Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Linda Williams - Gender, Genre, and Excess
Linda Williams - Gender, Genre, and Excess
in this issue
RichardAbel, author of two distin-
guished works on French film and
Film Bodies: Gender,
theory, teaches at Drake University.
CarolynAnderson teaches at the
University of Massachusetts,Amherst.
EdwardD. Castillois a CaliforniaCahuilla
Indian and chair of Native American
Studies at Sonoma State University.
DariusCooper teaches at San Diego When my seven-year-old son and I go
Mesa College. to the movies we often select from among cate-
David Desser, our Book Review Editor, gories of films that promise to be sensational, to
teaches at the University of Illinois, give our bodies an actual physical jolt. He calls
Urbana. these movies "gross." My son and I agree that the
John Fell, of our editorial board, is the
authorof Filmand theNarrative fun of "gross" movies is in their display of sensa-
Tradition(UC Press). tions that are on the edge of respectable. Where we
Dan Greenbergteaches in Michigan and disagree-and where we as a culture often disagree,
keeps a sharp eye on the film reference along lines of gender, age, or sexual orientation-is
book field. in which movies are over the edge, too "gross." To
RobertP. Kolkeris the authorof A
Cinemaof Loneliness. my son the good "gross" movies are those with
Sarah Kozloffwrote Invisible scary monsters like Freddy Krueger (of the Night-
Storytellers: Voice-OverNarration in mare on Elm Street series) who rip apart teenagers,
American Feature Film (UC Press). especially teenage girls. These movies both fasci-
George Lellisteaches at Coker College, nate and scare him; he is actually more interested
Hartsville, SC. in talking about than seeing them.
James L. Neibauris a film historian. A second category, one that I like and my son
LelandPoague teaches at Iowa State
doesn't, are sad movies that make you cry. These
University, Ames.
are gross in their focus on unseemly emotions that
Dana Polan, editor of Cinema Journal,
teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. may remind him too acutely of his own powerless-
LeonardQuartis the co-authorof ness as a child. A third category, of both intense in-
American Film and Society Since 1945. terest and disgust to my son (he makes the puke
MarkA. Reid teaches at the University sign when speaking of it), he can only describe eu-
of Florida and is finishing a book on
black film-making. phemistically as "the 'K' word." K is for kissing.
To a seven-year-oldboy it is kissing preciselywhich
Gregg Rickmanteaches at San
Francisco State University. is obscene.
andteaches
is a film-maker
AlanRosenthal There is no accounting for taste, especially in
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. the realm of the "gross." As a culture we most
EdwardBaronTurkteachesat MITand often invoke the term to designate excesses we wish
wroteChildof Paradise,on MarcelCarn6. to exclude; to say, for example, which of the Rob-
WilliamC. Wees's Light Moving in ert Mapplethorpe photos we draw the line at, but
Time: Studies in the VisualAesthetics
not to say what form and structure and function
of Avant-GardeFilm will be published
early next year by the UC Press. operate within the representations deemed exces-
LindaWilliamswrote Hard Core, and is sive. Because so much attention goes to determin-
a member of our editorial board. ing where to draw the line, discussions of the gross
Tony Williamsteaches at Southern are often a highly confused hodgepodge of differ-
Illinois University in Carbondale. ent categories of excess. For example, pornography
Don Willisis the author of several film
referencebooks. is today more often deemed excessive for its vio-
lence than for its sex, while horror films are exces-
sive in their displacement of sex onto violence. In
2
what more nebulous category of melodrama has
long been hamperedby assumptions about the clas-
sical nature of the dominant narrative to which
Genre, and Excess melodrama and some individual genres have been
opposed. Altman argues that Bordwell, Thomp-
son, and Staiger, who locate the Classical Holly-
wood Style in the linear, progressive form of the
Hollywood narrative,cannot accommodate "melo-
dramatic" attributeslike spectacle, episodic presen-
tation, or dependence on coincidence except as
contrast, melodramas are deemed excessive for limited exceptions or "play" within the dominant
their gender- and sex-linked pathos, for their naked linear causality of the classical (Altman, 1988, 346).
