Gender Imagery in Film, Pt. 4: Antichrist

It has been a while since my last post. I have been focusing on some new changes at work, with my family, and in academics. This post focuses on the Lars von Trier film, Antichrist. When I last left off, I spoke of Disney's representation through many of their films of the female as a representation of the sins of Eve.

And a metamorphosis into sin it is, that She, female lead of Antichrist, undergoes throughout the 2009 Cannes film festival’s most detested film. Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is the product of one man’s internal struggles with his personal Christian beliefs and fears, and is a strikingly visual interpretation of woman as executor of iniquity. His vision runs the gamut from male dominance to female dominance, from child sacrifice to self-mutilation, from psychiatry to psychologically volatile, from sex to torture to freedom. In short, Antichrist could take its tagline from Nietzsche himself: “The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”1 Even comedian, social critic, and philosopher, Bill Hicks noted the tendency for Christian fear-mongering. He said “The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options!”2

The Danish writer-director penned the screenplay and began filming it while in a deep depression and after having forgone the use of anti-depressants3, which could explain the daunting imagery, discouraging, dismal tone and complete lack of censorship. Additionally, it may be the only film in the short history of moving pictures to hire a “researcher on misogyny.”4

The film is divided into chapters, visually, each one explicitly titled and providing a distinct division between parts – similar to the way in which most books, including the Bible, are divided into chapters distinguishing a change in space, time or subject material. The film’s main title and all the subsequent chapter titles are drawn on a chalkboard, each one written different becoming darker and more embittered until the epilogue title. The use of a chalkboard could signify that the film is going to teach the viewer a lesson, mimicking the use of a chalkboard in a school setting. There are four chapters in total, named Grief, Pain, Despair, and The Three Beggars, as well as a prologue and an epilogue. Besides the previously mentioned link between the chapters of the film and the chapters in the Bible, the film ties the chapters to images in the film. The three beggars are shown briefly in the prologue as three pewter statue soldiers, labeled pain, grief, and despair. Later, in the beginning of chapter 3 (Despair), He, played by Willem Dafoe, finds them amongst his wife’s research materials, depicted this time as constellations of a fox, a crow, and a deer, and later sees these constellations in the sky while a voice over says, “I’ve never seen such constellations.” In addition, all three animals appear at regular intervals throughout the film, often at the end of the chapter that shares their namesake.

The connection of the three beggars to the zodiac imitates the same proposal that the Disney films introduced through the imagery of the villainesses in tying women to witchcraft. The first time He sees the deer, at the end of chapter 1, they share a moment of silent communication before the deer runs away, revealing a dead fawn hanging from out of its mother’s vagina, being kicked around in slow motion, both reflecting the death of his child and foreshadowing information that is to come concerning his wife and son. The appearance of the deer is significant to both He and the viewer, as it mimics the relationship between mother and child that is a major plot point for von Trier. Furthermore, the slow motion shot and high pitched whistle with no dialogue draw an immediate union between the end of the prologue and the end of chapter one, relying heavily on the viewer’s interpretation of visual images to make these distinctions.

Antichrist opens with a lengthy slow-motion sex scene, filmed in black and white, set against the Handel aria “Lascia Ch'io Pianga” from the opera Rinaldo, which, even as it builds in character, sounds full of lament and sorrow. As the couple engage in fully graphic and rather raucous coitus, their toddler son is seen climbing onto a desk, then onto the sill of an open window and, predictably, falling to his death. Following the art house technique of interpreting scenes of intensity in a most dramatic fashion, the boy’s super slow-motion fall is cut to moments of the mother’s orgasmic ecstasy in a long, drawn out, borderline painful manner. After witnessing the boy’s teddy bear plow face first into the snow below, the viewer is left with the uneasy feeling that the boy’s death is a result of the parents’ sexual encounter, and that there exists some tie between his mother’s sexual pleasure and his death. There hangs the impression that the family is being punished for allowing the woman sexual gratification.

