American cultures in film

Course #: CINA 11
Instructor: adam wadenius
Email: adam@apwadenius.com
Website: www.apwadenius.com

Office Hours: By email or appointment

Semester: Spring 2015
Day & time: T, 6:00p 8:50p
Building: Thurston Bldg., #136

course readings
what is normal?
bell hooks. Understanding Patriarchy. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Atria
Books: New York, 2004.

ideology and classical Hollywood

David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Janet Staiger. Ch. 1 An Excessively Obvious Cinema. The
Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. Routledge: London,
1988.
David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Janet Staiger. Story Causality and Motivation. The
Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. Routledge: London,
1988.

men and masculinity in film

Bill Nichols. Ch. 10 - Gender and Masculinity,pgs. 359-371. Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to
Film Studies. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2010.

women and femininity in film

Molly Haskell. The Womans Film, From Reverence to Rape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987.

the male gaze

Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin. Ch. 11 - Exploring the Visual Parameters of Women in Film,
America On Film. West Sussix: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.

representing otherness
Robin Wood. An Introduction to the American Horror Film: I. Repression, the Other, the Monster,
American Nightmare. Toronto: Festival of Festivals, 1979.

re-imagining women in film

Sharon Smith. The Image of Women in Film: Some Suggestions for Future Research, Feminist Film
Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Claire Johnston. Womens Cinema as Counter-Cinema, Film Theory. New York: Routledge, 2004.

gays and lesbians in film

Anneke Smelik. Gay and Lesbian Criticism, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998.

bisexuality in film
Wayne M. Bryant. Who Is Bisexual? Bisexual Characters in Film. New York: Routledge, 1997.

transgender cinema
Kate Bornstein. Gender Terror, Gender Rage, The Transgender Studies Reader. Eds. Susan Stryker
and Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006.

new queer cinema

Alexander Doty. Theres Something Queer Here, Making Things Perfectly Queer. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
------- Queer Theory The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Native Americans in American film

Jacquelyn Kilpatrick. Genesis of the Stereotypes, Celluloid Indians. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska
Press, 1999.
Sherman Alexie. My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys, and Reservation Drive-In, The Western
Reader. Eds. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.

African Americans in American film

Donald Bogle. Black Beginnings, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. New York:
Continuum, 1992.

Hispanics in American film

Charles Ramirez Berg. Stereotyping in Films in General and of the Hispanic in Particular, Latin
Looks. Ed. Clara E. Rodriguez Boulder: Westview Press, 1997.

Asians in American film

Stephanie Greco Larson. Asian Americans in Film and Television Entertainment, Media and
Minorities. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.

foreignness in American film

They Have No Reason to Notice A Man Like Me: Foreignness in Steven Spielbergs The Terminal.
9/11 and Beyond: Movies, Terrorism, and the Paranoia. Forthcoming Publication, 2014.

Understanding
Patriarchy
b el l h o o ks

Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening

social disease assaulting the male body and
spirit in our nation. Yet most men do not use the
word patriarchy in everyday life. Most men
never think about patriarchywhat it means,
how it is created and sustained. Many men in
our nation would not be able to spell the word or
pronounce it correctly. The word patriarchy just
is not a part of their normal everyday thought or
speech. Men who have heard and know the word
usually associate it with womens liberation, with
feminism, and therefore dismiss it as irrelevant to
their own experiences. I have been standing at
podiums talking about patriarchy for more than
thirty years. It is a word I use daily, and men who
hear me use it often ask me what I mean by it.
Nothing discounts the old antifeminist
projection of men as all-powerful more than their
basic ignorance of a major facet of the political
system that shapes and informs male identity
and sense of self from birth until death. I often
use the phrase imperialist white-supremacist
capitalist patriarchy to describe the interlocking
political systems that are the foundation of our
nations politics. Of these systems the one that
we all learn the most about growing up is the
system of patriarchy, even if we never know
the word, because patriarchal gender roles are
assigned to us as children and we are given
continual guidance about the ways we can best
fulfill these roles.
Patriarchy is a political-social system that
insists that males are inherently dominating,
superior to everything and everyone deemed
weak, especially females, and endowed with the
right to dominate and rule over the weak and to
maintain that dominance through various forms
of psychological terrorism and violence. When
my older brother and I were born with a year
separating us in age, patriarchy determined how
we would each be regarded by our parents. Both
our parents believed in patriarchy; they had been
taught patriarchal thinking through religion.
At church they had learned that God created
man to rule the world and everything in it and
that it was the work of women to help men
perform these tasks, to obey, and to always
assume a subordinate role in relation to a
powerful man. They were taught that God
was male. These teachings were reinforced in
every institution they encountered-- schools,
courthouses, clubs, sports arenas, as well as
churches. Embracing patriarchal thinking, like
everyone else around them, they taught it to their
children because it seemed like a natural way
to organize life.
As their daughter I was taught that it was

my role to serve, to be weak, to be free from

the burden of thinking, to caretake and nurture
others. My brother was taught that it was his role
to be served; to provide; to be strong; to think,
strategize, and plan; and to refuse to caretake or
nurture others. I was taught that it was not proper
for a female to be violent, that it was unnatural.
My brother was taught hat his value would be
determined by his will to do violence (albeit in
appropriate settings). He was taught that for a
boy, enjoying violence was a good thing (albeit
in appropriate settings). He was taught that a
boy should not express feelings. I was taught
that girls could and should express feelings, or
at least some of them. When I responded with
rage at being denied a toy, I was taught as a girl
in a patriarchal household that rage was not an
appropriate feminine feeling, that it should be not
only not be expressed but be eradicated. When
my brother responded with rage at being denied
a toy, he was taught as a boy in a patriarchal
household that his ability to express rage was
good but that he had to learn the best setting to
unleash his hostility. It was not good for him to
use his rage to oppose the wishes of his parents,
but later, when he grew up, he was taught that
rage was permitted and that allowing rage to
provoke him to violence would help him protect
home and nation.
We lived in farm country, isolated from other
people. Our sense of gender roles was learned
from our parents, from the ways we saw
them behave. My brother and I remember our
confusion about gender. In reality I was stronger
and more violent than my brother, which we
learned quickly was bad. And he was a gentle,
peaceful boy, which we learned was really bad.
Although we were often confused, we knew
one fact for certain: we could not be and act
the way we wanted to, doing what we felt like. It
was clear to us that our behavior had to follow a
predetermined, gendered script. We both learned
the word patriarchy in our adult life, when we
learned that the script that had determined what
we should be, the identities we should make,
was based on patriarchal values and beliefs
about gender.
I was always more interested in challenging
patriarchy than my brother was because it was
the system that was always leaving me out of
things that I wanted to be part of. In our family
life of the fifties, marbles were a boys game. My
brother had inherited his marbles from men in the
family; he had a tin box to keep them in. All sizes
and shapes, marvelously colored, they were to
my eye the most beautiful objects. We played
together with them, often with me aggressively

clinging to the marble I liked best, refusing to

share. When Dad was at work, our stay-athome mom was quite content to see us playing
marbles together. Yet Dad, looking at our play
from a patriarchal perspective, was disturbed
by what he saw. His daughter, aggressive and
competitive, was a better player than his son.
His son was passive; the boy did not really seem
to care who won and was willing to give over
marbles on demand. Dad decided that this play
had to end, that both my brother and I needed to
learn a lesson about appropriate gender roles.
One evening my brother was given permission
by Dad to bring out the tin of marbles. I
announced my desire to play and was told by
my brother that girls did not play with marbles,
that it was a boys game. This made no sense
to my four- or five-year-old mind, and I insisted
on my right to play by picking up marbles and
shooting them. Dad intervened to tell me to stop.
I did not listen. His voice grew louder and louder.
Then suddenly he snatched me up, broke a
board from our screen door, and began to beat
me with it, telling me, Youre just a little girl.
When I tell you to do something, I mean for you
to do it. He beat me and he beat me, wanting
me to acknowledge that I understood what I had
done. His rage, his violence captured everyones
attention. Our family sat spellbound, rapt before
the pornography of patriarchal violence. After this
beating I was banishedforced to stay alone
in the dark. Mama came into the bedroom to
soothe the pain, telling me in her soft southern
voice, I tried to warn you. You need to accept
that you are just a little girl and girls cant do what
boys do. In service to patriarchy her task was
to reinforce that Dad had done the right thing by,
putting me in my place, by restoring the natural
social order.
I remember this traumatic event so well
because it was a story told again and again
within our family. No one cared that the constant
retelling might trigger post-traumatic stress; the
retelling was necessary to reinforce both the
message and the remembered state of absolute
powerlessness. The recollection of this brutal
whipping of a little-girl daughter by a big strong
man, served as more than just a reminder to
me of my gendered place, it was a reminder
to everyone watching/remembering, to all my
siblings, male and female, and to our grownwoman mother that our patriarchal father was
the ruler in our household. We were to remember
that if we did not obey his rules, we would be
punished, punished even unto death. This is the
way we were experientially schooled in the art of
patriarchy.

