Mann & Frau & Animal (1973)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Valie Export

Genre:

Short

Plot:

The earlier films of Valie Export, one feels, were motivated by the author's desire and need to investigate her own subjectivity...

Also Known As:

Man & Woman & Animal

Runtime:

10 min

Country:

Austria

Color:

Color

An Attack on the Voyeur

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Valie Export's films try to communicate what it means to be female in a male-dominated society, and to attack the basic oppressive conceptions and institutions of that society. This film gives us nothing but the attack, with startling results.

The film begins by showing Export manipulating the knobs in her bathtub, and altering the showerhead. The cutting is erratic, and shows no more than Export's hands at work, so as to establish a "drawing the bath" scene in total opposition to Hollywood (read: male-dominated) images and stereotypes. Then, in straightforward fashion, the camera films Export masturbating, establishing a simple rhythm of zooming on her genitals, and then quickly pulling back. What Export essentially accomplishes is the affirmation of female sexuality, while eliminating filmic techniques that comply with how males typically value sex and pleasure. For example, the face is always out of frame, the breasts remain covered, the camera rhythm is anything but sensuous, and extreme focus is given to the particulars often elided from male-oriented pornography.

At this point in the film, a male viewer is in a voyeuristic position, but has been confronted with undesirable images (or more precisely: an entirely independent female sexuality). In the final minutes of the film, Export pounces upon these negative feelings, and aggressively heightens them in an attack on male voyeurism. The camera zooms in twice on Export's genitals, each time covered with a more disgusting substance to a soundtrack that parodies male sexual grunts. Finally Export develops a picture of what has just been shown, and allows her blood to drip into the pan. The blood is as a seal of ownership, indicating Export's independence from male-oriented sex.

The film is a bold experiment in manipulation, playing off of emotions like discomfort and disgust to ask the viewer to relinquish old notions of sexuality and assert a new feminist envisioning. The experiment pays off in forcing the viewer to reconsider, but by its brute force nature it may not have a great impact after the initial shock wears off.