Girls gone wild: animality, female teenagers, and disidentification in contemporary European cinema

ABSTRACT

Contemporary European cinema insistently depicts female teenagers in association with non-human animals. This article focuses on a group of films in which the teenage protagonists approach animality while closely surrounded by systems of exploitation of animals. The films Axolotl Overkill (Helene Hegemann, 2017), Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016), and Eastern (Piotr Adamski, 2019) feature female teenagers that experience oppression over their bodies. Animality appears both as part of their oppression and as a subversive alternative to negotiate their appointed social role as girls. The analyzed films explore narrative and aesthetic modes of disruption of the division between human/animal, as they articulate constructive encounters and even identification with the human and the non-human. Additionally, these films confront normative constructions of femininity through abject animality. Instead of ‘becoming women’, the protagonists embrace a more fluid transformation. These films propose ways of representing animals without participating in the traditional, spectacularizing gaze that reinforces the hierarchy of dominance of the human over the non-human. In this sense, this article contributes to the aim of animal (film) studies to rethink how visual culture represents the non-human. Lastly, these films appear more broadly as part of a larger tendency in contemporary European cinema inscribing animals in a critique of conventional femininity.

KEYWORDS:

• Animality
• femininity
• coming-of-age
• disidentification
• European cinema
• posthumanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a deeper analysis of the concept of European cinema see, for example The Routledge Companion to European Cinema (eds. Gábor Gergely and Susan Hayward, 2022), European Cinema (Elizabeth Ezra, 2004), or The Europeanization of Cinema (Randall Halle, 2014).

2. Burt takes a more nuanced approach than Berger, as he explains that these representations hinted at an ambivalence rather than an impossibility of cross-species encounters. As he claims, ‘the dynamic representations of animals on film were both an indication of a more humane science and an expression of an increased control over all aspects of life’ (2002, 113).

3. The last human zoo displayed Congolese families in the world fair set in Brussels, Belgium, in 1958.

4. Some illustrative examples include the live performance Meat Joy (Carolee Schneeman, 1964, United States/France), the photographic performance Anatomy Lesson #2: Learn Where the Meat Comes From (Suzanne Lacy, 1976, United States), the feature film The Beast (Walerian Borowczyk, 1975, France), and more recently the performative short film also entitled The Beast (María Llopis, 2005, Spain).

5. The idea of ‘becoming with animals’ comes from Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet (2008), in which she highlights interdependence and relationality with others and explains that companion species ‘make a mess out of categories’ (19).

6. See, for instance, Tomás Gomariz’s (2022) posthuman analysis of Justine’s becoming animal and Kath Dooley’s (2019) analysis of the mind/body divide in this and other recent French films depicting cannibalism. Of the three films analyzed in this article, Raw is the only one that has been studied in academic literature.

7. In her analysis of Raw, Rosalind Galt (2022) argues that, while the films satisfy feminist pleasures and proposes alternatives of transgressive posthuman resistance, it also symptomatic of the subjectivities and oppression enticed by white feminism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristina Ruiz-Poveda Vera

Cristina Ruiz-Poveda Vera is a film and media scholar teaching at U-TAD University of Technology and Digital Art (Madrid, Spain), where she is the Academic Director of the Animation Department. Her work predominantly focuses on three topics: transnational cinemas, especially in Ibero America and Europe; the role of women in contemporary European media; and the audiovisual literacy and media habits of Generation Z, with special attention to interactive media. In 2017, Cristina received the Ruth McQuown Award for the Humanities of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in recognition of her commitment to diversity and overcoming barriers through her research and teaching style. She has also participated in film festivals such as San Sebastián and has experience working in 3D animation, as she worked in the production of the award-winning Mortadelo y Filemón contra Jimmy el Cachondo (Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible, Javier Fesser, 2014). Cristina received her PhD from the University of Florida in 2018 and her B.A. from the University Carlos III of Madrid 2011.