2 UNDERSTANDING PATRIARCHY

There is nothing unique or even exceptional

about this experience. Listen to the voices of
wounded grown children raised in patriarchal
homes and you will hear different versions with
the same underlying theme, the use of violence
to reinforce our indoctrination and acceptance
of patriarchy. In How Can I Get Through to You?
family therapist Terrence Real tells how his sons
were initiated into patriarchal thinking even as
their parents worked to create a loving home in
which antipatriarchal values prevailed. He tells of
how his young son Alexander enjoyed dressing
as Barbie until boys playing with his older brother
witnessed his Barbie persona and let him know
by their gaze and their shocked, disapproving
silence that his behavior was unacceptable:
Without a shred of malevolence, the stare
my son received transmitted a message.
You are not to do this. And the medium that
message was broadcast in was a potent
emotion: shame. At three, Alexander was
learning the rules. A ten second wordless
transaction was powerful enough to
dissuade my son from that instant forward
from what had been a favorite activity. I call
such moments of induction the normal
traumatization of boys.
To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy,
we force them to feel pain and to deny their
feelings.
My stories took place in the fifties; the stories
Real tells are recent. They all underscore the
tyranny of patriarchal thinking, the power of
patriarchal culture to hold us captive. Real is
one of the most enlightened thinkers on the
subject of patriarchal masculinity in our nation,
and yet he lets readers know that he is not
able to keep his boys out of patriarchys reach.
They suffer its assaults, as do all boys and
girls, to a greater or lesser degree. No doubt by
creating a loving home that is not patriarchal,
Real at least offers his boys a choice: they
can choose to be themselves or they can
choose conformity with patriarchal roles. Real
uses the phrase psychological patriarchy to
describe the patriarchal thinking common to
females and males. Despite the contemporary
visionary feminist thinking that makes clear that
a patriarchal thinker need not be a male, most
folks continue to see men as the problem of
patriarchy. This is simply not the case. Women
can be as wedded to patriarchal thinking and
action as men.
Psychotherapist John Bradshaws clearsighted definition of patriarchy in Creating

Love is a useful one: The dictionary defines

patriarchy as a social organization marked
by the supremacy of the father in the clan or
family in both domestic and religious functions.
Patriarchy is characterized by male domination
and power. He states further that patriarchal
rules still govern most of the worlds religious,
school systems, and family systems. Describing
the most damaging of these rules, Bradshaw lists
blind obediencethe foundation upon which
patriarchy stands; the repression of all emotions
except fear; the destruction of individual
willpower; and the repression of thinking
whenever it departs from the authority figures
way of thinking. Patriarchal thinking shapes
the values of our culture. We are socialized into
this system, females as well as males. Most of
us learned patriarchal attitudes in our family of
origin, and they were usually taught to us by
our mothers. These attitudes were reinforced in
schools and religious institutions.
The contemporary presence of female-headed
house holds has led many people to assume
that children in these households are not learning
patriarchal values because no male is present.
They assume that men are the sole teachers of
patriarchal thinking. Yet many female-headed
households endorse and promote patriarchal
thinking with far greater passion than two-parent
households. Because they do not have an
experiential reality to challenge false fantasies
of gender roles, women in such households are
far more likely to idealize the patriarchal male
role and patriarchal men than are women who
live with patriarchal men every day. We need to
highlight the role women play in perpetuating
and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we
will recognize patriarchy as a system women
and men support equally, even if men receive
more rewards from that system. Dismantling and
changing patriarchal culture is work that men and
women must do together.
Clearly we cannot dismantle a system as
long as we engage in collective denial about its
impact on our lives. Patriarchy requires male
dominance by any means necessary, hence
it supports, promotes, and condones sexist
violence. We hear the most about sexist violence
in public discourses about rape and abuse by
domestic partners. But the most common forms
of patriarchal violence are those that take place
in the home between patriarchal parents and
children. The point of such violence is usually
to reinforce a dominator model, in which the
authority figure is deemed ruler over those
without power and given the right to maintain
that rule through practices of subjugation,

subordination, and submission.

Keeping males and females from telling the
truth about what happens to them in families
is one way patriarchal culture is maintained. A
great majority of individuals enforce an unspoken
rule in the culture as a whole that demands we
keep the secrets of patriarchy, thereby protecting
the rule of the father. This rule of silence is
upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy
access even to the word patriarchy. Most
children do not learn what to call this system
of institutionalized gender roles, so rarely do
we name it in everyday speech. This silence
promotes denial. And how can we organize to
challenge and change a system that cannot be
named?
It is no accident that feminists began to use the
word patriarchy to replace the more commonly
used male chauvanism and sexism. These
courageous voices wanted men and women to
become more aware of the way patriarchy affects
us all. In popular culture the word itself was
hardly used during the heyday of contemporary
feminism. Antimale activists were no more eager
than their sexist male counterparts to emphasize
the system of patriarchy and the way it works.
For to do so would have automatically exposed
the notion that men were all-powerful and
women powerless, that all men were oppressive
and women always and only victims. By placing
the blame for the perpetuation of sexism solely
on men, these women could maintain their own
allegiance to patriarchy, their own lust for power.
They masked their longing to be dominators by
taking on the mantle of victimhood.
Like many visionary radical feminists I
challenged the misguided notion, put forward
by women who were simply fed up with male
exploitation and oppression, that men were the
enemy. As early as 1984 I included a chapter
with the title Men: Comrades in Struggle in my
book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
urging advocates of feminist politics to challenge
any rhetoric which placed the sole blame for
perpetuating patriarchy and male domination
onto men:
Separatist ideology encourages women to
ignore the negative impact of sexism on
male personhood. It stresses polarization
between the sexes. According to Joy
Justice, separatists believe that there are
two basic perspectives on the issue of
naming the victims of sexism: There is
the perspective that men oppress women.
And there is the perspective that people
are people, and we are all hurt by rigid

sex roles.Both perspectives accurately

describe our predica ment. Men do oppress
women. People are hurt by rigid sexist role
patterns, These two realities coexist. Male
oppression of women cannot be excused by
the recognition that there are ways men are
hurt by rigid sexist roles. Feminist activists
should acknowledge that hurt, and work
to change itit exists. It does not erase or
lessen male responsibility for supporting
and perpetuating their power under
patriarchy to exploit and oppress women in
a manner far more grievous than the serious
psychological stress and emotional pain
caused by male conformity to rigid sexist
role patterns.

about his hostility and rage toward his abusing

dad. He was not interested in forgiving him
or understanding the circumstances that had
shaped and influenced his dads life, either in his
childhood or in his working life as a military man.
In the early years of our relationship he was
extremely critical of male domination of women
and children. Although he did not use the word
patriarchy, he understood its meaning and he
opposed it. His gentle, quiet manner often led
folks to ignore him, counting him among the
weak and the powerless. By the age of thirty
he began to assume a more macho persona,
embracing the dominator model that he had
once critiqued. Donning the mantle of patriarch,
he gained greater respect and visibility. More
women were drawn to him. He was noticed
Throughout this essay I stressed that feminist
more in public spheres. His criticism of male
advocates collude in the pain of men wounded
domination ceased. And indeed he begin to
by patriarchy when they falsely represent men
mouth patriarchal rhetoric, saying the kind of
as always and only powerful, as always and only sexist stuff that would have appalled him in the
gaining privileges from their blind obedience to
past.
patriarchy. I emphasized that patriarchal ideology
These changes in his thinking and behavior
brainwashes men to believe that their domination were triggered by his desire to be accepted
of women is beneficial when it is not:
and affirmed in a patriarchal workplace and
rationalized by his desire to get ahead. His story
Often feminist activists affirm this logic when
is not unusual. Boys brutalized and victimized
we should be constantly naming these
by patriarchy more often than not become
acts as expressions of perverted power
patriarchal, embodying the abusive patriarchal
relations, general lack of control of ones
masculinity that they once clearly recognized
actions, emotional powerlessness, extreme
as evil. Few men brutally abused as boys in the
irrationality, and in many cases, outright
name of patriarchal maleness courageously resist
insanity. Passive male absorption of sexist
the brainwashing and remain true to themselves.
ideology enables men to falsely interpret
Most males conform to patriarchy in one way or
this disturbed behavior positively. As long
another.
as men are brainwashed to equate violent
Indeed, radical feminist critique of patriarchy has
domination and abuse of women with
practically been silenced in our culture. It has
privilege, they will have no understanding
become a subcultural discourse available only to
of the damage done to themselves or to
well-educated elites. Even in those circles, using
others, and no motivation to change.
the word patriarchy is regarded as pass. Often
in my lectures when I use the phrase imperialist
Patriarchy demands of men that they become
white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy to
and remain emotional cripples. Since it is a
describe our nations political system, audiences
system that denies men full access to their
laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately
freedom of will, it is difficult for any man of any
naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself
class to rebel against patriarchy, to be disloyal
a weapon of patriarchal terrorism. It functions
to the patriarchal parent, be that parent female
as a disclaimer, discounting the significance of
or male.
what is being named. It suggests that the words
The man who has been my primary bond
themselves are problematic and not the system
for more than twelve years was traumatized
they describe. I interpret this laughter as the
by the patriarchal dynamics in his family of
audiences way of showing discomfort with being
origin. When I met him he was in his twenties.
asked to ally themselves with an antipatriarchal
While his formative years had been spent in
disobedient critique. This laughter reminds me
the company of a violent, alcoholic dad, his
that if I dare to challenge patriarchy openly, I risk
circumstances changed when he was twelve
not being taken seriously.
and he began to live alone with his mother. In the
Citizens in this nation fear challenging
early years of our relationship he talked openly
patriarchy even as they lack overt awareness

