Month: May 2019 (Page 1 of 5)

This is an excerpt from our interview with Alina Marazzi. In this portion, we discuss violence against women onscreen.

Mia Merrill

FMST 310

Final Paper

The Witches Are Back: Feminism, Violence, and the Male Gaze in the Two Suspirias

In 2018, Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino released his take on Suspiria, a cult classic horror film originally made by Dario Argento in 1977. Guadagnino’s film runs one hour longer than Argento’s and offers much more backstory than Argento’s: He places the protagonist, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), as a former member of the Ohio Mennonite Church; he features the violence and disruption of German domestic terrorism in the background of many scenes; and he expands on the dancing so critical to the film. Where Argento’s Suzy (Jessica Harper) was a beautiful and meek heroine who seems unable to solve the puzzle of the haunted dance academy until the last available moment, Guadagnino’s Susie takes charge of her fate before the audience even realizes it. Guadagnino’s changed ending seems at first to offer Susie more agency, but it ultimately serves to perpetuate the male gaze in the film and transform the protagonist into the body politic.

Guadagnino’s film thoroughly studies the role of modern dance in German Cold War art and culture. Argento’s film mostly features background actors in short, traditional ballet combinations; when Suzy gets dizzy and falls ill at rehearsal, it is quite noticeable that Harper is not actually dancing, as only her upper body is in the frame. Guadagnino, in contrast, uses the history of modern dance in post-war Germany to his advantage, inserting several expressionist dance sequences in his film. The film stresses the historical association of the female body with supernatural or satanic forces, as dance becomes a vehicle for witchcraft. In Guadagnino’s film, the feminine, the violent, the artistic, the sexual, and the satanic become one.

Where Harper’s Suzy was one of many unsung dancers, Johnson’s Susie is the star pupil of Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). She quickly climbs the ranks and earns the principal role in “Volk”, a dance Madame Blanc first choreographed in the 1940s. “Volk” translates to “people”, a common rallying cry of the National Socialist movement; the early twentieth-century völkisch, or people’s, movement laid the foundation for Nazism (Kolb 27). Like his exploration of Cold War politics, Guadagnino’s reference here is not subtle. Those familiar with German history would immediately recognize the significance of Madame Blanc welcoming the audience to a dance entitled “Volk”, and those versed in modern dance would see the similarities between the film’s satanic dance and that of renowned Weimar-era choreographer Mary Wigman.

Wigman was one of the founders of modern expressionist dance, pre-dating the giant Pina Bausch. David Kajganich, who wrote the screenplay for Guadagnino’s adaptation, claimed Wigman as an inspiration for his dance sequences (Castillo). Wigman is best known for three distinct versions of her “Hexentanz”, or “Witch Dance”, the last version performed with permission from Third Reich officials. Though the film is full of visual and physical references to Wigman and her work, it neglects to mention her by name, perhaps because of her ambiguous connections to Nazism.

Interest in witchcraft and the occult peaked under the Third Reich, as some Nazi officials sought to distance Germans from organized Christianity in favor of a return to traditional German, somewhat pagan practices. Heinrich Himmler, who orchestrated the Holocaust, was obsessed with witches and the power that they represented as authentic Aryan women. He believed that most medieval witch hunts were organized by Protestant churches, as well as Jewish mobs, to identify and kill powerful German women (Kolb 28). The Markos Company, which Sara (Mia Goth) tells us continued to dance during the War, represents the untapped potential of the German woman, repressed by both the patriarchal church and the cult of domesticity propagated under Nazism.

Unlike Argento’s film, which did not overtly explore the politics of 1970s Germany, Guadagnino’s film ostensibly becomes a critique of Nazism and subsequent Cold War authoritarianism. Susie frees the dancers from the binds of the corrupt government of Markos and Blanc. The witches become liberated women, a coven with artistic and sexual freedom – the stuff of anti-feminist nightmares. Guadagnino’s condemnation of dictatorship is ironic considering Argento’s subtle association of the witch as Jew in his Suspiria. Argento’s dance matrons have a sneaking obsession with money, and are feared by local Christians, who think they know the true nature of the mothers. They also move around constantly, fleeing cities and countries whenever someone uncovers their secret. To many viewers, Argento’s witches are archetypal monsters, possessors of the demonic feminine qualities that can manipulate and destroy innocents. But putting Argento’s Suspiria in the context of broader twentieth-century European conflicts allows for more nuanced, less one-dimensional interpretations of the witch, and may explain why Guadagnino and his team leaned in to heavy political themes in his adaptation.

