Disruptive Feminisms

Raced, Gendered, and Classed Bodies in Film

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137595478
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Film et vidéo

Disruptive Feminisms provides a revolutionary new approach to feminism as a disruptive force. By examining various films and filmmakers who are not so obviously read as feminist or Marxist, Gwendolyn Foster showcases their ability to disrupt and effectively challenge everything from class and racism, as well as sexism, ageism, and homophobia.

1

Feminist Disruptions in Postcolonial Film

Abstract: In Chapter 1, the reader is introduced to challenging and disrupting postcolonial films such as Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux and Claire Denis’ No Fear, No Die and Beau Travail. These films are exposed as significant in their disruptive feminism, which is informed by a global perspective and an aesthetic of opposition. After exposing many critical misreadings of first world critics, I demonstrate the manner in which these films disrupt received notions of masculinity, class, and race, along with sexuality. White colonial hegemony is exposed as malignant and dangerous to men and women, especially those at the bottom of the spectrum of the class system. The films are celebrated as overlooked masterworks of feminist aesthetics of postcolonial opposition.

Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. Disruptive Feminisms: Raced, Gendered, and Classed Bodies in Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137595478.0003.

Because it so effectively deconstructs and disrupts race, gender, and class with its dreamlike narrative, it seems fitting that I start this book with a close feminist examination of Post Tenebras Lux (2012), directed by Carlos Reygadas. While the film is certainly open to myriad readings, it seems fair to say that at the center of this film is an oppositional text, and a trenchant analysis reveals that it is colonialism and class privilege that destroy two families, one wealthy and one poor. Many critics seem to completely misunderstand the colonial politics of this film and the way it offers a global eco-feminist agenda and a deliberate Marxist examination of class, race, and power in Mexico.

I’m always attracted to films that cause an uproar, critical polarization, outrage, anger, dismissal, and confusion, particularly at larger film festivals. Thus I was drawn to the Mexican film, Post Tenebras Lux, when I read about the decidedly mixed critical reaction it received at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. There was a lot of applause for the film when it ran at Cannes; but it was also booed by some critics in the audience because of its supposed “difficulty,” and some were even openly hostile toward the film. Yet for all the mixed reaction, Carlos Reygadas was awarded the Best Director Award at Cannes for Post Tenebras Lux.

After a cursory glance at the reviews of Post Tenebras Lux, I fully expected an almost incomprehensible, dull, self-indulgent, inscrutable, and difficult, if not impossible, film. Where others found an overly “demanding” and “difficult” film, I felt Post Tenebras Lux was anything but “difficult.” I experienced the film as an exhilarating, poetic, and profoundly Marxist examination of patriarchy and class in a gorgeous yet disturbing dreamlike narrative willingly with a strong eco-feminist bent. I have always found the words and films of Luis Buñuel helpful in examining dreamlike films and Buñuel is certainly helpful in a reading of Post Tenebras Lux. As Buñuel writes in My Last Sigh,

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether. (174)

Post Tenebras Lux exists in the dreamlike realm described by Buñuel as, “somewhere between chance and mystery”; therefore, it is free to engage in an unruly disruption of norms of gender, race, and class in ways that are not unlike dreams and the active subconscious. Like Luis Buñuel, Carlos Reygadas values highly both freedom and imagination, and I find it disturbing that so many critics, those who should champion films that embrace the dream state between chance and mystery, rejecting the dreamlike aesthetics of the film as too difficult, completely miss the point of the film in terms of its Marxist feminist politics.

Reygadas offers freedom of interpretation to the audience as a co-participant in meaning, but, unfortunately, many unsophisticated contemporary critics openly reject that free space of imagination that Buñuel valued so highly and Reygadas conjures. Ironically, “Post Tenebras Lux” translates from Latin into “Light after Darkness.” Perhaps if critics, especially postcolonial feminist critics, would return to the film for a second viewing, they may be lucky enough to experience that revealing glow and step out of the darkness into light.