4 UNDERSTANDING PATRIARCHY

that they are fearful, so deeply embedded in our

collective unconscious are the rules of patriarchy.
I often tell audiences that if we were to go doorto-door asking if we should end male violence
against women, most people would give their
unequivocal support. Then if you told them we
can only stop male violence against women
by ending male domination, by eradicating
patriarchy, they would begin to hesitate, to
change their position. Despite the many gains
of contemporary feminist movementgreater
equality for women in the workforce, more
tolerance for the relinquishing of rigid gender
rolespatriarchy as a system remains intact, and
many people continue to believe that it is needed
if humans are to survive as a species. This belief
seems ironic, given that patriarchal methods
of organizing nations, especially the insistence
on violence as a means of social control, has
actually led to the slaughter of millions of people
on the planet.
Until we can collectively acknowledge the
damage patriarchy causes and the suffering
it creates, we cannot address male pain. We
cannot demand for men the right to be whole, to
be givers and sustainers of life. Obviously some
patriarchal men are reliable and even benevolent
caretakers and providers, but still they are
imprisoned by a system that undermines their
mental health.
Patriarchy promotes insanity. It is at the root of
the psychological ills troubling men in our nation.
Nevertheless there is no mass concern for the
plight of men. In Stiffed: The Betrayal of the
American Man, Susan Faludi includes very little
discussion of patriarchy:
Ask feminists to diagnose mens problems
and you will often get a very clear
explanation: men are in crisis because
women are properly challenging male
dominance. Women are asking men to share
the public reins and men cant bear it. Ask
antifeminists and you will get a diagnosis
that is, in one respect, similar. Men are
troubled, many conservative pundits say,
because women have gone far beyond their
demands for equal treatment and are now
trying to take power and control away from
menThe underlying message: men cannot
be men, only eunuchs, if they are not in
control. Both the feminist and antifeminist
views are rooted in a peculiarly modern
American perception that to be a man
means to be at the controls and at all times
to feel yourself in control.

Faludi never interrogates the notion of control.

She never considers that the notion that men
were somehow in control, in power, and satisfied
with their lives before contemporary feminist
movement is false.
Patriarchy as a system has denied males
access to full emotional well-being, which is
not the same as feeling rewarded, successful,
or powerful because of ones capacity to assert
control over others. To truly address male pain
and male crisis we must as a nation be willing
to expose the harsh reality that patriarchy
has damaged men in the past and continues
to damage them in the present. If patriarchy
were truly rewarding to men, the violence and
addiction in family life that is so all-pervasive
would not exist. This violence was not created
by feminism. If patriarchy were rewarding, the
overwhelming dissatisfaction most men feel in
their work livesa dissatisfaction extensively
documented in the work of Studs Terkel and
echoed in Faludis treatisewould not exist.
In many ways Stiffed was yet another betrayal
of American men because Faludi spends so
much time trying not to challenge patriarchy
that she fails to highlight the necessity of ending
patriarchy if we are to liberate men. Rather she
writes:
Instead of wondering why men resist
womens struggle for a freer and healthier
life, I began to wonder why men refrain from
engaging in their own struggle. Why, despite
a crescendo of random tantrums, have they
offered no methodical, reasoned response
to their predicament: Given the untenable
and insulting nature of the demands placed
on men to prove themselves in our culture,
why dont men revolt?Why havent men
responded to the series of betrayals in their
own livesto the failures of their fathers to
make good on their promiseswith some
thing coequal to feminism?
Note that Faludi does not dare risk either the
ire of feminist females by suggesting that men
can find salvation in feminist movement or
rejection by potential male readers who are
solidly antifeminist by suggesting that they have
something to gain from engaging feminism.
So far in our nation visionary feminist
movement is the only struggle for justice that
emphasizes the need to end patriarchy. No mass
body of women has challenged patriarchy and
neither has any group of men come together to
lead the struggle. The crisis facing men is not the
crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal

masculinity. Until we make this distinction clear,

men will continue to fear that any critique of
patriarchy represents a threat. Distinguishing
political patriarchy, which he sees as largely
committed to ending sexism, therapist Terrence
Real makes clear that the patriarchy damaging
us all is embedded in our psyches:
Psychological patriarchy is the dynamic
between those qualities deemed
masculine and feminine in which half
of our human traits are exalted while the
other half is devalued. Both men and women
participate in this tortured value system.
Psychological patriarchy is a dance of
contempt, a perverse form of connection
that replaces true intimacy with complex,
covert layers of dominance and submission,
collusion and manipulation. It is the
unacknowledged paradigm of relationships
that has suffused Western civilization
generation after generation, deforming both
sexes, and destroying the passionate bond
between them.

By highlighting psychological patriarchy, we see

that everyone is implicated and we are freed
from the misperception that men are the enemy.
To end patriarchy we must challenge both its
psychological and its concrete manifestations in
daily life. There are folks who are able to critique
patriarchy but unable to act in an antipatriarchal
manner.
To end male pain, to respond effectively to
male crisis, we have to name the problem. We
have to both acknowledge that the problem is
patriarchy and work to end patriarchy. Terrence
Real offers this valuable insight: The reclamation
of wholeness is a process even more fraught
for men than it has been for women, more
difficult and more profoundly threatening to
the culture at large. If men are to reclaim the
essential goodness of male being, if they are
to regain the space of openheartedness and
emotional expressiveness that is the foundation
of well-being, we must envision alternatives to
patriarchal masculinity. We must all change.

http://LAFF-experiment.org

http://ImagineNoBorders.org

Women's Cinema As CounterCinema

Claire Johnston
1. Myths of Women in the Cinema
there arose, identifiable by standard appearance, behaviour and attributes, the wellremembered types of the Vamp and the Straight Girl (perhaps
the most convincing modern equivalents of the medieval personifications of the Vices and Virtues), the Family Man and the Villain, the latter marked
by a black moustache and walking stick. Nocturnal scenes were printed on blue or green film. A checkered tablecloth meant, once for all, a 'poor but
honest' milieu; a happy marriage, soon to be endangered by the shadows from the past symbolised by the young wife's pouring of the breakfast coffee
for her husband; the first kiss was invariably announced by the lady's gently playing with her partner's necktie and was invariably accompanied by her
kicking out with her left foot. The conduct of the characters was predetermined accordingly. (Erwin Panofsky in Style and Medium in the Motion
Pictures, 1934 and in Film: An Anthology, D Talbot ed., New York, 1959.)

Panofsky's detection of the primitive stereotyping which characterised the early cinema could prove useful for
discerning the way myths of women have operated in the cinema: why the image of man underwent rapid
differentiation, while the primitive stereotyping of women remained with some modifications. Much writing on the
stereotyping of women in the cinema takes as its starting point a monolithic view of the media as repressive and
manipulative: in this way, Hollywood has been viewed as a dream factory producing an oppressive cultural
product. This overpoliticised view bears little relation to the ideas on art expressed either by Marx or Lenin, who
both pointed to there being no direct connection between the development of art and the material basis of society.
The idea of the intentionality of art which this view implies is extremely misleading and retrograde, and
shortcircuits the possibility of a critique which could prove useful for developing a strategy for women's cinema. If
we accept that the developing of female stereotypes was not a conscious strategy of the Hollywood dream
machine, what are we left with? Panofsky locates the origins of iconography and stereotype in the cinema in terms
of practical necessity; he suggests that in the early cinema the audience had much difficulty deciphering what
appeared on the screen. Fixed iconography, then, was introduced to aid understanding and provide the audience
with basic facts with which to comprehend the narrative. Iconography as a specific kind of sign or cluster of signs
based on certain conventions within the Hollywood genres has been partly responsible for the stereotyping of
women within the commercial cinema in general, but the fact that there is a far greater differentiation of men's roles
than of women's roles in the history of the cinema relates to sexist ideology itself, and the basic opposition which
places man inside history, and woman as ahistoric and eternal. As the cinema developed, the stereotyping of man
was increasingly interpreted as contravening the realisation of the notion of 'character'; in the case of woman, this
was not the case; the dominant ideology presented her as eternal and unchanging, except for modifications in
terms of fashion etc. In general, the myths governing the cinema are no different from those governing other
cultural products: they relate to a standard value system informing all cultural systems in a given society. Myth
uses icons, but the icon is its weakest point. Furthermore, it is possible to use icons, (i.e. conventional
configurations) in the face of and against the mythology usually associated with them. In his magisterial work on
myth (Mythologies, Jonathan Cape, London 1971), the critic Roland Barthes examines how myth, as the signifier of
an ideology, operates, by analysing a whole range of items: a national dish, a society wedding, a photograph from
Paris Match. In his book he analyses how a sign can be emptied of its original denotative meaning and a new
connotative meaning superimposed on it. What was a complete sign consisting of a signifier plus a signified,
becomes merely the signifier of a new signified, which subtly usurps the place of the original denotation. In this
way, the new connotation is mistaken for the natural, obvious and evident denotation: this is what makes it the
signifier of the ideology of the society in which it is used.
Myth then, as a form of speech or discourse, represents the major means in which women have been used in the
cinema: myth transmits and transforms the ideology of sexism and renders it invisiblewhen it is made visible it
evaporatesand therefore natural. This process puts the question of the stereotyping of women in a somewhat
different light. In the first place, such a view of the way cinema operates challenges the notion that the commercial
cinema is more manipulative of the image of woman than the art cinema. It could be argued that precisely because
of the iconography of Hollywood, the system offers some resistance to the unconscious workings of myth. Sexist
ideology is no less present in the European art cinema because stereotyping appears less obvious; it is in the
nature of myth to drain the sign (the image of woman/ the function of woman in the narrative) of its meaning and
superimpose another which thus appears natural: in fact, a strong argument could be made for the art film inviting
a greater invasion from myth. This point assumes considerable importance when considering the emerging
women's cinema. The conventional view about women working in Hollywood (Arzner, Weber, Lupino etc.) is that
they had little opportunity for real expression within the dominant sexist ideology; they were token women and little
more. In fact, because iconography offers in some ways a greater resistance to the realist characterisations, the
mythic qualities of certain stereotypes become far more easily detachable and can be used as a shorthand for
referring to an ideological tradition in order to provide a critique of it. It is possible to disengage the icons from the
myth and thus bring about reverberations within the sexist ideology in which the film is made. Dorothy Arzner
certainly made use of such techniques and the work of Nelly Kaplan is particularly important in this respect. As a
European director she understands the dangers of myth invading the sign in the art film, and deliberately makes
use of Hollywood iconography to counteract this. The use of crazy comedy by some women directors (e.g.
Stephanie Rothman) also derives from this insight.

