The Films of Julia Ducournau: Alpha

 

            The third film in my analysis of the films of Julia Ducournau is the allegorically harrowing Alpha. This Palme d’Or nominated film reaches back into the recent past, to bring AIDS and gay panic once again to the forefront, simultaneously intertwining COVID and trans panic into a salient cultural metaphor for our current context. While the overall application of this metaphor is clunky and less focused than in her previous work, Ducournau crafts a visually arresting film with a captivating narrative that seizes the viewer. This brief paper will engage in the historical underpinnings of Ducournau’s pandemic analogy and its similarities with other historical events, while contemplating the film’s conceit that grief is a Durkheimian “social fact”.

 

PLOT

            When Alpha (Melissa Boros), a 13-year-old second generation Algerian immigrant, living in the north of France, gets a homemade tattoo at a party, her Doctor mother (Golshifteh Farahani) fears she may have contracted a new devastating blood born disease that slowly turns the body to stone. The same one that took her Uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim). As they wait for the test results, Alpha gets bullied and ostracized in school while the mother and daughter pair begin to be haunted by Amin. A spectral vision induced by the emotional volatility of the situation and the trauma surrounding Amin’s death 8 years prior. The question is, can both mother and daughter be able to move past this grief, or shall it consume them in a “red wind” storm.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

 Ducournau’s third feature cements her visual and storytelling style. Like her previous installments, Alpha weaves a narrative that intersects time periods in a nonlinear structure. Jumping back and forth in time to increase tension around a traumatically transformative event, parallels the social reaction to major health scares and outbreaks over the last 45 years. This section will engage the similarities between the events depicted and the variety of health crises we have experienced in the last half-century; including the scapegoating of the ill, and the socio-political polarization in the wake of each tragedy.

From AIDS to COVID    

Ducournau refreshingly does not specify a particular time period in which Alpha takes place. Instead, she leaves context clues through car models, clothing, building architecture, and a lack of modern technology that indicates the film taking place prior to the turn of the 21^st century. This adds credibility to the marble disease in the film being a narrative allegory for HIV/AIDS (Human Immunodeficiency Virus/ Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome) which was first identified and garnered increasing attention beginning in 1981.

All those who lived through this period, and were aware,[1]were affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Global fear gripped nations. That fear led to the scapegoating and vilifying of the LGBTQAI+ community in ways the current Queer youth may think hyperbolic, but were all vitriolically and venomously validated by both the general public and the broader social institutions at the time. According to Halkitis (2019), the overt homophobia that both preceded and followed the HIV/AIDS crisis, contributed to the prolonged suffering of the community. Because some of the early cases of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS were first found in gay men, that gave the vocal supporters of religious and anti-gay policies justification to condemn the LGBTQAI+ community as immoral and feel vindication in their bigotry. This is reflected in the CDC first labeling the disease GRID (Gay Related Immunodeficiency).  The misinformation that followed, allowed for a lack of Government support services in the community, forcing a grass roots information campaigns and outreach that saved lives. The Government eventually came around to disseminating the information about the disease and started to pay (a modicum of) attention to this issue; primarily because it started to show up outside of the LGBTQAI+ community, moved beyond drug addicts and in addition to those needing blood transfusions. At the time, the Queer community constructed best practices (which included condom use, and disclosure of sexual partnership) various organizations, and a helpline. Those grassroots behaviors that were born out of necessity in the face of institutional apathy, became foundational to the Government’s response to the crisis. This was extended around the globe but no more so than in African countries where cultural norms and superstitions about virginal sex as a cure, allowed the disease to spread quickly.

              The disease’s origin and the communities around where it initially spread fueled racist, homophobic and classist discrimination. This vacillated from ignorance and violent intolerance to describing AIDS as a “deserved” biblical genocide.  This was all in service of minimizing government involvement by defining the core of the issue as a personal choice. “Culture” and “lifestyle choices” were used as a political dog whistle to mean non-white (specifically Black) and gay. Meanwhile, drug addiction was framed as poor financial choices. This tendency to identify social problems, as a personal problem, is consistent with the white cis/het supremacy that founded the United States; allowing for a dehumanization of these groups. This continued for decades as these groups were perceived as a threat to the foundational core identity of upwardly mobile, productive able-bodied, straight white men. The accusation of anything else is met with violence, ridicule and ostracization. During the height of infection, AIDS was removed from obituary causes of death (along with any same sex partners); labeling it instead as the illness contracted after the individual was immunocompromised.    

As an allegory, The Marbling disease in Alpha functions in a similar fashion both medically and socially to HIV/AIDS:

·         The disease is depicted to be transmitted by blood or sexual fluids

·         The characters we follow that contract the disease are shown to either share needles for drugs or tattooing, or it is heavily implied that they are gay (Both Alpha’s teacher and her Uncle Amin).

·         Once Alpha is suspected by her classmates, she is ostracized. Students flee the pool in a panic when Alpha bleeds in the water and move out of her way as she walks into the classroom.

·         In scenes where the public interacts with people with this disease, there is palpable fear and distancing from the person. One person allowing someone who contracted the virus to sit next to them by offhandedly saying that “It’s fine. I’m dead anyway.”   

·         Much like the cultural norms, misinformation and superstition that allowed for HIV/AIDS to spread in African Countries, Alpha’s Grandmother, an Algerian immigrant talks about “The Red Wind” that gets trapped in the body, and the only way to fix it is to pray, bathe and drink lots of water

Because Durcournau was writing and shooting this film in 2024, it is difficult to not also make a connection to our more recent pandemic, COVID-19, and the lessons that we learned (or more likely did not learn) in the years in between.

            The commonality between all major global events, be they pandemic, World War or economic crisis, is that, in order to overcome the horrific event(s) there needs to be an intersection between every observable/measurable aspect of a society from the Micro (individual) level, the Mezzo (community/group level) and the Macro (Institutional Global level). During wartime, it was the interlocking mechanism of civilian industrial logistics and the military war effort. During an economic crisis there are government subsidies, bailouts and one instance of an increase in a variety of social programs (New Deal). With pandemics, the Government would work on developing a vaccine and make it readily available to everyone (thus eating the cost) then give every household an amount of money to stay at home and where masks in public to stop the spread.  In hindsight, writing this 6+ years after the initial lockdown orders of 2020, while these things did eventually happen, and we reached the desired (but tenuous) threshold of vaccine parity (that may now be put in jeopardy given new 2026 guidelines), we still had to go through a period of anomie.

            Anomie is a Durkheimian term to mean normlessness or chaos. Societal periods of anomie typically arise during periods of social change during a transition between either a type and/or form of leadership. Minor forms of anomie take place during the change of leadership within an established system. For example, a new political party leadership in positions of established power. The focused emphasis and exercise of that power is going to be different, but it is (supposedly) not going to deconstruct the entire system itself. The normlessness experienced here is in the unknown way the new authority will exercise their established power. Major Anomie is where there is a break in the fundamental structures of power. Where the system that delegates and defines that power is removed. This may lead to anarchy, causing the established institutions to crumble, becoming then a steppingstone to a greater anomic effect as the established norms that allow for a civil society are obliterated. And because there are no longer established and agreed upon rules for any type of interaction, all interaction is thereby organized through a lens of acute individualism; making all communication and decision making transactional.

            During the pandemic lockdown, this anomic period was fueled by inherent racism and misogyny that we’ve established in the US since its founding. There was a class divide that caused the experiences of white-collar workers to be able to weather the lockdown easier than others whose jobs could not be completed from home. People of color were disproportionally a part of the workforce that were identified as essential workers (from nurses and doctors to food service workers), and because women are more likely to be members of the part time service industry, they too were unfairly put on the front lines of labor. This was especially significant because we did not have a working vaccine at the time. This period of normlessness also fueled conspiracy theories about bleach, and horse dewormer; which was moving people away from necessary behavioral change and into fear induced apathy.

            This anomie that we felt was also politically weaponized as the mask mandates and lockdown orders came about. The inability for some to accept that this was happening became a point of political manipulation to pry apart social solidarity, and for the Trump administration at the time to maintain power. In addition to peddling the conspiracy theories mentioned above, Trump stated that he believed it would just go away. He actively attempted to gaslight the American people into believing that COVID wasn’t serious. He defied his own mask mandate orders, repeatedly not wearing a mask or taking off the mask in public. This caused several of his supporters to protest the mandates with their guns in their local cities. Trump hid his own infection with COVID, twice. Once during the first presidential debate with opponent Joe Biden, and again during the confirmation announcement of Amy Comey Barrett; thinking that he’d seem weak if he was wearing a mask or taking his health seriously.  The bungling of the COVID-19 responses which contributed to over 1 million American’s dead, was the major factor that cost Trump the election in 2020.         

Ducournau embraces this anomic vibe and uses the unrest witnessed during these two historical crises (HIV/AIDS and COVID) as a backdrop; and unspoken tension that exists in every scene. There are displays of fear and panic that are based in entrenched bigotry but thinly obfuscated as legitimate individual concern. When Alpha confronts the boy she’s seeing about their similar tattoos, he sheepishly admits that he received his tattoo right after her; the same night, with the same needle. When Alpha asks why he did not speak up when he saw that she was being bullied, he demures, indicating that he did not want their classmate’s ire to fall on him.  Here, Ducournau illustrates the hollow rationalization of dehumanization justified by a medical crisis that both reinforces the narcissistic urge of self-preservation, and a desire for social acceptance. Rather than stand in solidarity with Alpha, he allowed peer group socialization to guide his choices and behavior. Granted, during this time of middle school, the social pressure to conform to your peer /friend group is considerably gargantuan. Nevertheless, it was clear through his depiction, and how he treated Alpha, that his caginess around Alpha’s potential illness wasn’t just to protect himself from social ridicule, but to also gain sexual favors from Alpha (kissing in bathrooms and nearly having intercourse in his bedroom).

Mini rant: How Child sexualization on screen contributes to pedophilia

 As an aside: much in the same way I am hard pressed to know the social and political intention of a piece of pop culture because I do not know how that culture is going to be consumed, so too do I bristle at the inclusion of childhood sexuality in coming-of-age films. Especially when they are explicit or contain nakedness of any kind. I question both the purpose and the audience. How does it serve the story, and what is the overall point? Who does this service? Because it doesn’t seem like it is serving the story, the audience, or the actors involved.

I directly questioned the depiction of child sexual behavior in my previous essay on Water Lillies by Celine Sciamma back in 2024. Like Sciamma, Ducournau cast an adult actress to play younger (Melissa Boros was 19 playing Alpha at 13), and while Ducournau did not personally sexualize her main lead, as Sciamma did in her film, she did have a significant development gap between the actor and the age she was portraying. Considering the wide variance in development among girls, there is some authenticity to a “more mature” looking 13-year-old. Yet, to depict them as being in intimate scenarios when they are depicted by someone older, increases the likelihood of their sexualization by the audience and contributes to the normalization of pedophilia.

Regardless of sexuality being a legitimate part of the coming-of-age story, there is a gulf of a difference between including the turmoil of rising sexual feelings and the depiction of sex and nudity amongst characters that are underage. The former is valid, while the latter is exploitatively pedophilic.  It continues the “adultification” of girls on screen and contributes to the sexual objectification of girls in public, which happens so early and with such frequency as it does, that it doesn’t need assistance from the cinema.  

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS            

The sociological question that Ducournau asks, outside of the allegorical representation of historic medical crises, is the value and interpersonal impacts of generational grief. What does it mean when an individual can’t let go, or someone cannot get past the worst time of their life? Narratively, this is unique as few films explore the failings of a protagonist to find solace or redemption. The primary reason being that people have been conditioned through generations of storytelling to value character arcs that show growth and moving past that point of pain. Generally, it is desirable to see characters that are not in the same place at the end of a story as they were at the beginning. This change shows both acknowledgement of, and a reward for, the investment of time the audience puts into watching the story unfold. It minimizes disappointment. Rare are films that show characters with an inability to grow. When they are depicted, it is usually a moral failing, a cautionary tale. It is something to learn from, so that unlike these characters, audience members can move on; and hold on to hope for something better. However, this messaging becomes muddled with the realities of grief and the way that people engage with it, and the societal expectation of grief and its processes. Few realize that grief is a social fact.

 Grief as a Social Fact

A social fact is clearly defined as any way of acting that is fixed or not, capable of exerting over an individual an external constraint or that which is generated over the whole of a given society whist having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations (Durkheim 1982:59)

   A social fact has three components to it:

1.       Externality: to exist outside of something (prior or outside of the individual) something that we learn through the process of socialization (e.g. language)

2.       Constraint: puts forth a compelling force or coercive power over individuals. It sets limits and constraints on people

3.       Generality: This is something that is widespread that has been deeply rooted in the cultural norms of a group or society, to the point that they are seen as natural.

Grief is an emotion that is felt by a variety of living creatures; not just humans. It exists outside of any one person, even though every person can experience it. Grief continues even if people don’t. Ironically, it is the emotional vacuum experienced after the loss of someone else that propels grief amongst a populace. Grief exists within the individual, and amongst the people. Both inside and outside the person. Externality. Those that have experienced grief understand how it may manifest as psychological and social shackles that keep individuals inert. The cinematic language used to explain grief is one of a barrier. It is consistently manifested as a hindrance; keeping something or someone from “moving on”. That “moving on” is also always presented as something good. This once again frames progress as linear and positive; because it is assumed, where you are, is never where you want to stay. Especially in narrative storytelling, grief is an albatross that must be cast off. Constraint. Since all humans and many nonhumans experience grief, it is an emotion that is ritualistically self-generating within our society. The experience of grief is not novel or unexpected, it is nuanced to the social, cultural and historical context in which it is experienced. We create rituals as a method to “process” our grief. Funerals and other collective experiences around death are not for the corpse, but for the collective conscience. It is a natural part of understanding life. Generality. Yet just because grief can be understood as a social fact, does not mean that its inevitability is how grief is neither conditioned nor socially experienced.

