Seduction, Receptivity and the ‘Reminine’ in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book

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Notes

1. From a much cited Greenaway quotation on petergreenaway.org.uk

2. See especially Gras (1995). Fouz‐Hernàndez (2005) and Lawrence (1997, pp. 5–6) offer some further reflections on this theme.

3. Albeit one that he sees Greenaway escaping in Prospero’s Books (1991).

4. From The Falls section 34: Canopy Fallbenning.

5. A Zed and Two Noughts reworks aspects of The Falls section 17: Stachia Fallari; Drowning by Numbers (1988) resumes section 27: Propine Fallax.

6. At several points Greenaway readily acknowledges that Darwin’s theory is ultimately a “human construct” itself, a “creation myth” of sorts which seeks to give “order [to] the beginning of things”, just like Genesis (see the interview with Pally, 2000, p. 107). Cf. his remarks on the refutability of scientific models and on his personal susceptibility to Darwin’s “beautiful myth” in the interview with Woods (1996, pp. 269–70). The notion of Darwin as myth‐maker is, of course, something Greenaway develops cinematically in A Zed and Two Noughts (1986).

7. Quotations from this essay and others collected in the volume Sexual: la sexualitéélargie au sens freudien, are taken from the forthcoming English translation, Freud and the Sexual: Essays 2000–2006 (Laplanche, 2012).

8. See Laplanche (2006).

9. Laplanche is referring to Freud (1919), a text he has invoked on many occasions in this connection over the last 40-years or so.

10. In particular, the work of Roy Schafer, Donald Spence and Serge Viderman. See Laplanche (1991, 1998).

11. I thank Dr Kiyofumi Sugiura for translating the Japanese script here.

12. See Cherry (1987): “Traditionally, a Japanese woman’s appeal was said to reside in an anatomical part that most other nations ignore: the nape [unaji] of the neck. More than breasts, buttocks or legs, the nape exuded sensuality” (p. 21).

13. Cf. Laplanche’s (2003a) attempt to conjugate identification via the adult other.

14. I shall cite from Greenaway’s (1996) screenplay only where it is differs from the finished film, adds particular emphasis to certain moments, or provides English versions of Japanese text used in the film.

15. Cf. A TV Dante (1989) and Prospero’s Books (1991).

16. All translations of André (1995) quotes are my own.

17. On ‘phallic logic’, see especially Laplanche (1980, pp. 59ff; 2003a, 2006).

18. This canon has a key starting point, of course, in Mulvey (1975).

19. Laplanche (1980) traces this progressive slippage from one level of theory to another.

20. Jacques André is Professor of Clinical Psychopathology and Director of the Centre for Studies in Psychopathology and Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VII. A small number of his essays (e.g. André, 1993, 2004, 2006, 2011) have been translated into English. The 1993 article is the pilot study for his monograph Aux origines féminines de la sexualité (André, 1995), which I discuss here. A review in English of the monograph was published by Cournut‐Janin (2003).

21. In particular, Freud (1905, 1919).

22. That the arrow is an aggressive, destructive reincarnation of the phallic quill is demonstrated when Akira, who understands nothing of literature, is shown firing an arrow through one of Nagiko’s books.

23. Cf. André (1995, pp. 118–23).

24. The Greek root angelos = ‘message bearer’.

25. My italics.

26. This is perhaps an implicit nod to the anal sexuality of Freud’s Rat Man.

27. Translation slightly altered.