Alan J. Pakula's 'Paranoid Trilogy': Klute

            The first film in my analysis of Alan J. Pakula’s “Paranoid Trilogy” is the 1970’s sinister surveillance thriller, Klute. Fueled by the second wave feminist movement, Jane Fonda’s own activism at the time, and Pakula’s interest in Psychoanalysis, this is one of the first films of the period, certainly of the genre, to explore the interiority of women beyond their convention and utility to the story. In turn, this film both sparked and mirrored a general feeling of mistrust in the populace that permeated through the decade. This sense of ennui created by this film was not something Pakula manufactured and injected into the culture. Instead, because Pakula immaculately frames the story through Bree (Jane Fonda)’s perspective, it allows the viewers the opportunity to understand the experience of being a woman in public. Effectively transferring a woman’s fear, anxiety, unease and sense of powerlessness to the audience. Pakula wanted to emphasize that, in this film, the ‘Paranoia’ in question might just be the average Tuesday for a woman. A revelatory concept at the time. The following brief paper will engage how the burgeoning torrent of social change of the 1970’s became the backdrop of the films production pedestaled by a primordial second wave that dared to see women outside of the socialized gender roles assigned to them; while simultaneously ignoring the dangers brought on by institutional regulation and oversite.

 

PLOT

        Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) is an actor and model that is constantly struggling and trying to get out of a life of prostitution. Yet, the sense of power she gets when she’s with a “trick” is intoxicating, especially when it is so aggressively juxtaposed with the sense of powerlessness of being a woman in 1970’s New York. John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a private detective that is looking for a missing person who may or may not have been one of Bree’s former clients. As the mystery continues to unravel, Bree is sucked back into her old life completely; complicated by her former Pimp (Roy Scheider) and an unknown stalker. As she and Klute get closer (to solving the mystery and each other) Bree must confront her own feelings and the personal embodiment of misogyny that threatens her.

 

HISTOTRICAL CONTEXT

           Anomie is the social condition of normlessness that often occurs simultaneously or after periods of immense social change. It is identified and measured by a period of instability that illustrates the dynamism of the social structure as the volatility of social institutions and interaction strain between individuals are in a verdant and often perplexing state of flux after such a calamity (Durkheim 2014)        

The 1970’s was a period of transition. This was a time at the tail end of the second wave feminist movement; much of which was codified by the two most liberal Supreme Courts the United States has ever had to date. The Warren Court and The Berger Court were responsible for many of the landmark Civil Rights decisions in US History:

            Under the Warrant Court (1953-1969)

·         Brown v. Board of Education (Struct down Jim Crow Segregation in Schools)

·         Loving v. Virginia (allowed marriage between races based on Privacy)

·         Miranda v. Arizona (Cops must make people aware of their rights)

·         Gideon v. Wainwright (Right to an appointed attorney if you cannot afford it)

·         Griswold v. Connecticut (Allows married couples to access contraceptives)

·         Coopper V. Aaron (Ruled States cannot delay desegregation)

·          New York Times v. Sullivan (limits public official’s ability to sue defamation)

·         Engel v. Vitale (outlawing prayer in schools)

·         While these were not court cases, this Court presided over the passage of landmark Civil Rights legislation in Congress: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 Civil Rights Act of 64 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

  

Under the Berger Court (1969-1986)

·         New York Times v. United States (allowed for the publishing of the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam)

·         Miller v. California (Obscene material was protected under the First Amendment)

·         Roe v. Wade (Women have federal protections for body autonomy (abortions))

·         US v. Nixon (Executive privilege does not extend to Presidential communication with advisers)  

·         Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (Upheld Affirmative Action in School admissions but disallowed racial quotas)

·         While these were not court cases, this Court did preside over the establishment of Title XI and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

These two liberal courts, in succession, transformed the social and political landscape for generations. This became a period for socialist principles, of a unity between marginalized groups.  This was a time of “Sisterhood” where women started to understand solidarity and similarities with all women, while recognizing their different experiences (Zeilinger 2012).

