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by Laura Wilson
Emerson College
In
1952, the Paris journal Les Temps Modernes featured an essay
by Simone de Beauvoir that kindled controversy even within the radical
community to which she belonged. Interestingly enough, "Must We Burn Sade?"
appeared in print just as do Beauvoir wrote the final pages of her groundbreaking
feminist tract, The Second Sex. The essay in Les Temps Moderns
explored the psychological and philosophical dimensions of male sadism,
daring to suggest that the Marquis do Sade's literary works were politically
worthwhile. How so? Because, de Beauvoir argued, Sade admitted and articulated
the troubling but real connections between power and eroticism (1). Although
the essay focused on men, the question presented in its title continues
to pose a daunting challenge to feminism. Must women burn Sade?
What are feminists to make of women - both real and fictional who cooperate
and take some pleasure in their own sexual domination? Do films portraying
such disturbing female complicity serve only to enforce gender inequality?
And, to pose the question more provocatively, is it possible for self-consciously
feminist spectators to experience such representations as sexually pleasurable?
These are not popular or appealing ideas for many feminists. Even some
of the bolder feminist theorists remain wary of investigating sadomasochism's
appeal to women. Yet the juxtaposition of pleasure and danger in female
sexuality is an important subject of feminist analysis. To support this
statement, I will focus on a single film, Liliana Cavanni's The Night Porter (1973). The Holocaust is probably the quintessential twentieth-century
symbol for sadistic power. Since Cavanni's film revolves around a sadomasochistic
relationship initiated in a concentration camp, it serves as a fitting
means for exploring the relationship between power and eroticism from
a women's perspective. For The Night Porter's Lucia - as
for all women growing up under a patriarchal system - sexual pleasure
and danger are inextricably and tragically connected. Cavanni's film dramatizes
the
consequences of that connection. In the process, the film exposes the
contradictions and weaknesses of male power and portrays a female character
who exploits those weaknesses in order to find her own voice. For these
reasons, The Night Porter is both compelling and worthwhile for
feminist analysis.
The Night Porter highlights, addresses, and resolves some
issues for female spectators. Determining what those issues are requires
an analysis of male and female subjectivity and identification within
the film's text. In the context of hierarchical gender relationships that
privilege men, sadomasochism certainly strips the woman of her sense of
subjectivity and thus, of independent action. Representations of sadomasochism
do not simply mirror the reality of gender hierarchy; they also reflect
the fears and hopes associated with that hierarchy, thus constituting
a fantasy where women - and men - can work though some of their issues
around sex and power (2). In such fantasies and films are fantasy - power
can come unfixed, shifting between sadist and masochist, man and woman.
What counts then is when and with whom female viewers identify in the
film and how the film's subjects operate.
As most feminist film theorists realize, subjectivity and
identification express power relationships. When, for example, point-of-view
changes in the course of a film narrative, the axis of power has also
changed. Marxist feminist Gayle Rubin has persuasively argued that how
power and pleasure are related is always a result of a particular "sex/gender"
system. Yet she insists, true to her Marxist orientation, that this system
is the product of the social and economic arrangements of a given society,
not a set of immutable relationships determined by biology. Her point
is that if power and sexual pleasure are socially constructed, they have
the potential to operate differently with even subtle changes in the sex/gender
system (3). I suggest that going to a movie - and indulging in a fantasy
- constitutes a structural change in individuals' system of reality. This
change creates a space for flexibility in the normal "rules." In
films dealing with sadomasochistic relationships, subjects possess the
capacity to transcend, for a time, the limits of male power under patriarchy.
Thus, The Night Porter gives Lucia
- and the women who identify with her - the chance to do what may be impossible
in the "real world": to simultaneously indulge in submission and
wrest considerable power from male victimizers.
