Warning: This blog post
contains spoilers about the 2021 horror film Titane. If you would
like to avoid the spoilers or don’t like horror, I recommend an older post, “In
Defense of Sleeping Beauty and All the Others”, which was spiritually an
International Women’s Day post like this one, even though it was posted at a
different month.
There are two movie genres that tend
to get the most resistance or the least love from the people I interact with: horror
and musicals.
Drama and comedy are the vanilla
genres accepted by everyone. Action and western are pastimes. Science fiction
and documentaries make people feel their time is spent productively. …
On the other hand, many people
deem horror disturbing and musicals annoying.
I love all movie genres. But I am
specifically a sucker for horror and musicals. Both are like emotion-fireworks.
Unlike my sentiments about real fireworks, which I think should be banned, any
art that depicts emotion-fireworks is helpful to deal with emotions that we
aren’t allowed or welcomed to deal with publicly. Such art can be a life-vest
while swimming through those emotions preventing you from being drowned in
them.
I watched Titane (on IMDB,
categorized as drama, horror, and sci-fi) together with Sister in Movies the
week it hit the theaters in Copenhagen in Fall 2021 at Gloria Biograf. I was going through a difficult
period at work and had a lot of anger, frustration, and sadness. I was
supported very well by family and friends at the time, but some emotions were
hard to express outwardly. Titane threw me a life-vest.
Regardless of my specific
situation at that time, Titane also serves as a life-vest for the anxiety
and anger I have internalized as a woman who goes through life in this world.
Today, I count Titane as one of my favorite movies.
In Titane, Alexia is our
main protagonist. In the remainder of this post, I will go over some events she
endures each having a horror element of different intensity. The interpretation
of these events is based on what they triggered in my mind during my viewing of
the film. The intention of the filmmaker Julia Ducournau might be very
different.
Hair being a source of pain.
Alexia’s hair gets stuck in
another character’s piercing causing pain for both Alexia and the other
character.
Let’s first take this one
literally. I don’t know how many times my own hair got stuck in things causing
me physical pain, yet I always prefer to keep it long and untied increasing the
changes of it getting stuck at places.
Moving onto less literal avenues
… How we present our hair to the world, whether we choose or are forced to
cover (or uncover) it or put it and other body hair through various beauty
regimes, can also be a source of pain.
Blood coming out of your body.
Alexia finds motor oil, not
blood, because this film is also sci-fi, coming out of her vagina one morning
while still in bed.
Vaginal bleeding is a normal part
of a woman’s life during menstruation. However, even under those normal and
expected circumstances, many things associated with menstruation can be sources
of anxiety: pain, irregularity, PMS, drowsiness, a heavy flow causing you
having to clean blood off things you wore or slept on ...
Unwanted or unplanned
pregnancy.
Alexia finds out she is
pregnant. This wasn’t her intention. Her first reaction is to take it in her
hands to terminate the pregnancy. It doesn’t work. She has to keep the baby.
I have never planned to have a
baby, but I had to do a pregnancy test once. The days surrounding it were among
the loneliest of my life. I was too young to be a mother (“too young” can
change person to person). Luckily, the test result was negative, and I got my
period a few days later (three weeks late). There was one thing that kept me
calm for the case where the result wasn’t negative: I lived in a country
(Turkey at the time) where abortion was (and still is) legal.
We live in the year 2024. Women’s
autonomy on their own body is still a luxury and not a human right and is still
heavily exploited by (mostly male) politicians.
Being followed by a stranger, or
unwanted attention in general.
One day, as she is leaving
work, Alexia is followed by a man. He doesn’t leave her even if she rejects his
advances. Another day, Alexia listens to a girl being verbally harassed on a
bus by a group of boys.
Unlike the single pregnancy test
example, I unfortunately have several examples for this one. The guy who didn’t
leave my dorm-room door even though I repeatedly told him to leave, an uncomfortable
interaction with a colleague back when I was a PhD student, the stranger who
started hitting on me on San Jose light rail and followed me even after I rejected
his advances and got off the light rail … Too many people feeling entitled over
your body.
Hiding your identity to be
accepted.
A large chunk of the movie, we
watch Alexia hide the fact that she is a woman, to feel safe and be accepted
among a group of men. As the movie progresses, the toll this lie takes on her
body increases.
When I started my PhD, I was in a
lab where I was the only female. Terms like diversity & inclusion or
psychological safety weren’t a thing back then. I thought to be part of
the lab I had to be “one of the boys”. The reason was a combination of the environment and my lack of self-confidence. I assume most woman who has career
ambitions, not just in computer science, can relate to this at some point.
I wasn’t one of the boys, and I
was never going to be. As a solution, I hid myself behind layers of armor and
revealed very little. It didn’t work. I was let go of that lab. I eventually
ended up in a lab where I could reveal more of myself. But at work events such
as conferences I still thought I needed some armor and put the layers back on
just in case to keep myself safer. It was a false sense of safety. Instead, I
got unhappy for having to hide myself. I spent years after my PhD getting rid
of the armor.
Today, I am the coordinator of a
lab that has 5 female faculty members. Things have improved in our field even
though the pace of progress is way slower than I wish it to be. I rarely feel
the need for armor now even at work events, but I am unsure whether this is a
result of progress or me being in a position of relative power as an associate
professor instead of a PhD student. Likely both.
Death by childbirth.
Alexia dies while giving birth
to her baby.
A mother dying during childbirth
could be a metaphor for other things such as being reborn or letting go of the
life you had before the baby. On the other hand, according to WHO, in 2020, 800
women died on average each day due to causes related to pregnancy and
childbirth. In the older centuries, these rates were way higher, and if you
wanted a long life as a woman, you were better off becoming a nun.
Happy International Women’s Day
everyone!
