| Abstrakt: |
This article leans on the dialogic exchange between Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman in Sex, or the Unbearable (2013) as a theoretical springboard for a reading of two of Ulrich Seidl's Paradies trilogy films — Paradies: Liebe (2012) and Paradies: Glaube (2012) — to consider the role sex plays as a site of relationality in both. In connecting sex and the unbearable, Berlant and Edelman suggest that sex has both anchoring and disrupting properties. Bearing this duality in mind, I focus on the two middle-aged, female protagonists we encounter in the films, respectively a sex tourist and a sexually repressed Catholic proselytizer. I propose that through their experiences the films stage encounters with the unbearable. However, the unbearable is not connected to the depiction of sex per se; rather, it emerges from the various relational bonds between the protagonists. Advancing the notion of toxic symbiosis, I argue that relationality in Seidl's films is ambiguous: it can be beneficial for the characters and yet it is also a sign of their exploitation. Relationality thus troubles the reproduction of a social order that is steeped in a normative understanding of (corporeal) relations as constructive, supportive and worthwhile. Sex in Seidl's films is divorced from hegemonic meaning-making, underscoring resistance to totality, independence and control in scenes of relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