An early sequence in The Night Porter suggests that Liliana Cavanni
herself was aware of the power of representation in male hands, perhaps
foregrounding the feminist anti-pornography debate. Nazi officer Max's
first encounter with the sixteen-year old Lucia as concentration camp
prisoner occurs through a camera, Max, training a 16mm movie camera over
a line of naked male and female prisoners, slowly picks Lucia out of the
crowd. The sequence effectively exaggerates the prototypical male gaze;
yet at various points later in the film, viewers learn that Max was once,
but no longer, "a man with an imagination." If imagination here serves
as a metaphor for power and control, by the film's end, Max has no imagination,
no control, and no power. His gaze, or power to represent, has failed
to conquer Lucia and subdue her sexuality. In fact, Cavanni is camera
has the last word, ultimately thwarting Max's power over Lucia.
To show just how Cavanni accomplishes this, I will focus on two principal
themes: first, an analysis of Max as a participant in a community of men
who bond together to protect themselves against their fear of women's
sexuality and who can only find sexual pleasure and emotional fulfillment
in cruelty, rape, and killing. Second, I will closely analyze Lucia's
behavior and how she exploits the weak spot in the community - symbolic
of male control in general-to which Max and his war criminal friends belong.
As we will see, the post-camp sexual encounters between Max and Lucia
frequently invert the relationships established to the concentration camp
and persistently threaten to disrupt the larger system of patriarchal
authority for which his friends stand.
The narrative of The Night Porter centers around the relationship
between Lucia, a Former concentration camp prisoner, and Max, a former
Nazi officer who raped and brutalized her inside the camp. The film opens
twelve years after the war. Max is covering his identity by working as
a porter in an aging Vienna hotel; Lucia arrives as a guest with her American
husband. Lucia decides to stay in Vienna on her own and, as a result,
concentration camp flashbacks recall the gruesome details of Max's brutalization
of the young Lucia. A sexual relationship ensues between the two which
replicates and expands upon their concentration camp memories. These scenes
explore the complexity of Lucia's emotional mingling of fear, desire,
and sexual passion.
Although an initial reading of The Night Porter apparently exhibits
a saga of sadomasochistic male power over women, a closer look reveals
that the film is actually about the undoing of that power. The
story is at once a tragic and hopeful parable about female challenges
to male authority and sexual domination.
As the narrative opens, Max's former position of power has been sublimated
by his reduced status of hotel porter, coupled with the implication that
Max is impotent. The loss of phallic power suggests that he can only he
potent and sexual in the power-based role of sadistic torturer, as he
was in the war. Max's frustration and shame are exhibited within his relationship
with Alec, a former 85 guard and ballet dancer, Although Alec is a man,
Cavanni's decision to make him a ballet dancer clearly identifies him
with the female sexuality that both intimidates Max and leaves him cold.
All Max can do in the face of Alec's desire is to inject him with drugs
in the rear end, clearly a feeble substitute for a phallus. For Max, the
issue seems to be that he cannot desire any woman-or feminized man - who
has independent desire of her own. He is only sexually potent when he
can exert complete domination over female sexuality, as he did with the
sixteen-year old Lucia. And since only his permanently-lost Nazi officer
status could offer him that, he shies away from sex, ashamed of his impotency,
but fearing the active sexual desire - the potential castrating capacity
- of women. Making such a choice is humiliating for Max hut preferable
to being swallowed up by a female sexuality that he cannot control.
As the narrative makes clear, Max is part of a small community of war
criminals who share Max's psychosexual dynamics. These men's secrets and
their obsession with sadism bind them together. Like Max, they require
absolute power to experience sexual pleasure and they all fear women who
step outside the bounds of that absolute power. The group bears a resemblance
to the Oedipal father and son who ally themselves because they fear the
consequences of mother's sexuality. These men understandably fear the
arrival of Lucia, as a woman and as a living witness/survivor of the war
crimes. She may very well betray them, initiating the castration metaphor.