Socially, grief is understood through a capitalist lens. It is a barrier that one must overcome or circumvent to have “grown”. This is measured by our ability to look back on that time of grief and value it for allowing us to be where we are in the present. We understand this in very pro-capitalist economic terms: the process of grief, our progress from it, and the growth or “profit” from experiencing it. In this, grief is transactional. This understanding of grief is reinforced through cinema.

In cinema, grief is mainly played as a constraint. It is the source of tension and conflict from which the filmmakers can create drama, stakes, and thus, audience investment (again a capitalist frame). Therefore, to see a return on that investment, the conflict must be resolved, the constraint removed, evaded or abated. Unfortunately, the consumption of these types of stories through this lens conditions us through the process of socialization to define grief as being fundamentally temporary (again, framed as a process) its resolution an inevitability. Additionally, that conclusion is reached with fundamental ease and speed (about the length of a feature film). While, conceptually, we understand that is not how the actual experience of grief works (emotional experiences in humans tend to exist nonlinearly), it creates a social expectation in individuals, organizations, and the social institutions in which we live, to exist as such.

 The United States being a capitalist society, we’ve framed our social and institutional interactions through the economic language of profit to be transitory and transactional. Thus, the Marxian notion of commodification provides an understanding that everything in human life, even the experiences of our emotions, can be bought, sold, traded or exchanged; grief included. Grief then becomes commodified. Usually manifesting in the form of self-help books with a variety of coping strategies, self-care routines, pharmacology and therapies. Access to these manifestations is not all equally distributed, with some groups, usually those with greater wealth, being able to acquire more than those who do not. Regardless, what often is overlooked is that there is always a societal time limit to grief.

In a capitalist system like the US, grief is assigned a value and is considered a commodified resource. The misery of others is publicly traded, and their recovery is profited from. It is cyclical as opposed to perpetually linear. This is contradictory to the common assumption that sustained grief should be desired for profit. Epitomized by the notion that therapy is never over. The rationalization being that there is always something about yourself that you need to work on (a notion that flies in the face of a therapeutic understanding based on having goals that you want to achieve; and once achieved, the therapy ends). Thus, a time limit to grief seems anti-capitalistic…until you factor in productivity.

Capitalism is an economic system that dehumanizes. It is amoral and apathetic. It does not care about the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of its workers. Thus, the arresting power of grief, halts productivity. The work never stops because the profit cannot abide a limit (Marx 1993). Therefore, there are constraints put on grief. No matter how generous the healthcare plan, no matter how understanding your boss, emotionally supportive coworkers, family and friends are, there is a variety of societal limits to grief’s expression.

Grief is allowed to be intense at the outset, with strong emotional support and a variety of empathetic gestures. But the greater the temporal distance from the grief causing event, the quicker the societal acceptance and behavioral latitude evaporates; replaced by an expectation to move past it and become productive again. Once that time is reached, grief is perceived as an individual and moral failing. Characterizing the person as broken if they cannot get back to their previous productive self. Criticized as being “stuck in the past.”

This understanding of the social conditions of grief is taught through the consumption of cinema. As we engage with a plethora of stories that champion the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity, and to not succumb to trauma, nor the grief and loneliness that accompanies it. We reinforce the social condition that grief is not only a social fact, and a normal part of existence, but as something that we inevitably have to overcome multiple times throughout our lives in order to simply exist within society. We also learn that shame, ridicule and ostracization follows those who cannot defeat grief. This results in people masking and self-medicating their grief. They realize that so long as you are still able to participate in the system, you are left alone (to “not be ok”). You are allowed to be mentally and emotionally broken so long as you are undisruptively productive. Thus, we are given several cinematic depictions of functioning broken people. If they do not improve by the time credits roll, they learn to mask convincingly enough to allow the audience to assume a happy ending; even when that may betray the context of the film itself.  Film in this context then becomes one way in which the acceptable image of grief is laundered. It hides the limits of grief within a capitalist society, creating a culture that sees grief as an aberration, and those that can’t control it, as failures. Ducournau’s Alpha is an exception.

In Alpha, grief is cinematically manifested in the character of Uncle Amin. The audience is introduced to Amin as an intrusion into the lives of Alpha and her mother.  Alpha is noticeably concerned, considering that she has no recollection of who he is at first introduction (occupying her room). This is despite his protests that they know each other quite well, and she was just too young to remember. As her mother returns home, she is uncharacteristically accommodating to her brother whom, as we see in flashbacks, is a drug addict. On numerous occasions, the film shows Alpha’s mother resuscitating him after various overdoses. A flashback to when Alpha was five, reveals that Amin had contracted the virus. He then decides to take Alpha to buy drugs so he can overdose and die on his own terms. When Alpha’s mom catches him in the act, she resigns to assisting him. But as he passes out, Alpha’s mother revives him again, unable to let him go. Eventually, Amin, after a painfully long process, succumbs to the disease and is turned into a marble statue.

Since the film is told in overlapping flashbacks, the story moves linearly but jumps between past and present towards the same event (the inciting incident). Ducournau builds to the moment that traumatized both mother and daughter: their collective assistance in Amin’s attempted suicide. Alpha’s mom administering the lethal dose and Alpha’s promise to make sure Amin doesn’t wake up. This schism results in his haunting of them; a manifestation of their unresolved grief. The mother, unable to let go of her brother, and the feelings of failure from Alpha for not being able to teach her mother to let go. This culminates at the end of the film when Alpha declares that Uncle Amin can’t be with them anymore. At films end, Alpha looks on as her mother and Uncle begin to walk toward the house. Suddenly, the spirit of Amin crumbles, carried off by the wind. Her mother screams, left with nothing but anguish.

A more hopeful interpretation of this final scene is that it is a turning point in the relationship between Alpha and her mother, that they are no longer haunted by the specter of their dead loved one. However, there has been nothing to suggest that growth in any of the preceding scenes. Alpha’s recovery of her lost memories and declaration to overcome grief has no practical weight to it. Given the context of the entire film that proceeded it, it is more likely that this is the start of another grief cycle for Alpha’s mother. Stuck resurrecting the memory of her brother in her own mind because she could not bring him back to life. Grief is a social fact, and for some, it becomes the only truth.

    

CONCLUSION

            Alpha is a film that competently provides a historical allegory for the HIV/AIDS crisis with Ducournau’s wonderful body-horrific flare. Yet, the film seems like an allegory in search of a story. The metaphors were so bluntly heavy handed that the narrative wasn’t cohesively held together in the same way as her previous work. However, where this film shines is in its meditation on grief and its circumventive subversion of audience expectations. We expect the narrative arc to the expiration of grief, the conquering of loss and a rebounding acceptance of life. Instead, this film shows us that somethings aren’t overcome, they are adapted to and lived with. An infrequent lesson that is as equally important as its rosier alternative.  

