Lars von Trier's women / edited by Rex Butler & David Denny.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed September 8, 2016).

"The Danish director Lars von Trier is undoubtedly one of the world's most important and controversial filmmakers, and arguably so because of the depiction of women in his films. He has been criticized for subjecting his female characters to unacceptable levels of violence or reducing them to masochistic self-abnegation (Bess in Breaking the Waves, "She" in Antichrist and Joe in Nymphomaniac). At other times, it is the women in his films who are dominant or break out in violence, such as in his adaptation of Euripides' Medea, the conclusion of Dogville and perhaps throughout Nymphomaniac. Lars von Trier's Women confronts these dichotomies head on. Editors Rex Butler and David Denny do not take a position either for or against von Trier, but rather considers how both attitudes fall short of the real difficulty of his films, which may simply not conform to any kind of feminist or indeed anti-feminist politics as they are currently configured. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis and the work of Slavoj Žižek, Lars von Trier's Women reveals hidden resources for a renewed "feminist" politics and social practice."--Bloomsbury Publishing

Introduction: the feminine act and the question of woman in Lars von Trier's films: Performing the feminine -- Femininity between goodness and act -- Listening to dancer in the dark: singing as recalling the world -- A woman's smile -- Female fight club: Lars von Trier's women and the paradox of being -- Cruelty and the real: the female figure in Orchidégartneren, Methe-le bienheureuse and Befrielsesbilleder -- What is the gift of grace? on Dogville -- Manderlay: the gift, grace's desire and the collapse of ideology -- Violent affects: nature and the feminine in antichrist -- A postmodern family romance: antichrist -- Not melancholic enough: triumph of the feminine in melancholia -- How to face nothing: melancholia and the feminine -- Lars von Trier's fantasy of femininity in Nymphomaniac -- Mea maxima vulva: appreciation and aesthetics of chance in Nymphomaniac -- List of contributors -- Bibliography -- Index.

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