Feminism, apparently

Alright, let's talk about vagina. In film. I'd like to preface this by saying that I am by no means a feminist, educated about feminist theory, or even really a huge fan of feminists as they appear to me to exist today; nor am I really very similar to most women and therefor close to being able to understand how they feel about gender roles and all that jazz. So here goes what looks to be pretty much a shot in the dark.

I specifically want to talk about feminism in the context of two films: Catherine Breillat's 'Anatomy of Hell,' and Peggy Ahwesh's 'The Dead Man'. Both of these films purport to be explorations of female sexuality, sans "the usual patriarchal-porn trimmings" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, on The Dead Man). Both are adapted from literary sources (The Dead Man from the short story by Georges Bataille, Anatomy of Hell from Breillat's own novel Pornocracy). And both are very focused around one overwhelming mood: revulsion.

I didn't choose to talk about these movies because they are good, and, in fact, I'm pretty sure Breillat's movie sucked, but they did make me think.

'The Dead Man' was interesting in that it has been heralded as a feminist film, as is evidenced by the above quote, but damn if it isn't absolutely true to the Bataille story. In the story (and the film) a young woman discovers her lover's corpse. She leaves her country home and wanders, naked under a raincoat, out into a storm and engages in a series of acts that convey that she has completely relinquished her self control; the violent situation produces a series of violently unstudied actions. Our heroin, naked, soaking wet and already at the edge of experience enters a bar and things escalate until she is engaged in raunchy public sex acts with the lecherous local yokels; falling down drunk and not above squatting on the bar and urinating on one of it's patrons before being unceremoniously fucked on the floor. Ahwesh's treatment of the subject matter is pretty much verbatim, and I don't think Bataille would be at all displeased with her decision to include acting so bad it made the audience squirm almost as much as the image of one of her actors pulling on his limp dick, or the very long and simply shot sex scene on the floor, with all the drunken grunting and thrusting that that involved. As the original story was written by a man, and the film is, in fact, shockingly true to the tone of the story, it is interesting that it is considered a feminist film. My best guess would be that this is a reflection of the perception that works that are violently confrontational and have female characters that make us uncomfortable are feminist works. Exactly why it is important, to the end of establishing gender equality, that we be made uncomfortable, that we be confronted with a revolting woman, I can't say I know. Needless to say, I thought the dead man was the most awesome movie ever.

The Anatomy of Hell, on the other hand, was deeply flawed and at times obnoxiously preachy. It did, however, leave an impression, as some of the images are burned into my retinas until the end of time, or at least the end of this week. In this confused head trip, a gay man(aging Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi) happens on a woman, in a gay bar, slitting her wrists. They enter into an agreement in which he will be payed to watch her while she sleeps at her isolated country home. What follows is a lot of terrible dialogue about how revolting women are, and how (straight) men want to possess them. The heart of the film, however, is the imagery and without the dialogue obnoxiously spelling out what must have been basically the entirety of 'Pornocracy,' the mood in this film is basically the same as that of 'The Dead Man.' Important differences are that the female character in Anatomy of Hell is in no way rooted in psychological realism, in fact I'm pretty sure that as this was in conception and execution a feminist film, she must necessarily be less specific than that and be representative of women. In addition, she has complete control, and although she's asleep for most of the action (and she's quite a deep sleeper), appears to constantly be doing things to poor Rocco. Rocco does an excellent job of being deeply affected by all this, and calmly drinks the reddened water she prepares for him by infusing it with her used tampon, but I have trouble buying the importance of the shit that he's so deeply affected by. Also of note is that Rocco's big, hard, beautiful cock makes a number of appearances in the film and female anatomy is, well, made revolting. I guess we'd have to ask Breillat how this forwards the feminist agenda. The film is absolutely violently confrontational, although when coupled with the explicit feminist 'men want to own me period blood is OK' dialogue it seems as if we are being asked to feel guilty for thinking the disgusting, confrontational imagery is gross rather than being asked to push ourselves to the limits of experience, perception and understanding as I feel we are in 'The Dead Man.' Overall an interesting idea in that it's violent and confrontational about sex, but, well.

So those are my thoughts on at least this one specific aspect of feminist film.

Anatomy of Hell available through netflix, The Dead Man available for rental(16mm) from the NY film makers coop