Financial Times Europe - 09.11.2019 - 10.11.2019

10 ★ FT Weekend 9 November/10 November 2019

Y

oung, diverse and exuding art-house

chic, the crowd that flocked to London’s

Barbican in March to listen to film theo-

rist Laura Mulvey as not what you’dw

expect for a 78-year-old academic.

It’s been almost 45 years since Mulvey ignited a

generation of feminists with her concept of the

“male gaze”, coined in 1975 to describe the domi-

nant assumption in Hollywood that the perspect-

ive of film-maker and viewer is male. She was the

first to call out the “sexual imbalance” of main-

stream cinema and how it positions men as specta-

tors, women as objects. Mulvey has a voice that car-

ries. In the wake of #MeToo, and in an age where

being active on social media demands a constant

ebb and flow of looking and self-presenting, her

coinage has been taken up by a new vanguard.

When the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault alle-

gations rocked Hollywood in 2017, the “male gaze”

came also to encompass the off-screen sexism rife

in the industry itself. It has since become a buz-

zword for sexual objectification across advertising,

art and literature. In turn, it sparked the counter-

revolution of the “female gaze”, loosely defined as a

perspective — be it queer, black or women-focused

— that challenges the age-old outlook of the white

heterosexual male. “Female gaze” has morphed

into a hashtag movement and a rallying cry for a

generation of creatives, from writer and performer

Phoebe Waller-Bridge to pop singer Lizzo, TV

showrunner Jill Soloway to feminist erotic film-

maker Erika Lust. A wave of artists and audiences

are actively adapting and expanding Mulvey’s

thinking — and now, so is the critic herself.

“As [the male gaze] gains in currency, it takes on

more of a life of its

ow n ,” M u lvey

writes inAfter-

images: On Cinema,

Women and Chang-

ing Times, her first

book since 2006.

Ruptures and con-

tinuities between

past and present

offer a thematic

thread through-

out the essay col-

lection, which

moves from the

decline of Holly-

wood’s studio sys-

tem to critiques of

films by and about women, and a survey of moving

images within visual art.

Mulvey’s new book is especially pertinent, given

the widening rift between her second-wave femi-

nist peers — who are predominantly white academ-

ics — and the current “fourth-wave”, known for its

Twittersphere stomping ground and exacting

inclusivity standards. Mulvey herself has been

“called out” by younger readers for the rigid hetero-

sexual framework of her 1975 essay and its failure

to acknowledge how the whiteness of Hollywood is

complicit in the all-powerful “male gaze”.

However, unlike older feminists such as Ger-

maine Greer, whose controversial writings on

transgender rights and rape have alienated new

audiences and led to her being “cancelled” in some

circles, Mulvey embraces these criticisms. In a

compellingappendix, she addresses her previous

blind spots. “Looking back on the essay, I seem to

have missed a lot of possible nuances in the argu-

ment, especially where a potential female or les-

bian spectator is concerned,” she admits.

Efforts to move forwards are most acute in her

postcolonial analysis of motherhood in Julie

Dash’sDaughters of Dust 1991), the first feature(

film by an African-American woman to gain gen-

eral theatrical release, and in her attraction to the

progressive work of 78-year-old multimedia artist

Mary Kelly. Kelly’s 2006 installationLove Songs

explores the legacy of the women’s liberation

movement “through the eyes of a younger gener-

ation”, Mulvey writes, conscious of her own chang-

ing readership.

It would have been exciting to see Mulvey apply

her flexible mind to today’s mainstream Holly-

wood output,and her trademark psychoanalysis

can prove dense at times. But Mulvey’s voice cuts

through generational divides andAfterimages

strikes a balance between consistency of thought

and a willingness to adapt.

H

ow far would you take a

digital detox? Delete Twit-

ter? Throw your phone off

a cliff? Luiza Sauma takes

it a step further inEvery-

thing You Ever Wanted, her recent novel

about the grips of anxiety in an alternate

now. Iris, a technology-dependent mil-

lennial, leaves Earth to join a colony on

Planet Nyx. With no oxygen on Nyx,

inhabitants must stay inside, watched

by cameras that feed back to Earth.

Years later, now accustomed to the view

through the window, Iris looks at the

“pink sand dunes” and the “searing blue

sky” and sees it “like a screensaver —

unreal and easy to ignore”.

Iris has no devices, yet her brain still

makes that connection. She still yearns

to check her phone, to be made signifi-

cant by existing online. She is obsessed

with the cameras that watch her, taking

meaning from the red light that flickers,

confirming that the camera is on,

recording. She imagines people back on

Earth speculating over her. Though she

doesn’t have access to digital systems,

her digital-driven psyche remains.

New technologies and their effects on

how we live have long proved an inspir-

ation for writers: whether it was Tho-

mas Hardy and the industrial revolu-

tion, or Mary Shelley and electricity.