In rejecting a sociological analysis of woman in the cinema we reject any view in terms of realism, for this would
involve an acceptance of the apparent natural denotation of the sign and would involve a denial of the reality of
myth in operation. Within a sexist ideology and a maledominated cinema, woman is presented as what she
represents for man. Laura Mulvey in her most useful essay on the pop artist Allen Jones ('You Don't Know What
You're Doing Do You, Mr Jones?', Laura Mulvey in Spare Rib, February 1973), points out that woman as woman is
totally absent in Jones' work. The fetishistic image portrayed relates only to male narcissism: woman represents
not herself, but by a process of displacement, the male phallus. It is probably true to say that despite the enormous
emphasis placed on woman as spectacle in the cinema, woman as woman is largely absent. A sociological
analysis based on the empirical study of recurring roles and motifs would lead to a critique in terms of an
enumeration of the notion of career/home/motherhood/sexuality, an examination of women as the central figures in
the narrative etc. If we view the image of woman as sign within the sexist ideology, we see that the portrayal of
woman is merely one item subject to the law of verisimilitude, a law which directors worked with or reacted against.
The law of verisimilitude (that which determines the impression of realism) in the cinema is precisely responsible
for the repression of the image of woman as woman and the celebration of her nonexistence.
This point becomes clearer when we look at a film which revolves around a woman entirely and the idea of the
female star. In their analysis of Sternberg's manipulative of the image of woman than the art cinema. It could be
argued that precisely because of the iconography of Hollywood, the system offers some resistance to the
unconscious workings of myth. Sexist ideology is no less present in the European art cinema because stereotyping
appears less obvious; it is in the nature of myth to drain the sign (the image of woman/ the function of woman in
the narrative) of its meaning and superimpose another which thus appears natural: in fact, a strong argument could
be made for the art film inviting a greater invasion from myth. This point assumes considerable importance when
considering the emerging women's cinema. The conventional view about women working in Hollywood (Arzner,
Weber, Lupino etc.) is that they had little opportunity for real expression within the dominant sexist ideology; they
were token women and little more. In fact, because iconography offers in some ways a greater resistance to the
realist characterisations, the mythic qualities of certain stereotypes become far more easily detachable and can be
used as a shorthand for referring to an ideological tradition in order to provide a critique of it. It is possible to
disengage the icons from the myth and thus bring about reverberations within the sexist ideology in which the film
is made. Dorothy Arzner certainly made use of such techniques and the work of Nelly Kaplan is particularly
important in this respect. As a European director she understands the dangers of myth invading the sign in the art
film, and deliberately makes use of Hollywood iconography to counteract this. The use of crazy comedy by some
women directors (e.g. Stephanie Rothman) also derives from this insight.
In rejecting a sociological analysis of woman in the cinema we reject any view in terms of realism, for this would
involve an acceptance of the apparent natural denotation of the sign and would involve a denial of the reality of
myth in operation. Within a sexist ideology and a maledominated cinema, woman is presented as what she
represents for man. Laura Mulvey in her most useful essay on the pop artist Allen Jones ('You Don't Know What
You're Doing Do You, Mr Jones?', Laura Mulvey in Spare Rib, February 1973), points out that woman as woman is
totally absent in Jones' work. The fetishistic image portrayed relates only to male narcissism: woman represents
not herself, but by a process of displacement, the male phallus. It is probably true to say that despite the enormous
emphasis placed on woman as spectacle in the cinema, woman as woman is largely absent. A sociological
analysis based on the empirical study of recurring roles and motifs would lead to a critique in terms of an
enumeration of the notion of career/home/motherhood/sexuality, an examination of women as the central figures in
the narrative etc. If we view the image of woman as sign within the sexist ideology, we see that the portrayal of
woman is merely one item subject to the law of verisimilitude, a law which directors worked with or reacted against.
The law of verisimilitude (that which determines the impression of realism) in the cinema is precisely responsible
for the repression of the image of woman as woman and the celebration of her nonexistence.
This point becomes clearer when we look at a film which revolves around a woman entirely and the idea of the
female star. In their analysis of Sternberg's 'the structure is associated with a single director, an individual, not
because he has played the role of artist, expressing himself or his vision in the film, but it is through the force of his
preoccupations that an unconscious, unintended meaning can be decoded in the film, usually to the surprise of the
individual concerned'. In this way, Wollen disengages both from the notion of creativity which dominates the notion
of 'art', and from the idea of intentionality.
In briefly examining the myths of woman which underlie the work of two Hollywood directors, Ford and Hawks,
making use of findings and insights derived from auteur analysis, it is possible to see that the image of woman
assumes very different meanings within the different texts of each author's work. An analysis in terms of the
presence or absence of 'positive' heroine figures within the same directors' oeuvre would produce a very different
view. What Peter Wollen refers to as the 'force of the author's preoccupations', (including the obsessions about
women) is generated by the psychoanalytic history of the author. This organised network of obsessions is outside
the scope of the author's choice.

Hawks vs Ford
Hawks' films celebrate the solidarity and validity of the exclusive allmale group, dedicated to the life of action and
adventure, and a rigid professional ethic. When women intrude into their world, they represent a threat to the very
existence of the group. However, women appear to possess 'positive' qualities in Hawks' films: they are often
career women and show signs of independence and aggression in the face of the male, particularly in his crazy
comedies. Robin Wood has pointed out quite correctly that the crazy comedies portray an inverted version of
Hawks' universe. The male is often humiliated or depicted as infantile or regressed. Such films as Bringing Up
Baby, His Girl Friday and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes combine, as Robin Wood has said, 'farce and horror'; they are
'disturbing'. For Hawks, there is only the male and the nonmale: in order to be accepted into the male universe,
the woman must become a man; alternatively she becomes womanasphallus (Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes). This disturbing quality in Hawks' films relates directly to the presence of woman; she is a
traumatic presence which must be negated. Ford's is a very different universe, in which women play a pivotal role:
it is around their presence that the tensions between the desire for the wandering existence and the desire for
settlement/the idea of the wilderness and the idea of the garden revolve. For Ford woman represents the home,
and with it the possibility of culture: she becomes a cipher onto which Ford projects his profoundly ambivalent
attitude to the concepts of civilisation and psychological 'wholeness'.
While the depiction of women in Hawks involves a direct confrontation with the problematic (traumatic) presence of
Woman, a confrontation which results in his need to repress her, Ford's use of woman as a symbol for civilisation
considerably complicates the whole question of the repression of woman in his work and leaves room for more
progressive elements to emerge (e.g. Seven Women and Cheyenne Autumn).
2. Towards A CounterCinema
There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming or broadcasting. The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated, but who
manipulates them. A revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear; on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator. (Hans
Magnus Enzensberger in Constituents of a Theory of Media, New Left Review No 64.)

Enzensberger suggests the major contradiction operating in the media is that between their present constitution
and their revolutionary potential. Quite clearly, a strategic use of the media, and film in particular, is essential for
disseminating our ideas. At the moment the possibility of feedback is low, though the potential already exists. In the
light of such possibilities, it is particularly important to analyse what the nature of cinema is and what strategic use
can be made of it in all its forms: the political film/the commercial entertainment film. Polemics for women's
creativity are fine as long as we realise they are polemics. The notion of women's creativity per se is as limited as
the notion of men's creativity. It is basically an idealist conception which elevates the idea of the 'artist' (involving
the pitfall of elitism), and undermines any view of art as a material thing within a cultural context which forms it and
is formed by it. All films or works of art are products: products of an existing system of economic relations, in the
final analysis. This applies equally to experimental films, political films and commercial entertainment cinema. Film
is also an ideological productthe product of bourgeois ideology. The idea that art is universal and thus potentially
androgynous is basically an idealist notion: art can only be defined as a discourse within a particular conjuncture
for the purpose of women's cinema, the bourgeois, sexist ideology of male dominated capitalism. It is important to
point out that the workings of ideology do not involve a process of deception/intentionality. For Marx, ideology is a
reality, it is not a lie. Such a misapprehension can prove extremely misleading; there is no way in which we can
eliminate ideology as if by an effort of will. This is extremely important when it comes to discussing women's
cinema. The tools and techniques of cinema themselves, as part of reality, are an expression of the prevailing
ideology: they are not neutral, as many 'revolutionary' film makers appear to believe. It is idealist mystification to
believe that 'truth' can be captured by the camera or that the conditions of a film's production (e.g. a film made
collectively by women) can of itself reflect the conditions of its production. This is mere utopianism: new meaning
has to be manufactured within the text of the film. The camera was developed in order to accurately reproduce
reality and safeguard the bourgeois notion of realism which was being replaced in painting. An element of sexism
governing the technical development of the camera can also be discerned. In fact, the lightweight camera was
developed as early as the 1930s in Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes; the reason why it was not until the
1950s that it assumed common usage remains obscure.
Much of the emerging women's cinema has taken its aesthetics from television and cinema verite techniques (e.g.
Three Lives, Women Talking); Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason has been cited as an important influence. These
films largely depict images of women talking to camera about their experiences, with little or no intervention by the
filmmaker. Kate Millett sums up the approach in Three Lives by saying, 'I did not want to analyse any more, but to
express' and 'film is a very powerful way to express oneself'.
Clearly, if we accept that cinema involves the production of signs, the idea of nonintervention is pure mystification.
The sign is always a product. What the camera in fact grasps is the 'natural' world of the dominant ideology.