displays of emotion; Ann Douglas once referredto Altman writes: "Unmotivated events, rhythmic
the genre of romance fiction as "soft-core emo- montage, highlighted parallelism, overlong spec-
tional porn for women" (Douglas, 1980). tacles-these are the excesses in the classical nar-
Alone or in combination, heavy doses of sex, rative system that alert us to the existence of a
violence, and emotion are dismissed by one faction competing logic, a second voice." (345-6) Altman,
or another as having no logic or reason for exis- whose own work on the movie musical has neces-
tence beyond their power to excite. Gratuitous sex, sarily relied upon analyses of seemingly "exces-
gratuitous violence and terror, gratuitous emotion sive" spectacles and parallel constructions, thus
are frequent epithets hurled at the phenomenon of makes a strong case for the need to recognize the
the "sensational" in pornography, horror, and possibility that excess may itself be organized as a
melodrama. This essay explores the notion that system (347). Yet analyses of systems of excess have
there may be some value in thinking about the been much slower to emerge in the genres whose
form, function, and system of seeminglygratuitous non-linear spectacles have centered more directly
excesses in these three genres. For if, as it seems, upon the gross display of the human body. Pornog-
sex, violence, and emotion are fundamental ele- raphy and horror films are two such systems of ex-
ments of the sensational effects of these three types cess. Pornography is the lowest in cultural esteem,
of films, the designation "gratuitous" is itself gra- gross-out horror is next to lowest.
tuitous. My hope, therefore, is that by thinking Melodrama, however, refersto a much broader
comparatively about all three "gross" and sensa- category of films and a much larger system of ex-
tional film body genres we might be able to get cess. It would not be unreasonable, in fact, to con-
beyond the mere fact of sensation to explore its sys- sider all three of these genres under the extended
tem and structure as well as its effect on the bod- rubric of melodrama, considered as a filmic mode
ies of spectators. of stylistic and/or emotional excess that stands in
contrast to more "dominant" modes of realistic,
Body Genres goal-oriented narrative. In this extended sense
The repetitiveformulas and spectacles of melodrama can encompass a broad range of films
film genres are often defined by their differences marked by "lapses" in realism, by "excesses" of
from the classical realist style of narrative cinema. spectacle and displays of primal, even infantile
These classical films have been characterizedas ef- emotions, and by narrativesthat seem circular and
ficient action-centered, goal-oriented linear narra- repetitive. Much of the interest of melodrama to
tives driven by the desire of a single protagonist, film scholars over the last fifteen years originates
involving one or two lines of action, and leading to in the sense that the form exceeds the normative
definitive closure. In their influential study of the system of much narrative cinema. I shall limit my
Classical Hollywood Cinema, Bordwell, Thomp- focus here, however, to a more narrow sense of
son, and Staiger call this the Classical Hollywood melodrama, leaving the broader category of the
style (1985). sensational to encompass the three genres I wish to
As Rick Altman has noted in a recent article
consider. Thus, partly for purposes of contrast with
(1989), both genre study and the study of the some- pornography, the melodrama I will consider here
3
their traditional status under patriarchy-as wives, these genres the bodies of women figured on the
mothers, abandoned lovers, or in their traditional screen have functioned traditionallyas the primary
status as bodily hysteria or excess, as in the fre- embodiments of pleasure, fear, and pain.
quent case of the woman "afflicted" with a deadly In other words, even when the pleasureof view-
or debilitating disease.' ing has traditionally been constructed for mascu-
What are the pertinentfeatures of bodily excess line spectators, as is the case in most traditional
shared by these three "gross" genres? First, there heterosexual pornography, it is the female body in
is the spectacle of a body caught in the grip of in- the grips of an out-of-control ecstasy that has
tense sensation or emotion. Carol Clover, speak- offered the most sensational sight. So the bodies of
ing primarilyof horror films and pornography, has women have tended to function, ever since the
called films which privilegethe sensational "body" eighteenth-century origins of these genres in the
genres (Clover, 189). I am expanding Clover's no- Marquis de Sade, Gothic fiction, and the novels of
tion of low body genres to include the sensation of Richardson, as both the moved and the moving. It
overwhelming pathos in the "weepie." The body is thus through what Foucault has called the sex-
spectacle is featured most sensationally in pornog- ual saturation of the female body that audiences of
raphy's portrayal of orgasm, in horror's portrayal all sorts have received some of their most power-
of violence and terror, and in melodrama's por- ful sensations (Foucault, 104).
