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The Introductory Event for NCSPP's 2010-2011 Intensive Study Group took place in September 2010 at the Hobart Building in San Francisco. The topic for the yearlong course, as well as the panel, was “Erotics and Intimacy: How Do We Think About Sex?” Panelists included myself, Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, and Francisco Gonzales reading our papers and discussing the film with the audience, moderated by Eric Essman.
The panelists were drawn to the provocative implications of the film, with regard to the topic of sexuality, the erotic, and gender roles. Issues of revenge and violence, especially when subtle and intimate, informed the characters' relational dynamics. We also saw how constructions, cultural values, and practices of the father figure contributed to the psychological make-up of the four main characters.
In Götz Spielman's Revanche, desire circuits through the four main characters — Alex, Tamara, Robert, and Susanne — with regard to both sexual and gender performatives. The exquisite crafting of the film expressively underscores psychological content through image, allusion, lighting, composition, editing, and narrative structure. Traditional iconography of the Mother and the Whore can be theorized next to rescue fantasies (Rescue of the Feminine) and revenge fantasies (Revenge of the Feminine). At the center of the film, constructions of the Masculine explore issues of virility, potency, and display set side by side with depression, withdrawal, and denial. The conflicts between Robert and Alex, shaped in the conventions of the fraternal agon of classical Greek tragedy, are shadowed by the paternal