Perverse Protests: Simone de Beauvoir on Pleasure and Danger, Resistance, and Female Violence in Film

Abstract

This essay engages Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to explore perverse forms of protest depicted in three films: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, David Fincher’s Gone Girl, and Lars von Trier’s two-volume Nymphomaniac. In each film, agency is linked to both sexuality and violence and is depicted as stemming from a range of affects—boredom, melancholy, anxiety, anger, desire, paranoia, revenge, and frustration. Emotions simmer until at some point, they produce violent outbursts, or what might be described as perverse protests. Why should feminists take an interest in these films about women who might easily be dismissed, even condemned, by viewers as crazy, vengeful, and slutty? Presented on screen, these women’s stories do not so much veer between pleasure and danger but rather sit at the apex of their conjunction. Read with Beauvoir, we can see that the films capture the ambiguities, intensities, and pathologies of women’s feelings and forms of protest.