            One example of the “sisterhood” existence during this time was through The Jane Collective. This was a consortium of women who counseled women and referred them to underground abortions from 1969 until 1973 when the first legal clinic opened after the Roe decision (Kaplan 2019). As the demand grew over this time, and the ability to outsource the underground abortions safely became more tenuous, The Jane Collective became medically trained to perform the procedure themselves. They only charged cost (on the necessary medical supplies) and no one was ever turned away for their inability to pay (Kaplan 2019). They understood that women’s body autonomy was a moral right, regardless of the archaic laws that governed them.[1]   

            The seeds of this intersectionality would come to embody the social justice movements in the future. While there was/is resistance to this change as these issues got codified into law during the 60’s and 70’s, people slowly started to adopt these more justice-minded principles publicly. It wasn’t that many of these people started to believe differently, they just did not want to be sanctioned for beliefs that have since become taboo at large. This contributed to the movement of discrimination and oppression from the overt language and institutional regulation into a more covert form of influence and control; while establishing reliable scapegoats regardless of their support for the policies behaviors and decisions of oppressors. This is because, regardless of truth, everyone tries to revise their morality publicly to always be on “the right side of history. We see this whenever a White Politician from a southern state invokes Martin Luther King Jr. by poorly paraphrasing the one quote that every Racist Republican leader references to elevate them beyond their racism in the eyes of the general-public[2]. A practice which uses Dr. King as a deflective prop rather than revered as a whole person.  To be clear, it’s not that these ideas have finally reached individuals that have been socialized to steep in various forms of vitriolic values and won them over. These individuals instead saw a culture shift and did not want to be ridiculed, ostracized or lose power. Therefore, they fain a social justice mindset.  As El Akkad (2025) astutely states: “One day everyone will have always been against this”     

The 1970’s was a decade chalk full of transitions; from civil rights the end of the Vietnam war, and a rash of serial killers to a string of high profile assassinations. The US was at a proverbial crossroads between becoming more democratically socialist or pivoting into greater authoritarian control through an embrace of Western Free market Capitalism. Nowhere was this existential intersection epitomized more than the 1980 Presidential election; in which President Jimmy Carter was challenged by Ronald Reagan. Carter, the democratic incumbent, was beset by an energy crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and falling poll numbers. Yet, in a series of speeches, he implored the American public to think beyond themselves. To think of the environment, about consumption and the morality of the nation.  This culminated in Carter’s famous/infamous speech about:

“The Crisis of Confidence”

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

 

Much like C. Wright Mills (1959), that saw that the personal is also political, pushing ourselves beyond our everyday understanding into something broader: a collective, interconnected symbiosis; so too does Carter beg his constituents to see beyond their Millsian “private orbits” of work, family, and their neighborhood. To look into the good of all people. Yet, this allowed his challenger Reagan to position himself to the exact opposite massage. Hence, Reagan promoted more spending, smaller government and an appeal to the “greatness” of the American people.

 Reagan’s message was attractive to the American voters; with the perfect blend of nationalist/egoistic pride and inaction. President Carter was painting a picture of America in the beginnings of a long uphill battle to get us back to where we were as a nation. Meanwhile, his challenger was saying “We can Make America Great Again” if we continue with the status quo without any reflection. These were two fundamentally and diametrically opposed views of our society. In the end, we took the easier, low road, believing that the American Experiment was thriving. Reagan, for his part, paved the way to our current (but not inevitable) ruin that culminated with Donald Trump and his bacchanal of bastards. After four decades of pro capitalist economic policies and anti-socialist deregulation Carter’s calls of “crisis” now seem prophetic in hindsight.

