Mirror, Mirror : Embodying the sexed posthuman body of becoming in Sion Sono’s Antiporno (アンチポルノ, 2016) and Mika Ninagawa’s Helter Skelter (ヘルタースケルター, 2012)

Abstract: This thesis examines the embodiment of the sexed body and the struggle of fitting into the narrow frames of what a woman is supposed to behave and look like in Japanese cinema. Using the medium of film, I, therefore, seek to produce knowledge regarding the internalized gaze of the oppressor, and self-objectification, caused by the capitalist heteropatriarchy. Thus, I am drawing from cyborg feminism, and the second wave of sexual difference theory’s concept of becoming, expanded upon by the Italian-Australian philosopher Rosi Braidotti. I further use the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of masculine domination and the American philosopher Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle, in creating a theoretical framework, and using the methods of cultural and feminist film analysis to contextualize the films and locate the subjectification of the women. The movies that I will be analyzing are the Japanese director and poet Sion Sono’s Antiporno (アンチポルノ, 2016) and the Japanese director and photographer Mika Ninagawa’s Helter Skelter (ヘルタースケルター, 2012), which both center around two women and their struggle in becoming-cyborg, in relation to power, trauma, sexuality, technology, and beauty ideals in ‘modernized’ Japan. In that sense, I will study the phenomenon of operating outside the lines of social norms of femininity and desire.