I’d be dishonest if I said I completely understood Post Tenebras Lux after only one viewing. A sense of mastery of the material is not the point of a Reygadas film any more than it is a Buñuel film. Even after several viewings I still find more to contemplate on and actively interpret, but I love that dreamlike free interpretive experience. Sadly, many contemporary critics seem unprepared to be active viewers and co-participants in the making of meaning and they are dismissive of dreamlike films that are open to interpretation. It is surprising to me that many critics demand material that is predigested; sutured and sealed up with simple plots and little aesthetic or political risk.

My initial takeaway from Post Tenebras Lux was that Reygadas likes to mix an unearthly “realism” with earthly fantasy, but the eco-feminism of the film, as well as the investigation into race and class, jumped out at me immediately. Reygadas cuts freely among flashbacks and flash-forwards, in a way more akin to the dreamscapes of surreal or experimental films. “Plot” matters less here, and audiences expecting a straightforward narrative might well feel confused and frustrated.

But isn’t it the job of the critic to prepare the viewer for a film that does not behave by the rules? It is hard enough to find wide distribution for challenging and aesthetically challenging films. The more reviews I read, the more frustrated I became with the critical reception of Post Tenebras Lux and many films like it. Nevertheless, it was quite clear to me, even on my initial viewing of the film, that Reygadas has significant things to say about patriarchy, capitalism, Mexico, the class system, sexuality, Marxist alienation, the environment, the perils of income disparity, the fleeting nature of life, the presence of evil in the mundane, and the sublime nature of simply being alive and perceptive, not to mention the breathtaking poetic beauty to be found in art and filmmaking.

Post Tenebras Lux is a personal film, a political film, and a film that specifically ponders filmic narrative as both fantasy and reality. We do not have to choose if the things we are seeing are a dream or a reality. Reygadas, like Buñuel and many of the greatest directors, disregards the rather dated insistence that film is a device to merely “capture reality.” It seems stunning that we are even still involved in such a tired debate in 2015, yet this seems to be one of the things critics complain about with regard to the film, in addition to the film’s supposed “nonlinearity.”

Like many Latin American authors, Carlos Reygadas frustrates those obtuse critics who insist that cinema must delineate carefully between scenes of “fantasy” and scenes of “reality.” Reygadas makes his intention evidently clear in an interview in Cineaste: “The film is about many things, including the perception of reality, of our dreams, fantasies, and in our direct experiences, and in the acknowledgement of the reality beyond what we see and hear” (Koehler, 11, my emphasis). Reygadas repeatedly states that cinema is a reinterpretation of reality as much as it is an embracement of fantasy. One feels an almost palpable sense of frustration in interviews with Reygadas when he is asked directly if a scene is “real” or “fantasy.” Often he simply replies, “who knows?” and leaves it open to interpretation.

Perhaps to some extent, the rejection of Reygadas’ work is also related to cultural difference. As Reygadas told Dennis Lim, “Friends in Mexico who saw [the film] didn’t think it would be so divisive. You know people here [at Cannes] are tired, they’re paid to judge, and they think they have to judge before they feel” (as qtd. in Bielak). Mexican and Latin American writers and filmmakers have a long tradition of embracing the illogic and poetic freedom of the surreal and the subconscious dream state.

It is self-evident, at least to me, that Reygadas is almost obsessed with offering plenty of space for the audience to become active co-creators of meaning, to bring their own dreams and desires to the meaning of the film, rather than suppress the urge to negotiate meaning that comes from our own individual experiences and dreams. An exchange between Anna Bielak and Reygadas displays just how much respect Reygadas has for his audience. Bielak flatly asks, “While making a movie, are you ever concerned about the viewers?” Reygadas replies, “I truly appreciate the directors that don’t try to lead me by the hand through their stories. I want to be considered one of them” (as qtd. in Bielak). Reygadas often seems flummoxed by the demand for simplistic or reductionist explanations of his films. When Lim asked Reygadas if “perhaps the refusal to distinguish between fantasy and reality is what bothers some people about the film?” Reygadas responded:

