Perverse Protests
Simone de Beauvoir on Pleasure and Danger, Resistance, and Female Violence in Film
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2224825 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lori J Marso (0000-0001-9990-4613, Union College, corresponding author), Lori Marso |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 869-894 |
| Publication date | 2016-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/685479 |
| OpenAlex | W2417345857 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 11 |
This essay engages Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to explore perverse forms of protest depicted in three films: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, David Fincher’s Gone Girl, and Lars von Trier’s two-volume Nymphomaniac. In each film, agency is linked to both sexuality and violence and is depicted as stemming from a range of affects—boredom, melancholy, anxiety, anger, desire, paranoia, revenge, and frustration. Emotions simmer until at some point, they produce violent outbursts, or what might be described as perverse protests. Why should feminists take an interest in these films about women who might easily be dismissed, even condemned, by viewers as crazy, vengeful, and slutty? Presented on screen, these women’s stories do not so much veer between pleasure and danger but rather sit at the apex of their conjunction. Read with Beauvoir, we can see that the films capture the ambiguities, intensities, and pathologies of women’s feelings and forms of protest
Agency (philosophy) · Anger · Anguish · Art · Boredom · Human sexuality · Loneliness · Paranoia · Pleasure · Psychoanalysis · Resistance (ecology) · Romance · Shadow (psychology) · Sociology · Uncanny · Cinema and Media Studies · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre · Social Psychology
Sexuality, Pornography, and Method
Germaine Dulac
Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome
Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema. A Beauvoirian Perspective
Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification
Feminism's Quest for Common Desires
Critical Inquiry, Affirmative Culture
Deviance as Resistance
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |