility of indeterminate gender roles. Through a close examination of the film’s mirror imagery, deconstructive editing and transvestic costumes, the author demonstrates how Breillat both exaggerates and confuses feminine icons in order to highlight them as patriarchal stereotypes and to deconstruct their opposition. The article also draws on paratextual evidence, including the striking poster art used in the film’s advertising campaign as well as the revealing statements made at film festivals by Breillat and her lead actress.

]]> Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/81 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/81 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:33 PST This article critically examines rape scenes in two films of the new extreme cinema, Gaspar No's Irrversible (2002) and Catherine Breillat's A ma sur!/Fat Girl (2001). On the surface, No's disturbing long-take rape scene is clearly designed to foster empathy with the woman's experience and to induce a physical aversion to rape. However, a deeper examination of the scene's ambiguous techniques reveals that they actually work to split the viewer's identification between the rapist and the woman he attacks. One function of this split is to lead the viewer who is presumed to be male along an emotional path from lustful aggression towards empathic understanding. Similarly, the film also provides audiences with a transitional figure a male character who is almost raped as someone with whom they can identify on the way towards identifying with the female. But this male character ultimately serves as a negative example when he moves to take revenge an act which is shown to be an extension of the rape, part of the same masculinist ideology or myth of male inviolability perpetuated through the violation of others. Furthermore, the revenge is revealed as being the male character's denial of his own complicity in the rape and of his own participation in rape culture. The rape scene in Breillat's A ma sur! also induces in the viewer a split identification with the rapist and with the female subjected to attack in this case a young girl who disturbingly seems to acquiesce to the assault. This scene is best understood as a rape fantasy that shows how the girl has internalized oppressive notions of femininity and female sexual response. In this fantasy, it is the girl's own subjectivity that is split between the attacker and herself as willing victim, between the man's sadism and her own feminine desire to be punished. The rape fantasy could thus be seen as an acting out of the same old gender story in which the girl (or the viewer) is forced to make a choice between two polarized or untenable positions: identifying masochistically with the victim or identifying against herself with the sadistic rapist. However, this rape fantasy could also be viewed as a working through of gender stereotypes. It is possible to see the split subject of the rape fantasy not as someone who is torn between masculine sadism and feminine masochism, but instead as someone who simultaneously occupies both positions and therefore neither as someone who occupies an undefined and unconventional space beyond sadomasochism.

]]> Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/80 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/80 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:29 PST This article engages in an in-depth discussion of Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore/Cemetery Man, a 1993 film based on a bestselling novel and on Italy's most popular comic-book series (Dylan Dog). Close analysis reveals that, rather than being just another forgettable splatter movie or ridiculous horror comedy, this zombie thriller is a film of great psychosexual complexity, along the lines of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Ligeia' (1838) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). In Dellamorte Dellamore, horror becomes the vehicle for the female character's struggle with guilt over infidelity to her deceased husband, with fear of phallic sexuality and with masochistic desires linked to the death drive. For the male character, zombies represent his fear of the femme fatale, his haunting by feelings of impotence in relation to older men and his gradual contamination by cynicism and indifference to life as he loses his faith in love and immortality. This article explores the psychological, sexual and religious aspects of love and death in the minds of the film's male and female protagonists.

]]> Douglas Keesey http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/79 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/engl_fac/79 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:25:25 PST Douglas Keesey