Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 'The Monkey's Mask' : Film, Poetry and the Female Voice
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A study of the ways in which the female voice is articulated in the novel and film adaptation of The Monkey's Mask. Through an analysis of the female voices within the film and novel, this book draws on Kaja Silverman's and Elizabeth Grosz's interpretation of Luce Irigaray's 'feminine language' to explore the ways in which the female body is voiced. It looks at the female voices within Samantha Lang's 2001 film. This book explores the ways in which image and voice work to express women's subjectivity.

It also discusses Dorothy Porter's 1994 verse novel The Monkey's Mask and the ways in which the female voice is articulated within Porter's text. Drawing on Silverman's argument that the embodied female voice in film works to contain the woman in the symbolic although the female characters' voices are embodied, their poetic language breaks down the subject-object dichotomy of the symbolic order. However, in its attempt to fulfil detective narrative conventions, the film adaptation privileges the unity and closure of the phallocentric language critiqued by Irigaray.

Compared with the novel, the film adaptation privileges masculine unity and truth over Porter's complex multiplicity. Porter uses the hysteric strategy through her parody of the detective genre and thereby brings to the foreground the complexity of female sexuality. In Porter's novel the relationship between female detective Jill and murder-victim Mickey reveals a continuous link between the living and the dead, bringing to light Irigaray's model of the maternal genealogy in which the mother is freed from the burial given to her by a phallocentric culture at the onset of motherhood. Porter's use of elegy rejects Silverman's suggested severance of the mother-daughter connection which Silverman argues is necessary for identity.'

Source: Trove catalogue record

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • St Kilda, Caulfield - St Kilda area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Atom , 2012 .
      Extent: 72p.
      Description: illus., ports
      Note/s:
      ISBN: 9781876467227
      Series: y separately published work icon ATOM Moving Image Series Atom (publisher), St Kilda : Atom , Z1805272 series - publisher criticism Number in series: 11

Works about this Work

Review : The Monkey’s Mask Jessica Wilkinson , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 12 no. 3 2012;

— Review of 'The Monkey's Mask' : Film, Poetry and the Female Voice Rebecca Louise , 2012 single work criticism
Review : The Monkey’s Mask Jessica Wilkinson , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 12 no. 3 2012;

— Review of 'The Monkey's Mask' : Film, Poetry and the Female Voice Rebecca Louise , 2012 single work criticism
Last amended 20 Mar 2013 09:22:55
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