 

REFERENCES

Durkheim, Emile 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method and selected text on Sociology and its Method. New York: The Free Press  

Halkitis, Perry N. 2019 “The Stonewall Riots, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Public’s Health” in The American Journal of Public Health 109(6):pp 851–852. Retrieved on 4/18/26 Retrieved at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6507988/

Marx, Karl 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy New York: Penguin Classics     

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[1]  Some of us were children. Many of us had the privilege to be kept ignorant of both the severity and the horrors of death the disease brought at the time

The Films of Julia Ducournau: Titane

            The second film in my analysis of The Films of Julia Ducournau is the genre-bending body horror thriller, Titane. Ducournau’s sophomore feature seems to crystalize and extend both the themes and the visuals she is interested in as a storyteller into a specified shape. The gendering of women and the patriarchal attempt to tame them, aging masculinity and the sense of identity loss that accompanies it, are present in this Palm d’Or winning wild wretched tale whose production was halted by the COVID Lockdown. This brief paper is a deconstruction of Ducournau’s second film as a cultural product; questioning the historical parallels of the anti-trans legislation at the time, with the films own complicated take on Trans issues and gender messaging; while examining the production and the overall craft of the film with the filmmaker’s desire to have this film be received as a story about unconditional love and acceptance.

 

PLOT

After young Alexia survives a car accident as a child, she develops mechaphilia and a penchant for murder. After committing a series of murders and a “one-night stand” with a Cadillac, Alexia flees. She alters her appearance to look like a lost boy and assumes his identity and is reunited with his father, Vincent. This ruse proves difficult to sustain as Alexia finds that she is rapidly progressing in pregnancy with an amalgamated mutant of her erotic dalliance with a car. As her new relationships are tested, both Vincent and Alexia must trust one another and decide if the lies between them matter less than the familial love they found between them.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            Both Titane, and Ducournau as a writer/director, were met with great acclaim while simultaneously bogged down by the challenges of an industry shut down due to a global pandemic. Additionally, a particular reading of the film correlates to trans discrimination bills and anti-trans rhetoric going on at the center of 2021 when the film was in production. This section intends to analyze these events and the perceived effect on the film. By placing it in a particular historical context, a richer understanding of the film as a cultural product can be achieved.

            Production

            One of the points of inception for Titane’s plot came to director Julia Ducournau in a dream. She would have a recurring nightmare about giving birth to engine parts. This recursion caused Ducournau to formulate the film’s ending and work backward from there. In the process of reverse engineering a story from the surreality of vehicular excision from the body, Ducournau took on an existential approach thinking about the metaphor of transformations and metamorphoses to get to the next stage of hybridization. Ducournau’s dream laid the foundation for this duality that she eventually would want to explore further: the warmth of giving birth and bringing life with the contrast of the metal representing lifelessness; cold and dark.

            In 2018, as the script was beginning to take shape, Ducournau had dinner with actor Vincent Lindon and mentioned to him that she had a part she was writing for him. In interviews, Lindon recalls not knowing if this was a pleasantry or an actual offer. Vincent waited for secondary confirmation before committing and then waited another two years before getting the script.

Titane marks the feature film debut of Agathe Rousselle (Alexia) who got a message on Instagram that she should audition for the film’s main protagonist. The film was so technical that there could be no space for improvisation. The role was also physically demanding, with both nudity, action and the willingness to masculinely present as a guy.  These demands that would have shaken a seasoned actor let alone a novice. And yet, Rousselle took it in stride and great care in crafting the role.

Titane was set to begin production in April 2020. Because of the lockdown orders that spanned the globe, the film began filming in September of that year, following all of the protocols and procedures of film production at a time when there were no vaccines on the horizon. Luckily, much of the film is centralized around the interplay between two characters, and they do not interact with too many more people outside of themselves. While it is easy to frame Titane as “a pandemic film” because it:

·                 Was shot in a single or multiple isolated locations.

·                 Involved few actors

·                 Blocked scenes with three or fewer people interacting at a time

·                 Had a limited crew  

·                 Included camera techniques to try to make up for the production difficulties

By looking deeper, the text of Titane also speaks to its position as “a pandemic film” because the themes of the film speak to the fragility of the human body and the thin veneer of health and wellness which we learned through the pandemic we hold in a tenuous slipping grasp. Even though this film is not about a global pandemic, the body horror aspects of the film remind us of the same vulnerability during COVID.

           

A consistent influence and paragogic mentor for Ducournau has always been David Cronenberg. While there are homages to his early body horror work in Raw, Titane draws heavily from Cronenberg’s much maligned film Crash, a relatively obscure movie about a group of car accident survivors that start to develop mechaphilia and a kink for car crashes. The way that Cronenberg shoots both the human body and the body of the car, echoes in Titane’s opening as the camera moves from underneath the car, looking at its different parts, before we go inside the cabin. This detail is mirrored by the camera as it follows Alexia through the showroom at the beginning of the film, revealing both Alexia and the glossy polish of engine parts of a car being sold. Alexia and the car begin as separate beings, but throughout the film, they start to merge. In Cronenberg’s Crash, that merging happens at the onset of the vehicular accidents caused during coitus; the survivors growing more machine-like with every collision. Titane takes this merging to be metaphysical, as the amalgamation is triggered by vehicular coitus and represented by the child of that union.

As the film was released on the festival circuit it garnered early buzz given its provocative premise and enigmatically shocking sequences. As the film was set to premiere at Cannes, it ended up taking the prestigious Palm d’Or. Infamously, this revelation was spoiled early by Spike Lee, who mistook first prize for first place, confusing Titane to be the runner up, rather than the winner. Regardless of the flub, Ducournau’s spirits did not dampen as she was, at the time, only the second woman to win the award and the first to win it alone. In that, Ducournau and Titane break both genre boundaries and glass ceilings in equal measure. Yet, the win was not unanimous, many on the Jury finding the film too avant-garde, often leaning into the anti-horror bias that is common in prestigious film festivals (Ben-hadj, 2021).  The genre being once again marred by derogatory labels of shlocky, popcorn, pedestrian, campy etc. Ironically, the rise and embrace of “elevated horror” as a concept redraws the boundaries of class culture within the genre. There are certain stories, because of its material or the auteur status of its director, that have been accepted by the elite class at regulating agencies, like festivals, which instead of balancing the genre scales, put their finger on it; making sure to gate keep horror, keeping it in its place. Ducournau winning the Palm d’Or, especially with a film as wild as Titane, is hopefully a turning point in allowing the eclectic messiness often found in horror to permeate the prestigious parts of the industry, causing a shift in both how horror is perceived, and the talent of those who create it.    

 

            The LGBTQAI Community in Crisis

            Sexuality outside of the white heteronormative cisgendered ableist capitalist patriarchy has always been marginalized (hooks 2000). The problem arises not in their existence, which has been a constant state in human civilizations (and documented in non-human animal species), but in a ridged latticework that is overlayed atop the naturally created universal spectrum of human diversity and identity. The mechanisms of control that create this caustically hostile system has its roots in historical institutional structures and cultural power dynamics that make it difficult to unearth, and whenever there is an attempt, those roots entangle themselves; knotting into a convoluted network that sinks deep into psyches, that is then lightly reinforced at dinner tables or behind closed doors, in court room decisions, in jury boxes, and store “etiquette”. It is hiding in plain sight, (not so) difficult to detect, more likely ignored, until those discriminatory branches decide to sprout.