trayal of weeping. I propose that an investigation There are, of course, other film genres which
of the visual and narrative pleasures found in the both portray and affect the sensationalbody-e.g.,
portrayalof these three types of excess could be im- thrillers, musicals, comedies. I suggest, however,
portant to a new direction in genre criticism that that the film genres that have had especially low
would take as its point of departure-rather than cultural status-which have seemed to exist as ex-
as an unexamined assumption-questions of gen- cesses to the system of even the popular genres-
der construction, and gender address in relation to are not simply those which sensationally display
basic sexual fantasies. bodies on the screen and registereffects in the bod-
Another pertinent feature shared by these body ies of spectators. Rather, what may especiallymark
genres is the focus on what could probably best be these body genres as low is the perception that the
called a form of ecstasy. While the classical mean- body of the spectator is caught up in an almost in-
ing of the original Greek word is insanity and be- voluntary mimicry of the emotion or sensation of
wilderment, more contemporary meanings suggest the body on the screen along with the fact that the
components of direct or indirect sexual excitement body displayed is female. Physical clown comedy
and rapture, a rapture which informs even the is another "body" genre concerned with all man-
pathos of melodrama. ner of gross activities and body functions-eating
Visually, each of these ecstatic excesses could shoes, slipping on banana peels. Nonetheless, it has
be said to share a quality of uncontrollable convul- not been deemed gratuitously excessive, probably
sion or spasm-of the body "beside itself" with because the reaction of the audiencedoes not mimic
sexual pleasure, fear and terror, or overpowering the sensations experiencedby the central clown. In-
sadness. Aurally, excess is marked by recourse not deed, it is almost a rule that the audience's physi-
to the coded articulations of language but to inar- cal reaction of laughter does not coincide with the
ticulate cries of pleasure in porn, screams of fear often dead-pan reactions of the clown.
in horror, sobs of anguish in melodrama. In the body genres I am isolating here,
Looking at, and listening to, these bodily ecsta- however, it seems to be the case that the success of
sies, we can also notice something else that these these genres is often measured by the degree to
genres seem to share: though quite differently gen- which the audience sensation mimics what is seen
dered with respect to their targeted audiences, with on the screen. Whether this mimicry is exact, e.g.,
pornographyaimed, presumably,at active men and whether the spectator at the porn film actually or-
melodramatic weepies aimed, presumably, at pas- gasms, whether the spectator at the horror film ac-
4
iiiiiii-::
?iiiiii, objectified victims of pornographicrepresenta-
tions, thatthe imageof the sexuallyecstaticwoman
::i:::
I:::'
:::::::::::
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iii so importantto the genreis a celebrationof female
?s
iiliigiiii'?'i.~ilili
iiiiii
iii
iiiii
iiii
:iiiiii::i:r;
-::::::::?::?-: victimizationand a preludeto femalevictimization
:::,:,;:
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in real life.
-.,::
:::
iii?ili?ii?iii:i:ei:iiii: Lesswellknown,but related,is the observation
of the criticof horrorfilms, JamesTwitchell,who
noticesthat the Latinhorreremeansto bristle.He
describesthe way the napehairstandson end dur-
ing moments of shiveringexcitement.The aptly
BarbaraStanwyckin StellaDallas-classicweepie. namedTwitchellthus describesa kind of erection
of the hair founded in the conflict betweenreac-
tual shuddersin fear, whetherthe spectatorof the tions of "fight and flight" (Twitchell,10). While
melodramaactuallydissolvesin tears, the success male victims in horror films may shudder and
of thesegenresseemsa self-evidentmatterof mea- screamas well, it has long been a dictum of the
suringbodilyresponse.Examplesof suchmeasure- genrethat womenmakethe bestvictims."Torture
mentcan be readilyobserved:in the "petermeter" the women!" was the famous advice given by
capsulereviewsin Hustlermagazine,which mea- Alfred Hitchcock.2
surethe powerof a pornfilm in degreesof erection In the classichorrorfilm the terrorof the fe-
of little cartoon penises; in horror films which male victim shares the spectacle along with the
measuresuccessin termsof screams,fainting,and monster. Fay Wray and the mechanizedmonster
heartattacksin the audience(horrorproducerWil- thatmadeherscreamin KingKongis a familiarex-
liam Castle specializedin this kind of thing with ample of the classic form. Janet Leigh in the
such films as The Tingler,1959);and in the long- showerin Psycho is a familiarexampleof a tran-
standing tradition of women's films measuring sition to a more sexuallyexplicitform of the tor-
theirsuccessin termsof one-, two-, or three-hand- tured and terrorizedwoman. And her daughter,
kerchiefmovies. Jamie Lee Curtisin Halloween, can serve as the
What seemsto bracketthese particulargenres more contemporary version of the terrorized
from othersis an apparentlack of properesthetic womanvictim.In both of theselaterfilmsthe spec-
distance,a senseof over-involvementin sensation tacleof the monsterseemsto take secondbillingto
and emotion.We feel manipulatedby thesetexts-- the increasinglynumerousvictims slashedby the
an impressionthatthe verycolloquialismsof "tear sexuallydisturbedbut entirelyhumanmonsters.
