Female Masochism in Film

Sexuality, Ethics and Aesthetics

Ruth McPhee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472413161
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317135999
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Theoretically and representationally, responses to heterosexual female masochism have ranged from neglect in theories that focus predominantly or only upon masochistic sexuality within male subjects, to condemnation from feminists who regard it as an inverted expression of patriarchal control rather than a legitimate form of female desire. It has commonly been understood as a passive form of sexuality, thus ignoring the potential for activity and agency that the masochistic position may involve, which underpins the crucial argument that female masochism can be conceived as enquiring ethical activity. Taking as its subject the works of Jane Campion, Catherine Breillat, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier as well as the films Secretary (Steven Shainberg), Dans Ma Peau (Marina de Van), Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006) Amer (Hélène Cattat and Bruno Forzani), and Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh), Female Masochism in Film avoids these reductive and simplistic approaches by focusing on the ambivalences and intricacies of this type of sexuality and subjectivity. Using the philosophical writings of Kristeva, Irigaray, Lacan, Scarry, and Bataille, McPhee argues that masochism cannot and should not be considered aside from its ethical and intersubjective implications, and furthermore, that the aesthetic tendencies emerging across these films - obscenity, extremity, confrontation and a transgressive, ambiguous form of beauty - are strongly related to these implications. Ultimately, this complex and novel work calls upon the spectator and the theorist to reconsider normative ideas about desire, corporeality, fantasy and suffering.

Chapter 1

The Deleuzian Model and the Masochistic Contract

The model of masochism outlined by Krafft-Ebing and developed and cemented in theoretical and, to a large extent, popular thought by Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretation remained predominantly unchallenged until Gilles Deleuze’s intervention on the topic with the 1967 essay ‘Le froid et le cruel’, translated into English with the title ‘Coldness and cruelty’ (Deleuze 1991). The more robust rejection of Freudian psychoanalysis that would follow in Deleuze’s collaborations with Felix Guattari was at this point in its germinal stage. ‘Coldness and cruelty’, therefore, refutes the aspects of Freud’s theories of sadomasochism that Deleuze finds most pernicious while nonetheless utilizing key concepts familiar from Freudian theory such as the death drive, ego and superego. He also retains a focus on the role of infant/parent dynamics in the formation of masochistic subjectivity, however, there is a significant shift in emphasis from paternal law to the figure of the mother, suggesting a subversion of the phallic basis of the symbolic order.

Deleuze’s essay has two primary aims that hold particular significance for the discussion in this book and that must be understood in conjunction with each other. Firstly, to put forward a conceptualization of masochism that relocates it from the arena of the pathological with its attendant connotations of mental illness, diagnosis and clinical cure, to the realm of the aesthetic. More accurately, to return it to the specific aesthetic form that permeates the literature of Sacher-Masoch, a form that Deleuze regards as epitomizing the movements and pleasures of masochistic desire and experience. Rejecting the language of pathology, Deleuze argues that this form of sexuality is not named after the novelist because he ‘suffered’ from it but because he transformed the symptoms and forged the beginnings of a ‘masochist aesthetic’ (1991: 142). Gaylyn Studlar comments that in ‘Coldness and cruelty’ Deleuze himself performs a similar ‘break’ with previous patterns of thought, displacing focus from psychiatric and psychoanalytic explanations and repositioning masochism in relation to formal factors such as language, narrative structure and textual pleasure (Studlar 1988: 14). Deleuze’s second intention also instigates a significant rupture with earlier theory. He argues vociferously against the assumed complementary opposition of masochism and sadism that is given such prominence by Krafft-Ebing, and that becomes ever more firmly entrenched in the Freudian oppositional matrix that posits sadism and masochism as manifestations of the same drive differing only in aim. That this assumption has been so enduring is perhaps unsurprising, for the intertwined nature of these paraphilias may appear not only commonsensical but also satisfyingly neat. As Deleuze puts it: ‘It may seem obvious that the sadist and the masochist are destined to meet. The fact that the one enjoys inflicting while the other enjoys suffering pain seems to be such striking proof of their complementarity that it would be disappointing if the encounter did not take place’ (1991: 40). The projection of this narrative onto the figures of the sadist and the masochist is indicative of the same cultural fantasies that fuel the abundance of popular representations of happy romances and idealized relationships, visible from romantic comedies to dating websites, the ‘you complete me’ mantra that the perfect partner awaits each of us. Such an illusion of the harmonious union between masochist and sadist is but a slightly more unorthodox version of this fantasy and functions to disavow the transgressive potential that masochism as perversion holds. The enormous success of E.L. James’s recent Fifty Shades trilogy (2011–2012) stands as testament to the continuing cultural investment in this image, drawing upon the allure of ‘illicit’ forms of sexual practice while ultimately reaffirming the heteronormative conviction that for women, the path to a ‘happily ever after’ entails monogamy, marriage and reproduction. Deleuze rejects any such neat formulation and is insistent that instead sadism and masochism belong to entirely separate worlds, each with its own rules, rituals and aesthetic conventions. ‘A genuine sadist could never tolerate a masochistic victim’ that willingly or, even worse, actively and deliberately underwent their torture (1991: 40), just as the masochist described by Deleuze requires a torturer who fits a specific model and can be persuaded into performing their tortures in a particular ritualized way. Studlar argues that the masochist requires ‘pseudosadism’ as an act or performance, not true sadism itself (1988: 83). This ersatz torturer ‘does indeed belong essentially to masochism, but without realizing it as a subject; she incarnates instead the element of “inflicting pain” in an exclusively masochistic situation’ (Deleuze 1991: 42).