            Most marginalized groups that have been othered by this wealthy white supremacist heteronormative ageist cisgendered ableist patriarchy have gone through periods of oppression with glimpses of social justice. Whether by race, gender, social class, or disability, all have experienced some amounts of recurrent and worsening oppression with tiny moments of equality and equity through civil rights and social justice movements;[1] only to have it possibly ripped away.     

            The 2000’s in the US, long after Stonewall, the scapegoating of LGBTQAI for the AIDS epidemic, and the consistency of media tropes that liked to murder gays and lesbians to punish them for their sexuality, non-heterosexual individuals started to be more prominently present in media portrayals and with their sexuality not being their defining characteristic. By 2010, homonormativity was becoming a consistent relationship structure in many media portrayals. Similarly, In the US Court System, cases were heard and laws changed that brought the LGBTQAI community more equity: Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 struct down sodomy laws (of which 29 states and 5 territories at the time had already repealed their laws), 2011 saw the repeal of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for non-heterosexuals in the military, in 2015, with Obergfell v Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that states must license and recognize same sex marriage in the entire country by ruling that Section three of the Defense of Marriage Act was considered unconstitutional. The most recent civil rights decision by the Supreme Court for the LGBTQAI community came in 2020 with Bostock v. Clayton where the court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects people from workplace discrimination, applied to sexual orientation and gender identity.

            In France at the time, gay marriage was legal, same sex adoption was possible, and lesbians had access to reproductive technology. The country had relatively strong discrimination protections, school support, and hate crime legislation. However, since 2018, there has been a rise in attacks and rhetoric against Trans individuals.  Similarly, just as Titane was entering the festival circuit, the newest version of The Equity Act was introduced to US Congress. This bill had the intention of prohibiting discrimination based on sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. The bill passed the House by a narrow margin and went to the Senate; but could not overcome the filibuster. This loss then became a Harbinger of policies and ordinances that have sprouted up to put a strangle hold onto the equity by orientation. In the US, 79 measures and bills were introduced in 2021 alone that restricted or revoked Trans rights or access to trans care; including medical care and a ban on sports participation.

This culminated at the beginning of 2025 when the second Trump administration handed down executive orders that were exclusively transphobic.

On January 20, 2025, Upon returning to office, Donald Trump labeled Trans people “Gender Identity Extremism” and therefore Determined:

·         “Sex” shall refer to an immutable biological classification as either male or female all people should be classified through that lens

·         The term sex should be used in place of gender

·         Gender identity is a falsehood and disconnected from reality

·         Ended federal funding for any K-12 schools that promotes “gender ideology” (loosely defined)

·         Defunding and removal of Diversity Equity and Inclusion Courses

·         Denying access to Transition medication and Procedures  

            This cultural shift of Anti-LGBTQAI rhetoric and policies has begun to cascade over the shores of each country. Both Argentina and Hungry have followed the United States lead in becoming more conservative; banning femicide, blaming feminism, banning Pride, and using facial recognition software to round up those that attended. According to Brechenmacher (2025), this is a part of a new global wave of ANTI-LGBTQAI policies. But unlike previous movements, this new heteronormative resistance is organized and transnational. Social media and the internet allow for the mobilization and unification of desperate and fringe groups, amplifying alienated attitudes and minority opinions. Still, the Pew Research Center shows that over the last few decades, attitudes and behaviors have become more exclusive for trans people. Since 2022, more inclusive attitudes have soured into alignment with the policies that Donald Trump has enacted when he took office for his second term.

Brechenmacher (2025) states:

 “[These] new oppositional movements treat gender equality, feminism, and LGBTQ rights as existential threats to cultural and national integrity linked to globalization, Western liberalism, and the erosion of traditional authority. This shared worldview allows diverse actors—from right-wing populists in Europe to nationalist autocrats in Russia and China to conservative religious groups in Latin America and Africa—to coalesce around a common enemy. (3)”

Like many backlashes to progressive social movements, much of the resistance to these progressive policies is a resistance to change and the acquisition of power by women and non-heterosexual groups.

 In the US, the reasoning is twofold: Firstly, a lot of these conservative [read as narrow minded] beliefs do not have the strength of personal convictions. The only way that their policies can exist is if there is no opposition. They crumble at the first sight of criticism. Sure, they may deflect, produce scapegoats and be in denial, but the sanctity of their ideology cannot exist in a multicultural system that accepts and allows the fruition of equity and equality for all. The happiness, wellness and success of the LGBTQAI +community is abhorrent to the acutely religious conservatives that derive a sense of self from their God’s wrathful righteousness against those that He’d deem wicked. And, if the LGBTQAI+ community is allowed to be happy, healthy, successful and prosperous, that challenges their worldview and their religious identity to the core. This challenge is so visceral that they feel personally insulted by it. Therefore, the dehumanization of nonbinary, trans and everyone else on the gender and sexuality spectrum becomes a moral crusade. Conservatives often obfuscate their intentions by publicly stating that they are protecting children or girls.[2] Secondarily, considering that the gay hook-up app “Grindr” crashed due to overuse in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention giving credence to the notion that many Religious conservative republicans are gay, but are closeted, illuminates their ire for the LGBTQAI+ community even further. Under this framing, the openness and joy with which non closeted members of the gender and sexuality spectrum live their lives as fully themselves, fosters a sense of resentment in the closeted conservative Christians. They are angry that they feel they cannot be as free as them. Thus, it’s the religious and sexual fragility of (typically) conservative Christian men which motivates anti-trans policies and the eradication of anything that isn’t within the gender binary.    

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS     

            As a self-identified Feminist, most of Ducournau’s work intertwines themes of gender, sexuality, and representation. In Titane she cloaks those themes in the embodiment of a character that is difficult to empathize with. Without a sympathetic protagonist, it is difficult for the audience to invest in that character’s story. Thus, as Ducournau emphasizes a lot of feminist and gender related concepts presented through characters that audiences aren’t invested in, it causes those gender and feminist ideologies to be misinterpreted as the source of the character’s toxic traits (Bogutskaya 2023). By delivering these gendered themes in an unlikable package, Ducournau stretches the audience’s cinematic latitude of acceptance, challenging them not to project positive personality traits onto characters that embrace, embody, or express socio-political ideologies that they might agree with, while simultaneously punishing those characters for their rejection of patriarchal structure.

            The gendering and punishment of a subversive woman  

            The basic gender socialization of girls and women into a white heterosexist capitalist ableist patriarchy of the United States revolves around the value of their body and its importance to men [collectively, structurally]. The bifurcated message that girls learn, and women often internalize, is that they need to be an object of male sexual adulation and a vessel for the next generation through the process of reproduction. Succinctly, it is important for girls and women to perform duties we have associated with being a wife and mother in this misogynistic patriarchy.

