Female Enclosure, Surveillance and Prurient Expectations of the Contemporary Audience: Visualising the Medieval in Newby’s Film Anchoress

• Rebecca D. Flynn ^[1]
  1. [1] Georgia Gwinnett College

     Georgia Gwinnett College

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Exploring Visual Literacy Inside, Outside and Through the Frame / Aundreta Conner Farris (ed. lit.), Frieda Pattenden (ed. lit.), 2012, ISBN 9781848881129, págs. 187-194
• Idioma: español
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • In the Middle Ages the term ‘anchoress’ referred to women who for religious reasons were permanently enclosed in a small chamber or cell appended to a church or located within a churchyard. Though this form of religious asceticism was revered in Middle Ages, little is known about the particular lives these individuals who voluntarily surrendered their names, possessions and their physical freedom as a symbol of earthly penance. The 1993 film, Anchoress , directed by Christopher Newby, attempts to fill this tantalising medieval lacuna by superimposing visual (re)constructions on the historically elusive, physically reclusive 14th century figure of Christine Carpenter. Newby’s film depicts a medieval community’s methods of manipulation and exploitation the anchoress; on the whole they benefit from the prestige and income such a figure brings to their village. Individually, through small windows and squints, villagers can peer inside and survey Christine. Yet, the film unwittingly performs a similar act as the camera permeates the private enclosed spaces the young woman inhabits, exposing private moments and physical acts to an even wider audience. The visual perspective the film reveals that notions of female enclosure do not connote the potential for transcendence of the flesh and divine mystical union with Christ as it did in the Middle Ages. Rather the visual depiction of her cell binds Christine more tightly to her physicality and sexuality, a condition more vulnerable to abuse and degradation, and more available to the voyeuristic expectations of a contemporary audience.