THE OEDIPAL MYTH

• (Nicely summarised by Andrew Wilson at http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/myth.htm)

• First told/performed, arguably, 425BC• Moral: man must go in search of truth and accept it; man

can’t escape what the Gods have destined for him• Shortest version: son damaged and rejected by parents;

goes in search of truth/identity: journey of discovery; achieves greatness; makes series of discoveries (esp that he has killed father, married mother); accepts truth/honours parents and the Gods’ law; steps down, accepts fate

THE OEDIPAL COMPLEX OR FANTASY

• Expands on key aspects of the myth and is part of Freud’s interest in the ‘family drama’ (how we’re expected to recognise and accept familial roles)

• Is about psychic and sexual identity, the law of the father, and boys and girls accepting their ‘rightful’ place in the symbolic, patriarchal order (much of Freud’s work is based on the problems this creates)

• See In A Lonely Street (chapter 6) and the super-shorthand version I’ve given you

“A woman’s film is a movie that places at the center of its universe a female who is trying to deal with emotional, social and psychological problems that are specifically connected to the fact that she is a woman.” (Basinger, in Neale, 2000: 189).

WOMEN’S FILMS AND THE ‘CULT OF TRUE WOMANHOOD’

• 19th century alliance (science and govt): family at heart of healthy nation; mothers at heart of family

• Paradigm of respectability, sacrifice and selflessness• Idea that, however unwittingly, seeks to keep intact the

oedipal fantasy• Mid-20th century: fascinated by psychoanalysis – serves to

question Freud’s interpretation of Oedipus, but also lends it credibility

• Kaplan and others argue that the ‘maternal woman’s film’ questions the oedipal fantasy most

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZOpBTJbGwg

STELLA DALLAS (1937)

• Stella Dallas, arguably, does perpetuate cult of true womanhood and male oedipal fantasy

• But feminist critics like it because:• Features mother-daughter relationship• Stella combines her pleasures with good mothering• Stella is virtuous and subject to middle-class oppression• But she plays with the ‘gaze’ and middle-class codes• And refuses to ‘recede gracefully into the background’• Film invites women to recognise the dilemmas of three

women

THE WOMAN’S FILM

• Hollinger’s (2002) sub-categories:Maternal melodramas: Terms of Endearment, The Good Mother,

Stella DallasIndependent woman film: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, An

Unmarried WomanIndependent mother film: Tumbleweeds, Anywhere but HereFemale friendship film: Julia, Girlfriends, Beaches, Steel

Magnolias, Boys on the Side, Moonlight and Valentino, How to Make an American Quilt, Waiting to Exhale, Desperately Seeking Susan, Housekeeping, Mystic Pizza, Now and Then, The Babysitters’ Club, Thelma and Louise, Mi Vida Loca

The reworked costume drama: Little Women, Sense and Sensibility, Clueless, The Portrait of a Lady, Mrs Dalloway, Washington Square

VON TRIER AND THE WOMAN’S FILM

• See Paula Quigley’s (2012) essay on the reading list

• She argues that Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves and The Idiots can all be classed as women’s films

• Her argument about the gift of love as selfless is not far away from Zarzosa’s argument about The Piano (this week’s key reading)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53vr9EiOH7g

• She argues that suffering and masochism are not only about misogyny and passivity

• They are also pushed so far as to be something else in these films – i.e. a form of shock or negation

• And may even be a form of agency

SOME RECENT, NOTABLE FILMS AND DIRECTORS

Laurie Collyer’s Sherrybaby• Collyer’s first feature film (documentary background)• Gyllenhaal arguably perfectly cast and delivers

extraordinary performance• A study in incoherent character psychology• And the way in which her condition is

revealed/explained can be argued both as subtle and too obvious

• Bourgeois family is again the ‘cause’ and the saviour

Andrea Arnold’s Red Road and Fish Tank (and Wasp)• Arnold shows a consistent interest women, mothers and poverty• Though the 3 central characters differ• Red Road is in some ways a familiar story of loss and redemption• Fish Tank is arguably the strongest and most interesting (or multi-

layered) film of the 3• Has 3 strong central performances• And also reworks familiar themes: rite of passage; working-class

chaos; holiday of repair; façade of middle-class respectability; ‘incest’; jealousy over father-figure; female utopia

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg1yMOdjyp0

Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy• A remarkably pared-down film with another strong central

performance• Very strongly focalised on Wendy (see comparable

European and UK films)• But arguably manages to avoid sentimentalism• More than this, it arguably a very understated commentary

on poverty and a US underclass• And one of the bleakest accounts of female self-abnegation• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zmQSv7T8wc

Lucrecia Martel’s The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman• Strong connection to the themes of Almodovar• Very strong use of affective elements and close framing• Less oriented to ensemble than Almodovar• And more oriented to Argentinian history and politics• E.g. in The Headless Woman the ‘disappeared’• And a decaying, corrupt Argentinian society• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj97_tsMsdg

• As well as Michelle Williams and Kelly Reichardt• Keep an eye in Mia Hansen-Love and Greta

Gerwig, together in the forthcoming Eden• Whether either or both neatly fall into the

woman’s film category is debatable• We can discuss this via Father of My Children• And Frances Ha is certainly a woman’s storyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke7owylVeMg

See also David Martin-Jones’ chapter on Scottish female friendship films in Scotland: Global Cinema (2009)• E.g. Women Talking Dirty and Beautiful Creatures• That arguably try and imagine a post-industrial

Scotland from a female perspective• So while the films are recognisably set in Scotland• Iconic settings provide backdrops for the films’ higher

priorities: the emotional, subjective, psychic realisms of women’s lives

• And also Claire Perkins on Nicole Holofcener, and Belinda Smaill on Susanne Bier – both in Camera Obscura 29(1), 2014

• Albeit not all of the films discussed in these essays are women’s films

• Smaill, for instance, is interested primarily in the figure of the ‘male sojourner’ in Bier’s films

• Camera Obscura is one of the best film studies journals• And takes a special interest in feminism, queer studies

and, frequently, melodrama

THE PIANO

• Arguably melodrama par excellence because Ada’s feelings must be communicated by affect

• To some extent transitional questions are raised (white settlers), but the film has been criticised in this respect

• Is especially about gender conflict and the oedipal fantasy

• Cutting finger off equals symbolic castration, attempt to chain her to the oedipal order

• Film represents Stewart’s failed battle to retain control of his ‘property’

• He constantly looks in, with envy, on another world/order

• Ada highly sexed, but by her pre-oedipal terms• Campion plays with ‘the look’ throughout the film• Ada cannot be mastered/known, returns look, is not

subject to the male gaze (?)• Flora stumbles into oedipal order with disastrous results• What status the ending?