Historically, these messages have shifted slightly. Our misogynistic culture has had to get creative to make sure that it consistently continues to produce women who will be support staff for men. Initially, we framed sex and sexuality through the lens of morality. Men were the only ones with the moral fortitude to engage in conversations of sex or be able to look at pornography without corruption. Meanwhile, any female interest in the subject and she was brandished a harlot. These are part of the sexual scripts of the patriarchy to limit female sexual agency and maintain a sense of control. “Good girls” were innocent, pure, virginal; while “bad girls” were the ones who were interested in sex or engaged in any kind of sexual behavior. Firstly, the paternalistic infantilism that was/is used when referring to women speaks to this overbearing misogyny that permeates the culture. Secondly, this Madonna/whore complex became the framing of women’s caged sexuality for generations, only to be unearthed by the Second wave Feminist movement’s push for contraception and the promotion of guilt free sex for women. The patriarchy had to pivot. The Madonna/Whore messaging changed from being either/or, to both. Essentially, girls and women need to exude both innocence and oversexed debauchery simultaneously, the only delineation being between public vs. private spaces. To the front facing public, women are to be the innocent, obedient moralist. But in private, they are encouraged to be sexually adventurous. To use a descriptive popular parlance: “A lady in the streets, but a freak in the sheets.” Granted, there may be a subculture or two (based in specific religious interpretations) that still engage in the Madonna/whore script in the traditional way: creating “purity tests” and making fathers be the gatekeepers of their daughters’ virginity, objectively giving it to a man he sees as worthy on their wedding day (Valenti 2009). But it is the amalgamated redux of the system that is currently the most prevalent gatekeeper of women’s sexuality.

Whether women are either supposed to be innocent completely, or only in the presence of others to project patriarchal passivity, it is still control through the lack of female agency. Women in either the original or “New Coke” version of the Madonna/whore complex are still engaging in sex for the purpose and pleasure of men. Sex, especially in the patriarchy is framed as a masculine event. This contributes to the orgasm gap between cisgendered men and women and frames women’s sexuality as relational and performative (Harvey, Jones and Copulsky 2023). This is the misogynistic framing of women’s sexuality as emotional labor for men, which women are compensated for through the power and autonomy they glean from their patriarchal bargain.

Women who perform these “wifely duties” of lover, then mother, can extract the illusion of agency, autonomy and independence they desire. This is what I deem as “Have-it-all Sexism.”

 As I explain in a previous essay from 2013:

"Have it all" Sexism is a term that refers to a new type of sexist female representation in the media that requires female characters that are shown to have careers (with varying degrees of power, agency and autonomy), or who are being portrayed as physically strong (or strong willed), must also identify (or in some cases learn to identify) with traditional female gender norms and scripts.  The message is that it is OK for girls to have agency and social power in our society so long as they don't forget that they also must be wives and mothers (i.e. sex objects and reproductive vessels.) This maintains the value of women to be in their body, and their representation as full and complete human beings is a distant second.”

In a misogynistic patriarchy, the only acceptable way to achieve independence and identity outside of the gendered roles women have been shackled to, is to fulfill those roles first and if there is any time, money, energy and effort left, then women can have a personality. A woman’s individuality and uniqueness is an ancillary addition that is not a part of their systemic patriarchal function. Any portrayal outside of this is summarily punished.

            Entertainment media is one mechanism by which women are both presented and policed. Socialized gender messages are taught and the consequences of not following or rejecting those messages are illustrated through a variety of stories. Here, the Madonna/whore binary (both original recipe and “extra misogyny”) is used as both paragon and criteria for punishment against those who resist.  According to Anna Bogutskaya (2023) this misogyny limits female representation, framing any character that isn’t promoting the patriarchy as “unlikeable”. They may be painted as too angry, too direct, too mean, too sexual, too disorganized, too unhinged, too aloof, or just too odd. These criticisms of character traits are then slyly and erroneously connected to left-leaning political ideologies and notions of liberation to reinforce patriarchal dominance.  Characters that spout clear feminist rhetoric about agency and equal treatment are deemed “crazy”.

““Crazy” is often the default insult for women who exist in ways that upset the status quo; women who have been hurt, women who are tired and overwhelmed, and women who suffer from any form of mental illness are lumped into this one big bag of “crazy””(Bogutskava 2023: 226). 

These portrayals are commodifications of women by the patriarchy to sell to men as:

·         Cautionary tales to create and maintain the heterosexist family unit fidelity  

·         Sexually desirable; a respite from the masculinely insecure emotional vacuum the Patriarchy traps men in.

·         A project they can fix.

Because the politics and ideals of feminism are patriarchally misinterpreted through the lens of unlikability, women’s independence, autonomy and individuality are perceived as a threat. Therefore, there is this misogynistic motivation in fiction and reality to take a single, successful, career-focused independent women and shackle them to the gender roles assigned to them as a form of punishment. (Bates 2020). While there have been several celebrities that this can be applied to; in fiction, this punishment is illustrated through a series of pregnancy tropes.  

 

            There are several media tropes that revolve around pregnancy, and all of them are designed to punish women. The most common trope is the mystical pregnancy. This is where a female character is either supernaturally inseminated by gods, spirits, or other mystical beings, or conceives naturally only to find that the pregnancy is otherworldly. Often this pregnancy is used as punishment for women’s transgressive independence. But through their loss of agency and experiencing the terror and humiliation of this natural body horror, their behavior can be corrected.[3]  In Titane, Alexia is an unlikeable character and therefore she gets punished with a mystical pregnancy that eventually kills her.

            The audience first meets Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) when she is a child, just before she is in a car accident with her father. It is heavily implied, though never stated, that the injuries that she sustained in the wreck motivated her psychopathy. When we meet up with her as an adult after the title sequence, we bear witness to her performative sexuality and a penchant for murder (the news reports indicating that she is a serial killer). These traits seemingly would place Alexia into the classical trope of “The Psycho” (Bogutskava 2023). Her violence is not generated by revenge or retribution for an assault (sexual or otherwise) and there is no inherent empathy we are supposed to have for the character. She is also charming, intelligent and easily offended (all traits of psychosis). According to Bogutskava (2023) this offense has a polymorphic trigger that is different for each media “Psycho”. For Hannibal Lecter it was rudeness. For Amy Dunne it was mediocrity. For Alexia, it is her vulnerability. Anytime that she feels like she gets close to any real emotion, she lashes out. Yet, the violence she commits is not without explanation. It can easily be traced back to the trauma of the car accident and the titanium plate in her head that is overly sensitive, and the source of her emotional detachment. So, it is difficult to say if Alexia fits Bogutskava’s (2023) trope of “The Psycho” completely, as she does not seem to fit all the criteria while embodying the impulsive messiness of the caricature. Still, Ducournau can’t help but punish Alexia with a mystical pregnancy, brought on by the mechaphilia Alexia developed after the accident.   

