Late in the noughties I took post graduate papers in Feminist Studies and Sex in Film at The University of Auckland. During this time I wrote some slight pieces about the works I was reading and from time to time I’ll publish them here. This is one of them.
Lisa Dowling argues that ‘pornography displaced, fragmented, relativised, undermined is not pornography’. Pornography can be loosely defined as representational sexual activity with minimal narrative provided – male focused and often parodic – to give some credibility and logic. A new genre, of which Romance is representative, aims to break down prohibitions relating to ‘real’ sexual activity in a climate exemplified by a return to realism in its broadest framework.
Baudrillard identifies pornography as having ‘very precise ideological parameters’. Dowling identifies closely with this view and sees it a supporting a new way of evaluating the status of films – principally non Anglo-American films – such as Romance in a new cultural context.
Dowling identifies, in particular, a range of tools used by Breillat to deconstruct the potentially pornographic sequences of ‘Romance’ and fit them into a genre of film that is more art cinema and narrative-conventional. These tools include creating a counterpoint between the seen and the heard, with the protagonist providing an extensive existential discursive voiceover which focuses on shame, ambivalence and, in particular, masochism. By challenging stereotypical connections between sex, gender and sexual practice Breillat emasculates any otherwise straightforward reading of the film.
Dowling sees otherwise latently pornographic scenes undermined by a conflict at ‘visual and narrative level’ and suggests that this, in part, determines that the scenes are not pornographic and that, as a result, some make the ‘macho mask’ become a source of humour.
Dowling states that Romance ‘incorporates hardcore elements but does so only to challenge and mobilise their meanings not as an end in themselves.’
dykiegirl 