Univerza v Ljubljani,

Filozofska fakulteta

Nymphomaniac Vol.
I&II (Lars von Trier)
An Analysis

Ajla Šarić
Mentor: dr. Jela Krečič Žižek
 1. Contents

1. Contents............................................................................................................1

2. Introduction......................................................................................................2

3. The demonization of the protagonist................................................................3

4. Seligman's comparisons: „reading the river“....................................................4

4.1. The Fibonacci sequence..........................................................................4

5. A sensation lost.................................................................................................5

6. Sex scenes.........................................................................................................6

7. Climax...............................................................................................................6

8. Conclusion........................................................................................................7

9. Sources..............................................................................................................8

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 2. Introduction

I feel that it is important to mention that Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac is not a conventional
Hollywood film, yet it has met criticism based upon analysis that could be applied to a
conventional blockbuster. I have seen more than enough reviews concluding it is „a man's
conventional sexist view on female sexuality“, ultimately pointing out how the director tried to
portray something he himself does not understand. I, on the other hand, disagree. As Dominic
Strinati concludes in his Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture in the chapter concerning
feminism, when it comes to cultural production, „women are ‘symbolically annihilated’ by the
media through being absent, condemned or trivialized”1.

If Nymphomaniac was, in fact, a conventional Hollywood film, the protagonist would very likely
be wrapped in stereotypes; trapped in denying her sexual awakening and sugar-coating,
mitigating her actions. Instead, Gainsbourg’s character is raw, direct and fully aware of the
reality surrounding her. She is completely in charge of her life and her actions; taking a dominant
role at handling her demise, instead of being portrayed as a weak creature that suffers under her
own fragility.

1
Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (Second Edition)

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 3. The demonization of the protagonist

At the very beginning of the film, after being introduced with another important character
(Seligman), Joe, the nymphomaniac in question, proclaims she is “a bad human being”.
Seligman, who in a sense, especially through the second part of the film, can be considered
something that would be called a “white night” in the internet culture, constantly tries to reassure
Joe how “he cannot see sin anywhere”, and how he has never met a bad human being, let alone a
sinful child. Seligman is presented as an educated man, a man of culture; whose parables that
follow after Joe’s stories often carry a very particular type of disconnection. The language he
turns to is vastly different than Joe’s, and in the beginning, it almost feels as if the two of them
are inhabited in different realities.

Perhaps some viewers perceive it as if the protagonist is demonized because of the raw honesty
and directness she deploys. Joe indeed proclaims that she was a sinful child, a bad human being;
but Joe does not do so to invoke some sort of compassion or reassurance that convinces her
otherwise. Upon receiving the mentioned from Seligman, we can notice her indifference to his
remarks; cleverly masked micro-expressions through which we can see glimpses of the true
reality of her world. The reality to which Seligman appears to be selectively blind. Joe embraces
the idea of being putrid; but in a sense, the entire humanity is wrapped in a decaying putridness.
She does not value the artificial innocence often attributed to females, where one is expected to
repress her sexuality. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex, we cannot refer
meaningfully to natural or unnatural gendered behavior, because all gender is by definition
unnatural2, and if we go back to Freud’s Theory of Sexuality, we can notice that almost all
sexual acts beside a standard missionary intercourse of a male and female can be considered a
perversion. Along those lines, something as simple as oral sex is no less of a deviation, a
perversion than a foot fetish, and Joe’s promiscuity does not stand above as unnatural behavior in
a pure, sinless world. She does not understand sin through religion, and does not refer to it
through such; but she rather embraces the fact that she is a part of a perverted word, and instead
of repressing her sexuality as she is expected by society, she embraces it by putting her own
needs before imposed values. She simultaneously takes the role of a sinful human being, but in a
way she understands it, her only sin was “demanding more from the sunset”, while Seligman
automatically equalizes her perception of sin with her subjective impurity. If we were to analyze
this thoroughly, even without reflecting to the plot twist the film reaches, we can notice this as
moments in which Seligman’s mask of a just, heroic man with no prejudices slips.

2
Judith Butler, Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex

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 4. Seligman's comparisons: „reading the river“

Starting from the term itself, „a nymphomaniac“, Seligman tends to resign to parables he
connects with personally; somewhat leading us into a separate story-line. He associates the term
„nymph“ typically used to describe a lust-provoking young woman, with its other meaning
connected to the activity of fishing. Nymph is also a particular type of bait, an insect in its early
stage of development, used to lure fish. In this fashion, he analyzes the activity Joe and her best
friend, B, engage in while beholding the men down the corridor of a train, as „reading the river“.
It is argued that the term is derogatory, and once again, this is one of the reasons why even the
title of the film has met some negative criticism. In a sense, „a nymph“ can be used with a
negative connotation, and the comparison provided by Seligman (where such woman described
as a nymph is a form of a bait) is one of the ways a female with a high sex drive can be presented
in a negative fashion through the term. However, the sense in which Joe uses it is in no way
derogatory. She describes herself as what she is, her compulsion as what it is; and it is no
different than attributing the ability of flying to birds or calling a person performing vocally
alongside some jazz group, a singer. Seligman quickly restores to his established manner of
proceeding, pointing out that Joe and her friend did nothing that is not common within the world
of men when they are observing their potential prey in the form of displayed female specimens.
While Seligman is essentially right, the idea that may go over our heads is that Joe herself did
not suggest otherwise; which is why his way of presenting things in a manner that give Joe the
advantage, putting her above those negative connotations, is essentially a reflection of his own
negative perception of her compulsion.