Guadagnino’s film does not address the witch as wandering Jew in either a positive or negative light. While Argento’s Suspiria brims with immigration panic – the constant paranoia that outsiders will infiltrate and conquer your territory –, Guadagnino’s seeps with gay panic. Susie’s sexuality blossoms as she studies with the Markos Company, and she is encouraged to explore her body and newfound independence. The dancers blur the boundaries of the platonic and the romantic, as Madame Blanc kisses each student on the cheek before class, Sara climbs into Susie’s bed to comfort her, and the Company forms a writhing, half-naked matriarchy of the occult. While dance and theatre obscures some social boundaries naturally – dancers change in crowded dressing rooms and share each other’s body weight in choreography –, the camerawork emphasizes Susie’s sexual awakening. The more choreography she learns, the more sexually free she becomes, grinding against the floor as she is drawn to the waiting witch below its surface. This association of the supernatural and the sexual is made clear by juxtaposed shots of the floor and close-ups of Johnson’s rear as she pushes her body as close to the floor as possible. Despite Guadagnino’s attempts to instill Susie with a modern sense of agency and bodily autonomy, his film still projects the male gaze onto his characters through his association of witchcraft with bodily liberation.

Guadagnino’s changed ending both celebrates and denigrates the liberated by associating her with witchcraft. Despite the use of electronic music, exploration of German Cold War politics, and the shift from “candy apple blood” to a tonalist color palette, the changed ending was the most notable difference in the adaptation for film critics and fans of Argento (Chang). Fans were shocked, though in examining the film retrospectively, it is clear that Guadagnino hinted at Susie’s true fate throughout.

In the original film, Suzy recalls Patricia (Eva Axén)’s words the night she fled, leading her to a hidden passageway where she discovers the mutilated body of Sara. She accidentally awakens Helena Markos (Lela Svasta), who possesses Sara (Stefania Castini)’s bloody body in an attempt to kill Suzy. But Suzy sees the outline of Markos’ fleshy, decomposing body behind a curtain when lightning flashes. As the demonic Sara approaches, Suzy stabs Markos in an ending that may feel too convenient to contemporary consumers of horror. The witches shriek, the academy burns, and Suzy escapes, unscathed, as the credits roll.

Guadagnino’s Suspiria is long, drawn-out fantasia on the body and the body politic. As Susie creeps toward madness and begins to understand her role in the coven – she even communicates telepathically with Madame Blanc about her knowledge of the past, present, and future of the coven –, she goes to greet Markos with dignity and grace. She appears unfazed by students dancing wildly at a witches’ Sabbath while the matrons torture Dr. Klemperer (Swinton in heavy prosthetics) and prepare to sacrifice Sara, Olga (Elena Fokina), and Patricia (Chloë Grace Mortez). Madame Blanc seeks to affirm Susie’s consent in the possession, and Markos maims the matron for interfering. Susie then confronts Markos about her corrupt governance of the coven, and, as her biological mother succumbs to death back in Ohio, she summons Death itself and reveals herself as Mater Suspiriorum, one of the original Three Mothers from whom all other witches spring. She kills Markos, grants painless deaths to the ravaged Sara, Olga, and Patricia, and encourages the students to keep dancing in her honor. When they wake the next morning, the students think the Sabbath was but a nightmare.

This invocation of the title character reinstates Susie’s agency, as she may be in control of her fate from the moment she enters the academy. Flashbacks show her drawn to Berlin as a child; her mother burns her fingers with an iron when she rejects her American geography lesson in favor of learning about her German Anabaptist roots. Dream sequences show Susie dancing with Madame Blanc and exploring her ethereal dance abilities – which seem to live in her despite her acknowledged lack of training – as a rebellious teenager in Ohio. She cries out in the middle of the night, “I know who I am!” Close-ups of her face frequently feature Susie breathing heavily, only to juxtapose her breath with the diseased snores of her dying mother. In this respect, the revelation that Susie is literally the mother of sighs feels obvious, perhaps even stilted. Whether or not the foreshadowing feels imaginative or heavy-handed, Susie’s evolution from unwitting victim to the orchestrator of the film’s events feels refreshing, reflecting an enlightened interpretation of the witch.

But the male gaze still permeates the film, whether employed purposefully or not. Susie revolts against the patriarchal order of the Ohio Mennonite Church, sneaking off to see dance performances and making her way to Germany without her family’s approval. Her tattered, fringed dance costumes that barely cover her body are a far cry from her stiff Mennonite dresses. Along on Susie’s journey with her, we praise her courage for leaving home and embracing the modern world.

Other instances of Susie’s rebellion against the patriarchy are not so innocuous. In a dream-flashback sequence, Susie takes a sharp hook that the witches use to impale and maim their victims and masturbates with it. This image is not a mere exploration of sexuality, but an equation of the inhumane with a gratifying carnal experience. Perhaps the moment is there for shock value – it’s certainly not what we expect from the shy and nervous Susie, who aims to please others and reveres her teachers. It must be noted, however, that the witches use their hooks not only on the dancers, but on random, unlucky men. In one scene, a hidden Susie observes the mothers sexually humiliating naked detectives, mutilating their genitals with the hooks. Until now, we have thought the academy to be a refuge from the horrors of the patriarchy, a place where women can explore their bodies, their independence, and their interpersonal relationships in a matriarchal setting. But by showing the witches needlessly sexually torturing men, Guadagnino reinforces the stereotype of the liberated woman as the dominator and destroyer of men. Susie’s weaponized masturbation, then, is not only an unnecessarily sexualized image in a film about her coming-of-age, but a signal that she is something worse than a witch: she is a feminist.

