Our next Screen Talks will be on Monday 2nd December, 6.30pm at Exeter Picturehouse. Ryan Sweet, a Phd researcher in the Dept of English at the University of Exeter, will introduce Jacques Audiard’s De rouille et d’os (Rust and Bone; 2012).

Jacques Audiard’s De rouille et d’os (Rust and Bone; 2012) is a film that deals with a number of complex and emotive themes, including the father-son relationship, the struggles of working-class life, the dubious policies of middle management in retail firms, domestic abuse, single parenthood, the animal-human relationship, and, to an extent, the question of whether we should keep powerful and intelligent animals, like orcas, in captivity—many of which we can anticipate based on the trailer alone. Above all, though, as I will suggest in my screen talk, Audiard’s romantic drama is acutely concerned with the practical, emotional, and psychological effects of limb loss and disablement— themselves extremely sensitive topics.

As a researcher working on fictional representations of artificial body parts, I initially suggested giving a screen talk on Paul Verhoeven’s iconic 1987 motion picture, Robocop, a film that’s portrayal of prosthetics is significantly different than that which we see in Rust and Bone. As scholars working on disability in film have noted, Murphy, the hero of Verhoeven’s sci-fi action film, is an archetypal example of a particular type of disabled character that we often see deployed in Hollywood film—the “Techno Marvel”. Like the on-screen portrayals of other characters of this type, the display of Murphy’s hyper-sophisticated prosthetics takes precedence over the effects and implications of his disablement. While Robocop is explicitly evoked in Audiard’s film in a light-hearted exchange between the lead characters—Ali, a boxer, and Stephanie, a former ocra trainer—disablement and artificial-limb use are displayed in a much more realistic light in the latter. Unlike the majority of films that use disability as a significant motif, here we see the day-to-day struggles of limb loss and prosthesis use unreservedly displayed—in a couple of instances we even see how difficult and undignifying going to the toilet can be without the use of real or artificial legs. Though we commonly see disability used in film as a visual sign for a character’s deplorable character, or as a motif that enables a physically or mentally impaired protagonist to appear more heroic for achieving success in the face of adversity, in Rust and Bone we see one woman’s surprising and somewhat unusual response to the psychological, emotional, and physical torment occasioned by double-limb amputation.

A particularly unusual and yet extremely interesting aspect of Rust and Bone is the way in which it eroticises the amputee. As I will suggest in my introduction, this eroticisation can be read to engage with but also to reject a recent cultural interest in the sexual appeal of prosthetics—you may remember from a few years ago the internet rumour that Lady Gaga had opted for amputation “for fashion purposes”! As you will see in this film, prostheses are quickly discarded when sex is on the cards. By drawing the attention of the audience to the film’s use of lighting, shot selection, and close-ups to focalise legs—severed and whole—in the movie, I will raise a number of questions regarding Audiard’s decision to sexualise the amputee. How does the film deal with the loss of sexual self, which often accompanies limb loss? How does one regain libido after experiencing amputation? Are prostheses are turn-on, or should they be hidden from potential sexual partners?

As I will also identify, the film raises some intriguing questions about the role of people with disabilities within the film industry. How can we justify Audiard’s decision to cast an able-bodied actress as double amputee in this film? How, if at all, would this film differ if a disabled actress played Stephanie?

Ryan Sweet is a fully funded PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant based in the Department of English at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on the representations of artificial body parts in literature from 1830 to 1914.

On the 21st of October Dr Jana Funke of the University of Exeter (Department of English and Member of the Centre for Medical History) will introduce David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method (2011), starring Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender. Part of the ‘Sickness on Screen’ strand of SCREEN TALKS, the film looks at how the intense relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud gave birth to psychoanalysis.

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Booking Information: Book online, call the Box Office 0871 902 5730 or buy tickets on the door (half price for students on Mondays).

In this guest blog post Dr Jana Funke discusses the film and the important insights that it offers into the development of a scientific understanding of sex at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In A Dangerous Method, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) explains to his erstwhile follower and later adversary Carl Gustav Jung (Michael Fassbender) that people will still reject psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century. In a way, Freud was right, as we love to make fun of psychoanalysis: not all of us want to have sex with our mothers and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. However, we also live in a world in which talking is believed to cure and allowing people to express themselves is generally seen as conducive to health and wellbeing. Talking about sexual experiences and desires, in particular, is something many of us love to do, be it with our friends, in therapy sessions or on television. In this sense, we are very much invested in the so-called ‘talking cure’, which is the dangerous method referred to in the title of David Cronenberg’s film.[1]

Freud did not single-handedly invent the talking cure and A Dangerous Method reminds us of this fact. The film is about the relationship between Jung and the first patient he subjected to this experimental treatment, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). As you will know from seeing the trailer, Spielrein suffered from a range of debilitating tics and fits when she was admitted to Jung’s care at the Burghölzli clinic near Zürich in Switzerland in 1904. In the film, it is only after speaking about and satisfying her masochistic desires (both with the help of Jung) that her so-called ‘hysterical’ symptoms begin to disappear. In my talk before the screening, I will speak a bit about hysteria in relation to gendered ideas about illness and sexuality, and try to explain why people like Freud and Jung thought the talking cure might work. 

I will also consider the film from a different angle. A Dangerous Method is not just a biopic about Jung and Spielrein’s relationship; it is a film about the history of psychoanalysis and sexual science more generally and this is where it speaks most directly to my own research interests. The emergence of psychoanalysis is part of a broader shift in Western understandings of sexuality as a result of which sexual desire came to be seen as something that should be studied and treated scientifically. This process begins in the nineteenth century and I am fascinated with the question of what it meant to think and write ‘scientifically’ about sexuality at that time. A Dangerous Method offers important insights here. In a way, Jung used Spielrein to gain access to Freud and to contribute to the emerging discipline of psychoanalysis. The film depicts brilliantly Freud and Jung’s changing relationship as they struggle to define the scope and aims of psychoanalysis. Whereas Jung, for instance, was interested in mysticism and keen to push the limits of acceptable scientific knowledge, Freud insisted that psychoanalysis had to be based on rigorous scientific principles. Freud’s authority and reputation were shaky – the film reminds us repeatedly that his Jewishness and lack of financial security, for instance, did not work in his favour – and yet it was he who ultimately succeeded in securing his name as the pioneer of psychoanalysis. A Dangerous Method sheds light on the more conflicted history of psychoanalysis and reminds us of some lesser-known contributors, including the radical Otto Gross (Vincent Cassell) and Spielrein herself. It also raises bigger questions that still matter very much today and that I would love to discuss after the film. For instance, what is at stake in understanding sexuality scientifically? What are the aims of therapy? And who gets to decide?

Jana Funke is Advanced Research Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include the history of sexuality and literature and culture in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries.  Read more about Jana’s research here