Furthermore, the decision to show explicit sex, with a close-up shot of penile-vaginal insertion, heightens the connection that von Trier is making between the original sin, sex, and death. Before Eve’s sin, there was no shame5 surrounding nudity and sex, whereas today there is a large amount of discomfort and the resulting censorship of anything sexual. Von Trier’s overt sexual imagery in one way references itself (a movie about sex should surely have sex in it; this opening sex scene foreshadows upcoming sexual scenes) and in another references history’s discomfort with sex. As the viewer is caught off guard, likely having never seen such a scene in a non-pornographic film, he or she is imbued with the same shame and anxiety that Adam and Eve felt upon recognizing their nakedness. In a certain sense, Antichrist is saying that Eve’s sin has resulted in film and art censorship through the unveiling of the human sense of embarrassment. It is woman who has ruined paradise and brought upon us shame and death, both tied to the act of sex, the same act that creates life – because of woman’s wickedness, the creation of life is now, too, the destroyer of life. Just as there can be no divorce without marriage, there can be no death without life. While still contemplating the connection between these two drastically different displays of life and death, the viewer is thrust into the next chapter.

The remainder of the film is shot in color, though von Trier keeps the colors cold, damp and unwelcoming, like a moldy cellar – so strong are his color, cinematographic, and prop choices that as a viewer, you can practically smell the old furniture bathed in cat urine in the couple’s shabby Seattle home or the rotten stench, like decaying hamster bedding, as the main characters trample through the woods en route to their cabin. Von Trier favors long shots with little dialogue, allowing the viewer to feel as if they themselves are immersed in the scenery, feeling the same discomfort, fatigue, disillusionment, sadness, and fear that He and She experience. He relies on an atmosphere of realism, despite the rather unrealistic characteristics of his storyline. Sturken and Cartwright note that realism “has been a fundamental goal of many styles of art, because art has often functioned to reflect society and nature back to its spectators.”6 Antichrist, as a work of modern art, or even postmodern art, intends to relay a feeling of pragmatism, of possibility, of reality, in the face of the oncoming less practical, more metaphysical, myth-like horrors that unfold as the plot thickens. Antichrist could be considered both modern, with its realistic depictions of sex and the historical treatment of women along with its linear frame and its ties to classical literature and art, and postmodern, as it questions the notions of what is actually real and really provides us with no clear resolution in the end. Like many religious and spiritual films, Antichrist relies heavily on a blend of reality and mythology, similarly to the book in which it derives its “originality” and its substance, The Bible.

Returning to the three beggars, just as they return throughout the film, the ties to the biblical trinity is undeniable. Many ancient religions put particular emphasis on numbers, particularly those that were polytheistic – Judaism and Christianity are no different. Though today, the Jewish and Christian establishments claim monotheism, there exists in the Bible evidence to the contrary. Generic references to ancient god Baal can be found littered throughout the Old Testament7, as well as references to other divine beings, including “sons of god”8, “nephilim” and “angels”9, “satan” 10and, of course, Jesus11. Recognition of other divine beings, let alone other beings existing in the same heavenly realm, negates the possibility of monotheism. Christianity attempts to “Jedi mind trick” believers by claiming that the three are really one (which, coincidentally, defies all logic and rationality), and has therefore settled on the notion of a “Holy Trinity.” The three beggars represent von Trier’s interpretation of the Christian trinity, easy for the meticulous observer to spot when other mythical references are revealed.

Perhaps, the most obvious references are provided to us by the characters in a self-referential way. Sturken and Cartwright, in reference to the view that producers of art construct an intended meaning, say that filmmakers, amongst other artists, create images “with the intent that we read them in a certain way” while still maintaining that the producer is “not in full control of the meanings that are subsequently seen in their work.”12 In particular, von Trier intends his audience to be aware of Antichrist’s connections to Christianity: the name of the cabin in the forest in which his main characters experience their fall from grace is named “Eden;” He draws a triangle similar to the food pyramid on a piece of paper, representative of She’s psyche, in an attempt to understand her fears, and, at different points of time in his attempt to analyze her mental state, he labels them with the words “Eden” and “Satan;” the research materials that belong to She have wood-carving style pictures of witch burnings, which were largely produced during a period of religious persecution against women of otherness [otherness being anything outside of the societal-religious norm: insubordinate, intellectual, atheist, &c.]. Once he can create the obvious connections to religious teachings, he can truly begin to deconstruct his own spiritual interpretations and thrust his views onto the spectators. Those spectacles can be subdivided into their own categories: self-mutilation and female circumcision, child sacrifice, and female dominance, though all three intertwine and overlap.

