신유물론적 관점에서 본 토드 헤인즈의 〈세이프〉

Abstract

This paper considers the causes of ‘multiple chemical sensitivity’(MCS) or ‘environmental illness’(EI) of Carol White in Todd Haynes’s Safe to be a material-discursive environment represented in the film. The film, I argue, suggests that this symptom is a material-discursive phenomena created by the inter-penetration and entanglement of culture-body-nature. Through gender, racial, social and cultural discourses, previous studies have explored social and political toxicity factors such as patriarchy, possessive individualism and consumerism as possible causes to Carol’s symptoms. The body is a space in which material and discourse operate simultaneously. Various material-discursive forces and lines transform her body and life through trans-corporeal movement through Carol’s body. While previous studies have focused on the cultural mechanism of Carol’s bodily transformation, in this paper I will reinterpret such process of transformation from the perspective of new materialism, such as Karen Barad’s ‘agential realism’ and ‘intra-action,’ and Stacy Alaimo