Impossible closeness: intimacies and transgressive desire in Park Chan-wook’s Stoker and The Handmaiden.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the representation of intimacies and transgressive desires in Park Chan-wook’s films Stoker (2013) and The Handmaiden (2016). I argue that these queer coming-of-age films represent women as active agents in their quests toward self-awakening and emancipation from patriarchal control (Mulvey 1989; Dworkin 2000). Indeed, transgression and taboo are two primary tropes in these narratives of queer sexual awakening. The films are compelling in their depiction of queer intimacies and the quest for an impossible closeness. Both plots play upon gendered expectations by presenting female protagonists who seemingly conform to patriarchal norms, only to dupe male characters (and the audience) and overturn these expectations with dramatic effect. I approach these films through the lens of queer and feminist theory, along with feminist film theory (Laura Mulvey and Kaja Silverman). My analysis of the representation of eroticism and intimacy in the films is informed by a critical lexicon provided by Georges Bataille, Karmen MacKendrick and Michel Foucault. This study considers Park’s role as a hybrid auteur and his capacity to occupy a liminal zone between art and commercial cinema, allowing him to access a wide and diverse audience. In my analysis of The Handmaiden, I explore the film’s self-reflexive interrogation of pornography’s objectifying power and the difficulty of representing women’s desires in cinema. Moreover, I explore how the inversion of gender power dynamics in the film highlights the illusory nature of phallic power, thus exposing the fantasy of male subjectivity, with its assumptions of mastery, authority, and sufficiency. Furthermore, I also explore how eroticism and intimacy are used as tools for liberation by the female protagonists. In my analysis of Stoker, I situate the film as a neo-noir thriller that co-opts elements of the bildungsroman to tell the coming-of-age tale of a fille fatale. I analyse scenes in the film that highlight the awakening of the protagonist’s killer/sexual awakening, the fluidity of sadomasochistic attractions and the quest for limit experiences that reveal the interconnectedness of violence, pleasure, and power. Reading through the lens of Silverman’s critique of the Oedipus complex, I outline how India rejects Oedipalisation. Focussing on the leitmotif of shoes, I discuss the film’s subversive rewriting of two traditional fairy tales, imagining an unrestrained feminine desire. In conclusion, I consider the transformative ethics of Park’s films, and how through vicariously sharing in the rebellious boundary-breaking of Park’s female protagonists, queer cinema encourages viewers to question heteronormative views on sexuality, intimacy and desire, inviting us to “to take a fresh look at our gaze (and our gays)” (Boyle 2012: 67).