jerker"and "fear jerker"express-and to which In the woman'sfilm a well-knownclassicis the
we could add pornography'seven crudersense as long-sufferingmotherof the two earlyversionsof
texts to which some people might be inclinedto StellaDallas who sacrificesherselffor her daugh-
"jerkoff." Therhetoricof violenceof thejerksug- ter's upwardmobility. Contemporaryfilm goers
gests the extentto whichviewersfeel too directly, could recentlysee Bette Midlergoing throughthe
too viscerallymanipulatedby the textin specifically same sacrificeand loss in the film Stella. Debra
genderedways. Mary Ann Doane, for example, Winger in Termsof Endearmentis another familiar
writingabout the most genteel of these jerkers-- example of this maternal pathos.
the maternalmelodrama-equates the violenceof With the above genre stereotypes in mind we
this emotionto a kindof "textualrape"of the tar- should now ask about the status of bodily excess
geted female viewer, who is "feminizedthrough in each of these genres. Is is simply the unseemly,
pathos" (Doane, 1987, 95). "gratuitous" presence of the sexually ecstatic
Feminist critics of pornographyoften evoke woman, the tortured woman, the weeping woman
similarfiguresof sexual/textualviolencewhende- -and the accompanying presence of the sexual
scribingthe operationof this genre. Robin Mor- fluids, the blood and the tears that flow from her
5
lation to one another, as a system of excess in the ,::iiiiiiiiiiiiiii:
_...::
?:
ii: i,•
?? .......
popular film? And finally, how excessive are they
really? iiiiiii''':'-':'
-i:- :i:
6
of a film like Halloween finally grabs the phallic taken seriouslyas pleasure.
knife, or ax, or chainsaw to turnthe tableson the Thereis thus a real needto be clearerthan we
monster-killer,that viewer identification shifts have been aboutwhat is in masochismfor women
from an "abjectterrorgenderedfeminine"to an -how powerand pleasureoperatein fantasiesof
activepowerwithbisexualcomponents.A gender- dominationwhich appealto women. Thereis an
confusedmonsteris foiled, often symbolicallycas- equal need to be clearerthan we have about what
tratedby an "androgynous""final girl" (Clover, is in sadismfor men. Herethe initialoppositionbe-
206-209). In slasherfilms, identificationwith vic- tweenthese two most genderedgenres-women's
weepies and male heterosexual pornography-
needsto be complicated.I have arguedelsewhere,
for example,that pornographyhas too simplisti-
callybeenalliedwitha purelysadisticfantasystruc-
ture. Indeed, those troubling films and videos
whichdeployinstrumentsof tortureon the bodies
of womenhavebeenalliedso completelywithmas-
culine viewing pleasuresthat we have not paid
enoughattentionto their appealto women except
to condemn such appeal as false consciousness
(Williams, 1989, 184-228).
