The picture you see here is by no means a very exceptional framing. I know that. In fact, the film - whose title will read something as "Diary of a Nymphomaniac" in english - itself has several other better frames in terms of the beauty of a picture, a frame. But what makes me select this frame in particular is my association with this film. The name may suggest, but please DON'T sit to watch with the 'expectation' of, it as one of those sleazy 'pornos'. Yes, there are ample moments in this film which may (though I am not at all sure of this, honestly) satisfy one's libidinal instincts. But, this film is much more. No, wrong. The film is much different. Much removed from such accepted genre of pornographic films, or simply put, pornos. Going by the post-antipornographic movement in the feminist history, it may perhaps be labeled under the genre of Erotica(a), though I have always had reservations about naming in such a manner or fixing under/within/into some particular compartment. This is an work of art and why should we be so foolish to attempt and name them always?(b)
I would not go for an elaborate, or even brief, description(c) of the film. Just a few words for the particular frame from the film that I have chosen here.
It's a grandma and her grand daughter, the latter being the protagonist of the film, the nymphomaniac (d). In the film it's just moments before the old woman breathes her last and, to borrow from the protagonist's soliloquy in the film, she loses the "only person who's ever understood me". Yes, the world fails to understand the lady. Her workplace, her friends, her lovers (or, it would be better to call people who have sex with her, and she also with them...), all fails to understand her. And, as the film draws towards end with a dissolve into the end-roll from a long shot where she walks down a road, alone, we come to realise, yet again, that the world is bound to fail in understanding her. Reason? She is a woman. She loves as a woman, she wants like a woman. She lives and thinks like a woman. Taking itself to a level beyond the feminism of sameness, to a level beyond the perceived notion of some sexless, timeless, universal humanism, The Diary notes down and points towards the difference, the feminism of difference, without concretely essentialising anything in particular.(e)
As we see in the still from the film above, that's the last time the lady is holding her grandma's hands in her hands. This is the grandma who once told her that the world has decided only two roles for women: marriage and prostitution. It's that grandma who asked her to enjoy her life to the fullest and live it in her own terms. May be the grandma, thus, snatched all her possibilities of a 'happy', 'peaceful' life... after all, show one single woman who has managed to have a happy peaceful life by living the way she feels and wants it...as a woman...not the other half, but a woman only... it's that grandma who had no inhibitions in letting her granddaughter know that if given another chance to live her life from the beginning she would, to quote from the film, "fuck as many men as she wanted"...
May be readers would accuse me of oversimplifications at some instances... may be I will be accused of having sort of jot down some of my incoherent thoughts. but i love incoherence. And, all I can say is - see the film and see if it talks to you... if it engages in a dialogue with the person that you are...
NOTES
(a) Feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon are famous for their anti-pornogrpahic stance. They, along with several others, raised the consciousness as to how and why all sexually explicit materials prove to be defamatory for women. It was precisely this moment in Feminism that saw a demarcation of the erotica from the thanatica. By erotica was meant depiction of women enjoying sexual encounter and often finding enjoyment and fulfillment from such sexual encounters. Thanatica, on the other hand, referred to sexually explicit images of women being involuntarily physically possessed (by men) and dismembered in sexually coercive situations.
(b) May we remember that Mallarme for a while, "...to name is to destroy..."
(c) I am of the belief that films cannot be described, least through words. To know the film, we have to see the film. And, isn't that just too obvious?
(d) Strange coinage, this nymphomaniac. In fact, the film itself also problematises this nomenclature and the politics behind such sexist nomenclatures, in general. "If a guy wants more sex, he is macho. If a girl wants more, she is a slut" reflects the female protagonist of the film during one of her intriguing conversations with her grandma.
(e) As a matter of fact, ever since the poststructuralist critical thinking has made its presence felt in feminist poetics as well - which has often been seen by many as the wave of French Feminism; Third Wave Feminism for some; also the feminism of difference - whatever it be, there has been this growing concern over the question of essentialism. It has been accepted, more or less, that men and women are NOT equal. We may talk of Luce Irigaray's The Question of the Other, or Cixous's The Laugh of the Medusa, and an entire corpus of feminist writings from and since that period which try establishing this feminism of difference. But none is without its own set of problems. Whenever we utter the statement - men and women are different, then (i) there is always this fear of universalising the 'categories' men and women; in fact, the very act of categorising something eventually leads to universalisation, homogenisation. That, for us, is quite a grave problem in itself; and (ii)it risks being echoed as the mouthpiece of the centuries and millenniums old argument of patriarchy. And this despite the repeated warnings echoed by the likes of Irigaray and Cixous among others. Taking off from this situation, I feel, Elizabeth Grosz's reading of French Feminism in form of the book Sexual Subversions - Three French Feminists and another very insightful essay by her - Sexual Difference and the Question of Essentialism - can be quite significant in this regard; in our dilemma over the risk of essentialising in attempt of seeing the difference. In fact, a lot much needs to be thought and talked about in this regard. For me, personally, too this becomes one of the most important questions to be dealt with in today's time. I will come up with other separate posts in my attempt to deal with this problematic.
