The Acoustic Mirror and Subversive Visual Strategies in Park Chan Wook’s The Handmaiden

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2023.446

Keywords:

gaze, voice, Park Chan-Wook, The Handmaiden, Korean cinema, body

Abstract

This essay analyzes the narrative and visual tools that the Korean director, Park Chan-Wook deploys in his film that aim to dismantle this hegemonic gaze and its associated discourse by using Lacan’s visual theory, Laura Mulvey’s concept of visual pleasure and Kaja Silverman’s approach of voice as element of masculine domination. On the other hand, it will analyze how the female subject is able to challenge the traditional phonic space in which they have been limited to a mere body element that anchors them to a passive positioning, resisting the normative relationship between female voice / body through which the woman is excluded from the ability to narrate her own story.

 

References

Conley, T. (2010). Foucault + Fold. The Deleuze Dictionary: 2nd Revised Edition, edited by Adrian Parr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 110-113.

Crary, J. (1990). Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. United Kingdom: MIT Press.

Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault. United Kingdom: University of Minnesota Press.

Forcinito, A. (2013). Lo invisible y lo invivible: el nuevo cine argentino de mujeres y sus huellas acústicas. Chasqui, 42(1), 37-53.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Visual and other pleasures. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 14-26.

Silverman, K. (1998). The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Published

2022-05-08

How to Cite

Claveria, J. Z. (2022). The Acoustic Mirror and Subversive Visual Strategies in Park Chan Wook’s The Handmaiden. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 11(1), 170–192. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2023.446

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023): Fall 2023

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2023 Javier Zapata Zapata

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