In resolutely dissociating masochism from sadism Deleuze does much to start dismantling the reductive binary logic that has conceptually bound this perversion, and as a consequence his essay provides the foundation for my own work on the radical potential of masochistic desire and pleasure. Furthermore, this initial act of separation entails a rethinking of the accompanying assumption that masochism is manifested as an entirely passive and submissive sexuality in opposition to the active and dominating drives of sadism. However, this quote also indicates the problem of objectification that arises in the model espoused by Sacher-Masoch and Deleuze, a problem that must be addressed and overcome in order to forge forward with a more ethically aware and open conceptualization of masochistic subjectivity. The pivotal device for, on the one hand, the theoretically enabling aspects of Deleuze’s study and, on the other, the possible problem of objectification, is the trope of the masochistic contract, a motif that Deleuze regards as central to the structure of the aesthetic. The contract has important connotations for intersubjectivity and the organization of power dynamics in this perverse aesthetic form and as a result will be critical in realigning masochism away from a simple and reductive passivity. Beyond this, the contract as a structural device has also been influential in the discipline of film studies as a means of conceptualizing the relationship and patterns of libidinal investment between spectator and film and therefore has further significance for a discussion of the excessive and transgressive images to come in later chapters.

Deleuze draws upon Theodore Reik’s Masochism in Modern Man (1941) to highlight five elements he regards as crucial to the masochistic aesthetic, the first four being taken directly from Reik’s text and the fifth element, the contract, standing as Deleuze’s own addition. The contract will be explored in greater depth as this chapter progresses. The initial four factors require further discussion here as they are instrumental in the construction of the formal style of masochistic desire and pleasure which for Deleuze is a literary concern but for subsequent theorists, most notably Studlar, have been mapped onto the audiovisual medium of cinema. As will become evident in the following chapters, there are aspects of these four elements that may still be identified in the contemporary group of films that portray female sexuality and subjectivity as masochistic, although not without transformations and the addition of further representative strategies and aesthetic tendencies. Reik, a former student of Freud, addresses masochism from a psychoanalytic perspective and yet his four basic characteristics of masochism display a latent awareness of the formal nature of this perversion. It is this potential that enables Deleuze to rework these characteristics into the basis for his theory of the masochist aesthetic, in turn paving the way for scholars of visual culture to make this formalism their focus. The four points as listed in ‘Coldness and cruelty’ cited in full:

1. The ‘special significance of fantasy’, that is the form of the fantasy (the fantasy experienced for its own sake, or the scene which is dreamed, dramatized, ritualized and which is an indispensable element of masochism).

2. The ‘suspense factor’ (the waiting, the delay, expressing the way in which anxiety affects sexual tension and inhibits its discharge).

3. The ‘demonstrative’ or, more accurately, the persuasive feature (the particular way in which the masochist exhibits his suffering, embarrassment and humiliation).