One important complication of the initial
schemaI haveoutlinedwouldthusbe to take a les-
em son from Clover'smorebisexualmodel of viewer
identificationin horrorfilm andstressthe sadomas-
. ....
ochistic componentof each of these body genres
Fear:JanetLeighin Psycho(norror)
7
melodramatic scenario of the passive and innocent For these pleasures spell sure death in this genre.
female victim suffering at the hands of a leeringvil- In the melodramatic woman's film we might
lain. We can also see in horror films of tortured think to encounter a purer form of masochism on
women a similar melodramatization of the inno- the part of female viewers. Yet even here the female
cent victim. An important difference, of course, viewer does not seem to be invited to identify
lies in the component of the victim's overt sexual wholly with the sacrificinggood woman, but rather
pleasure in the scenario of domination. with a variety of different subject positions, includ-
But even in the most extreme displays of femi- ing those which empathically look on at her own
nine masochistic suffering, there is always a com- suffering. While I would not argue that there is a
ponent of either power or pleasure for the woman very strong sadistic component to these films, I do
victim. In slasher horror films we have seen how argue that there is a strong mixture of passivity and
identification seems to oscillate between powerless- activity, and a bisexual oscillation between the
ness and power. In sadomasochistic pornography poles of each, in even this genre.
and in melodramatic woman's weepies, feminine For example, the woman viewer of a maternal
subject positions appear to be constructed which melodrama such as Terms of Endearment or Steel
achieve a modicum of power and pleasure within Magnolias does not simply identify with the suffer-
the given limits of patriarchal constraints on ing and dying heroines of each. She may equally
women. It is worth noting as well that non-sado- identify with the powerful matriarchs, the surviv-
masochistic pornography has historically been ing mothers who preside over the deaths of their
one of the few types of popular film that has not daughters, experiencing the exhilaration and tri-
punished women for actively pursuing their sexual umph of survival. The point is simply that identifi-
pleasure. cation is neither fixed nor entirely passive.
In the subgenre of sadomasochistic pornogra- While there are certainly masculine and femi-
phy, however, the female masochist in the scenario nine, active and passive, poles to the left and right
must be devious in her pursuit of pleasure. She of the chart on which we might position these three
plays the part of passive sufferer in order to obtain genres (see below), the subject positions that appear
pleasure. Under a patriarchaldouble standard that to be constructed by each of the genres are not as
has rigorously separated the sexually passive gender-linkedand as gender-fixedas has often been
"good" girl from the sexually active "bad" girl, supposed. This is especially true today as hard-core
masochistic role-playing offers a way out of this pornography is gaining appeal with women view-
dichotomy by combining the good girl with the ers. Perhaps the most recent proof in this genre of
bad: the passive "good girl" can prove to her wit- the breakdown of rigid dichotomies of masculine
nesses (the super-ego who is her torturer) that she and feminine, active and passive is the creation of
does not will the pleasure that she receives. Yet the an alternative, oscillating category of address to
sexually active "bad" girl enjoys this pleasure and viewers. Although heterosexual hard core once ad-
has knowingly arranged to endure the pain that dresseditself exclusivelyto heterosexualmen, it has
earns it. The cultural law which decides that some now begun to addressitself to heterosexualcouples
girls are good and others are bad is not defeated and women as well; and in addition to homosex-
but within its terms pleasure has been negotiated ual hard core, which has addresseditself to gay and
and "paid for" with a pain that conditions it. The (to a lesser extent) lesbian viewers, there is now a
"bad" girl is punished, but in return she receives new category of video called bisexual. In these
pleasure. videos men do it with women, women do it with
In contrast, the sadomasochistic teen horror women, men do it with men and then all do it with
films kill off the sexually active "bad" girls, allow- one another, in the process breaking down a fun-
ing only the non-sexual "good" girls to survive. damental taboo against male-to-male sex.5
But these good girls become, as if in compensation, A related interpenetration of once more sepa-
remarkably active, to the point of appropriating rate categories of masculine and feminine is what
8
Pornography Melodrama
Bodily sex violence emotion
excess
Ecstasy: ecstatic sex ecstatic violence ecstatic woe
-shown by orgasm shudder sob
ejaculation blood tears
Presumed men adolescent boys girls, women
audience: (active) (active/passive) (passive)
Perversion: sadism sadomasochism masochism
Originary seduction castration origin
fantasy:
Temporality on time! too early! too late!
of fantasy:
Genre cycles:
"classic stag films "classic"horror: "classic"women's films:
(20's-40's) Dracula maternalmelodrama:
The Casting Couch Frankenstein Stella Dallas
Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde Mildred Pierce
King Kong romance:
Back Street
Letter from an
Unknown Woman
contemporary feature-length post-Psycho: male and female
hardcore porn: Texas Chainsaw "weepies"
Deep Throat, etc. Massacre Steel Magnolias
The Punishment of Anne Halloween Stella
Femme Productions Dressed to Kill Dad
Bi-sexual Videodrome
Tri-sexual
has come to be known in some quarters as the exist at all. (It is instructive, for example, that in
"male weepie." These are mainstreammelodramas the new bisexual pornography women characters
engaged in the activationof the previouslyrepressed are shown verbally articulating their visual pleas-
emotions of men and in breakingthe taboos against ure as they watch men perform sex with men.)