The Role of Hollywood and Klute’s Production

  This transition period of the 1970’s was fueled by a noticeable shift in culpability, causing a perspective shift from the personal to the institutional. After the Watergate Scandal and the Nixon pardon, people were wary about trusting their government and were more likely to believe in conspiracies. This distrust was capitalized on by Hollywood and furthered this mis/distrust through the decade. While the popularity of Pakula’s Trilogy was the anchor of this shaping of the public perception towards paranoia, it was furthered along by other films at the time: Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation, Network, The China Syndrome. Like Pakula’s 70’s work, these films continued to sew doubt and erode trust in government institutions. Cover-ups, conspiracies, propagandic brain washing, and mass surveillance all became popular storytelling devices that fed on the growing uncertainty of the time due to such rapid and drastic social changes. 

With Klute, Pakula not only created one of the seminal New York films of the 1970’s (representing perfectly the city as it was in the decade) but provided a glimpse into the interior life of women that no thriller up to that point had done before (Harris 2019). This was not the original intention of the film. Based on the conventions of the genre, Pakula originally wanted to explore the titular character more deeply. But as they were pairing down the film to shooting length, the story was found in the tidal pull between Bree’s internal struggles with her desires and the way the rest of society frames her.

The film challenged the popular perception of the depravity of sex work. There is a grace by which Pakula presents and depicts sex work that both is realist in the kinds of individuals surround such a profession, but at the same time, succeeds in not demonizing the practice or participants. It was one of first times that this humanization was seen on camera. While it does not come right out and state that “sex work is work” and should be legitimated, the centering of Bree in the narrative and her richly complex admissions and discussions with her therapist infer as much (Harris 2019).

Harris (2019): Continues:

“In ‘Klute’, therapy is used not to break Bree down, but to give her an opportunity to plumb her own mind, and as we watch her musing, reconsidering, overriding herself, always thinking, the movie dips into verité in ways in which there was very little precedent in a genre film.”    

Pakula and Fonda independently discussed the difficulty of shooting the therapy scenes. There was always a discussion of what Bree would share with her therapist and how much the therapist would both know and be willing to push back against her in those sessions. In one take, Fonda as Bree, met the hostility of the Therapist with cool, emotionless control. Because, according to Fonda, “Overt hostility is the easiest thing in the world for Bree Daniels to deal with. She deals with it every day of her life. It makes her relax, because she knows where she is at.” (Milne 1972:23). Because Pakula always encouraged actors to share their ideas, he recognized Fonda’s complete embodiment and went a different direction to make Bree more vulnerable in that moment. Instead of meeting Bree with hostility, Pakula had the character of the Therapist catch her off guard with a question “Do you feel I failed you?” she asks. Instinctually, Fonda responded with “No, I feel I’ve failed you.” Giving us the first glimpse of the internalization of female gender norms, that women define themselves by their value to other people in their lives (more on this in Social Analysis).

               The film’s cinematography, photographed by legend and frequent Pakula collaborator, Gordon Willis. Willis focused on creating a sense of imbalance and claustrophobia. To achieve this, he refused to shoot many establishing shots and almost no wide shots; often cutting into the middle of scenes from other scenes to add to the ratcheting tension, purposefully not letting the audience breathe, to fully put them in Bree experience. While general wide shots exist in the film, one singular use of them stands out at the beginning of the film. When we are first introduced to Bree it is in a wide shot. She is sitting in a waiting area at a model agency to possibly be selected for a commercial. Wills decided to photograph this scene widely with a long lens; making Bree almost faceless among the other exclusively white female models. Even though the scene is interspersed with close-ups of the models, we never see the face of the director or producers that are critiquing them; furthering that sense of alienation. We watch the models sense of hope rise and fall as they are passed over with increasing apathy through disaffected comments like “Too Pretty” and “Seen her Before”. When we get to Bree, they dismiss her with “Funny Hands.” Once they get to the end of the row, Willis goes back to a wide shot. The producer thanks them and they all stand up, shuffle out to the right of the screen (their left) and behind them comes in a difference crop of now Black female models. The illustration of powerlessness in this scene sets the tone for the film and solidifies it as one of the major themes of the picture.  