I’ve always thought that intelligent viewers don’t need to be led and will follow eventually. Something I find really strange is that the people who saw the film here last night [at the Cannes Festival] went to school, read books, and I say this not because I am comparing myself—but think of The Metamorphosis by Kafka, which was written almost a hundred years ago. Nobody knows if he really transforms into an insect or not, and there’s no explanation . . . why can they read and accept these books, but they need explanations when they’re watching films? (as qtd. in Bielak)

Clearly, then, Carlos Reygadas loves his audience; he respects us, he offers us choices. It is not surprising, then, to find subversive elements of disruptive Marxist feminist in his films. But almost as fascinating as the film itself is the curt and dismissive critical reaction to the filmmaker (largely by English-speaking Westerners). I’m fascinated by the almost violent nature of the reaction against Reygadas, and I cannot help but think it has much to do with his Mexican ethnicity and global perspective. Words used to describe him (or his films) such as “confrontation,” “divisive,” “baffling,” “calculated to confound,” “perplexing,” “maddeningly elusive,” “self-indulgent,” “smug,” “given to pretension and willful experimentation,” “radical,” and “difficult” typically have a rather positive connotation in the context of, say, an established critical white auteur darling, but in the case of Reygadas, these words are used in a mean-spirited and harsh judgmental manner, essentially invoked to kill off his films, to attack a filmmaker who neither complies with Hollywood standards nor European art-house tropes.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the harshest criticism comes from The Hollywood Reporter writer Neil Young, who pronounces in his opening line that Reygadas is a Mexican director who throws away his career with Post Tenebras Lux. “Acclaimed Mexican auteur’s self-indulgent exercise in exquisite pseudo-profundity commits hara-kiri on his own reputation,” Young writes, finding the film a “patience-tester” with decidedly low box-office potential beyond the festival circuit. If “box-office potential” has become a reliable marker of aesthetic ambition, we are all in big trouble, but I do find it interesting that the writer continually refers to Reygadas’ ethnicity in his screed against the film and its maker.

“Illumination proves maddeningly elusive in Post Tenebras Lux, the eagerly awaited fourth feature by Mexico’s leading younger auteur Carlos Reygadas,” he writes. After criticizing the film’s “weirdness,” Young gripes that the film never builds up to a “satisfying emotional or intellectual finale.” Clearly, however, a satisfying ending is not at all something Reygadas is interested in; he allows the audience to finish the film as they wish. He allows the audience the freedom to do the intellectual work of the radical Marxist and feminist. Young concludes that “suspicions [are] that the critically-lauded, award-laden Mexican is, in artistic terms, an emperor clad in exquisitely invisible garments” and that “the ticket buying public is likely to dismiss it as a waste of time.” A chorus of similar negative reviews of both the film and the filmmaker echoes Young’s remarks in the comments section after the review.

And yet Post Tenebras Lux seems so obviously a contemplation of wealth disparity, gendered relationships, marriage, and ethnicity—even if it is a story told in oblique dreamlike narrative style. In the film’s stunning opening minutes, we view what is most likely the dream of a very young girl (actually Reygadas’ daughter) who is seen wandering in a vast field populated by a herd of cows and a pack of dogs, as the sky darkens overhead, eventually erupting into a full-scale rainstorm. While some viewers have described the young girl as “lost”—she walks through the field murmuring “doggies” and “mommy” as the animals run past her—it seems to me that she is simply on her way home, albeit beset by the violence of nature. She seems in control of the situation, and unthreatened; she is just reacting to the world around her in a primal, childlike fashion. As the sky turns almost completely black, and lightning bolts erupt in the background, the film’s opening titles appear over the storm of striking contrasts of light and dark, one word at a time; “Post/Tenebras/Lux.” Then the film’s narrative begins again.