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1 Nietzsche, 172.
2 Bill Hicks, Rant in E Minor, Rykodisc, 1997.
3 Sean O’Hagan, "Interview: Lars von Trier," guardian.co.uk, 12 Jul. 2009. Web. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/12/lars-von-trier-interview>, 17 Apr. 2010.
4 Antichrist, dir. Lars von Trier, perf. Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, DVD, Zentropa Entertainments, 2009.
5 HarperCollins. Genesis 2:25
6 Sturken and Cartwright, 111.
7 HarperCollins. Judges 2:11, 10:10; Numbers 25:3; Deuteronomy 4:3; &c.
8 HarperCollins. Genesis 6:1-8; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7; Daniel 3:25; Psalm 89:6; &c.
9 HarperCollins. Genesis 6:4; 1 Peter 3:18-22; 2 Peter 2:4-5; Jude 6.
10 HarperCollins. Job 2:1-7; John 8:44; James 4:7; Revelation 20:10; &c.
11 HarperCollins. The New Testament
12 Sturken and Cartwright, 45-46.

Gender Imagery in Film, Pt. 3

The characterization of witches, faeries, wicked stepmothers, and other negative roles for women play into all forms of commercially available art, especially film. Disney’s animated films could warrant a paper on misogynistic imagery in and of itself. For example, many of the Disney villains are actually villainesses. Lady Tremaine from Cinderella[1] is the ultimate evil stepmother: self-centered, tyrannical, power hungry, and a backstabber to boot. The Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs[2] is willing to have her stepdaughter murdered to feed her own ego. The tale combines imagery of witchcraft (the magic mirror on the wall) with allusions to women’s desire for preening and narcissism. Half-woman, half-octopus Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid[3] is a combination of similar misogynist stereotypes from tales of witchcraft and Biblical stories. Ursula is an evil sorceress who is arguably the least attractive of the villainesses, being half-octopus, overweight, and with a stereotypical lesbian short haircut and a big mole on her face. Her two cohorts are eels, or water serpents, mimicking the serpent of the Genesis myth. Cruella De Vil is a villainess so evil, she kills puppies. Like Ursula, she has short, grey (or white) hair, and has decidedly inhuman features. Cruella’s face is more demonic, or even witch-like, and her demeanor is quite psychotic. Like Lady Tremaine, Cruella’s only concern is for wealth and status, without concern for who gets hurt along the way[4]. The typical association of selfishness without regard to female characters is yet again linked to the tale of Eve’s selfishness in Genesis.

Perhaps the villainess who portrays evil in the most magnificent way is the stunning Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty[5]. She embodies the attributes of the aforementioned desperadas, while throwing in a few accoutrements at no extra cost. Maleficent damns a baby to exile and death, practices sorcery, and eventually turns into a giant serpent-like dragon in an attempt to distinguish the fair prince. She is drawn with typical Christian imagery influenced features normally associated with Lucifer (who is often considered to be the serpent of the Genesis myth, though there is no real link between the two in the original text), as she is tall, thin, and beautiful with horns and seen as leading little goblin-like demons. Revelation 12:9 describes both Satan as a dragon and the presence of his angels: “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan… and his angels were thrown down with him.[6]” If the visuals were not enough, Maleficent even summons upon “all the powers of hell.” She immeasurably reflects the traditional Christian view of both Satan and the woman as an evil entity. In all cases mentioned, these womanly villains are obsessed with wickedness and their psychotic personas are reflected not only in their actions, but in their appearances as well.

