Women at Work in Twenty-First-Century European Cinema

259 Pages·2019·1.359 MB·English

by  Barbara Mennel

WOMEN AT WORK
IN
TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY
EUROPEAN CINEMA
BARBARA MENNEL
Women at Work in
Twenty-First-Century
European Cinema

Women at Work in
Twenty-First-Century
European Cinema
BARBARA MENNEL
© 2019 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mennel, Barbara Caroline, author.
Title: Women at work in twenty-first-century European cinema /
Barbara Mennel.
Description: [Urbana, Illlinois] : University of Illinois Press,
[2019] | Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Identifiers: lccn 2018032356| isbn 9780252042225 (cloth : alk.
paper) | isbn 9780252083952 (paperback : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Working women in motion pictures. | Motion
pictures—Europe—History—21st century.
Classification: lcc pn1995.9.w6 m46 2019 | ddc 791.43/6522—
dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032356
Ebook ISBN 978-0-252-05096-1
Cover illustration: Déborah François in Populaire, directed by
Régis Roinsard (The Weinstein Company/Photofest)
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. The Specter of Domesticity 24
2. Precarious Work in Feminist Film 52
3. Heritage Cinema of Industrial Labor 78
4. Voice in the Cinema of Labor Migration 103
5. Care Work and the Suspicious Gesture 129
6. Reproductive Labor in the Age of Biotechnology 154
7. Crisis Cinema 178
Conclusion 201
Notes 207
References 215
Film Index 233
General Index 237

