Flickorna

Challenging the patriarchal order

Mai Zetterling’s film Flickorna (Mai Zetterling, 1968) was released to a dismissive audience. With its feminist subject and almost satire portrayal of men, it was seen by many as too provocative. It centres on a group of actors putting up the antique play Lysistrate, during which three of the women (Liz, Gunilla and Marianne) undergo a feminist awakening. The play is used as a kind of frame story in the film, and tells the story of a group of women refusing to sleep with their husbands in order to force them to make peace. This is intertwined with subjective and sometimes dreamlike sequences where the three main characters process their thoughts, feelings and memories of their relationships with men.

Seven years after the release of Flickorna Laura Mulvey published her ground breaking, feminist text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, examining how women are portrayed in film. Using psychodynamics as her theoretical framework, she criticises the way that women often are portrayed as passive and men as active in film: while the man becomes the bearer of the look the woman becomes the image, implying who we as spectators are supposed to identify with. Through her lack of a penis the woman represents men’s fear of castration and men therefore need to find ways to undermine her – where one way is to turn the woman into an object of desire. Often times she becomes the victim of voyeurism, that is, she is being watched in secret in a sexual way by a man on screen, and in addition, the viewer.

Applying Mulvey’s theory on Zetterling’s film is interesting since the film is not a traditional Hollywood narrative. While it is fairly clear that the film aims at challenging the patriarchal order, the approach it not clear cut. The three women constitute the biggest part of the film, and are portrayed as complex characters, something we understand through their flashbacks and thoughts, and their discussions with each other. The men, on the other hand, are portrayed as rather one-dimensional; powerful, rational and cold. We never get their perspective. It is easy to dismiss their arrogant style within the frame of the story, which legitimises the women’s battle.

There is a scene where Liz, Marianne and Gunilla are dancing. In this scene, the camera doesn’t primarily focus on the women’s bodies, but on their faces, revealing how they feel rather than how they look. I would not say that this scene can be blamed for voyeurism. The film portrays men ridiculing and patronizing women, but the film itself rather ridicules men, in their one dimensional portrayal. In that sense the men are objectified; they are simplified, almost caricatures. At the same time, neither they are portrayed in a voyeuristic manner – they are not portrayed in such a way that we are supposed to feel sexual pleasure in watching them.

In Lysistrate, the frame story of the film, the women use their sexual desirability to overthrow the patriarchal order. One could argue that by using this story as the key to the women’s feminist awakening, Zetterling reinforces Mulvey’s theory of the woman as the object of desire and the man as driven by desire. At the same time as the film criticises the patriarchal order, it also criticises women’s inability to organise, their incapacity to leave their comfort zone that is a product of the patriarchal order, and according to Larsson, the Swedish welfare system. In the film, Liz tries to start a discussion with the audience after one performance, but none reply. This critique can also be read into the title of the film. Why is it named Flickorna, rather than Kvinnorna (the women)? It implies that the main characters are minors, not completely grown up. It can be read, however, as an expression of the way men see women in the film, rather than it being self-critical. The film can therefore be seen as a settlement with that idea, transforming the main characters from girls to women, from unaware of the injustices in society to strong and independent. Maybe the use of the play could be read in a similar way. Rather than an indication that men are driven by desire and women are not, it can be read as a critique of the men’s patriarchal understanding of women.

Laura Mulvey, ”Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in Critical Vision in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj, (Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2011). Mariah Larsson, ”Modernity, Masculinity and the Swedish Welfare State. Mai Zetterling’s Flickorna”, in Swedish Film: An Introduction and Reader, ed. Mariah Larsson and Anders Marklund (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2010).

Die Hard

Denaturalisation of masculinity in Die Hard

The 1970s saw a rise in a certain type of big-budget family movie – the blockbuster. These films aim at large audiences, often starring famous actors, with stories containing moral dichotomies with heroes and villains. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) and Rocky (John Avildsen, 1977) are early examples, and as for the action genre, Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988) is one of the major ones. Centring around the tight lipped and physically compact character of John McClane, the film recounts the story of how he outsmarts both the LAPD and the FBI in his mission in saving a group of hostages, including his wife, from some organised criminals. Thereby the film expresses ideas of gender, race and class.

McClane’s hyper masculinity can be read as a response to the loosening up of stereotype gender roles, and as an expression of class identity. In her text “Dumb Movies for Dumb People: Masculinity, the Body, and the Voice in Contemporary Action Cinema”, Yvonne Tusker argues that this kind of almost super power masculinity should be understood as performative, with the male body as spectacle, as “a set of aestheticized images to be lovingly dwelt on”.

In the film, we learn that McClane’s wife Molly has a high post in a Japanese company (the company that is attacked), something McClane criticises in the beginning of the film, arguing that she has offered their family life for her own career. Molly McClane could be said to represent the modern career woman, occupying what was long seen as male environments. She is portrayed as a most competent businesswoman, and is in that aspect superior to her husband, who in one scene hits his himself on the head, saying “think, think, think!”, illustrating his character trait as a doer rather than a thinker. But what he fails in his role as a father and a male authority he compensates through his body. Tasker argues that the hyper masculinity found in McClane is an attempt to regain former glory, meaning that McClane is being expressive of a “denaturalization of masculinity”. “Within the narrative […] the position of the father, a position of authority, lacks credibility in various ways. This lack of credibility is part of a denaturalization of masculinity and its relation to power”. McClane reunites with his wife in the end, taking back what he said earlier about her deserting the family. His failure can be understood as a consequence of not adopting to modern gender roles.