Women's cinema cannot afford such idealism; the 'truth' of our oppression cannot be 'captured' on celluloid with
the 'innocence' of the camera: it has to be constructed/manufactured. New meanings have to be created by
disrupting the fabric of the male bourgeois cinema within the text of the film. As Peter Wollen points out, 'reality is
always adaptive'. Eisenstein's method is instructive here. In his use of fragmentation as a revolutionary strategy, a
concept is generated by the clash of two specific images, so that it serves as an abstract concept in the filmic
discourse. This idea of fragmentation as an analytical tool is quite different from the use of fragmentation
suggested by Barbara Martineau in her essay. 1 She sees fragmentation as the juxtaposition of disparate elements
(cf. Lion's Love) to bring about emotional reverberations, but these reverberations do not provide a means of
understanding within them. In the context of women's cinema such a strategy would be totally recuperable by the
dominant ideology: indeed, in that it depends on emotionality and mystery, it invites the invasion of ideology. The
ultimate logic of this method is automatic writing developed by the surrealists. Romanticism will not provide us with
the necessary tools to construct a women's cinema: our objectification cannot be overcome simply by examining it
artistically. It can only be challenged by developing the means to interrogate the male, bourgeois cinema.
Furthermore, a desire for change can only come about by drawing on fantasy. The danger of developing a cinema
of nonintervention is that it promotes a passive subjectivity at the expense of analysis. Any revolutionary strategy
must challenge the depiction of reality; it is not enough to discuss the oppression of women within the text of the
film; the language of the cinema/the depiction of reality must also be interrogated, so that a break between
ideology and text is effected. In this respect, it is instructive to look at films made by women within the Hollywood
system which attempted by formal means to bring about a dislocation between sexist ideology and the text of the
film; such insights could provide useful guidelines for the emerging women's cinema to draw on.

Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino

Dorothy Arzner and Lois Weber were virtually the only women working in Hollywood during the 1920s and 30s who
managed to build up a consistent body of work in the cinema: unfortunately, very little is known of their work, as
yet. An analysis of one of Dorothy Arzner's later films, Dance, Girl, Dance, made in 1940 gives some idea of her
approach to women's cinema within the sexist ideology of Hollywood. A conventional vaudeville story, Dance, Girl,
Dance centres on the lives of a troupe of dancing girls down on their luck. The main characters, Bubbles and Judy
are representative of the primitive iconographic depiction of womenvamp and straightgirldescribed by
Panofsky. Working from this crude stereotyping, Arzner succeeds in generating within the text of the film, an
internal criticism of it. Bubbles manages to land a job, and Judy becomes the stooge in her act, performing ballet
for the amusement of the allmale audience. Arzner's critique centres round the notion of woman as spectacle, as
performer within the male universe. The central figures appear in a parody form of the performance, representing
opposing poles of the myths of femininitysexuality vs. grace & innocence. The central contradiction articulating
their existence as performers for the pleasure of men is one with which most women would identify: the
contradiction between the desire to please and selfexpression: Bubbles needs to please the male, while Judy
seeks selfexpression as a ballet dancer. As the film progresses, a oneway process of the performance is firmly
established, involving the humiliation of Judy as the stooge. Towards the end of the film Arzner brings about her
tour de force, cracking open the entire fabric of the film and exposing the workings of ideology in the construction
of the stereotype of woman. Judy, in a fit of anger, turns on her audience and tells them how she sees them. This
return of scrutiny in what within the film is assumed as a oneway process constitutes a direct assault on the
audience within the film and the audience of the film, and has the effect of directly challenging the entire notion of
woman as spectacle.
Ida Lupino's approach to women's cinema is somewhat different. As an independent producer and director working
in Hollywood in the 1950s, Lupino chose to work largely within the melodrama, a genre which, more than any
other, has presented a less reified view of women, and as Sirk's work indicates, is adaptable for expressing rather
than embodying the idea of the oppression of women. An analysis of Not Wanted, Lupino's first feature film gives
some idea of the disturbing ambiguity of her films and their relationship to the sexist ideology. Unlike Arzner,
Lupino is not concerned with employing purely formal means to obtain her objective; in fact, it is doubtful whether
she operates at a conscious level at all in subverting the sexist ideology. The film tells the story of a young girl,
Sally Kelton, and is told from her subjective viewpoint and filtered through her imagination. She has an illegitimate
child which is eventually adopted; unable to come to terms with losing the child, she snatches one from a pram and
ends up in the hands of the authorities. Finally, she finds a substitute for the child in the person of a crippled young
man, who, through a process of symbolic castrationin which he is forced to chase her until he can no longer
stand, whereupon she takes him up in her arms as he performs childlike gestures provides the 'happy ending'.
Though Lupino's films in no way explicitly attack or expose the workings of sexist ideology, reverberations within
the narrative, produced by the convergence of two irreconcileable strandsHollywood myths of woman vs. the
female perspectivecause a series of distortions within the very structure of the narrative; the mark of disablement
puts the film under the sign of disease and frustration. An example of this process is, for instance, the inverted
'happy ending' of the film.
The intention behind pointing to the interest of Hollywood directors like Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino is twofold. In

the first place it is a polemical attempt to restore the interest of Hollywood from attacks that have been made on it.
Secondly, an analysis of the workings of myth and the possibilities of subverting it in the Hollywood system could
prove of use in determining a strategy for the subversion of ideology in general.
Perhaps something should be said about the European art film; undoubtedly, it is more open to the invasion of
myth than the Hollywood film. This point becomes quite clear when we scrutinise the work of Riefenstahl,
Companeez, Trintignant, Varda and others. The films of Agnes Varda are a particularly good example of an oeuvre
which celebrates bourgeois myths of women, and with it the apparent innocence of the sign. Le Bonheur in
particular, almost invites a Barthesian analysis! Varda's portrayal of female fantasy constitutes one of the nearest
approximations to the facile daydreams perpetuated by advertising that probably exists in the cinema. Her films
appear totally innocent to the workings of myth; indeed, it is the purpose of myth to fabricate an impression of
innocence, in which all becomes 'natural': Varda's concern for nature is a direct expression of this retreat from
history: history is transmuted into nature, involving the elimination of all questions, because all appears 'natural'.
There is no doubt that Varda's work is reactionary: in her rejection of culture and her placement of woman outside
history her films mark a retrograde step in women's cinema.
3. Conclusion
What kind of strategy, then, is appropriate at this particular point in time? The development of collective work is
obviously a major step forward; as a means of acquiring and sharing skills it constitutes a formidable challenge to
male privilege in the film industry: as an expression of sisterhood, it suggests a viable alternative to the rigid
hierarchical structures of maledominated cinema and offers real opportunities for a dialogue about the nature of
women's cinema within it. At this point in time, a strategy should be developed which embraces both the notion of
films as a political tool and film as entertainment. For too long these have been regarded as two opposing poles
with little common ground. In order to counter our objectification in the cinema, our collective fantasies must be
released: women's cinema must embody the working through of desire: such an objective demands the use of the
entertainment film. Ideas derived from the entertainment film, then, should inform the political film, and political
ideas should inform the entertainment cinema: a two way process. Finally, a repressive, moralistic assertion that
women's cinema is collective filmmaking is misleading and unnecessary: we should seek to operate at all levels:
within the maledominated cinema and outside it. This essay has attempted to demonstrate the interest of women's
films made within the system. Voluntarism and utopianism must be avoided if any revolutionary strategy is to
emerge. A collective film of itself cannot reflect the conditions of its production. What collective methods do provide
is the real possibility of examining how cinema works and how we can best interrogate and demystify the workings
of ideology: it will be from these insights that a genuinely revolutionary conception of countercinema for the
women's struggle will come.

Editor's Notes
1. See Martineau, 'Subjecting Her Objectification, or Communism Is Not Enough' in Notes on Women's Cinema,
ed. Claire Johnston (London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973).

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THEY HAVE NO REASON TO NOTICE A MAN LIKE ME:

Foreignness in Steven Spielbergs The Terminal
Adam Wadenius | College of Marin | copyright 2013

Adam Wadenius earned his Masters degree in Film Studies at San Francisco State University, and he currently
teaches Film/Media Studies & Production for several colleges in the Bay Area. His research interests include the
work of Julia Kristeva, horror and the abject, postmodern theory, cultural studies, and American independent
cinema. He is currently working on a project entitled, I Know Definitely You Are the Middle Piece, which
examines the monstrous representation of bisexuality in Tom Sixs The Human Centipede.