4. The ‘provocative fear’ (the masochist aggressively demands punishment since it resolves anxiety and allows him to enjoy the forbidden pleasure). (Deleuze 1991: 74–75)

The points outlined above, in addition to the device of the contract, construct an image of masochism that is resolutely performative, even theatrical, reliant upon a staging of desire that must necessarily take place as an intersubjective effort between the masochist and their chosen beloved. The creation of the masochist aesthetic is, in Deleuze’s theory, orchestrated in order to enact or play out activities and practices that have previously been part of their fantastical imagination. The rituals that emerge through the masochistic encounter are a means of bringing these fantasies to life and constructing the pleasures of the dreamworld within the space of reality: ‘the masochist needs to believe he is dreaming even when he is not’ (Deleuze 1991: 72). Whereas for early sexologists the quest for pain and submission in which the masochist indulges was regarded as an indication of mental aberration and the accompanying fantasies a symptom of this illness (discussed at length by Freud in ‘A child is being beaten’, 1955c), the figure depicted in Deleuze’s theory could almost be described as utopian, an idealist attempting to shape the world in accordance with their alternative vision of sexuality and pleasure. ‘Coldness and cruelty’ takes up what Peakman describes as the ‘constructive’ nature of the love of pain and submission given form by Sacher-Masoch (2013: 224) and in doing so elevates this perversion to a position of creativity and artfulness. The place of fantasy, suspense and provocation in the aesthetic and ethical debates prompted by masochistic sexuality will be teased out in subsequent chapters for they reappear as central concerns within the majority of the films explored. However, they take form in ways that frequently deviate from Deleuze’s model in order to reconfigure the male masochistic position into one that is more attentive to female bodies and subjects, and to the choices made by these subjects in an ideology dominated by discursive practices that have systematically marginalized and oppressed female perspectives.

Masochism and Film Theory

The space conjured up by Sacher-Masoch and analysed by Deleuze, with its focus on fetishized objects and textures, tableaux of suspension and luxuriant settings is strikingly visual and portrays the material world much more vividly and tangibly than the interiors of the characters’ minds. It is not unsurprising, therefore, that Studlar makes effective and careful use of the masochist aesthetic in In the Realm of Pleasure (1988) to interpret the series of collaborations between director Josef von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich in the first half of the 1930s (from The Blue Angel in 1930 to The Devil is a Woman in 1935). The use of sexual pathologies as a model for the theorization of the often ambivalent pleasures of cinematic spectatorship has its roots in the film theory of the 1970s, which took an avid interest in the libidinal processes invested in and facilitated by the experience of spectatorship. This interest found its form through recourse to Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis with an emphasis placed upon the ‘perverse pleasures’ of cinema viewing and concepts such as fantasy, desire and the gaze. Tanya Krzywinska notes that the theory of spectatorship has been sexualized from the earliest days of film analysis (2006: 195), a tendency that is apparent in influential studies such as those by Christian Metz and, in particular, Laura Mulvey (Metz 1982, Mulvey 1975). Mulvey’s canonical article ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ argues that the primary pleasures of classical Hollywood cinema function according to the Freudian principles of scopophilia, voyeurism and fetishism. Within the sadistic model the spectator identifies with the typically male protagonist of the film, vicariously experiencing a position of activity and mastery, while the female figure on screen is presented as a passive spectacle before his gaze. The subject/object divide is clearly articulated along gendered lines in Mulvey’s theory, reflecting the rising voice of second wave feminism in the expressed concerns about the violent processes that lead to and stem from the objectification of the female body. Mulvey’s article still stands as a landmark text within the discipline of film studies, not only for the slew of analyses it spawned as theorists found evidence of her model in a wide variety of film genres and eras but also because of the many writers who have offered critiques of this conceptual framework through alternative perspectives on spectatorship. Mulvey herself returned to the debate with a later essay, ‘Afterthoughts’, a direct response to criticisms that her sadistic model leaves scant space for the experiences or pleasures of the female spectator (Mulvey 1999). It was argued in the Introduction that female masochism and particularly female heterosexual masochism has to a large extent been a blind spot in studies of perversion and paraphilias, overlooked or marginalized in discourses that view it as either so ‘natural’ as to be unremarkable or as a source of denigration resulting from its perceived replication of existing oppressive power hierarchies. The female spectator of ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ and ‘Afterthoughts’ is subject to a similar process of under-theorization or pejorative perception. The suggested positions open to her are either transvestism, in which she identifies with the male protagonist, or masochism, an unhappy identification with the passive and frequently punished spectacle of the female star. Mulvey’s view was not untypical for the period or the discipline; when asked in 1979 to comment on women’s love for Hollywood cinema, the critic and theorist Raymond Bellour stated, ‘I think that a woman can love, accept, and give a positive value to these films only from her own masochism, and from a certain sadism that she can exercise in return on the masculine subject, within a system loaded with traps’ (Bellour cited by Bergstrom 1979: 97). A critique of such perspectives aims not to suggest that Hollywood cinema and films that closely adhere to its models of narrative and characterization are unproblematic in terms of how they represent and address women, but to make clear how entrenched traditional modes of thought are with regard to gender and sexuality more broadly, and masochism specifically. Evident in Mulvey and Bellour’s perspective on female masochistic identification is the more or less explicit assumption that this position is one of weakness and inferiority, to be avoided or derided. The films discussed in subsequent chapters of this book are precisely so important because they refute the deeply ingrained belief that the masochistic subjective position is one of victimhood. As a group, these films portray the ambiguous allure and fascination of masochism, the wilfully sought pleasures and pains to which it speaks, the subversive practices of control it requires and the way that it defies or reconfigures networks of corporeal and sociocultural power. They open up this fertile realm of enquiry through their challenge not only to conventional modes of spectatorship, but also to the ‘classic’ canonical models put forward in spectatorship theory. The emphasis placed upon the scopophilic model has shifted substantially in the decades between Mulvey’s intervention and the present day with studies such as Studlar’s playing an instrumental role in this change of emphasis, along with other important texts such as Tanya Modleki’s The Women Who Knew Too Much, Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women and Chain Saws (1992), Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body (1993) and more recently Patricia MacCormack’s Cinesexuality (2008). Each of these studies puts forward the possibility of finding masochistic pleasure through identifications and experiences that are not necessarily bound by gender, whether in the films of Hitchcock, modern horror cinema or the Italian zombie film. Paradoxically, the notion of the sadistic gaze provided the starting point for a selection of theorists to put forward an oppositional position: that the fantasies, desires and subject positions engaged with and brought into being through cinema spectatorship are more accurately masochistic in nature.