            Mechaphilia is an intense sexual arousal or attraction to machines. Alexia’s particular fixation is on cars. Therefore, the source of the mystical pregnancy punishment trope is her sex with a car.  In an elegantly lit, cinematically graceful, albeit protracted sequence; the audience witnesses a naked Alexia get inside a Cadillac and proceed to have sex with the car. It should be noted that Alexia, even though she freely enters the car, is a passive participant in the sexual encounter; wrapping the seat belts around her forearms as the car uses its hydraulics to create the motion of penetrative sex. Thankfully, we are spared any actual pornographic images of mechaphilic penetration, though Ducournau makes sure that we see the consequences of the act (bruising on Alexia’s thighs and a motor oil like secretion from her vagina that simulates car semen). This is the first level of punishment.

 Sexual humiliation of women is a popular form of mainstream pornography that depicts women being punched, slapped, spanked, made to cry, gag and brutalized through violent and extreme penetration; usually coupled with humiliating language designed to dehumanize and “other” the female participants (Lust 2010, Bates 2020). While there is legitimacy in a humiliation kink, the kind of humiliation described above is not about and does not involve consent nor depicting equal power for the pleasure of all parties. Instead, it is a way for men to re-establish dominance through the violent sexual humiliation of women, a toxically masculine reformation of male identity. In Titane, that toxic masculinity is represented by the Cadillac, and the ensuing violence brought upon Alexia through the sexual act is her penance for existing outside of the bounds of societal gender roles.

 The second punishment is the mystical pregnancy itself. Ducournau revels in depicting the “womb horror” castigation of pregnancy.  Given the mechaphillic conception, it is quickly apparent that Alexia is carrying a half human hybrid. The camera seems to revel in Alexia’s pain as it fixates on her transforming body: the growth of her titanium womb, the tearing of her skin, her lactation of oil and the agony she goes through trying to hide it from others. At the end of the film, Alexia is absolved for all of her “unlikeable” anti-masculine transgressions by succumbing to a violent death while giving birth; making sure that the final emotion she felt before death was an unending void of fear. Through this lens, by using such tropes, regardless of her intention, Ducournau contributes to the misogyny of patriarchy through the punishment of women that fail to follow or contribute to traditional societal gender norms.

   

       The Humiliation of Aging Masculinity

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence towards women. Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation., that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves (bell hooks 2004: 66)

            As girls and women are socialized to be wives and mothers, boys are socialized to be providers and protectors. They are socialized as rational, stoically emotionless and singularly focused beings. This masculinity is extremely fragile. A mannerism, improper word choice or drink selection, and the masculine gender identity built on sexual objectification of women, violence and emotional and physical durability, crumbles to dust. Its form and reformation need to be established within every social situation. Therefore, men are effectively chasing after masculinity, their own form of patriarchal cage unique to men (Walker 2020)[4]. Much of this masculinity is wrapped up in validation and valorizing of youthfulness. The desirable traits of masculinity are always framed through the lens of those in the symbolic springtime of age. Rarely do we get an image of aged masculinity that isn’t a preternatural, Uber masculine hyperbole of the already established traits of strength and power. We do not get an acceptable form of aged masculinity that isn’t melancholically pining for their lost virility, either in strength or sexual prowess. Aging for men, then becomes its own form of humiliation. The slow desiccation of abilities and mental acuity until their value and worth is atomized.

            Ducournau epitomizes the relationship between age and masculinity through Vincent’s narrative journey. An aging firefighter, Vincent struggles with his weaning strength and compounding PTSD brought on by decades of combating fire, and the grief over his lost son. His fear and loss of identity results in him becoming overbearingly authoritarian with other firefighters under his command (comparing himself to God and Adrian/Alexia as Jesus) and contributes to developing an addiction to steroids. Throughout the film, Vincent’s physical and emotional shortcomings are laid bare. It is through these failures that we understand and recognize why he is willing to actively delude himself into believing that Alexia is his long-lost son Adrien. With the loss of his perceived masculinity, and his failure to get it back through synthetic means, the only way for him to reclaim any semblance of masculinity is by holding onto his ability to be a protective father. Therefore, regardless of Alexia’s identity, the lie allows him to piece together the bits of his former masculinity that have withered away by age and inability. This is why he both lashes out whenever that lie is questioned, culminating in his line to Alexia: “I do not care who you are. To me, you will always be my son.” At the end of the film, that paternalistic purpose is refocused and realized as he commits to the protection of Alexia’s hybrid baby; by simply stating “I’m here.”      

 

            A Trans story of acceptance or a Symbolically anti-trans narrative?

            “Horror is a genre that encapsulated a lot of social anxieties. A lot of the things that we as a society are stressed about or uncertain about or titillated and tantalized by the transgressiveness of. Sexuality and gender nonconformity are common themes in horror. What are the images we are producing of these communities and what stereotypes are we using?” (Dr. Jaime Hartless on “Episode 18: Queer Representations of Horror” of The Sociologist’s Dojo Podcast  

 

            Horror has always been a bifurcated place for the LGBTQAI+ community. It has reproduced harmful stereotypes and subverted them, reinforced violence against the marginalized group and provided thoughtful critiques about the harm it causes. Horror has perpetuated and subverted all expectations. “Positive portrayals coexist with more potentially regressive ones that continue to associate queerness with evil.” (Hartless 2021: 5). Trans people especially have been underrepresented in horror and are often misrepresented when they are. From Sleepaway Camp, Psycho and Dress to Kill, to The Crying Game and The Silence of the Lambs trans people have historically portrayed the villain; but more nefariously, their villainous motivations were often framed as being derived from their gender and sexual “otherness”. However, as we have taken the slowest of baby steps toward a culture of trans acceptance (from which our current administration is taking strides away from), recently, more positive trans visibility has been seen. Even in the horror genre, there are several trans actors that are redefining their presence in the Horror landscape onscreen. Thus, as horror seems to have a history of being an exploitative carnival where cisgendered people can gawk, laugh and be terrified of the existence of those outside the binary, simultaneously, it has been at the forefront of trans representation, the conventions of the horror genre allowing for gender bending and boundary breaking behavior that can culminate into acceptance.

            A lot has been written about Titane as a trans narrative that swings the pendulum between  elation and revulsion. The film has been heralded by some as a wonderful transmasc love story of acceptance that provides a hopeful allegory for those still terrified to come out to their parents. While those more critical of the film see the inclusion of the trans identity as a plot device, the protagonist using gender deceit as a cover to avoid accountability. The copout is to say that this is a perfect example of why art is subjective; that it can mean anything to everyone, even the opposite. Yet sociologically it can be understood that two things can exist at the same time. These conflicting pro/Anti trans ideas run parallel with each other throughout the film. Ducournau gives just enough to allow for a dual reading of the film that both meets and subverts expectations. There are linear through lines that audience members can follow that will present a person coming into their own sense of self through a transmasc transformation from which the character finds unconditional love and acceptance for the first time. Conversely, there is also a complete throughline of a serial killer who is using a trans narrative as a method of escape and their frustration with having to hide their identity. However, there is also considerable evidence that suggests that Ducournau, understanding the way that the film could be interpreted, decided to first present the Trans identity as false, only becoming real through the love and acceptance Vincint gives to Alexia. In this sense, Alexia can’t fully embrace and accept their identity as Adrien until they felt safe to do so. Vincint gave them that space. The new identity is solidified when Adrien calls Vincint “Papa”. While this is undercut during the birthing scene where Adrien deadnames himself and re-identifies as Alexia, it still points to the social construction of sexuality and the gender fluidity of sexuality on screen.       

