Archived seminar
26 February 2014: An Investigation of Theme of Sexuality in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) (CISC Seminar Series)
Dr Matthew Carter
At 13:00 in 6.345.
Abstract The work of Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990), explores notions of gender, sex, and sexuality through a detailed analysis of the post-structuralism of Michel Foucault and those of Luce Irigaray. They work as an evolution upon the psychoanalytical-based work of film theorist, Laura Mulvey.
Butler details the construction of the “Heterosexual Matrix” (her terminology) as “the grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalised.” Her methods can be understood as an attempt to further disrupt and critique patriarchal hegemony through a consideration of ‘subversive’ sexualities that do not fit into the traditional male-female binaries.
This is a binary that insists upon (using Butler’s terminology again) the compulsory “heterosexualisation” of a subject’s desire as requirement for a stable, coherent identity within the socio-symbolic order.
Through a consideration of the work of Judith Butler, Dr Carter will analyse the investigations of sexuality in filmmaker David Lynch’s psycho-sexual thriller Mulholland Drive (2001).
Dr Carter will see how far the film’s ‘dream logic’ narrative can be considered for the feminist project of sexual representation in cinema.
Biography Matt Carter teaches film and critical theory at the University of Essex. He is the author of Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood’s Frontier Narrative (Edinburgh UP, 2014) and has published work in numerous edited collections and peer-reviewed journals.
Matt has just been contracted to co-edit (with A.P. Nelson) a collection of essays on the films of Delmar Daves for Edinburgh UP as part of their “ReFocus” series on neglected Hollywood filmmakers. His contribution will focus on the figure of the femme fatale in Daves’ film Jubal.