Guadagnino’s equation of the sexual with the satanic aligns him more so with Argento than fans of his oeuvre may expect. Guadagnino is known for romantic dramas, some of which include turbulent plots, many of which are complete with indulgent, luxurious cinematography. His Suspiria is full of quick, jarring jump-cuts meant to induce cinematic whiplash. The camera snaps from Johnson’s perspective to Swinton’s often to link the two women together as witches. Where Argento’s Suspiria features many shots narrowing in to the academy’s hallways, Guadagnino parrots this with many shots pulling out from the architecture. Both filmmakers feature scenes with high angled cut away shots, implying that the characters are being watched by someone unseen, and allowing the viewer to identify with this unknown observer.

Guadagnino imitates Argento in more than just his cinematographic mimicry. Argento is known for exploring nonconventional behaviors and experiences of gender, a common trope in horror and psychological thrillers. But Argento “seems to complicate and pervert gender more than most directors”, often conflating someone who deviates from their prescribed gender and/or sexual role with the monstrous, villainous, or murderous (de Ville 54). His films often include twisted mothers who subvert their societal-biological duties. The witches of Suspiria are the ultimate damaged mothers, remorseful of their creations and yet unable to release them.

Scholars of women’s film studies and women’s horror have criticized Argento over the years for his methods of murdering women onscreen. His victims are often hypersexualized, naked or scantily clad; he has both sexualized and tortured his own daughter onscreen multiple times (de Ville 55). In Suspiria alone, an unseen murderer rips open Patricia’s nightgown to stab her repeatedly in the heart; Sara’s body reemerges blood soaked, her dress clinging to her skin; and a hand angrily chokes Patricia’s face against the window of her room, holding her head against the glass in a moment that resembles forceful oral sex and suffocation. Yet Suspiria features only a few of Argento’s many exploitations of women’s bodies onscreen.

Guadagnino may be more soft spoken in his other films, but his ode to Argento runs rampant with images of violence against women’s bodies. The witches cause Sara’s leg bone to protrude bloodily from her body; they starve Patricia until she appears ghoulish; they (or Susie) break and mangle Olga’s bones until she is a contorted mess, vomiting and urinating and begging for death. Guadagnino’s violence is made more visually compelling and disturbing by the development of special effects; in comparison, Argento’s murders look clownishly unrealistic.  Guadagnino also explores non-traditional gender in a problematic way, highlighting violence against an androgynous dancer’s body and casting the openly gender-fluid Swinton as not one, but two witches (Young). Guadagnino’s conflation of sex, violence, nonconventional gender, and the occult echoes Argento’s.

In fact, Guadagnino’s twist ending places him among a long list of male filmmakers who have used women’s characters and bodies as sacrifices for the state. By making Susie into Mater Suspiriorum, Guadagnino makes her the body politic. Susie rips open her chest and exposes her black, immortal heart. Her body, in all its lithe femininity, becomes the academy, the coven, the very perpetuation of witchcraft itself. She is a more powerful being than Argento’s naïve Suzy, but she sacrifices her own interests for the good of the state. As Susie catches Sara’s body, finally free from the tortures of life, in a blood-colored pieta, Guadagnino cements himself as a male filmmaker who employs and manipulates the bodies of his women to serve a misguided greater good.

Guadagnino’s Suspiria is a well-studied meditation on the meanings of violence. It offers a very different cinematic experience than the original. Their similarities lie not only in characters and plot, but in Guadagnino’s problematic perpetuation of the male gaze onto women’s bodies, agencies, decisions, and downfalls. While many critics have proclaimed the film to be strikingly different from Argento’s original, the two films’ overlaps represent the unfortunate reality of how women’s stories are defined, limited, and represented by men in cinema.

Works Cited

Castillo, Monica. “The Dance Legends Who Inspired Suspiria’s Bewitching Movement.” Vanity Fair, 26 October 2018, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/10/suspiria-choreography-modern-dance-tilda-swinton-martha-graham-pina-bausch.

Chang, Justin. “New, Magnificently Obsessive ‘Suspiria’ Is More Rebirth Than Remake.” NPR, 25 October 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/10/25/660509969/new-magnificently-obsessive-suspiria-is-more-rebirth-than-remake.

de Ville, Donna. “Menopausal Monsters and Sexual Transgression in Argento’s Art Horror.” Cinema Inferno: Celluloid Explosions from the Cultural Margins, edited by Robert G. Weiner and Dr. John Cline, Scarecrow Press, 2010, pp. 53-69.

Kolb, Alexandra. “Wigman’s Witches: Reformism, Orientalism, Nazism.” Dance Research Journal 48.2 (2016): 26-43.

Suspiria. Directed by Dario Argento, Produzioni Atlas Consorziate, 1977.

Suspiria. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, Amazon Studios/Videa, 2018.

Young, Victoria. “What happens if you’re both a man and a woman? Welcome to the ‘third sex’ generation.” The Telegraph, 4 March 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/happens-man-woman-welcome-third-sex-generation/.