           

            The Redeeming Power of Unconditional Love

            Through the process of traditional, binary focused gender socialization, love is an emotion that is taught to be embraced by girls and women and barred by boys and men. Boys and men are taught to relinquish their love at adulthood and to calcify their emotional selves. Girls and women are taught to embrace love, as both their primary criteria when searching for a partner, and the abundant emotional commodity they sell through relationships. This again, is the way that a heterosexist capitalist patriarchy conditions cisgendered men and women into gender specific servitude; with neither being satisfied.     

            Within a general social order, love and affection are valorized through domestication. Sexuality gets refined into sublimation of love and the social order constructs it as only acceptable in private spaces, relegating and controlling sexual expression and legitimating it through love (Marcuse 1966). This focus on love is then translated to labor, and we then learn to love and enjoy work (often time as a representation of our identity) which helps to maintain social institutions and the order of a civilization (Marcuse 1966). Love then, especially for men, is weaponized and used to shore up the economy. Men start to see love as a type of satisfaction from work and the economic success that comes with it. bell hooks (2001) recognizes this as greed, a lust for money. This lust for money overtakes the love of others, as we are willing to put our lives in precarious positions, even those that are life threatening, for money. We cannot even escape the love of money when we seek love through partnerships. Capitalism has permeated every aspect of our culture, and so, when we are looking for companionship, we often view it through a capitalistic lens.

            According to hooks (2001)

        “When it comes to matters of the heart, we are encouraged to treat partners as though they are objects we can pick up, use, and then discard and depose of at will…When greedy consumption is the order of the day, dehumanization becomes acceptable” (p:115)

 

            After the accident, Alexia, through the function of her trauma, brain damage or both, looks at relationships as transactional. Faced with new experiences, she is unclear of how to act or how she is to respond. She does not know what she likes or what she wants. This lack of understanding of her body and her own desires causes her to lash out violently rather than deal with any kind of emotional complexity. Each sexual encounter is followed by violent murder. Yet, as she alters her identity to escape, she faces Vincent who gives her unconditional love and support regardless of her behavior. This is anathematic to Alexia’s transactional understanding, and she lashes out. Afterword, Vincent is still there, with comfort, stern safety, and sometimes tough love.

            When asked in interviews about the core message of the film, Ducournau consistently stated that it was unconditional love. The love between two broken people that heals them. Indeed, love has the power to change everything. The way that we see the past and live with it in a new way (hooks 2001). Alexia and Vincent find in each other a healing communion of love. Alexia finds the love and acceptance she has never experienced. Vincent finds a chance to end his heartache and fulfill his paternalistic drive. First to Alexia in the persona of Adrien, and then to her baby.  All they needed to receive was love, and that is the only thing Vincent had left to give.

 

CONCLUSION

            Julia Ducournau’s second film is not for the faint of heart, though heart it does have, deep in its viscera. Behind all of the serial killing mechaphillic feminine punishing, and possibly transphobic muddled messages, beats a story about acceptance and compassion. While all the themes that it presents aren’t equally fleshed out or serviced in equal measure, the amalgamated space of body and horror in which it lives allows the film to run on vibes, fuel and chrome. Thereby complicating our relationship with gender, ourselves and each other.   

 

RFERENCES

Bates, Laura 2020. Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects US All. Naperville. Source Books

Ben-Hadj, Emmanuelle 2021. “Making Room for Horror: The Adversity of Genre in the French Film Industry” PhD dissertation Deitrich School of Arts and Sciences University of Pittsburgh. https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/41404/32/41404.pdf

Brechenmacher, Saskia 2025. “The New Global Struggle Over Gender, Rights, and Family Values” in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Retrieved on 10/28/2025 Retrieved at https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/06/the-new-global-struggle-over-gender-rights-and-family-values?lang=en

Brutlag, Brian 2013. “Gender Representation in Disney’s ‘Frozen’ and Hollywood’s “girl” problem.” In The Sociologist’s Dojo  Retrieved on 11/1/2025 Retrieved at  https://thesociologistsdojo.blogspot.com/2013/12/gender-representation-in-disneys-frozen.html

___________ 2022. “Episode 18: Queer Representations of Horror with Dr. Jaime Hartless.” In The Sociologist’s Dojo Podcast Retrieved on 11/1/2025 Retrieved at: https://thesociologistsdojo.libsyn.com/episode-18-queer-representations-in-horror-with-dr-jaime-hartless

Bogutskaya, Anna 2023. Unlikable Female Characters: The women pop culture wants you to hate New York: Source Books.

Emanuelle Ben Hadj 2021. “Making Room for Horror: The Adversity of Genre in the French Film Industry” PhD dissertation. Detrich School of Arts and Sciences University of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

Hartless, Jaime 2021.”Horror as a Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Sexualities” in Teaching Sociology pp 1-12 American Sociological Association.

Harvey, Penny, Erielle Jones and Daniel Copulsky 2023. “The Relational Nature of Gender, the Pervasiveness of Heteronormative Sexual Scripts, and the Impact on Sexual Pleasure.” In Archives of Sexual Behavior 52(3) pp-1195-1212.

hooks, bell 2000. Feminism is for Everybody Cambridge. South End Press

_________ 2001. All About Love: New Visions  New York: William and Morrow  

_________ 2004. The Will to Change: Men Masculinity and Love  New York: Washington Square Press

Lust, Erika 2010. Good Porn: A Woman’s guide  New York Seal Press

Marcuse, Herbert 1966. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud  Boston: Beacon Press

Valenti, Jessica 2009. The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women New York: Seal Press   

Walker, Alicia 2020. Chasing Masculinity: Men Validation and Infidelity New York: Palgrave Macmillan

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[1] And thanks to the Warren Court- The 8 year Supreme Court make up responsible for the most landmark pieces of legislation

[2] This is double speak because, like mental Illness and Gun Control, these conservative groups only seem to care about girls and children when they are using it to fight against something else.

[3] Meta textually, the misogyny of Joss Whedon can be measured by his use of the mystical pregnancy trope twice on the character of Cordiella Chase  in the Buffy  spin off show Angel twice after Chase’s actor Charisma  Carpenter rejected his sexual advances.

[4] Through the establishment and reinforcement of stoicism at a very young age, boys are emotionally stunted causing arrested development and a reliance on women for their emotion work. Women, particularly sexual partners, then become the primary source of men fulfillment of intimacy. Unfortunately, because sex and intimacy are inextricably linked for men there is a fundamental misunderstanding that takes place. Women being socialized to have an easier accessibility of diverse emotions like empathy and compassion; see them as separate from sexual attraction whereas men do not. Therefore, when women provide emotional support for men based on basic human decency, men misinterpret this as emotional intimacy and a sign of attraction (Walker 2020). This again maintains a reliance of men on women to meet all their emotional needs