ABSTRACT
In Strangers to Ourselves, Julia Kristeva discusses the notion of foreignness in contemporary Western society,
writing that the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the
time in which understanding and affinity founder. The foreigner is something hidden within the self, beyond
comprehension, and a constant, uncanny threat to ones home. Film has long functioned as a window into the
cultural subconscious, and similar investigations of cinematic otherness have been explored, most notably by Robin
Wood in his The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film. However, in many post-9/11 texts like
Constantine, Inside Man, The Hills Have Eyes, and Cloverfield, the foreigner is not only positioned as an Other because of
the characteristics that exclude him from the dominant group, but he is specifically foreign in that he is not a citizen
of the country in which he resides. This notion of foreignness is the dominant theme that resonates from Steven
Spielbergs The Terminal. The films central project is an exploration of the anxiety projected upon foreigners by a
post-9/11 American culture whom, beset by paranoia, are unable and unwilling to accept themselves as foreign,
instead seeking to reject or assimilate the foreigner in all of its many representations. This fear of the foreigner is
projected onto the abject body of the films main protagonist, Viktor Navorski, and through his experience of initial
rejection, and ultimate assimilation into American culture, The Terminal lays bare Kristevas ethic of
cosmopolitanism, and her claim that in order to accept the foreigner, we must recognize that we are all foreigners.

Amelia, would you like to get eat to bite? mumbles Viktor Navorski, the foreign protagonist of Steven
Speilbergs The Terminal. He is standing in front of the Hugo Boss retail store in the transit lounge of the
JFK International Airport, coveting the collection of suits, ties, and winter coats on display in the
window. He pauses for a beat, realizing his mistake, and corrects himself; Bite to eat? Cantelloni?
Viktor is practicing to ask his new acquaintance Amelia out on a date, and as he walks apprehensively
along the glass faade, stopping to peer in at each of the mannequins, his reflection creates the illusion
that his head is resting atop each of the lifeless silhouettes, one by one, as if he is trying on each of the
outfits. (#1 - This is a common image in the film, Viktor reflected in mirrors, seen slightly distorted
through panes of glass, and his face framed on surveillance cameras) As he gazes into the window, he
imagines purchasing the clothes, asking Amelia to dinner, and taking her out on the town. Viktor,
however, engaged in his fantasy, is merely taking on the pretense of a proper American; one who
works, consumes, shops, speaks English, and falls in love. He can never truly be American, because he is

a foreigner. In her essay trangers nous-mmes, Julia Kristeva provides an analysis of the internal
experiences of the foreigner in Western culture. She writes that the foreigner assumes different guises,
multiplying masks and false selves, and in so doing the foreigner has no self(Kristeva, 1991, 8). Like
the reflection in the storefront window, Viktor is an abstraction. He is foreign, valueless, and though he
can buy a suit, smile, and put on appearances, his foreignness will always be present beneath his veneer,
ready to reveal itself in verbal misspeaks, social awkwardness, and the mispronunciation of words like
cannelloni (ibid, 8).
Kristeva writes that the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that
wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. The foreigner is something
hidden within the self, beyond comprehension, and a constant, uncanny threat to ones home. This notion
of foreignness is the dominant theme that resonates from The Terminal, and the films central project is an
exploration of the anxiety projected upon foreigners by a post-9/11 American culture whom, beset by
paranoid fears of invading terrors, are unable and unwilling to accept themselves as foreign. This fear is
projected onto Viktors abject body, and throughout the film his experience is typical of the foreigner in
America: he is identified as foreign, temporarily sequestered, and ultimately assimilated into American
culture where he will be tolerated. What Viktors journey lays bare is Kristevas claim that in order to
accept the foreigner, we must recognize foreignness in ourselves; that we are all foreigners. Such is the
realization of Customs Director Frank Dixon, Viktors uncanny doppelganger in the film, who comes to
realize his own foreignness through his interactions with Viktor. The bond developed between the two
illustrates Kristevas call for a cosmopolitanism that recognizes the universality of human rights, and the
notion that the foreigner is within me, hence we are all foreigners; we are strangers to ourselves trangers nous-mmes (Kristeva, 192).

You are a citizen of nowhere

Kristevas reading of foreignness concentrates on the experiences of a subject who is characterized as
more than an other the foreigner is an exile, alien, or immigrant, and it is with her reading of Sigmund
Freuds Das Unheimlich that she begins her articulation of the foreigner (Moruzzi, 137). Freud
associates the uncanny with that class of the frightening which arouses dread and horror and excites
fear in general (Freud, 219). The uncanny is something familiar and old-established in the mind and
which has become alienated from it if only through the process of repression (ibid, 241). He goes on to
discuss how the other is constructed through this process of repression, and that when the unconscious
returns, as that which ought to have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light, it
asserts itself in the individuals consciousness as something uncanny - unheimlich (Freud, 224). According
to Kristeva, the difference of otherness - a different age, ethnicity, sex, or religious background than the

dominant group - does not endow one with the attributes of foreignness (Kristeva, 1991, 96). The
foreigner is the one who does not belong to the state in which we are, the one who does not have the
same nationality, thus the foreigner is positioned as an other because of the characteristics that exclude
him from the dominant group, and he is specifically foreign in that he is not a citizen of the country in
which he resides (ibid, 96).
The opening moments of The Terminal introduce the spectator to the JFK International Airport. The first
image of the film is that of a towering Departures board, listing flights to cities like Toronto,
Copenhagen, Mexico City, and Beijing. It is made clear that we are entering a foreign space, and will be
engaging with foreignness in its many variations. Customs agents and custodial crews mill about the
empty terminal, and one of the agents, setting up a row of metal stanchions, pulls open and fastens one of
the retractable belts to its neighboring post. The words The US Customs and Border Protection are
etched in white block letters across the blue nylon strip, signaling that the spectator need not fear this
foreign space, as all foreigners passing through the airport will be subject to intense scrutiny. When the
doors open, crowds of people swarm in like a mob of overzealous shoppers on Black Friday at the local
WalMart. America is open for business, and the subsequent montage sequence reveals that the queue
of foreigners are waiting in line to speak to customs officials, all of whom are asking questions, examining
faces, and stamping passports. What is the purpose of your visit? asks one of the uniformed agents.
Business or pleasure? inquires another. How long will you be staying in the United States? Can I see
your return ticket please? Speaking with thick accents, those who answer appropriately, the demure
woman who replies, Just visitingshopping, or the nervous gentleman who splutters, Ehh, bbusiness, are welcomed to enjoy their stay. They are the good foreigners; the ones who will adhere to
their place, and temporarily assimilate by shopping, and conducting business in America before returning
home. The bad foreigners, however, are those with ulterior motives; such as the group of Chinese
tourists identified as having false documents, all of whom are promptly expelled for their transgressive
behaviors. For Kristeva, this relationship with the foreigner is essential to establishment of the nationstate, which Norma Claire Moruzzi notes, must continually maintain the legitimacy of its identity as a
subject through encounters with an other, strangers either outside or within its borders (Moruzzi, 142).
Americans have long been concerned with forms of other/foreignness as an individual and national
matter of contention, and perhaps now more than ever in our post-9/11 culture, the encounter with, and
resolution to eject or assimilate the foreigner functions as a means of solidarity for Americans. Viktor will
undergo a similar investigation throughout the film.
As security and police agents chase the group of Chinese, Mickey Mouse sweater-wearing forgers
through the airport, one of them brushes past Viktor while he speaks with a customs official about his

entry into the United States. Carrying his luggage, and mysterious Planters Peanuts can, Viktor is
informed that his passport has failed, and hes pulled out of line. Officer Thurman, Franks right-hand
man, accompanies Viktor to a stanchioned-off area in the middle of the terminal, and groups of people
look on as Viktor is isolated in a four by four foot square space delineated by the blue nlylon U.S.
Customs belts. Until his proper status can be ascertained, he is marked as foreign, poisonous to the crew
and other passengers, and he must be investigated. As an exile in an unfamiliar land, the foreign body
represents a threatening element, at once fascinating and repulsive; a condition Kristeva calls the abject.
The abject induces a simultaneous fear and fascination, the dissolution of boundaries, and a return to the
maternal space of the semiotic (Kristeva, 1982, 2). Kristeva incorporates her analysis of the abject into
her discussion of the foreigner when she writes, Confronting the foreigner whom I reject and with
whom at the same time I identify, I lose my boundaries, I no longer have a container, the memory of
experiences when I had been abandoned overwhelm me, I lose my composure. I feel lost, indistinct,
hazy (1991, 187). !The experience of foreignness is akin to the experience of abjection, in that the
subject is jettisoned back to the realm of the semiotic, and to our first home the mothers body where
the drives do not remain housed securely in the unconscious, but return in estranging bodily symptoms
and affects (Smith, 23). The individual subject is haunted by the looming threat of the presubjective
experience of abjection; the vortex of summons and repulsion (that) places the one haunted by it
literally beside himself (Kristeva, 1982, 1). The nation-state is threatened by the return of the foreigner,
as one who beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire (ibid, 1). For Freud, a confrontation with the
other evokes the uncanny. For Kristeva, a confrontation with the foreigner gives rise to abjection.
Viktor is taken to Franks office for questioning, where he is informed that while he was in the air, there
was a military coup in his home country of Krakozhia. Because of this, all of his travelling privileges have
been suspended, and the visa that would have allowed him to enter the United States has been revoked.
Currently, you are a citizen of nowhere, Frank tells him. And the thing is, you dont really have a
home, you dont. Technically it doesnt exist. In losing his home(land), Viktor has lost his mother(land),
for as Kristeva says, The foreigner, thus, has lost his mother (Kristeva, 1991, 5). The foreigners
existence involves a separation from ones origins from the mother and the assumption of an orphan
status, which means that for the foreigner to start anew, he must do so in a decidedly non-maternal
environment (Lechte, 80-81). Just as Frank says, Viktor has fallen through a small crack in the
system; he occupies the space in-between, foreign, Not belonging to any place, any time, any love
(Kristeva, 1991, 7). His presence disturbs identity, system, order, drawing attention to the fragility of
the law, and to that which does not respect borders, positions, rules (1982, 4). Frank, thrust into this
confrontation with abject foreignness, allows Viktor to enter the International Transit Lounge until
Uncle Sam works out the details of his case. Officer Thurman then escorts Viktor out of the

Department of Homeland Security offices, and provides him with several food vouchers, a 15-minute
pre-paid calling card, a pager, and an ID badge. The scene culminates with Viktor left standing in the
middle of the terminal, alone amongst a crowd of hundreds, his abject body a symbol of the foreign
intruder that must be either assimilated or ejected in order to alleviate the threat it imposes upon the
American people and their home(land).