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

            As Klute positioned itself as a mirror and cultural reproduction of the 1970’s, it also embodied a lot of social themes that were impossible to disentangle from the decade itself. Chiefly, the “Second Wave” Feminist movement, that saw independence in terms of access to abortion, birth control, contraceptives and job opportunities leading to a higher rate of divorce as more women achieved independent economic stability. White women specifically believing that there was something beyond the gender roles in which they had been conscripted. Meanwhile,  Black women carved out space for themselves that wasn’t provided to them by the movement. The language of the movement was only inclusive to white women, and affirmative action policies disproportionally benefit white women in practice (Kendall 2020).

            Gender Socialization and the legitimacy of sex work.

While Bree is portrayed by a white woman in Klute, her penchant for sex work taints her whiteness through the Madonna/Whore complex. The Madonna /Whore Complex is a feminist analysis of gender socialization directed at girls and women regarding sexual identity and expression. In this binary, women are required to be the (biblical) Madonna- chaste, pure. Thereby, under this archaic notion, women’s morality is tied to her virginity; and if the woman does have sex, even in committed relationships, there is a likelihood that she will be labeled a “whore” which defined as a fallen, defiled, and impure woman. This clear Christian supremacy is the lens through which women and their bodies are being controlled. Yet, whereas white women have the opportunity of the assumption of outright purity until it is “lost” through what is perceived and projected to be immoral acts, women of color have never given the same “benefit”. They have always been associated negatively through this religious lens as temptations and the work of “The devil”. The thematic through line being the overall fear of female sexual agency.

  The paradox of female gender socialization lies in its overall hypocrisy. Women are given the message since they were girls that their value is in their bodies; both as a sexual object to be possessed by men, or as a vessel for the next generation. Their bodies become currency. However, if women trade on that currency for their own financial or social gain, they are oppressed and ostracized either as a part of the Madonna/Whore binary or something equally reprehensible. This illustrates that the issue is not about the value of women’s bodies per se, but women’s agency to control those bodies. Independence of women scares the patriarchy because of the way it threatens the fundamental functions of its operation. They have conditioned men to be dependent on women that society has socially supplied them through these socialization processes. If women are allowed to be removed from that economic and social equation, Patriarchy’s power begins to crumble.

Klute was one of the first films to not villainize the sex worker as a hedonistically hell-bound harlot. Pakula’s direction and Fonda’s performance provide Bree with humanity beyond her profession. This was a giant leap forward and speaks to the feminist revolutionary spirit in the culture with which the film was made. Similarly, the film uses Bree to make a commentary about power. Bree is threatening to the Patriarchy because she knows how to commodify and weaponize her body (as society has taught her) for her own social and financial gain. In one of the first therapy sessions, the audience hears Bree confess the rush of power she feels when she is on a “trick”. That she has agency and control over her body, her time, and the situation. The film makes clear that this is a feeling of power through autonomy making that more difficult to give up than just the act of sex alone.

However, the film does couch the fullness of this identity by showing that Bree is also the victim of abuse (both as a child and an adult); implying that it was this damage that contributed to the decision to engage in prostitution (another tired trope). Thereby implying, but close to directly stating, that if she were well adjusted, she would not have chosen to sell her body. This is also fueled by the presence of John Klute (Donald Sutherland) that represents a way out of this life; stability and normalcy that Bree should desire. The dialogue toward the end of the film, and its ambiguous ending, suggest that Bree will self-sabotage her relationship with Klute, and thus be perceived as a failure.     

As women have achieved more agency, since the 1970’s, the patriarchal system has had to get creative. The taboo and critique of women through the Madonna/Whore binary is still in place. But in the 2020’s, women are expected to be both simultaneously. Pressured to have desired aspects of both categories while still performing these aspects in the service of men and the general patriarchy. While it is more widely accepted that sex work is work, today, there is still the commodification of women’s bodies for profit in which women are both being exploited and being active participants in that exploitation’s reproduction. Thus, more agency women have achieved over their bodies, the more the patriarchal system monetizes it for its own consumeristic benefit. Through that objectification, women are stripped of the value of that agency.

