This activity should only take about one class day, and is part of a 2-day VALIE EXPORT unit. The Valie EXPORT unit is a part of a broader week-long unit entitled “Through her Lens”.
Frame and Preparation
Menschenfrauen, 1980
Conceptual Frames and Background
- The work of VALIE EXPORT sought to recapture the female body for the woman, which EXPORT suggests had been taken from her by the patriarchy and the male gaze. In this unit, you should explore every aspect of EXPORT’s films and photography- who is looking? How are we seeing the body, and how is the body acting? How is the way we look through EXPORT’s lens different from what we are used to? Her art is all about disruption, and the instructor should attempt to stop, recognize, and discuss this disruption wherever possible. This can be disruption about the body, sex, the workplace, and power.
Introduction
Like in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, Austria was experiencing a fight for women’s liberation. During this time, radical women artists produced films, photography, and performance art which embraced their agency and power, and which questioned the patriarchal, Catholic, traditional social structure of postwar Austria. VALIE EXPORT was, and still is, one of these artists.
Preparation
Students should watch the film Menschenfrauen for homework. There is not a worksheet for them to fill out, but they should instead take notes while watching on these open questions-
- What is the role of motherhood and pregnancy in the film? How do the characters reconcile their identity as women with their job as mothers?
- What is EXPORT’s intention in the split-screen, role-reversal scene with Franz and Anna? What traits do you associate with Franz and Anna when they assume the same roles?
- Think about the “male gaze” in scenes of intimacy and nudity. What does the term “male gaze” mean to you, and how does EXPORT try to work away from it?
- As discussed in the last class with EXPORT’s photo series Körperkonfigurationen, EXPORT critiques the idea that women and their bodies are often associated with nature, whereas men are associated with society and the city. Where do you see EXPORT experimenting with the association between womanhood, femininity, and nature?
- Note anything else you would like to discuss- this is a rich movie full of things to talk about!
Text and Discussion
To begin, ask students about the title of the film, Menschenfrauen. What does EXPORT mean with this?
- It is a proposal which is to be proved throughout the film, or a mantra, that women are humans.
- Further, by placing womanhood next to humanness, the title asks how the women in the film reconcile being women and being human, and how these ways of being often contradict each other.
Allow students to discuss their answers to the discussion questions from viewing the film. Give them 15 minutes to discuss all of their answers in small groups. Before this, ask students to come up with group responses to each of the questions, so that the class as a whole can discuss.
Finally, compare the black-and-white dream scene from the beginning of the film, in which Elisabeth begs for a room of her own, the closing scene which depicts Gertrud and Petra heading for Alaska, and the text screen at the end of the film reading “We must establish a human society in which motherhood does not restrict a woman in her creativity and determination”. Discuss them first one by one, and then ask students to interpret what they might have in common.
- The scene with Elisabeth references Virginia Woolfe’s “A Room of One’s Own”, in which she suggests that prejudice and financial dependence has stunted women’s creativity and success.
- The scene with Alaska suggests that women must escape to a new frontier in which they can explore their potential or establish their own society. This could also be in reference to Freud’s concept of the “dark continent”, a phrase describing women’s subconscious and sexual drive which suggests that women are impossible/not worth it to understand or “explore”.
- The text screen references back to Woolfe, seemingly adding an addendum to Woolfe’s claim that, in addition to financial freedom ad freedom from prejudice, women also need a freedom from the burdens of motherhood in order to reach equality.