The second sequence is just as stunning, if more disturbing and visually arresting. Reygadas cuts to the interior of an upper class home, and unexpectedly, perhaps in another dream, the iridescent figure of a gleaming, bright red demon appears, complete with a workman’s toolbox. Just as it is not entirely clear (yet) if the opening hyperreal moments of the daughter wandering in the rain are dream or fantasy, the introduction of a devil-like figure, rendered in CGI (computer-generated imagery), who features a tail, goat-like head, hooves, and rather large and prominent sexual organs, is at once concrete and seemingly “real,” but just as equally surreal. The soundtrack features the loud sound of his hooves hitting the floor and his labored breathing. Who is this living creature that turns to the camera and stares directly at us? Is he a devil? Is he a manifestation of raced and classed masculinity under late-stage capitalism? Does he have to be anyone in particular? Why is this image so disturbing? Is it meant to be humorous? As a viewer, one is made very aware that meaning is often made out of the projections of the viewer.

Reygadas’ visual and aesthetic flexibility and his nimble movement between what would usually be defined as either “real” or dreamlike and surreal are not bound by conventional limits or the rather limited imagination of first world Americans. Reygadas seems almost amused by critics who try to pin him down as either a documentarist or a fantasist. He is genuinely perplexed at the political unsophistication of his most ardent critics. He often states that fantasy films are “one of the few genres I don’t like” (Koehler, 12). In fact, the image of the demon combines elements from the real (the toolbox carried by the red demon is Reygadas’ father’s actual toolbox in real life) and a particular dream that the director had of such a demon invading his home.

Depending on your projected interpretation, the demon could well be both Reygadas’ father and a potent signifier of patriarchy and capitalism, the evils that define us all. He could simply signify the power of the phallic father. But such a presumption would probably prove to be overdetermined. As we learn later in this film, much evil lurks inside the adults; only small children experience true joy and wonder in the universe of Post Tenebras Lux. It would be reductionist to blame the dream demon for the catastrophically sad events that take place in the film, yet his more than prominent naked sexual organs seem connected to masculinity, and specifically related to Juan, the main light-skinned European character, an abusive and porn addict, who is both malevolent and wealthy.

Reygadas often reminds us that dreams and fantasies are actually “realistic” and the cinema allows him to disturb us with surrealistic fantasy that is revealed through realism. The stunning image and the sound of the horned and hooved, red CGI demon is punctuated by his rather heavy breathing in the quiet home as the family sleeps. It is disturbing to hear the demon loudly clunking around the house on his hooves in an expressionist use of sound; Reygadas has spoken at length on his preference for expressionism. Robert Koehler aptly regards Reygadas’ work as a bridge between what he terms “The Cinema of the Possible” and “The Cinema of the Impossible” (10), but I get the distinct feeling that Carlos Reygadas does not see any difference at all between these filmic spaces. He is most eloquent on this when he tells Koehler that he is interested in the acknowledgement of the reality beyond what we see and hear (11, my emphasis).

For audiences who are accustomed to a clear explanation of all plot events and the distinction between fantasy and reality, Reygadas’ work indeed can be frustrating, but to those who are more open to his Buñuelian gift of the blending of the real and the surreal, Reygadas is clearly generous, even playfully so, especially to those who embrace cinéma inquiétante. Reygadas’ gift of free interpretation disturbs many critics, but I find this biased and limited critical reaction more disturbing than the actual film, which is a poetic, horrific, and playful film about the malevolence of income inequality, greed, masculinity, and race.

The demon is as much a symbol of patriarchy and capitalism as it is a nod to Mexican belief in the Black Legend, which is a myth that goes back many centuries centering around the idea that most of the evils in Mexico come from E...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Feminist Disruptions in Postcolonial Film
• 2  Queering Repression and Gender Codes
• 3  Malignant Narcissism and the Toxic Family
• 4  Embracing Mature Female Eroticism
• Works Cited
• Index