Masculinizing and Emasculating in Domestic Space: Comparative Studies of Homebound (1967) and Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Keywords: Space, Gender, Domestic, Verticality, Communism
Abstract
By comparing the gender division of labor in domestic space in both Homebound (1967) and Anatomy of a Fall (2023), I address the issue of masculinizing and emasculating on the counter gender with a spatial perspective. First, physical mobility decides the prior access to the public sphere as well as the position of the householder psychologically. Also, the typical and conventional vertical structure of "home" in both films visualizes the gender hierarchy and its collapse within the domestic space. The vertical structure embodies the historically inherited phallus worship symbolically. In this sense, it encounters the requirement of a new space structure that claims gender equality. Approaching the ideal model with practice case of functionalism in architecture, I recount the controversy of the radical equality at the geographic level practiced in communist society by architecture and other supporting mechanisms, which drives the interrogation of the essential association between capitalist structure and male subjectivity since the former, including the basic concepts of private property and liberal market-based competition, is designed and extended by the latter in a biologic sense.
Author Biography
Abigail He is a freelance writer and graduate student of Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University. Her research interests include urban spatial theories, functionalism, visual art, and modern history of East Asian societies. She is attracted by the radical debate of gender issues within space and architecture in her writing. She tries to rouse discreet thinking about the intangible power pattern crossing different disciplines. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in history and Historical Geography. For six months, she was an intern at ByteDance, working on the cooperation of music copyright matters.
During her undergraduate years, she learned Korean and conducted research about the Ancient Sino-Korean relationship. Then, she focused on Frontier Geography, especially the boundary between China and North Korea. Her master's dissertation is focused on the Korean society on the border during the period of the Republic of China, which leads her to read related literature of sociology and anthropology.