male-to-male hugs and embraces. The father-son The deployment of sex, violence, and emotion
embrace that concludes Ordinary People (1980) is would thus seem to have very precise functions in
exemplary. More recently, paternal weepies have these body genres. Like all popular genres, they ad-
begun to compete with the maternal-as in the con- dress persistentproblems in our culture, in our sex-
ventional Dad (1989) or the less conventional, wild ualities, in our very identities. The deployment of
paternal displays of Twin Peaks. sex, violence, and emotion is thus in no way gratui-
The point is certainlynot to admire the "sexual tous and in no way strictly limited to each of these
freedom" of this new fluidity and oscillation-the genres; it is instead a culturalform of problem solv-
new femininity of men who hug and the new mas- ing. As I have argued in Hard Core, pornographic
culinity of women who leer-as if it represented films now tend to present sex as a problem, to
any ultimate defeat of phallic power. Rather, the which the performance of more, different, or bet-
more useful lesson might be to see what this new ter sex is posed as the solution (Williams, 1989). In
fluidity and oscillation permits in the construction horror a violence related to sexual difference is the
of feminine viewing pleasures once thought not to problem, more violence related to sexual difference
9
address the insoluble problem of the discrepancy
Structuresof Fantasy between an irrecoverable original experience pre-
All of these problems are linked to gen- sumed to have actually taken place-as in the case,
der identity and might be usefully explored as for example, of the historical primal scene-and
genres of gender fantasy. It is appropriate to ask, the uncertaintyof its hallucinatoryrevival. The dis-
then, not only about the structures of perversion, crepancy exists, in other words, between the actual
but also about the structures of fantasy in each of existence of the lost object and the sign which
these genres. In doing so, we need to be clear about evokes both this existence and its absence.
the nature of fantasy itself. For fantasies are not, Laplanche and Pontalis maintain that the most
as is sometimes thought, wish-fulfilling linear nar- basic fantasies are located at the juncture of an ir-
ratives of mastery and control leading to closure recoverable real event that took place somewhere
and the attainment of desire. They are marked, in the past and a totally imaginary event that never
rather, by the prolongation of desire, and by the took place. The "event" whose temporal and spa-
lack of fixed position with respect to the objects tial existence can never be fixed is thus ultimately,
and events fantasized. according to Laplanche and Pontalis, that of "the
In their classic essay "Fantasy and the Origins origin of the subject"-an origin which psycho-
of Sexuality," Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis analysts tell us cannot be separated from the dis-
(1968) argue that fantasy is not so much a narra- covery of sexual difference (11).
tive that enacts the quest for an object of desire as It is this contradictorytemporal structureof be-
it is a setting for desire, a place where conscious ing situated somewhere between the "too early"
and unconscious, self and other, part and whole and the "too late" of the knowledge of difference
meet. Fantasy is the place where "desubjectified" that generates desire that is most characteristic of
subjectivities oscillate between self and other oc- fantasy. Freud introduced the concept of "original
cupying no fixed place in the scenario (16). fantasy" to explain the mythic function of fanta-
In the three body genres discussed here, this sies which seem to offer repetitions of and "solu-
fantasy component has probablybeen better under- tions" to major enigmas confronting the child
stood in horror film, a genre often understood as (Freud, 1915). These enigmas are located in three
belonging to the "fantastic." However, it has been areas: the enigma of the origin of sexual desire, an
less well understood in pornography and women's enigma that is "solved," so to speak, by the fan-
film melodrama. Because these genres display tasy of seduction; the enigma of sexual difference,
fewer fantastic special effects and because they rely "solved" by the fantasy of castration; and finally
on certain conventions of realism-the activation the enigma of the origin of self, "solved" by the
of social problems in melodrama, the representa- fantasy of family romance or return to origins
tion of real sexual acts in pornography-they seem (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1968, 11).