You are at this time, simplyunacceptable.

The foreigner is poised between two opposing attitudes; he either attempts at all costs to merge into that
homogenous texture that knows no other, to identify with it, to vanish into it, to become assimilated, or
he withdraws into his isolation, humiliated and offended (1991, 39). It is made explicitly clear that
Viktor, as a foreigner, must either conform to American cultural standards, or face rejection and
expulsion. American culture in The Terminal is defined by a number of habits and characteristics:
consumerism, eating fast food, speaking proper English, performing a hard days work, and heterosexual
coupling.
In order to properly feed himself, Viktor must first discover and embrace two of the fundamental tenants
of American culture: capitalism and consumerism. Viktor tries to keep his appointment with Gumpta,
who merely shrugs him off saying, Tuesday, I hate-a the Tuesday! Later that day, while meandering
through the food court, Viktor watches as an airport busser cleans plates of food off of the small
cylindrical tables. He inches forward, eying a plate of salad that the worker has overlooked, and just as
hes about to make his move, a woman walks in front of him with a large metal luggage cart. Excuse me
buddy, she says, depositing the cart into its corral, and retrieving her 25 cents deposit back. Viktor
approaches the machine, looks at the large .25 Reward label above its coin dispensary, and has an
idea. The following sequence shows him scurrying about the airport, gathering a small row of pushcarts,
and returning them for coins. Viktor has found his means of production, with his initial output of labor
producing a profit of 75 cents. Like any typical American, he takes his first earnings to the Burger King
to buy a small cheeseburger. Keep the change, he tells the cashier, before sitting down to stuff the
burger into his mouth. Viktor is learning what it takes to be a proper capitalist; his first step towards
assimilation. American capitalism, however, demands not only that you acquire wealth, but that you
acquire as much wealth as possible. Viktor quickly realizes this, and the following montage is of him
collecting more and more carts, this time earning enough money to buy an entire value meal, complete
with a Whopper, green salad, large fries, apple pie, and a Coke. With more carts come more money,
more food, and much bigger burgers. Similar lessons of excess are evident throughout the film, most
notably the egregious product placement and icons of consumer culture that permeate the mise-en-scne
at every possible turn. As Viktor and the other characters traverse the narrative, numerous scenes take

place in front of cafes and eateries like Starbucks, Baskin Robbins, Panda Express, and Sbarro. Retail
shops like Dean & Deluca, Verizon Wireless, and Cambridge Soundworks are clumsily situated in the
frame during key situations that relay dialogue and story action. In one scene, Viktor and Amelia have a
conversation about Napoleon in a Borders bookstore #3(hes holding a copy of Dr. Suesss Oh the
Places Youll Go), while during another Viktor realizes he needs to get a job, so he visits the Discovery
Channel Store, Yoshinoya, Brookstone, Swatch, and La Perla to fill out applications. The transit lounge
is not dissimilar from your average American mall, and in The Terminal this space functions as a training
grounds of sorts for Viktor to immerse himself in before proceeding into the United States. Officer
Thurman makes this abundantly clear when he says to Viktor, just before leaving him in the terminal on
the afternoon of his arrival, that, Theres only one thing you can do here Mr. Navorskishop. Viktor
comes to fully appreciate this sentiment, and with his knowledge of the capitalist system, and newfound
understanding of how to best produce and consume in his environment, he can focus on the next order of
business towards assimilating into American culture.
Kristeva writes that because he is between two languages the foreigners realm is silence (ibid, 15).
As a foreigner in an English-speaking world, Viktor is living with resonances and reasoning that are cut
off from the bodys nocturnal memory (ibid, 15). Continually bombarded with words and phrases that
are as unfamiliar to him as he is to the people who hurl them, Viktor will be forced to abandon his native
Krakozhian and learn English. This realization is made clear soon after the cart sequence. While gorging
on his newly purchased hamburger and French fries, Viktors attention is suddenly diverted by the
sounds of the Krakozhian national anthem wafting across the food court. Moving to a television monitor
where WGN News is continuing with their Crisis in Krakozhia coverage, Viktor looks on as a reporter
speaks about the violent insurrection, its devastating effect on the people, and the countrys uncertain
future. He attempts to read the headlines on the crawl in the lower third of the screen, but he is only able
to recognize the words crisis, food, and Krakozhia. Frustrated, Viktor makes his way to the
Borders bookstore, where he purchases two New York City travel guides: one in English, and the other
in Krakozhian. Studying the guides side by side, Viktor reads about the story of Broadway and the cast
of the international comedy hit Friends. He begins to put together words and sentences, slowly
wrapping his mind around the structure of the language, but perhaps more important than learning
English is the lesson Viktor is learning about American pop culture, its modes of entertainment, and
values of celebrity worship. Eventually he is able to read along and understand the majority of the WGN
news crawl, however, similar to his acceptance within American culture, Viktor will soon learn that his
grasp of the language has its limits. Just after Frank creates the Transportation Liaison position to
alleviate his means of making money, Viktor becomes friends with a baggage handler for one of the
airlines named Enrique Cruz. During one of their conversations about an immigration officer named

Dolores whom Enrique has a crush on, Viktor tells him that she used to have a boyfriend, but they broke
up. What happened? Enrique asks. Eat shit, Viktor says. Whateat shit? replies a stunned
Enrique, who then asks for Viktor to repeat exactly what Dolores said. Eat shit, she catch him, he says
before Enrique interrupts. Oh, he cheats! Say cheats not shit. It is in moments like this that Viktors
foreignness punctures the faade of assimilation he is trying to construct. His thick accent and the
occasional mispronunciation mark him as foreign, irritating just the same to those properly situated
within American culture, and are painful signifiers of the notion that he will never be a part of it (ibid,
15). Ultimately, the foreigner in The Terminal is condemned to silence. When Viktor asks Gupta if he is
afraid of being deported, he replies, As long as I keep my floor clean, keep my head down, they have no
reason to deport me. They have no reason to notice a man like me. The foreigner is silent and
withdrawn, all the while seeking to appease the wishes of others so that he may remain invisible. Thus
the foreigner, settled within himselfhas no self (ibid, 8).
From the very start of the film, it is made clear that Franks endeavor as Customs Director is silencing
the foreigner. When he is introduced in the opening moments of the film, he is looking at a bank of
security monitors, and fishing as Officer Thurman says for potential foreign threats. After recognizing
and expelling the Chinese tourists, his next problem is Viktor and his ambiguous status, which he
initially attempts to deal with by letting him go. Sometimes you land a small fish, unhook him very
carefully, you place him back in the water, set him free so somebody else can have the pleasure of
catching him, he says to Thurman. This poses a problem, however, because at this point in the film
Viktor is not equipped to venture out into America, as he is not yet fully assimilated. Conversely, he
represents the dangerous foreign body that may potentially harm the homeland, a threat to national
security as Frank says. Viktors position in-between these two poles is a continual source of anxiety for
Frank, who makes several unsuccessful attempts at alleviating the situation. When simply letting him go
fails, Frank tries to call in favors with officials at other airports to have him moved, devises a
workaround that would require Viktor admitting a credible fear of going back to Krakozhia, and even
contacts the FBI to have him put in a federal detention center under the guidelines of section 212. At
one point he sequesters Viktor in a large room containing only a handful of wooden cots and a toilet, a
scene that evokes the dread of being indefinitely and forcibly detained; an intrusion on the human rights
of immigrants made possible by the U.S.A. Patriot Act in year subsequent to the attacks of 9/11.
Rendered silent, and stuck within that polymorphic mutism, Kristeva writes that instead of saying, the
foreigner can attempt doing housecleaning, playing tennis, soccer, sailing, sewing, horseback riding,
jogging, getting pregnant, what have you and this is precisely what Viktor does (ibid, 16). It is made
clear early on in the film that Viktor is crafty with tools. Feeling sleepy after a long first day in the
terminal, he gathers a row of old airports chairs, and constructs them into a makeshift bed. When Frank