4.1 The Fibonacci sequence

The exact number of thrusts used by Jerome, Joe's first partner and only love interest, in the act
of relieving Joe of her virginity, 3 + 5, becomes another diversion Seligman uses when he points
them out as Fibonacci numbers. Von Trier cleverly wraps this idea into a full circle, when, in the
culmination of events and the seventh chapter of Joe's story, Joe witnesses the same amount of
thrusts given by her former lover to P, a woman she herself trained and nurtured, right in front of
her. I cannot escape the fact that the entire scenery provided in this triangle involving Joe,
Jerome and P resembles a lot of the images we can visually conceive upon reading most of
Marquis de Sade's work; where the story is brought to an expected, raw tragedy.

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 5. A sensation lost

One of the most significant scenes for further plot development is situated early in the film,
through the poetic betrayal of Joe's friend, B. At one moment, while abandoning the sex-
worshipping cult consisted of females, based upon the rule that each of the members shall only
stay loyal to purely physical pleasure and never have sex with the same man twice, B whispers
into Joe's ear that the „secret ingredient to sex is love“. When the protagonist embraces her love
interest after failing to overcome it, von Trier cuts the scene of romantic sex (vastly different
than the way intercourse is filmed and portrayed in the rest of the scenes) by ripping Joe's ability
to orgasm violently out of the picture. Symbolically, this happens right at the moment when Joe
„discovers“ love, when she becomes the part of a hetero-normative society, obeying its rules and
expectations. Joe becomes a part of something, something immanent, she becomes a wife, a
mother – but ultimately, she becomes a woman who has lost a part of herself by becoming a part
of something else. This can, again, be observed through Strinati's work, primarily the point that:

„Cultural representations of women in the mass media support and perpetuate the prevailing
sexual division of labor and orthodox conceptions of femininity and masculinity. The ‘symbolic
annihilation of women’ practiced by the mass media confirms that the roles of wife, mother and
housewife, etc., are the fate of women in a patriarchal society. Women are socialized into
performing these roles by cultural representations which attempt to make them appear to be the
natural prerogative of women”1

As Joe tries to perform in these activities imposed upon her, she strays further away; she does not
perform well as a mother, a housewife or a wife in general, for that matter. She is left crippled, in
a sense no different than an athlete whose legs got violently chopped off, or a singer with a
ripped out tongue. She cannot find conformity by being part of a unit while being ridden of the
sensation she treasures the most. Ultimately, she resorts to sadomasochism, using pain as her last
resort to regain the sensation. In a set of different acts, she breaks the bonds of family and
liberates herself, leaving Jerome and her son, Marcel, behind. She chooses her own interest, her
own pleasure, over succumbing to the norms, over maternal instincts, and over love. Only at this
moment does she regain her ability to reach a climax, as she becomes what she initially was,
without being weighted down into normality.

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 6. Sex scenes

Lars von Trier uses a particular way to portray sex in Nymphomaniac. In his world, or more
accurately, Joe's world, sex is presented as a lethargic, melancholic act. Each sex scene, with the
exception of the one where she is re-embraced with Jerome (at the very end of the first film), is
presented as animalistic act ridden of passion, but not pleasure itself.

This is one of the things that makes Von Trier's Nymphomaniac very different than conventional
Hollywood films revolving around sexuality, where there is a clear distinction between positive
and negative scenes of sexual activity. In Nymphomaniac, Joe's acts of engaging in her
compulsions, weaponizing her sexuality and embracing her body are neither positive nor
negative; the sex itself is not driven by emotions but represents a pure, physical need. In that
way, watching Joe engage in sexual activity is no different than watching a man eat the same
breakfast over and over again, it does not invoke excitement or disgust; it is not pleasant to
observe as it is not unpleasant either. It simply „is“.

7. Climax

In the final chapter of Joe's story (which is cleverly presented through eight chapters, resembling
a written memoir), after we learn the circumstances that led to her tragedy, the act of pure
violence perpetuated upon her by the only sexual object for whom she carried an emotional
connection to, possibly the only man she loved apart from her father; the love that evolved into
rage and violent beatings that left her in the position in which she appears at the beginning of the
film, broken and abandoned on the street, we are brought back to the character of Seligman. The
moment in which Joe finishes her story, Seligman's true face is revealed under the mask of an
asexual virgin, a man wrapped in innocence, as he, ridden of diversions he succumbs to engages
in Joe's reality, by trying to crawl into her bed. Here, he is revealed as the true villain; the true
oppressor who engages in stereotypes, yet shields himself by repressing his true intentions and
masking them according to societal norms. In the final act of liberation, Joe becomes his
executioner, as she was the executioner of many other things that were imposed upon her.

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 8. Conclusion

Marquis de Sade once said, „it is not my mode of thought that has caused me misfortunes, but
the mode of thought of others“. Personally, I understood Joe's tragedy in a rather similar fashion.
Von Trier's character is an individua that does not fit within the norms of society, a woman that
does not fit within the walls built around female sexuality. As such she is constantly in war with
everything but herself; she is not a part of any unit and her co-existence within those who obey
norms imposed upon them can result only in this violent culmination of events – events that
finally finish with a full circle, Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio transformed into a perfect
tragedy.

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 9. Sources

1. Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (Second Edition)

2. Judith Butler, Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex

3. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

T If You Thought Fibonacci Had Nothing to do with Lars

Von Trier or Women’s Bodies, Think Again