In film theory, Studlar’s In the Realm of Pleasure stands as the most obvious antecedent to the project at hand. Her transferral of the concept of the masochist aesthetic from literature to cinema provides a significant influence and sets out some provisional paths of investigation and debate. There are common threads that can be followed from Sacher-Masoch, through Deleuze and Studlar and into the more recent films that portray female masochistic subjectivity, such as the emphasis on delay and suspension, the primacy of fantasy and the construction of an alternative realm of desire through the heterocosmic impulse of masochism (the drive towards the ‘remaking’ of the world), and the use of sometimes highly stylized and mannered formal content. However, the mode of aesthetic that has developed since the mid-1990s also indicates a significant development in regard to the explicit and excessive nature of the imagery and themes portrayed, a gendered extremity that is predominantly connected to the experiences of the female body. Many of the films in this book, for example, include nudity and unconventional images of the female body, graphic sex scenes, rape and violence. The ethical dimension that is so critical for an engagement with these confrontational images and narratives is of less concern for Studlar and consequently the relationship of the masochist aesthetic to ethics is as yet unexplored. She does, however, address the politics of gender to some extent through the repeated focus on Marlene Dietrich as the embodiment of the ‘coldness and cruelty’ of Deleuze’s title. The von Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations echo the narrative form of Venus in Furs in their enactment of male masochistic desires, playing out the formula of the male protagonist and the beautiful but punishing woman over and over. Studlar argues that her chosen films construct a masochistic heterocosm: a space outside the ‘real world’ in which normative temporality and spatiality are suspended as an area is opened up in which to emphasize and enact the dynamics of fantasy and desire, as well as to elevate a maternal authority over the masculine law (Studlar 1988: 91–93). Arguably, this is the purpose of cinema more broadly; the banalities of everyday life are pushed aside in favour of narratives focusing on unlikely romances and improbable adventures all contained in a neat 90-minute slot. However, there is a distinction to be made between films that strive to portray a probable world ‘as it is’ according to the dominant tropes and values of the reality in which the film is produced, and films that actively move away from this verisimilitude and towards something more improbable and theatrical. The type of cinema described by Studlar uses baroque settings, fetishized costumes and hyperbolic characterization in order to emphasize the contrasts between the ‘normative first world’ and the ‘second world excesses’ of masochism (Studlar 1988: 93). Within this context the role play and ritualized scenarios dreamed up by the masochist are staged in order to create an alternative world that functions not in accordance with the logic of the dominant ideological system but in line with a logic of perversion in which temporality, spatiality and intersubjectivity operate differently. This description of the form and function of the heterocosm recalls Hart’s explanation of the indeterminate space within which the elaborate performances of sadomasochism take place, a borderland between reality and the phantasmagorical (Hart 1998: 9). Studlar argues that the von Sternberg/Dietrich films construct an audiovisual version of the themes of ‘disavowal, suspension, fantasy, fetishism’ that Deleuze describes as the key components of masochistic literature’s structural form and thus enact masochistic desire and pleasure through stylistic choices as well as plot and characterization (Studlar 1988: 97). In keeping with the psychoanalytic framework that Deleuze uses to theorize masochism Studlar interprets Dietrich as the fetishized mother figure whom the male child wishes to reconstruct as inseparable plenitude in symbiosis with himself. Thus, the female (mother) figure is exalted to a position of wholeness without need for the father, a shift in the heteronormative balance of power that Studlar regards as threatening to and subversive of Oedipal imperialism and the paternal law (Studlar 1988: 51–52). Certainly from this perspective, we can follow Studlar’s logic in holding up the masochist aesthetic as positive from the position of feminist politics: male authority is overcome and humiliated and Dietrich appears resplendent and powerful, dominant in terms of both the mise-en-scène and the progression of the narrative (Studlar 1988: 58). The spatial organization of the screen consistently places Dietrich at the centre of an interplay of gazes, encompassing those of the enraptured male characters within the diegetic space and that of the spectator, positing her as statuesque and still (Studlar 1988: 50). She becomes an embodiment of the ‘perfect’ love object depicted in Sacher-Masoch’s novels: the idealized image, frozen in order that it might be apprehended in a different temporal and spatial dreamworld outside the confines of reality (Deleuze 1991: 33). The extraordinarily visual qualities that the masochist aesthetic entails make it clear why film is such an apt medium for the expression of this perversion, particularly when considered in relation to the other vital elements of suspense and fantasy that Reik and Deleuze identify. The effects of visual stillness and temporal disruption can be most effectively achieved when juxtaposed with the movement and progression enabled by the medium of film.

