Amber Jacobs, Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
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Wednesday 14 March 2012
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6.00-7.00pm
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Room TW1.U8 (Tower 1)
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Chair: Dr Sadie Wearing, Gender Institute
Open to all - no booking required. Followed by a reception from 7.
00pm in the Gender Institute Open Space (Columbia House). There will be a screening of the first episode of Haynes's 'Mildred Pierce' in the Gender Institute from 4.00pm earlier in the day.
Abstract
This paper argues that Todd Haynes's 2011 television version of James Cain's 1943 novel 'Mildred PIerce' makes a radical departure from dominant modes of representing the maternal- and more precisely the mother -daughter relation- via particular formal techniques he employs within the terms of the specific audio visual medium of the TV mini series. I will argue via use of the theory of Michel Chion, Andre Green and Luce Irigaray that we can read Haynes's Mildred Pierce as an experiment in form that has political and aesthetic implications that relate to recent queer and feminist interventions into psychoanalytic models of the symbolic. I argue that Haynes's 2011 rendering of Mildred PIerce is an exemplary instance of formal innovation that can be seen as a significant move beyond the matricidal economy described by Irigaray and others.
Biography
Dr Amber Jacobs works on feminist theories and philosophies, film and visual culture, ancient Greek myth, tragedy and philosophy and post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theories. Her Book On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother came out in 2008 with Columbia University Press. She currently works as a lecturer in the department of psychosocial studies, Birkbeck, University of London.