Acknowledgments
Thinking about invisible emotional labor has made me appreciate the many
ways others have sustained me and this project over the years. Several insti-
tutions have supported the writing of this book. A two-month research stay as
a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Studies of
the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, in 2013 provided me
with a unique access to materials and a productive environment for writing.
Dean Elizabeth Cropper, associate deans Therese O’Malley and Peter Lukehart,
the film department’s Margaret Parsons and Joanna Raczynska, senior fellows
Arnold Witte and Christine Goettler, and research associate Emily Pugh brought
perspectives of art history and visual culture to bear on the project. Based on the
early progress I was able to make, the organization Women in German endorsed
the book project with a Faculty Research Award in 2015.
As a Marie Skłodowaska Curie FCFP Senior Fellow in 2016–17 at the Freiburg
Institute for Advanced Studies I benefited from director Bernd Kortmann’s
enthusiasm for interdisciplinarity. Carsten Dose, Britta Küst, Petra Fischer,
Lena Walter, Kathrin Burkat, and Roland Muntschick made it possible for me to
focus on completing a draft of the manuscript. Fellows Martin Bemmann, Todd
Carmody, Carolin Duttlinger, Winfried Fluck, Joseph Harris, Lorenzo Kamel,
Martin Loughlin, Nicola Piper, Andrea Riemenschnitter, Marie Seong-Hak
Kim, and Aude Wirth-Jaillard created community around scholarship.
viii • Acknowledgments
The University of Florida, especially the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
and the Departments of English and of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures,
supported this work generously. I would like to acknowledge the research fund-
ing provided by the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
In addition, a one-semester sabbatical, humanities enhancement grants, and
a faculty enhancement opportunity grant enabled me to advance the project at
its different stages. The Center for European Studies provided summer travel
funds and allowed me to participate in a workshop entitled Capitalism in the
New Europe with political economist Dorothee Bohle. Collaborating with the
center’s director, Amie Kreppel, made possible visits by scholars of European
cinema, including Anikó Imre, Rosalind Galt, and Karl Schoonover. My former
and current chairs, Akíntúndé Akínyemí, Sidney I. Dobrin, Kenneth Kidd, and
Ingrid Kleespies, and Associate Deans David Pharies and Mary Watt provided
crucial administrative support. My colleagues in German studies, Franz Fut-
terknecht, Will Hasty, Eric Kligermann, and Chris Overstreet, took over the
daily grind while I spent a year away from my regular duties. Aida Hozić read
parts of the manuscript and watched films with me. More than that, she and
Richard Scher opened their home and prepared sumptuous meals for me.
I have been fortunate to present drafts of sections of the book at invited talks
and engage in scholarly conversations at several conference panels about cin-
ema and labor. For generous invitations to the Johannes Gutenberg University
in Mainz, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University
of Maryland, College Park, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of
Toronto, I thank Nathan Dize, Angelica Fenner, Uli Linke, John Lyon, Sabine
Nessel, Katrin Pahl, Peter Pfeiffer, and Kayla Jean Watson. Emma McGlennen
provided me with a thorough and astute response to my talk. I also benefitted
from participating on three panels on labor and film at the Society for Cinema
and Media Studies. Vinzenz Hediger’s excitement for the term “heritage cin-
ema of industrial labor” was an infectious boost! Tamao Nakahara and Daniela
Berghahn organized two panels where I tried out initial versions of the ideas
included in this book. Daniela also brought key films and readings to my atten-
tion. Earlier versions of sections of this book appeared in Women in German Year-
book (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) and in Genre and the (Post)Communist
Woman: Analyzing Transformations of the Central and Eastern European Female Ideal,
edited by Florentina C. Andreescu and Michael J. Shapiro (Routledge, 2014). I
am grateful for the permission to reuse this material.
Colleagues, friends, and strangers gave time and effort in a myriad of
ways. Fellow scholars generously read and commented on individual chapters
despite their own writing projects: Monika Shafi, Berna Güneli, and Erica
Acknowledgments • ix
Fretwell nudged me along with encouragement and critical questions. Erica
Carter offered references in more than one important conversation. Ann
Manov translated song texts, and world traveler Ada Cruz told me, “You can
do it, Professor!” Scholars Hester Baer, Ipek A. Celik, Michael Falser, Elena
Gorfinkel, and Jaclyn Kurash generously shared published and unpublished
work with me. Filmmakers kindly sent me DVDs or gave me access to their
films. Thank you to Ursula Biemann, Clara van Gool, Mako Idemitsu, Ivana
Mladenovic, Anja Salomonowitz, and Elke Sasse. Former students, curators,
librarians, academics, and cinema directors provided me with film titles: Mary
Fessenden, Jodi Greig, Danijela Majstorovic, Erinn Murray, Kerry Oliver-Smith,
Amy Ongiri, Katy Ross, and Judy Shoaf. While some of the films and texts ended
up on the book’s cutting-room floor, watching and reading them informed my
thinking.
A handful of continuous collaborators were steadfast supporters from the
project’s inception to its final incarnation. An enthusiastic advocate, Randall
Halle encouraged me throughout the years and staged an important intervention
in Paris, no less. Sabine Hake also championed the significance of my undertak-
ing, always with a list of critical questions. Sabine is an important role model
and mentor for a generation of scholars—another form of invisible labor. Katrin
Sieg’s ability to reflect ideas refracted through her own sophisticated think-
ing left a lasting imprint on the manuscript. Discussing theories, films, and
chapters in Gainesville, Washington, DC, Paris, Freiburg, Berlin, Venice, Kas-
sel, and Atlanta maps our shared conversation over the last couple of years.
Closer to home, Jeff Adler, historian by training and film scholar by osmosis, has
accompanied the project from its infancy through its gestational phases with a
critical eye toward detail and a sophisticated understanding of what is at stake
in its broader questions. At the University of Illinois Press, Danny Nasset is a
dream editor. Two substantive, engaged, and generous manuscript reviews by
Hester Baer and Maria Stehle provided rigorous and supportive feedback that
identified areas in need of improvement and pushed me to clarify the implica-
tions of my argument. I am also grateful to Levy Randolph for helping me with
the final preparation of the screen shots. Finally, I thank my family, especially
Hans-Dieter Mennel, Mary Mennel, Susan Mennel, Surjo Soekadar, and Bärbel
and Werner Stibal, for their patience, care, and unwavering confidence.