less obviously fantastic. Yet the usual criticisms Each of the three body genres I have been de-
that these forms are improbable, that they lack psy- scribing could be seen to correspond in important
chological complexity and narrative closure, and ways to one of these original fantasies: pornogra-
that they are repetitious, become moot as evalua- phy, for example, is the genre that has seemed to
tion if such features are intrinsic to their engage- endlessly repeat the fantasies of primal seduction,
ment with fantasy. of meeting the other, seducing or being seduced by
There is a link, in other words, between the ap- the other in an ideal "pornotopia" where, as
peal of these forms and their ability to address, if Steven Marcus has noted, it is always bedtime
never really to "solve," basic problems related to (Marcus, 269). Horror is the genre that seems to
sexual identity. Here, I would like to forge a con- endlessly repeat the trauma of castration as if to
nection between Laplanche and Pontalis's struc- "explain," by repetitious mastery, the originary
tural understandingof fantasies as myths of origins problem of sexual difference. And melodramatic
which try to cover the discrepancy between two weepie is the genre that seems to endlessly repeat
10
by the body of the mother.
Of courseeachof thesegenreshas a historyand
iii
does not simply"endlesslyrepeat." The fantasies i:ili
12
and Law. Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress.
Marcus, Steven, 1964/74. The Other Victorians: A Study of FILMHIEROGLYPHS
Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century
England.New York:New AmericanLibrary. Rupturesof ClassicalCinema
Morgan,Robin, 1980. "Theoryand Practice:Pornography TOMCONLEY
and Rape." In Take Back the Night: Women on Pornog-
Filmmaking considered from the
raphy,editedby LauraLederer.New York:Morrow.
Morefti,Franco. 1983. "Kindergarten."In Signs Takenfor points (ruptures) at which story, im-
Wonders.London:Verso. age, and writing appear to be at
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative odds.
Cinema."Screen 16, no. 3: 6-18. $15.95paper
Neale, Steve. 1986. "Melodramaand Tears." Screen 27
(Nov.-Dec.): 6-22.
Silverman, Kaja. 1980. "Masochism and Subjectivity." CLOSEENCOUNTERS
Framework 12:2-9. Film,Feminism,and
. 1988. "Masochismand Male Subjectivity."Camera Science Fiction
Obscura 17: 31-66.
Studlar, Gaylyn. 1985. In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Stern- Edited by CONSTANCE PENLEY,
berg, Dietrich and the Masochistic Aesthetic. Urbana: ELISABETH LYON,LYNNSPIGEL,
Universityof IllinoisPress. ANDJANETBERGSTROM
Twitchell, James. 1985. Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of
Modern Horror. New York: Oxford.
Addresses the ways conventional
Williams,Linda. 1983. "Whenthe WomanLooks." In Re- notions of sexual difference are
Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism. See Doane reworked in science fiction films.
(1983). Includes the complete script of Peter
. 1989. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy Wollen's 1987 film Friendship's Death.
of the Visible." Berkeley: University of California Press.
$12.95paper
CINEMAONE
Errata
The Movement-Image
We inadvertentlyomittedtwo contributoridentificationsin CINEMA
TWO
ourlastissue.Apologiesto LloydMichaels,whoteachesat Al-
leghenyCollegeand edits the journalFilm Criticism;and to
TheTime-Image
MaurizioViano, who teachesat WellesleyCollegeand whose GILLES DELEUZE
A Certain Realism: Towards a Use of Pasolini's Film Theory "In Cinema 1 Deleuze saw the cin-
and Practicewill be publishednext yearby the Universityof ema prior to WW II as essentially
CaliforniaPress. narrative in character, dedicated to
developing images of movement. In
Cinema2 he perceives images of time
About FQ's Index being developed since the war to
Heretofore, we have prepared our own Index to supplant those of motion and sees
each four-issue "volume" of the journal; it has fragmentation and solitary images
been bound in at the end of the Summer issues. replacing the previous narrative
emphasis.... well worth reading."
However, our contents are indexed in the many
Choice
indexing services listed on the contents page, and
$15.95 paper(each volume)
they are also accessible through the new public-
library data bank system, Infobank. We are there-
fore discontinuing our own indexes, confident orfromthe
at bookstores
that readers will be able to locate anything that
has appeared in our pages by other easily accessi- UNIVERSITYOF MINNESOTAPRESS
ble means.
800-38-3863ext.5
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