Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women

Fifty years of feminist thought have made the idea that women stay at home while men dominate the streets seem outdated; nevertheless, Ceuterick argues that theoretical considerations of gender, space, and power in film theory remain limited by binary models. Looking instead to more fluid models of spatial relations inspired by Sara Ahmed, Rosi Braidotti, and Doreen Massey, this book discovers wilful, affirmative, and imaginative activations of gender on screen. Through close, micro-analysis of historic European Messidor (Alain Tanner, 1979) and contemporary world cinema: Vendredi Soir (Claire Denis, 2002), Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012), and Head-On (Fatih Akin, 2004), this book identifies affirmative aesthetics: light, texture, rhythm, movement and sound, all of which that participate in a rewriting of bodies and spaces. Ultimately, Ceuterick argues, affirmative aesthetics can challenge the gender categories and power structures that havebeen thought to determine our habitation of cars, homes, and city streets. Wilful women drive this book forward, through their movement and stillness, imagination and desire, performance and abjection.

Provides an affirmative approach to feminism and film Explores case studies of films that are wilful to change the status quo, deconstructing the binary social distinctions created and reinforced by many films Uses a micro-analysis of four films to show how bodies and forms have the potential to revise women's current relations to space

Autorentext
Maud Ceuterick is a Marie Sk odowska-Curie research fellow in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has previously published on the 'road movie' genre, gender and domesticity in transnational cinema, and space tourism in film.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Affirmative ethics, wilfulness, and affects as forms.- 2. Urban wanderer and wilful performances: Head-on (Gegen die wand).- 3. Housing wilfulness: Wadjda.- 4. Lived body, affects and cars: Friday night (Vendredi soir).- 5. Conclusion: Affirmative aesthetics.