Still more, her presence suggests that the cherished lost power was never
a complete one. She is a survivor of the Holocaust, therefore a
witness and living reminder that historical circumstance granted them
power in the camps, and then took it away. The role of dominant sadist,
although once enshrined in law, had never inherently been theirs, as perhaps
they had liked to think, in spying on them through the crack of a door,
Lucia will stumble across the "realization" that the sex/gender system
that permits men to dominate women so completely has nothing to do with
biology and everything to do with economic and social arrangements- which
can change. For Max and his friends, a woman in possession of such a secret
is dangerous indeed.
Lucia's arrival heralds a dramatic dilemma for Max, who surely feels torn
between his desire for her and the fear that she will recognize his impotence.
On the other hand, Lucia presents the possibility of restoring his lost
status and power, if he can succeed in subduing her. Still not confronting
her directly, he follows her and her husband to the performance of The
Magic Flute- a suggestive choice of pleasure (magic) and flute (phallus).
To some extent, the episode at the opera can be read as an exaggerated
example of Laura Mulvey's male gaze: Lucia is positioned within a triangle
composed of Max, the husband-conductor (waving a phallic baton), and the
protagonist of The Magic Flute, who storms about the stage looking
like a paratrooper and wielding his flute at penis-level. During the scene,
Lucia repeatedly turns to look at Max as he watches her; the final time
he has disappeared, behaving like an omnipotent, even magical figure who
torments Lucia by appearing and vanishing at his discretion. Yet, there
is an additional element to the scene, particularly given what viewers
know about Max's fears
and insecurities: Max making a last-ditch effort to resist his increasing
attraction to Lucia and the danger she implies. The film's following sequence
reflects just how dangerous she is. The next day, after her husband's
departure. Lucia walks the streets of Vienna, remembering in flashback
the details of her relationship with Max. Returning to the hotel and hearing
the murmur of male voices as she stands in the lobby, she approaches and
peeks in to find Max and his war criminal friends discussing their secrets
and how to hold onto them. Lucia's act of voyeurism significantly shifts
the balance of power in the film; she has claimed her own gaze, in the
process of learning that Max no longer has the capacity to dominate her
as he once did. Furthermore, the scene shows Lucia that Max has plenty
of reason to fear her. This is a critical turning point in the film for
female viewers, knowing as they do what Lucia knows and experiencing the
satisfaction and pleasure of exposing, in the words of film theorist Teresa
de Lauretis, patriarchy's "blind spots, gaps, and repressed areas."
This shift in the narrative opens up the possibility for Lucia to subvert,
to some degree, the gendered hierarchy of her sadomasochistic relationship
with Max.
The moment when Lucia and Max finally confront one another reflects the
shift in power that Lucia's act of voyeurism produced. The violence between
them turns to tenderness, then back to violence and finally, to sexual
passion. Max cries out, "Tell me what to do!" clearly looking to
Lucia for guidance, unsure of what the new parameters of their sadomasochistic
relationship are. As Max and Lucia wrestle on the floor, Max seems overwhelmed
by the intensity of her sexual desire. In one of the scene's more revealing
moments, Lucia lets out a laugh which deepens into a prolonged and resounding
roar. Lucia, who has said almost nothing thus far into the film, has now
found her own voice. Now, female spectators can potentially identify with
Lucia not only because she has uncovered the secrets of male control,
but because she is using the opportunity to make herself heard, and loudly.
By thus speaking on her own terms, Lucia has begun to transform the relationship
into a less unequal and abusive one.
While flashbacks telling the story of Lucia and Max's concentration camp
relationship occur through the film, one is of particular importance:
Lucia sings and dances before a crowd of Nazi officers as though she were
performing in a cabaret. The first revealing feature of this flashback
scene is not what is in it, but when it takes place in the chronology
of the narrative. The scene, not surprisingly, as we will see, occurs
after she peeks in on Max and his friends and after the momentous episode
with Max where she lets out her long-pent up victimization in a roar.
At first glance, Lucia's performance may seem typical of performance scenes
in films like 9 1/2 Weeks, which function primarily as male
fetishization, Yet, I argue that this is only part of the episode's significance.