The Catharisis and Containment of Female Rage

An undercurrent in the film that is only indirectly addressed. Is Bree’s justifiable rage for being swept up in Klute’s investigation. Both the “hero” and “villain” of the story surveillance her, become emotionally compromised by her, and obsess over her. They also make Bree feel powerless in similarly distinct ways, albeit with the opposite intent. Cable achieves this through direct threats, intimidation, and fear; Klute through emotional intimacy. Regardless of the ladder’s positive context, it is a form surrendering; a relinquishing of power that makes Bree uncomfortable, and ultimately full of rage.

According to Rebecca Traister (2018), female rage is a revolutionary act. But recognizes that anger is socialized to be an asset for men and an albatross for women. If women’s anger is legitimized, which it is often not, it must be deployed sparingly and with precision, lest they summarily dismissed at best or dehumanized, violenced and violated at worst. Unfortunately, the validation of women’s anger usually comes at the cost of their silencing through victimization. And even then, it often plays out that male advocates speak on women’s behalf; embodying the role of anger translator for the masses while effectively stealing their voices rather than giving them space to speak for themselves. Yet, more women are willing to speak determined to not be distracted or deflected from their duty. Their rage can be a catalyst; even if they must shape their anger into a form that is more plateable than the direct form of rage that men benefit from.

As Traister (2018) Concludes:

            “Being mad is correct. Being mad is American; being mad can be joyful and productive and connective [Women] don’t ever let them talk you out of being mad again.       

 

 Unfortunately, Klute does not frame this rage as a healthy expression of Bree’s loss of power. Instead, it has Bree move from the powerlessness of victimhood (with Cable) to the powerlessness of gender bound heterosexual monogamy (with Klute). The film posits that she is too broken to be able to sustain a “normal” relationship with Klute which is reinforced by its ambiguous ending. We are left unsure where Bree will end up, but it is implied that if she does return to that doctor’s office, we are supposed to feel like it is a failure. That Bree, retaining agency and anger, while not being swept up and rescued from her life, like a damsel, is wrong. A cautionary tale. For all the ways that the film inches toward progressive themes, there is still this lingering thread of when a woman chooses anger and empowerment, it is perceived as a character flaw. This is another example of the way that women’s anger is dismissed, discouraged and discounted (Traister 2018).    

  Seeding a Critique of Surveillance

 Surveillance is the process by which individuals are consistently tracked and observed through various physical or non-physical means by individuals, organizations, companies, and institutions, often for the creation and maintenance of social control. The assumption of permanent visibility is important for the automatic functioning of power. Therefore, the knowledge of being watched leads to self-regulation. We see this any time we see police parked near a freeway, or black domes in convenience stores. We don’t know if anyone is in there or if they are watching but the possibility causes us to self-regulate. However, this is just the feeling, or perception of being watched rather than always being watched. In this example, the threat of force is always more effective than the actual force (Foucault 1977).

According to Foucault (1977)

 “Penopticism [as] a disciplinary mechanism…must improve the mechanism of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for the society to come… [Therefore] the spread of disciplinary institutions…testifies to this.” (p 209)

What Foucault means here, is that the way that our social structure is organized, allows for a subtle form of social control through the assumption of constant surveillance we assume we are being watched therefore we follow the rules…However, due to technology, that threat is even more plausible.

