Embracing Precarity: Attending to Vulnerability and Negative Affects in E J-yong’s The Bacchus Lady

Abstract: This thesis attends to vulnerability and precarity within visual representation by analysing the negative affects bound to the experience of social exclusion. The study explores what it might mean to embrace and not overcome 'bad feelings' like shame and alienation using the visual example of an elderly prostitute–a ‘Bacchus Lady’– in E J-yong's 2016 film The Bacchus Lady. Investigating the utility of 'bad feelings' is informed by and draws upon the work of queer theorist Heather Love as a way to acknowledge and value more complex experiences like failure, shame and unhappiness. By considering how the cultural representation of ‘Bacchus Ladies’ addresses feelings of precarity and vulnerability in relation to themes of economic oppression and objectification this thesis aims to examine and think more broadly about the negative effects of inequality. The study attends to aspects of the film that might be commonly regarded as beyond a narrative of progress, the bodily and psychic reality of a subject living in poverty. Departing from previous scholarly work that has attended to the protagonist in The Bacchus Lady as a figure who represents forms of queer agency, my own analysis has, to the contrary provided a framework in which to analyse the protagonist’s restricted agency in relation to multiple themes of oppression. By going beyond neoliberal narratives of happiness, success, and self-fulfilment, this thesis argues that embracing and addressing more adverse feelings can be used to develop a critical understanding of the utility of 'bad feelings' as a form of transformative criticism and allow one to consider more broadly the use of negative affects as a potential strategy for repair.