engleski

Peter Greenaways film productions of sex and gender gap: Bodies and identities of men and women in mortal conflict

Postmodernist texts are double-coded as a rule. The surface layer of the message is meant to entertain and to adjust to populist needs and to the pop culture of the “lower” layer of recipients who prefer to remain rather intellectually blind and emotionally thrilled by a story. The “deeper” layer of the message can hide some very serious diagnosis of the discussed problem(s), but this diagnosis has to be deciphered. Greenaway has played in his film texts with various formal styles (grotesque caricature of baroque, neo- surrealism and the postmodern parvenu capitalism), but at the same time he has created an intellectually rich space of discourses dealing with male and female identities and bodies within the frame of marital relations. The interpretations of the films allow us to draw some interesting conclusions. Men and women differ considerably in the way how they behave towards the members of the same sex and towards the members of the opposite sex, in the quality of the personal, individual identity and the gender self- description. Firstly, the depicted male-to-male relations reveal egoism, lack of group cohesion, hostility and the tendency of mutual elimination. The marital relationship is considered by man as a chance to pervert the marriage platform for economic purposes. The marriage cannot function because of infantilism blockade from within the male psyche and because of unjust social re- definition of the woman’s position in marriage. The male psychological identity is harmed by destructivity, formal rigidity, immaturity, morbidity and suicidal tendencies. Consequently, the male body can easily be destroyed, mutilated or physically or symbolically castrated, exposed to the feelings of guilt and the self-imposed boomerang moral causality of punishment. The male death brings the male body back to Mother Earth through the medium of water or fire. Secondly, the female-to-female relations are very often characterized by mutual solidarity. The marital relationship is considered by women to be an opportunity for equality in rights and obligations, which leads to a feminist revision of the patriarchal dominance constellations. The female psychological identity can be defined as strong and not so easily exposed to externally imposed morality norms. A deeper life wisdom does not allow women to become victims of rigid formalisms. Finally, the adopted relativism of moral rules makes them immune to the logic of unavoidable punishment. The female body remains compact – maybe because women tend not to violate the deeper essence of things and, on the other hand, readily subvert the irrelevant male formalisms. To sum up, Greenaway allows his female figures to offer postmodernist feminist gender and identity concepts which could liberate his male figures from their destructive, narcissist, misogynist structures appearing to be mere hypnotic simulations of power.

Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover , gender gap, identities in conflict

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