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I love subtext
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this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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the handmaiden really just reads like fetish fanfic tbh
That's unfortunate
I wish there was a way for that story to be told by a cishet male director that didn't feel like it's fetishizing or objectifying lesbians. There is kinda a metanarrative thing where one of the characters finds out the other is the object of a bunch of creeps' fantasies and they both go and deal with that; if you're watching the movie to titillate yourself you'd probably feel called out in that scene. But ultimately, they're kinda having their cake and eating it too, right? Sex sells and there's an undeniable market force that pushes a studio to sex up their movie to make it sell more. The negative aspect here is the thin line between tasteful, deliberate sexual content, and the opposite; there's a qualitative difference between both categories that isn't even dependent on how much sexual content is in the movie, but on the way it's conveyed. I wish I could say that the movie treads the line extremely well and that Park Chan Wook's close queer friend that they consulted for the movie did her job tremendously, but that's not for me to say.
Maybe the ideal way for a movie like that to come to be is for almost everyone involved in the production to be queer, to make sure it's genuinely being made to express experiences in a cathartic way rather than opportunistically using a lesbian story to pander to the straight male gaze. I don't know if there's a way to insulate such a production from market forces that would push the artists in a less fetishistic direction, being produced under socialism would definitely help. Everything is better under FALGSC.
I find your take confusing. I’m going to try to reduce it to the confusing points, and apologies if this comes off as too blunt:
Men find women attractive and some fetishize lesbians as double the number of attractive women in a sexual scenario. Lesbians find women attractive and also enjoy a two lady sexual combo. Both buy a ticket to a public movie, and both are turned on to some extent.
Is it a problem that anyone is titillated by it, or only a problem if men are titillated since they are implicitly uninvited to lesbian sexual encounters? If your suggestion of a queer production cast includes lesbians, then aren’t they equally at risk of letting their own excitement cloud their judgment? Lastly, isn’t it possible to be an ally who understands real life context while simultaneously allowing yourself to be aroused by a movie?
In my opinion, if you make and sell artistic media, you are giving up control for how it is privately consumed. If you don’t want your image used privately (sexually or otherwise), then don’t sell your image to the public.
I think the issue here is that there's an enormous qualitative difference between the male gaze and the lesbian gaze. I'm not equipped to really break it down super well because I'm only 1 straight guy and haven't really ever discussed this with queer women enough to understand their side of it, but I'll do my best.
Neither is a problem. It's totally cool for people to be titillated by the movie, and as you said what people do with the movie in their private consumption is not a problem. The issue is with how the movie comes to be that way, and whether the movie's depiction of lesbians is reductive and fetishistic, or authentic and cathartic.
Nope, the opposite. It's an erotic story! I'd hope that their excitement leads them to make creative decisions that would make the movie authentically their own, and aligns the final product with how they really feel. That's ultimately the source of any authenticity in art, that the artist is expressing what they truly feel and what they truly desire rather than what they think the audience will enjoy.
Yeah, it is, but only if you ignore how you fit into that context. The sum of the outcomes of 50,000 allies watching movies with one hand full is the same as 50,000 creeps doing the same: you're providing a demand for more movies to be made to appeal to your sensibilities, and depending on the conversations you go on to have it may have a social effect of normalizing (to the extent that it's not already normalized) fetishization.
Maybe I came across a little too critical above, or I only implied a bunch of caveats that I should've stated explicitly. You are allowed to watch and enjoy the movie regardless of your identity lol; I'm a straight dude that watched and enjoyed the movie. I'm just questioning how it fits into the landscape of fetishization and how these kinds of movies are made for the male gaze. Not to mention, for all I know I completely missed the point of why kristina thought it just read like fetish fanfic, because sometimes us straight dudes just get it wrong and we assume a bunch of things.