The measure of a female character’s evilness is not the end of the measure of a film’s misogyny factor, however. The relatively recent saturation of “chick flicks” has solidified the American female stereotype of a dimwitted, appearance- and shoe-obsessed shopaholic. Female roles are so standardized in the Romantic Comedy genre, they might as well come with labels from major market brands or advertisement agencies, showing them to be exact replicas of each other, produced in bulk for the cinematic masses. Any given film starring the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Sandra Bullock, or Matthew McConaughey, et al., is sure to have similar themes, similar visuals, similar dialogue, and similar characters: the sassy black friend; the self-absorbed blonde bimbo; the single, childless businesswoman; the sex-obsessed ethnic minority. By characterizing women in a way that says, “proper women must fit into these rigidly defined categories,” the film industry, and the “chick flick” subgenre in particular, are pulling out the stops, and spreading this misogyny thickly onto the female moviegoer, in a most ridiculous, non-romantically-comedic manner.

Returning to Disney’s animated classics, the positions of the central female characters, often princesses, though not evil, are very descriptive about gender roles and gender neutrality. Snow White and Cinderella, for example, are both women who work as slaves, but in two different capacities. Cinderella is quite literally a slave to her stepmother and stepsisters. She is treated not as a member of the family but instead as an insignificant worker bee who is unworthy to partake in their life of luxury, which is actually the result of her father’s fortune. Cinderella accepts her situation, but hopes that someday a prince will rescue her. Snow White, in a similar fashion, struggles with stepmother issues, only to a more serious extent. She, like Cinderella, accepts this fate, and in the meantime, takes over the household chores for a group of seven male strangers, while waiting around to be rescued from herself by a handsome and wealthy prince. Little girls grow up seeing these images of women, even as members of royalty, as slaves to household duties. And nearly all of the Disney classics enforce the notion that to live happily ever after, the woman needs to marry a man of wealth and status. A surprising converse would be the tale of Aladdin, wherein the wealthy princess, Jasmine, rejects the attempts of her father to have her marry into wealth, and instead falls in love with and marries a poor street kid [do not be mistaken, however, Aladdin is not without its faults. It may be one of the most racially controversial Disney films, as Aladdin, Jasmine, and the Sultan are all seemingly white characters, not Arabic. The only dark skinned character is, of course, the evil character, Jafar][7].

The typical Disney princess, including both Cinderella and Snow White, as well as Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Belle (from Beauty and the Beast[8]), and Ariel (The Little Mermaid), have issues relating to their fathers. In some cases the father is dead or missing, and in others he is distant or easily disappointed. The only way for the princess to find genuine happiness is to find another man, similar to her father in status, to whisk her away to a magic life full of true love and animals with human traits. The princess will know true love as soon as Mr. Right arrives – there is no need to bother with dating, introductions to friends and family, and definitely no reason to ask any “get-to-know-you” questions. It is important for the princess to not waste any time with formalities, because she could end up single – then who would save her from herself when she begins her immoral metamorphosis into pure sin?
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[1] Cinderella, dir. Clyde Geronimi, et al., perf. Ilene Woods, VHS, Disney, 1950.
[2] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, writ. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, perf. Adriana Caselotti, VHS, Disney, 1937.
[3] The Little Mermaid, dir. Ron Clement and John Musker, perf. Jodi Benson and Pat Carroll, VHS, Disney, 1989.
[4] 101 Dalmatians, dir. Clyde Geronimi, et al., perf. Betty Lou Gerson, VHS, Disney, 1961.
[5] Sleeping Beauty, dir. Clyde Geronimi, perf. Eleanor Audley and Mary Costa, VHS, Disney, 1959.
[6] HarperCollins. Revelation 12:9
[7] Aladdin, dir. Ron Clements and John Musker, perf. Scott Weinger and Robin Williams, DVD, Disney, 1992.
[8] Beauty and the Beast, dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, perf. Robby Benson and Paige O’Hara, VHS, Disney, 1991.