First, Lucia is dressed not in the lacy chiffon tunic that Max once gave
her, hut in officer's clothes: oversize male trousers, suspenders,
and a Nazi officer's cap, with only her breasts exposed. Although clearly
fetishized by male spectators, she is nevertheless active, moving into
a male realm of power-or at least trying to. This accounts for the fear
on the faces of the men watching; they look at her with desire, but mostly
trepidation. Here I suggest that Lucia, by behaving thus, pivots the sadomasochistic
relationship so that men-in a subtle, and of course, limited way -will
he on the masochistic end.
After Lucia’s arrival at Max's flat, more incidents suggest that the fixed
equations of sadist with men and masochist with women have been loosened.
An especially powerful moment occurs as Max dresses Lucia. As he struggles
to fit her feet into little-girl shoes - symbolic of his desire to mold
and dominate her completely - Lucia breaks away, hides in the bathroom,
and shatters a glass bottle on the tile floor. Unlocking the door, she
watches in fascination as a barefoot Max steps onto the shards of glass,
wincing in pain. It is clearly an erotic moment; immediately afterwards,
she holds Max's foot under
the faucet in a classic metaphor for orgasm. How does the female viewer
experience such a sequence? While I am not arguing here that female spectators
become truly active agents by adopting the abusive strategies that men
have historically employed against women, I do believe that this scene
empowers Lucia to some extent. Giving Max notice, Lucia proves that he
is vulnerable to her just as she is to him
The conclusion of The Night Porter offers us the murder of Max
and Lucia by Max's "friends" and former SS officers who figure out
Max's involvement with Lucia. This serves to support the ideology of the
codes of male dominance that they tried to subvert. The story of Lucia
and Max's struggle to negotiate power within their sadomasochistic relationship
might have more hopeful potential if larger male structures of authority
did not intervene, killing them for shifting the balance of power. Max
is thus punished for permitting (unwillingly, at times) Lucia access to
the secret of just how precarious male power is; Lucia's punishment is
for daring to use those secrets and exercise an independent sexuality
at the same time.
In her preface to The Sadeian Woman, feminist Angela Carter writes
about pornography:
Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers, as if sexual relations were not necessarily an expression of social relations. . . (5)[my emphasis].
I conclude my analysis of The Night Porter by echoing Carter's
words: sadomasochism on film is only an enemy of feminists if our vision
of the genre does not "encompass the possibility of change", thus
turning us into history's slaves rather than its makers. The Night
Porter, as I have tried to show, is one representation of sadomasochism
that indeed articulates change. In allegorical form, the film offers to
female spectators the chance to identify with Lucia, who transforms the
axis of power in her relationship and practices her sexuality no matter
what the cost. This is not to reclaim The Night Porter as a Feminist
film or to make a "feminist heroine" out of Lucia (although I believe
she is), but rather to show how the film addresses themes of interest
to feminists interested in transformations in gender hierarchy. Since
film sadomasochism sharply magnifies those hierarchies, feminists, rather
than turning away in aversion, should take a closer look.
END NOTES
1. De Beavoir, Simone. "Faut-il Bruler Sade?" Les Temps Moderns.
January, 1952.
2. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially
Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1981.
3. Rubin, Gayle. "The Traffic of Women: Notes on the Political Economy
of Sex." Toward An Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna Reiter.
New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979. Pp. 157-210.
4. Do Lauretis, Teresa. "Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women's
Cinema." New German Critique 34 (Winter 1985): 163.
5. Carter, Angela. The Sadeian Woman. Pp.4.
WORKS CITED
Carter, Angela. The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
De Beauvoir, Simone. "Faut-il Bruler Sade?" Les Temps Modernes.
January, 1952.
De Lauretis, Teresa. "Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women's
Cinema." New German Critique 34 (Winter 1985): 163.
Jameson, Fredric. Time Political Unconsciousness. Narrative as a Socially
Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.
Rubio, Cayle. The ‘Traffic in Women:' Notes on the Political Economy of
Sex. Towards an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna Reiter. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1979. Pp. 157-210.
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