For conservative movements, her freedom and desire for more dangerous
Here is a fortune telling: In the coming years we will see a recoil focused on the middle woman and her creation and dreams. But I also predict that she will not come back from the freedoms she struggled.
At the moment she is everywhere in culture, the wife of the menopause. As a subject, as a Creator, as a projection area and sexual imagination. Do I see her so clearly only because I am there myself? It is certain. But I also think something bigger is going on.
The so -called transitional age has always been a difficult place to interpret. What is a woman really if she is no longer flexible and fertile? In a patriarchal society she becomes ridiculous or dangerous. Most women who were burned as witches in Salem were older than 40, there was hardly any coincidence.
But now the 70s have been reached there and it is noticeable. A generation of female directors and writers who are used to being in the middle themselves writes new lead roles and stories.
In the movie “Babygirl” Play Nicole Kidman A woman remained in a frozen position between the body, the family and the career. She treats it through total control, while wearing a secret sexual desire. The perfect robot -like woman appears to have a chaotic interior, or at least a pussy. She is looking for excitement of a younger man, a trainee in the company where she is the manager. The film made by the female director and screenwriter Halina Reijn Investigates ambivalence in their positions through erotic dominance games. But the film ends with an anti -climax – even if it occurs in the form of an orgasm – when the protagonist of the film is reconciled with his husband. It is possible to interpret as a neat and conservative happy ending, the family is intact and also the career. Or is it a feminist rewriting of film history, where the surviving woman is always punished with death or madness?
A more radical vision is found in the American artist and author Miranda Julys The novel “All Four”. Here too, the starting point is a woman between 45 and 50 who feels that she is stuck in her relationship, in life, in sexuality. She also suffers a great passion where the object is a younger man. The relationship between the protagonist and Davey is passionate and life changes, but the real theme of the book is what happens then, when July investigates whether it is possible to re -negotiate what the family can be, the smallest part of this conservatism in the social body. In the vision of Miranda July it is difficult and painful, but possible. When the book is over, she has succeeded in doing her life again without – in contrast to the generation that went for her – completely destroying his supporting walls. She still lives in the “family”, but in a new way.
IN Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies The new novel “Dream Count” is three of the well -ordered, privileged women who live their lives in the joint between the country of origin Nigeria and the United States where they move. It is not the best novel of Ngozie Adichie, and in the image of relationships it is a traditional story. Chiamaka, who wears most of the book with his list of relationships and loves dreams to be seen, correctly by the right man. But neither the expectations of the family, nor her own desire for ambiguity is still so strong that it is worth even to give up freedom, whether it is like a sadness or a wound.
Are there no really radical view of contemporary? In the German director Florentina Holzingers Last set, “The Year without Summer”, she examines sexuality and boundaries, pain and death and thoughts about eternity and aging with 20 naked women. Where the robot woman tries to retain her appearance with injections and ice baths in “Babygirl”, Holzinger shows the back of Brutal Eternity. IN The ultimate facelift A woman is lifted by the flesh of the face high in the air by hooks. The skin becomes tighter, the pain is displayed and by making it visible, the lies of our time beauty and aging become visible. Holzinger enables himself to dream of a view of both community and the body of the women. When I see it, I am filled with euphoria, I think it is still possible to have such visions in this reactionary time. Perhaps it is only possible in the world that Holzinger has built, where she has fully embedded herself in a women’s collective.
That is why it is no one that many women feel an instinctive restraint for the Sweden Democrats
It’s not A coincidence that today’s conservative movements – both right and left – are often worn by men. The relationship of women with the wave of freedom of the seventies and eighties that gave us both neo -liberalism and the liberation of women has always been more complex. The twist of industrial society and its implicit idea of the man as a family provider intended for many women real progress. That is why it is not the case that many women feel an instinctive restraint for the Sweden Democrats. It is based on an inherited fear that seriously acquired liberties will disappear.
My generation of women-de-70s not how new the world was who we met. At school and society we were explained early that equality was obvious, but at the same time we grew up at a time when it was only a few decades since women came to the labor market. We were at the start of a revolution that was questioned both unfinished and strongly, but of which we were expected to consider – tried to consider it. It did not go together and the failure that we had ourselves in itself. Today we live with that experience, and at the same time many have achieved real power positions and great real freedom in my generation. It creates both dissonance and new stories.
A few years ago I wrote that the white middle woman was the Köttberg – time, at least in some parts of society – including cultural journalism. What I wanted to indicate is that today’s story about the position and liberation of women is more complicated than before when the oppression of the women was one -sided and clear.
Last week I have read an exchange of views between the cultural journalist Lykke Eder-Ekman and DN’s deputy head of culture Åsa Beckman. Eder-Ekman to describe How she likes to be expected by older cultural men, although it feels forbidden after metoo, and required To write where about their desires. Åsa Beckman answers By explaining that this desire is naive and misled. In the debate I am inclined to agree with both. A woman who writes must be free, that was the goal. But I also get nervous because of the idea of a time when women demanded that this freedom demanded.
In just a few decades, women in working living with requirements for equal rights and freedom
Every change that goes on hierarchies creates resistance. Today’s reactionary political wave is often described as a recoil against immigration, but perhaps it is an even greater response to the revolution of gender equality. In just a few decades, women from working life came with requirements for equal rights and freedom. At the same time, the image of the family was re -negotiated, because after the liberation of the woman the smallest component of this conservatism in the social body could never be solid and reliable. It created fear and confusion; How should we live then?
Don’t know What women want, they are not politically collective in a banal or two -dimensional way. That is why they clearly come up with different answers in contemporary, middle -aged. At the same time, there is something common at the starting point that is about family, marriage and how we live, just changes. The dangerous thing about menopause is that it seems to show that women look at their lives, their relationships and therefore society with impatience and then demand more. More freedom, more intimacy, more meaning, more satisfaction. For a conservative society it is in itself both dangerous and destabilizing.
Art Pod: In fact
The art of destroying art
31:26
