REPULSION

Fig. 1; Repulsion poster art

This theory will discuss the film Repulsion (1965), directed by Roman Polanski. It will
focus on the term “Male Gaze” and how it applies in the movie. Apart from that, we
will see how Repulsion’s protagonist Carole moves back and forth from “The Abject”
and its definition as the plot slowly unfolds in front of the viewers.
Repulsion tells the story of a young and beautiful woman, Carole, who works as a
manicurist. She lives with her sister, Helen, in a small apartment located in London.
Helen goes on vacation with her married boyfriend, leaving Carol to withdraw into the
apartment. During the time her sister is away, Carole starts having frightful
hallucinations, and the fear of men that accompanies her for years gradually makes
her lose her sanity.
Carole suffers from androphobia, a persistent fear of men as stated before, that is
hinted in the end of the movie where it is speculated that one of her male family
members -probably her father- sexually harassed her. This is shown to us at first by
the way her expression changes once she passes by a group of workers on the
street. This is the point when the “Male Gaze” appears. By definition, “The “Male
Gaze” invokes the sexual politics of the gaze and suggests a sexualised way of
looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, woman is
visually positioned as an “object” of heterosexual male desire. Her feelings, thoughts
and her own sexual drives are less important than her being “framed” by male
desire”. The protagonist has also experienced this with the three men we see in the
film. Her sister’s boyfriend, the man who claims to be in love with her and her
landlord. None of them seem to see her as a person, except maybe the person who
has feelings for her who nevertheless objectifies her up to a certain point.
Carole’s fear of men and solitude leads her in the state we know as “The Abject”.
This is a reaction of a person like horror or vomit to a threatened breakdown in
meaning which is caused when said person loses their distinction between subject
and object, or between self and other. “She’s a girl with a problem.” -Polanski. When
Carole is kissed by the man who loves her, she immediately wipes her lips disgusted
and runs to her apartment, brushing her teeth furiously and trying to “cleanse”
herself. Even though she is disgusted by this action, as the film continues and
Carole’s reality starts shattering, we see that in the moments when it’s certain for
someone to be disgusted by someone’s actions Carole is unfazed. She killed two
men in her apartment. The first one was the person who had feelings for her. We see
her frantically securing the apartment’s front door to make sure no one enters and
then casually proceeding in dumping the corpse in her bathtub. The second man she
killed was her landlord. In this situation she was again calm as she dropped him
behind the couch and shifted the couch to cover the dead body. “As sudden and
unexpected as they're inevitable, the killings are vicious and shocking, although
Carol's subsequent oblivion to the bodies littering the flat is, if anything, more
disturbing.” -Macintyre.
“She always sees men as a threat, and eventually takes a knife to the guilty – her
bullying landlord – and innocent – her nice would-be boyfriend – alike.” -Newman.
To sum up, Carole’s experience with her family member when she was a child made
her feel vulnerable when she was around men. Once she starts losing her sanity
though, not only does she get over this fear but she goes to the extreme level where
she kills everyone who attempts to be in close proximity with her. Carole shifts from
being disgusted by actions that she doesn’t like to the point when she, herself
becomes disgusting.
Harvard bibliography:
Sources:
• Loreck. (2016) Explainer: what does the ‘male gaze’ mean, and what about a
female gaze? – Australia – January 2016 [online] at:
https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-
what-about-a-female-gaze-52486 (Accessed on 12.12.18)
• Pentony. (1996) How Kristeva's theory of abjection works in relation to the
fairy tale and post colonial novel: Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, and
Keri Hulme's The Bone People. – England – Spring 1996 [online] at:
https://www.otago.ac.nz/deepsouth/vol2no3/pentony.html (Accessed on
12.12.18)
Image:
• Figure 1. Repulsion poster art (date unknown) [poster] at:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059646/ (Accessed on 12.12.18)
Quotations:
• Polanski: [online] at: https://film.avclub.com/50-years-ago-repulsion-
pioneered-a-new-genre-of-gender-1798285951 (Accessed on 12.12.18)
• Makintyre: [online] at:
http://www.elainemacintyre.net/film_reviews/repulsion.php (Accessed on
12.12.18)
• Newman: [online] at: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/repulsion/review/
(Accessed on 12.12.18)