creates the Transportation Liason position, which prohibits him from earning money by collecting stray
carts, Viktor again finds himself without food, and so he is forced to find a job. He visits a number of
eateries and boutiques in the terminal, one by one filling out applications and answering questions. Most
of the merchants simply laugh at and dismiss him, denying him an opportunity because he has no
address, phone number, drivers license, or social security number; absent signifiers to attest that he is a
lost origin, the impossibility to take root, a rummaging memory, the present in abeyance (ibid, 7). Later
that night, walking back towards Gate 67 #(his surrogate home during his stay in the airport), Viktor
passes through a section that is under construction. He eyes a large wall, stripped of its paint, and in
need of some patching and resurfacing. He picks up a large putty knife, and working all night he scrapes
off all of the excess stucco, patches a large rectangular hole, frames a decorative addition, and finishes the
job with a fresh coat of white paint. In the morning the foreman and his crew show up to find Viktor,
paintbrush still in hand, admiring the finished product. When the foreman asks, Who is this? Who are
you? Viktor opens his mouth to speak, pauses, and then the assistant foreman, shuffling through a list of
papers replies, Hes no one. Though the foreigner is silent, no one, he is still, as Kristeva writes, the
one who works, and though Viktor is a foreigner in a strange land, he still considers work as a value,
and the foreman hires him onto the crew full-time (ibid, 17). Gupta similarly has not come here just to
waste his time away, taking great dignity in his work as a janitor, and when Viktor tries to use his mop
to clean up a mess in the food court, Gumpta gets upset (ibid, 18). Put it down! he yells. You try to
take my mop, you try to take my floor. Its my job! Stay off my floor, stay away from my mop. If you
touch it again, I kill you! The foreigner, possessed with driving ambition, a pusher, or merely
craftytakes on all jobs and tries to be tops in those that are scarcest. In those that nobody wants but
also in those that nobody has thought of (ibid, 18).

From now on, you and I are partners

When Viktor meets Amelia, he is helping her over to a nearby bench, having just slipped on a freshly
mopped section of the terminal floor. Wet floor he says to her, picking up one of the plastic yellow
signs from the ground, that you, he quips, pointing to the image of a small figure on the sign,
tumbling backwards after not heeding the bright red caution warning. When speaking of the unheimlich
place, Freud writes that it is:
the entrance to the former Heim [home] of all human beings, to the place where each one of us
lived once upon a time and in the beginning. There is a joke saying that Love is home-sickness;
and whenever a man dreams of a place or a country and says to himself, while he is still dreaming:
this place is familiar to me, Ive been here before, we may interpret the place as being his mothers
genitals or her body (Freud, 245).

While Freud goes on to assert that ones homesickness for the mother's womb ultimately manifests itself
in the uncanniness of the female genitalia, it is clear that we should also understand this passage in its

denotative sense, as the longing to return to ones home or nation. Throughout the rest of the film
Amelias function is twofold: she provides Viktor with a lesson in love, satisfying the classical Hollywood
trope of heterosexual coupling so as to quell any anxieties about Viktors sexuality, and she also fills the
void in Viktors heart brought about by his separation from Krakozhia. The former is best illustrated
during his courtship of her as the film progresses, and the latter comes about during the climactic
moments of the film, when Viktor is celebrating the end of the war, and Amelia presents him with a oneday emergency travel visa that will allow him to enter the United States. I go New York! he exclaims,
holding up the document in the air as his gathering of friends around him cheer and congratulate him.
When he asks her to come along, however, Amelias glowing smile dissipates. I told you to stay away
from me Viktor, she says, but you didnt understand, I think you were confused. It is instantly clear to
Viktor that their love affair will not continue. With tears in his eyes, Viktor attempts to sway her, I
confused about everything, I not confused, not this (first gesturing to the documents) not this (then
putting his hand over his heart). Viktors love for Amelia comes to light as an uncanny manifestation of
his repressed homesickness, and he acknowledges the connection between the two by his asserting that
he is neither confused by his feelings of home, signaled by his gesture to the documents that consent his
entrance into the U.S. (so that he can ultimately return to Krakozhia), nor is he confused about his
feelings for her, signaled by him placing his hand over his heart.
Viktor is explicitly connected to Frank as well, as the two are both going through a transition period;
Viktor must assimilate in order to enter the U.S., and Frank has recently been nominated to take over as
CVP Field Commissioner in Washington. The emergency travel documents that Amelia have arranged
for Viktor need Franks signature to validate their authenticity. His signature functions as a one of the
many links between the two men, as it is both an approval of Viktors assimilation, allowing him to cross
over into American soil, and also a signifier of his absolute authority as Field Commissioner, an
achievement ultimately made possible by Viktors intrusion into his world. Their connection is also made
apparent early in the film when Frank, in conversation with Officer Thurman about Viktors dilemma,
says bluntly, Who knows what this guy is thinkingwhat gulag he escaped from. Everything he does
comes back to me. Kristeva articulates her reading of Freudian otherness when she writes that the
archaic, narcissistic self, not yet demarcated by the outside world, projects out of itself what it
experiences as dangerous or unpleasant in itself, making of it an alien double, uncanny and demonical
(Kristeva, 1991, 183). Viktor is Franks uncanny doppelganger. As the abject foreigner, his arrival in the
terminal is a manifestation of Franks repressed anxiety about his new position, and a threat to Franks
chances of assuming his role as the new commissioner. We see this explicitly in the scene where a crew of
inspectors is observing Frank at the airport, and a dangerous situation arises with Milodragovich, a
Russian traveller whos just landed on a trip from Toronto. Frank needs Viktors help to translate, and

agrees to let him go to New York if he can help diffuse the situation. They learn that Milodragovich is
trying to bring four bottles of pills back to Russia to help his sick father, but Frank informs him through
Viktor that because he does not have a medicinal purchase license, the pills will be confiscated by U.S.
customs. Watching as uniformed officers carry Milodragovich away in handcuffs, Viktor looks down at
the pill bottles in his hands, and then back up, his face bright with an idea. Goat, goat, the medicine is
for goat! he exclaims. I not understand himin Krakozhia, the name for father is, sound like goat.
Frank immediately sees through Viktors deception. Youve been reading the immigration forms, he
says, the blue onethe one that says if its an animal, he doesnt need the medicinal purchase license.
Viktor insists that he made a mistake, and Frank reluctantly gives Milodragovich the pills. Incensed that
Viktor was able to both diffuse the situation and achieve the optimal result when he himself could not,
Frank grabs him by the back of the neck and pushes him up against a copy machine. Do you think I
need an excuse to put you back in that cell, to keep you there for another five years? he growls. When
you go to war with me, you go to war with the Unites States of America. Franks outburst, brought
about by Viktors uncanny strangeness, is a defense put up by a distraught self, that conjures the image
of the malevolent double, projected onto Viktors abject body, onto which he can his impose his power,
and focus his rage (ibid, 183-84).
When he looks up, he sees that everyone has been watching the display - his employees, the government
officials, and most importantly, the outgoing Field Commissioner, who later tells him that, you could
learn something from Navorski. After their dispute, Viktor tries to apologize by bringing him a large
stuffed fish that he won in a late night poker game, and Frank asks him what hes carrying in the
Planters Peanuts can. A promise, Viktor says, to which Frank replies, Let me make you a promise
ViktorFrom now on, you and I are partners. If I stay, you stay. You will not set one foot in New York
City. Not a single toe in the United States of America. Franks threat is a further illustration of their
bond, and an early marker of Kristevas call for an ethic of cosmopolitanism. Living with the other, with
the foreigner, she writes, confronts us with the possibility or not of being an other. It is not simply humanistically - a matter of our being able to accept the other, but of being in his place, and this means to
imagine and make oneself other for oneself (Kristeva, 1991, 13). Frank glares intently, pointing his finger
at Viktor as he speaks, and by virtue of pointing at his doppelganger, he is in essence pointing at himself.
Additionally, the framing of the shot suggests that he is also directing his gaze and finger at the spectator
(and thus American culture at large), and so it is from here on out that we realize the importance of the
bond shared by us all, as that which would recognize everyone as having universal rights qua human
being as Kristeva says (Lechte, 80).
When the film arrives at its climax, Viktor is standing, his arms full of commodities that the local

merchants have given to him for his journey, in front of a wall of customs officials, who have been
directed by Frank to stop him from entering into the United States. Officer Thurman, however, gives
Viktor his coat, and allows him passage into America. Viktor walks out into the winter air, a flurry of
snow embracing his body, and he gets into a cab to head to his destination. Frank comes barreling out
onto the sidewalk after him, and one of his officers asks if they want to seal off the exits and perform a
vehicle search. He down looks at his watch, and smiles. He has decided to let Viktor go, because in this
moment, after all that the two have been through, he has recognized and accepted his own foreignness.
The foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arises, Kristeva declares, and he
disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities
(1991, 192). The union developed between the two throughout the film culminates in an illustration of
Kristevas call for a cosmopolitanism that recognizes the universality of human rights, and the notion that
by embracing the foreigner within, we can accept that there are no foreigners; The foreigner is within
me, hence we are all foreigners (Kristeva, 192). What The Terminal makes clear, is that foreignness is
the normal state of affairs for a citizen at the end of the twentieth century, and ultimately, Kristevas
notion that that Given such a situation, cosmopolitanism once again becomes the necessary universal
principle for regulating human relations (Lechte, 82).

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Kristeva, Julia. trangers nous-mmes, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
--------------. Powers of Horror, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Lechte, John. Julia Kristeva. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Moruzzi, Norma Claire. "National Abjects: Julia Kristeva on the Process of Political Self-Identification,"
in Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writing. Ed. by Kelly Oliver. New York:
Routledge, 1993.
Smith, Anna. Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement, New York: St. Martins Press, 1996.