Female Madness/Rationality Under Patriarchy: A Case Study

ALERT: We will be watching the clips in a special order that will provide new insights, so it really is necessary to watch the video beforehand this time. Please watch the entire film (both parts) before the event. Erg bedankt!

WARNING: Men will find this week’s material especially elusive. This is a feature, not a bug.

For the first time in SADHO history, our topic is not a BBC production, but the famous and highly controversial 1982 feminist classic, A Question of Silence (Dutch: De Stilte Rond Christine M.)—an honest and brutally frank reflection on the state of consciousness in modern liberal Western society.

The “hard problem” of intersubjectivity, like legal theory, is most fruitfully discussed by means of case studies. The fact that this particular “case“ is fictional is irrelevant to its importance. Media studies is the social equivalent of neurology, and provides a perfectly good means for interrogating social reality.

This week’s content is meant as a therapeutic challenge. To critique our knowledge, we must be open to everything; to expose our deficiencies, we must respect the pain we feel when things are contradictory, or threatening, or make no sense. Embrace your disquiet as you follow this week’s haunting story.

Background
This seminal film was created by a ground-breaking visionary 40 years ago. Yet it still stands as an accurate depiction of how class and power play out in the perception, understanding, and empathy within human relations. And it shows how staggeringly different one and the same reality can be for people at opposite ends of a power relation.

Method
View the entire film without reading any (additional) synopsis, review, or analysis in advance, in order to capture your authentic initial impression. Here are the links:

• Part I
• Part II

Overview
Three women—Christine, wife of a public servant, a quiet stay-at-home mother of three; Annie, a boisterous waitress; and Andrea, a sharp executive secretary—are enmeshed with a female psychiatrist who must make a professional clinical determination on behalf of the Dutch legal system regarding who is sane.

As the tale simply-starkly unfolds, we become entwined in a series of events that, while objectively uncomplicated, yet baffles us. We are forced to examine, and then abandon, what must surely be the most sane interpretation. But we are not alone, for the story telling itself confirms our shock and assists us in our self-undoing.

Points of Interest

Form

• Drama requires us to participate in order for its truth to be heard.
  What story does this story attempt to tell us?
• How is the technique of story-telling and depiction manipulated or crafted to this end—e.g. the presence of a “Greek chorus”?

Judgment

• Can the acts portrayed be those of sane (not moral) actors?
• Everyone is called to judge this issue. How shall we?

Agreements and Assumptions

• Are there salient facts about the men and women which reveal important issues grounding our take on the story and ultimate questions, beyond the moments at the dress store?
• What insights come from the interactions and roles among these men and women?
• How is power balance depicted in the four women’s lives?
• How do we know where Power lies?
• What powers are distributed to the women vs the men, either openly or implicitly? Does this change?
• Who has to listen to questions posed about existing “agreements”?
• How gender-ambiguous is Dr. Janine in her various roles—as doctor, wife, in court, in prison, and in society?

Denialism

• Discounting the women’s choices is depicted as reality. The women are deranged fools. The court case is open and shut.

Sanity

• If the clinical judgment is “sane” then what problem does this present?
• The question of sanity is a technical question answered to execute technical legal determination; it does not address the content of one’s values, life or its meaning. Would “Justice” address other criteria than fact and sanity?

Silence

• What is the meaning of silence and its being volitional or coerced?
• Why did Christine stop speaking? Reflect on the other events of silence by each character.
• Ultimately is Dr. Janine able to understand other women? How could SHE break through?

Laughter

• What is the meaning of laughter, regarding expressing, revealing, conveying, sharing a secret?
• The final straw, when the prosecutor suggests: “If a man were to …” progresses to chaos. Where is power at that point?
• Bonus Question: Why does the Doctor laugh?

Open Ended Questions

• What felt completely dissonant when you encountered it during your first viewing?
• Which consciousness types are distinctly portrayed?
• What does the fact that you’ve never seen this film, or heard of its director, mean?