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Thought Problem #5 English 217: Sexuality and Ethics Carol,…
Thought Problem #5
English 217: Sexuality and Ethics
Carol, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Pariah
The answer should be a full page each
1. When we first meet Carol and Therese in Carol, Therese is an aspiring photographer who refuses to take pictures of human beings, and, as a shop person in a department store, occupies a lower social class than Carol. Analyze how the events in the film, including Therese’s temporary estrangement from Carol, influence her status as a photographer (and artist), inspire her to photograph Carol, make her Carol’s equal, and contribute to the overall meaning of the film. Why is it important that, in the end, Carol and Therese become social equals and that it is Therese who chooses to be with Carol rather than the other way around?
2. Like Carol, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is very much a film about the female gaze–divorced, as is very unusual in films, from the male gaze–which normally has men gazing at women rather than women gazing at each other. Yet, the female gaze operates in an ironic way in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Marianne, the painter, has been summoned to the remote French island in order to make a portrait of Heloise, who her mother wants to have married to a Milanese gentleman. However, if painting of Heloise begins with very heterosexual purposes in mind, it swiftly turns to something else . . . Describe how and why Marianne’s painting of Heloise–in different contexts–comes to be about the lesbian bond between them.
3. Is Portrait of a Lady on Fire a tragedy–if so or not, describe and analyze its tone and perspective and how Marianne and Heloise understand what has happened between them.
4. Analyze the multiple challenges and conflicts that confront Anika (Lee) in Pariah. Within this psychic economy of pain, explain how and why Anika/Lee’s artistic gifts as a poet affect her and enable her, in the end, to receive an advance admission to Berkeley–which, as she says in one of her poems–enables her to “choose again?”
