Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Reevaluating Our Ga(y)ze: An Exploration into How Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (2016) Creates Empathy for Queer Individuals
Rasmika Naidu
ABSTRACT:
This paper considers the transformative ethics of Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (2016), and how, through vicariously sharing in the rebellious boundary-breaking of Park’s female protagonists, queer cinema encourages viewers to question heteronormative views on sexuality, intimacy, and desire, inviting us to “to take a fresh look at our gaze (and our gays)” (Boyle 2012: 67). Drawing on Martin Rossouw’s musings on the transformational ethics of film, I will explore how Park’s film creates a cognitive dissonance in the audience that encourages them to challenge their assumptions of social norms and ideals. The characters, Sook-hee and Hideko, openly defy heteropatriarchal norms and, as the primary focalisers, encourage the viewer to sympathise with their plight. The Handmaiden imagines a lesbian relationship free from the voyeuristic gaze of men who wish to control and dictate women’s sexuality and encourages the audience to confront their notions of women’s sexuality and what it means to be a woman in a heteronormative society. In my analysis of The Handmaiden, I explore the film’s self-reflexive interrogation of pornography’s objectifying power and the difficulty of representing women’s desires in cinema. Furthermore, I also explore how eroticism and intimacy are used as tools for liberation by the female protagonists. These films make the audience empathise with, and be concerned about, the protagonists’ quests for freedom even if their “shackles are very different from [our] own” (Lorde 1984). I argue that, through its exaggerated and winding narrative, Park’s film can act as an agent for change.
keywords: cinema; gaze; intimacy; pornography; transformational ethics