The notion of McClane’s character as a doer rather than a thinker is central also to the class aspect of Die Hard. McClane’s persona embody a working class man, signalling hard physical work through his body. Furthermore, his class belonging is shown in the clothes he wears (jeans jacket) and in his interaction with other characters. While the main bad guy (Alan Rickman) symbolises European snobbism in his knowledge of expensive suits etc., McClane only connects with people of his own class: the driver, and the police man he talks to on the police radio. Interestingly, both these characters are black, suggesting that class solidarity trump race division.

Their portrayal is not completely unproblematic, however, seeing as they are both portrayed as rather clumsy, and partly function as comic relief in their clumsiness (especially the driver). This is a typical trait of blockbuster movies, where the characters are not supposed to be complex, especially not the minor ones. One should also not romanticise the movie’s position on race relations – yes, McClane connects with the two black guys rather than some of the white characters, but it also goes without saying that the main character in an 80s blockbuster action movie like Die Hard is a white, heterosexual male. And while it is important to discuss the implications of exaggerated masculinity, as does Tusker in her text, the male action hero is not someone who is simply a passive image (to use Mulvey’s theory framework), but an active part driving the story forward. To the masses John McClane is portrayed as someone to identify with, as well as an object of admiration.

Yvonne Tusker, ”Dumb Movies for Dumb People: Masculinity, the Body, and the Voice in Contemporary Action Cinema”, in Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj (Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2011). Laura Mulvey, ”Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in Critical Vision in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj, (Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2011).

Laurence Anyways

Publicerad i Tidningen Kulturen den 11/5 2016

Laurence Alia är 30 år, har en passionerad flickvän, har vunnit ett skrivarpris och får trånande blickar av tjejerna i sin klass. Vi förstår snart att detta liv är en lögn; en sekund till och Laurences lungor exploderar. Identitet handlar om existensberättigande. Får Laurence finnas till?

Laurence Anyways (2012) skildrar Laurences brokiga väg från man till kvinna i 80- och 90-talets Quebec. Hen möts av förakt, och alla Laurences relationer prövas: den till föräldrarna, den till kollegorna och inte minst, den till flickvännen Fred. Man uppfattar Fred som bipolär och hon kastas mellan viljan att bryta sig loss och att stanna kvar i relationen. Laurence slits itu av en liknande konflikt, men könskorrigeringen målas inte upp som ett val, utan som en fråga om överlevnad. Det framkommer tydligt i slutet när Laurence ser tillbaka på de tio år som gått sen hen kom ut, och menar att hen inte ångrar något, trots de konsekvenser det inneburit.

Temat överlevnad utkristalliseras i filmens betoning på närbilder och blickar. Det sägs att vi blir till i mötet med den andre. Utan detta möte tillintetgörs vi. Jag menar att detta är filmens kärna: blickens dubbeltydighet, spännvidden mellan å ena sidan blicken som stänger ute och å andra sidan den som släpper in. Filmen är en uppvisning i alla blickar som ryms i detta spektrum: blicken som stirrar, blicken som avvaktar, blicken som fryser till, blicken som viker, blicken som blir tvungen att titta upp igen, blicken som uttrycker äckel, förvåning, förvirring och gillande. Alla finns representerade här. Den blick Laurence främst möts av – den betraktande, stirrade – stänger ute genom sitt tysta fördömande, medan Laurences universella längtan i filmen är motsatsen till att bli betraktad, nämligen sedd.

Det krävs skicklighet för att skildra de där exakta muskelrörelserna vi så väl känner till från verkligheten. Den franska impressionisten Jean Epstein hyllade för nästan hundra år sedan vad som då var känt som ”den amerikanska närbilden”: ”Ett huvud dyker plötsligt upp på duken och dramat som nu är ansikte mot ansikte tycks rikta sig till mig personligen, och stegras med utomordentlig intensitet. Jag är trollbunden. Nu är tragedin anatomisk. Dekoren i den femte akten utgörs av ett käkparti som spricker upp i ett leende. Väntan på det ögonblick då 1000 meter intrig löper samman i en muskel som löses upp tillfredsställer mig mer än resten av filmen.” Jag kan inte låta bli att tänka på denna text när jag ser Laurence Anyways.

Närbilden är idag norm och förekommer i de flesta filmer, men Xavier Dolan ger mycket plats åt det anatomiska drama som närbilder är. I den svagare The Danish Girl (2015), som berör ett likartat ämne, skildras huvudpersonens transformation från man till kvinnan genom en stor betoning på det yttre; skor, sminkprocedurer, inövade rörelsemönster. I Laurence Anyways tvingas vi gå i Laurences skor snarare än att se dem. Den inledande sekvensen är ett bra exempel. Här får vi över huvud taget inte se Laurence, istället får vi genom rena närbilder se de personer som Laurence passerar, och deras blickar. Blickarna vänds rakt mot kameran, mot oss, och vi känner oss uttittade. På så sätt lyckas Dolan med konststycket att låta tittaren uppleva sig betraktad samtidigt som vi själva fråntas möjligheten att betrakta.

Över huvud taget är fokus på ögon, blickar eller ansikten kanske filmens främsta visuella verktyg för att betona likheter mellan individer. Isolera någons ögon i en bild och det är svårt att säga något om dennes kön, etnicitet och ålder. Riktigt så nära kommer inte närbilderna i Laurence Anyways, men de har en effekt av att tvinga tittaren konfronteras med den andre. Den andre, som någon som liknar en själv. När Epstein skrev sin text för hundra år sedan ansågs närbilden vara vulgär – kanske just på grund av detta mötande som den framtvingar.

”Är blickar viktiga för dig?” Laurence får frågan av en journalist. Efter år av undvikande och dömande blickar kan man anta att han har ledsnat, och konfronterar nämnda journalist; hon har inte mött hens blick en enda gång under en trettio minuter lång intervju. ”Och för dig?” kontrar Laurence, ”du behöver väl luft för att andas?”