The Data mining process has increased exponentially. Programs like Upstream, Prism and XKeyscore and the growing dependence on algorithmic software (AI) allow companies to data-mine from fiber cables and infrastructure (as the data flows past) (Upstream) and by collecting directly from the servers of US internet providers and social media companies (Prism) Keyscore is international.  This is what is called Dragnet Surveillance looking at all of the data to find suspected criminals/terrorists without a warrant

Corporations and Governments begin colluding to compile and Profit from “Metadata” beginning Surveillance Capitalism – where the Users, and info about them, are the product. (Zuboff 2019)

Also, due to the way that we use and consume social media, much of this data mining is very easy to do. Our tweets, Facebook posts, Snapchat swipes, Instagram pins, can all be subject to search by the government, and since the program they use is connected to private sector companies (Palantir), that information is then sold to other companies. Along with this, private companies work in conjunction with law enforcement agencies to violate sovereign privacy laws (especially those of women).

 The crux of Pakula’s Paranoid Trilogy is the danger and abuse of surveillance. In Klute, it is at its most intimately focused; looking at one person’s experience with the stalking obsession of others. This surveillance is a constant in Bree’s life for just being a woman in public. Like the millions of women before and after her, the general street harassment of women is commonplace; perceived as part of the female tax for their existence. The price that women pay to live in a society. However, Bree’s experience is more defined than the general misogyny inherent in the ideal of a public’s ownership of women’s bodies. As mentioned above, Bree gets surveilanced without her consent by both the protagonist hero (Klute) and by the antagonist (Cable). Yet, in a very patriarchal framing, Klute’s surveillance is justified through tired gender scripts that are structured to absolve him. His is a benevolent surveillance under the auspices of paternalistic protectionism.  Pointedly, Cable’s surveillance is not criminalized because of a lack of Bree’s agency, it is only in the overall violence and unease that he creates while engaging in it. The act of surveillance itself is framed as benign- which becomes a tacit endorsement of the practice.

 

CONCLUSION

            The first film in the “Paranoid Trilogy” is a film that embodies the torrential spirit of the 1970’s social change. Making Bree the center of a political thriller without her being relegated to a secondary character who is damseled was unique at the time. Pakula’s interest in Psychology also allowed for Bree to have an interiority that gave the audience a window into the mind and experiences of women. Bree’s treatise on the reclamation of power through sex work: that it acts as a buffer from the sense of powerlessness brough on by cultural womanhood, is an important sex positive feminist message that was just starting to crystalize in the culture; even if the film makes Bree feel powerless through parts of it for the purpose of (unearned) punishment[3].  Pakula also falls into some gender and class tropes reinforcing the objectification of women and an obfuscation of women’s anger. This provides an overall mixed message as to the value of women and their ability to have agency and autonomy over their own lives.  

 

REFERENCES

Durheim, Emile 2014. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press   

El Akkad, Omar 2025. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Toronto. Knopf

Foucault, Michel 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison New York: Vintage Books

Harris, Mark 2019. “Klute: Trying to See Her.” In Current. Retrieved on 9/3/26 Retrieved at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6492-klute-trying-to-see-her?srsltid=AfmBOop10WWTISoYIudCsH868T8q8_wam2vAjZ0PtgOVBx2Z8QSQs-81

Kaplan, Laura 2019. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service New York: Vintage Books  

Kendall, Mikki 2020.  Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women a Movement Forgot New York: Viking

Milne, Tom 1972. “She’s Nowhere: A Conversation with Alan J. Pakula” in Sight and Sound  Retrieved on: 9/3/26 Retrieved at: http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Mi-Pe/Pakula-Alan-J.html

Traister, Rebecca 2018. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger New York: Simon and Schuster

Zeilinger, Julie 2012. A Little F’DUP: Why Feminism is not a Dirty Word New York: Seal Press

Zuboff, Shoshana 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Human Future at the New Frontier of Power New York: Public Affairs

 

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[1] After the Dobbs decision removing federal protections for the body rights of women. The Documentary “The Janes”  and the feature  film “ Call Jane” opened to critical acclaim no doubt due to cultural relevance and likely resurgence of the need of safe underground abortions again.

[2] “ To judge a man not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” MLK

[3] A pop culture Tax for being a prostitute.

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

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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