Gender and Sexuality in The Piano Essay -- Piano Essays

Gender and sexual activity in The PianoTHERE IS A SILENCE WHERE HATH BEEN NO labored THERE IS A SILENCE WHERE NO SOUND MAY BE IN THE COLD GRAVE, UNDER THE DEEP DEEP SEA. With these words, The Piano ends and leaves me in a state of confusion about what point the moving-picture show was move to express. The film by Jane Campion has been compared to the likes of Wuthering Heights and has been highly lauded for championing freedom of womens sex activity and indistinguishability. Many critics, though, apply debated on the final meanings of the film. This is possible because the film has such complicated characters, such as the main character adenosine deaminase, who stool intricate reasons for carrying out their actions. Campion created a film with a conglomerate storyline that has no clear, easily extracted meaning. I believe that most critics have missed the films point when they try to surround what adenosine deaminases expression of her gender and sexuality means. I would li ke to argue that while Ada does find a outcome to the question of her identity and sexuality, this solution is not the feminist ideal of overcoming the status of Other and befitting a fully liberated woman that some reviewers claim it is. Nor is her solution an acceptance of the gender ideology prescribed by patriarchal society. Instead, Ada assumes a complex identity that falls somewhere in amid these two extremes. The Piano demonstrates that although gender identity theories are complex themselves and process provide understanding, they fail to accurately and completely describe a detail persons gender identity and sexuality because these can be combinations of many, perhaps even contradictory, factors. So, the movies representation of gender and sexuality is more Foucauldian, though some characters may still see thems... ...Winter 1998) 227-244. Foucault, Michel. The accounting of Sexuality. New York Vintage Books, 1990.Gillett, Sue. Lips and fingers Jane Campions The Pian o. Screen 36 (Autumn 1995)277-287. Hardy, Ann. The give out Patriarch. Jane Campions The Piano. Ed. Harriet Margolis. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 2000. 59-85.Hoeveler, Diane Long. Silence, Sex, and Feminism An Examination of The Pianos unrecognized Sources. Literature Film Quarterly, 1998, Vol. 26 Issue 2, 109 116. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO Publishing. parade 23, 2001 http//ehostvgw16.epnet.comMargolis, Harriet, ed. Jane Campions The Piano. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 2000.Sawicki, Jana. Feminism, Foucault, and Subjects of Power and Freedom. Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. Ed. Susan J. Hekman. University Park, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania maintain UP, 1996. 159-178.