The frozen image of the female torturess that stands out in Sacher-Masoch’s novels and von Sternberg’s films, as well as taking centre stage within the theoretical representation of Deleuze and Studlar, does perhaps enable a reconfiguration of the established Oedipal system and therefore the overthrowing of paternal authority in favour of maternal dominance. However, the figure of the female beloved as manifested in the male masochistic fantasy remains problematic. Each of these twentieth century theories is underpinned by a structure of gender that continues to conceptualize this paraphilia in terms similar to those of Freud’s feminine masochism: a male subject who longs to suffer at the hands of his female love object. Two important consequences follow from this. Firstly, the female masochist is once again left unconsidered in a model that privileges the male and provides no space for an alternative masochistic position. There is a position made available for the female but, and here the second problem arises, it is a place that is extremely risky and that entails the female becoming, once again, a mirrored surface that reflects male desires about femininity rather than allowing her any access to or articulation of her own desires and pleasures. Such an image of the female is more easily read into sadistic discourse as exemplified by novels such as Justine and 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. In these narratives, the female victim is tortured by a typically male subject who takes pleasure in objectifying her as the locus of suffering and endurance (an envisioning of the female body that will be explored further in Chapter 2). Prior to Deleuze’s theory, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Deleuzian Model and the Masochistic Contract
• 2 Masochism, Feminine ‘Goodness’ and Sacrifice
• 3 Self-Mutilation and (a)signification
• 4 Transgressive Reconfigurations
• 5 Heterocosms, Spectres and the World Remade
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Index