Butthe digital age has introduced a

technology that infiltrates our inner

lives. Everyone’s version is personal-

ised, tweaked by algorithms and news-

feeds. Ever-expanding, its multiplicities

teach us new ways of communication

and intimacy, tugging at our attention

spans and becoming part of us, while

social media profiles stay rigidly

curated. This slippery sense of self is a

challenge for writers to capture.Fiction

is led by characterisation, and yet we are

still working out the effects of the inter-

net on ourselves — as a clutch of recently

published novels show.

In Halle Butler’sThe New Me, t he

increasingly depressed protagonist, Mil-

lie, relies on TV to evade her loneliness,

and ignores her phone to avoid the texts

coming in. Meanwhile, the characters

on screen “never watch TV, they never

check their email without event, they

always worry about something real”.

When the digital psyche is absent from

something set in the modern-day — this

compulsion to check, to flick, to be seen

— it feels exactly that: absent. For the

generations of writers who were

immersed in social media and digital

technology from an early age, it’s

implausible to ignore it.

So how does the contemporary writer

take on the digital psyche and integrate it

into fiction? Some — including Ben

Lerner inLeaving the Atocha Station

(2011), Sally Rooney inConversations

with Friends(2017), and Niviaq Kor-

neliussen inCrimson(2018) — have

introduced online chats into their books.

On the surface, it seems a similar task to

writing dialogue. They are both immedi-

ate, with people ready to respond to each

other, and on the page we read them in

Afterimages:

On Cinema, Women

and Changing Times

by Laura Mulvey

Reaktion Books £15, 288 pages

Sight lines

The critic who coined the term ‘male

gaze’ is nowreaching the #MeToo

generation, writesMadeleine Pollard

Illustration

by Tim Marrs

around her is a “bitter cliché”. The dig-

ital psyche has a flippancy. Straight-

forwardly processing emotion is impos-

sible. Iris inEverything You Ever Wanted

finds herself losing feeling. In her last

few days on Earth, shesits looking t thea

sunset. “There would be no sunsets on

Nyx. Iris took a photo of it, uploaded it

to Instagram and waited for someone to

like it.” Social media allows her to react

without having to process.

This slippery self — where we are

overwhelmed by page after

page and person after per-

son, where we can

knock someone out of

our lives with the

click of “unfollow”

— creates a simulta-

neous feeling of bom-

bardment and control.

There’s something writ-

erly about it: we put our-

selves down in words, we

choose characters who

can participate, those we

nudge out.

When I started writing my

own novel, incorporating this dig-

ital compulsion was one of the

first issues I ran into. I was writ-

ing a book that aimed to follow

the mind of a woman in her

twenties, nonstop, so ignoring it

would be a plot-hole. But quickly,

I found that it opened up my

protagonist, created a portal

to others while still keeping

her isolated. It inspired me to

shake up form; the pressures of

an age of distraction making

me break up prose into columns

and fragments.

The digital psyche allows

writers to find new layers of

meaning. It is not just a matter

of adapting plot and charac-

ters’ feelings to incorporate the

online world. Writers embody it

in their language and form: incor-

porating the tight prose and humour

of online speak.

The young Texan writer Bryan Wash-

ington reads like a millennial Lucia Ber-

lin (Berlin, a short-story writer born in

1936, is a master of precise prose). In

“Alief”, a story from Washington’s col-

lectionLot, Aja is cheating on her hus-

band Paul, and the neighbours know.

Their neighbours speak as one: a plural-

ised narrator that is a lyrical, inadvert-

ent mob; building like supporters of a

Twitter argument.

We told him.

We’re the ones who opened our mouths.

But not all at once. We’re better than that.

Denise whispered it from the lot. Harold

mumbled it in the hallway.

[... ]

And, the thing is, we liked Paul.

We liked Paul.

We liked Paul.

But we spoke as one. A single cry, and then

another.

Washington clips his prose, short sen-

tenced, rhythm leading. Brevity feels

like the switching of tabs on an internet

browser; flipping from sentence to sen-

tence. Was that what Washington

intended? I don’t know. But it’s what I

see. The digital world is not just some-

thing the writer implements. For read-

ers, it’s another interpretation —

another type of ambiguity.

How many times did I flick to Twitter

while writing this essay? It would have

been an interesting experiment to

record, but even if I aspired to count, I

might struggle. Often, it wasn’t a con-

scious choice. I just switched tabs. It can

feel scary to see how ingrained the dig-

ital psyche is — too unknowable, too

dominant — but for writers, it can be

useful. It offers new ways of being able

to address the pace and confusion of

modern-day life, of understanding inti-

macy and disconnection. These feelings

may have far predated the digital age,

but now they are being given new life.

Rebecca Watson is the FT’s acting assistant

arts editor. Her novel ‘little scratch’ will be

published by Faber & Faber in July 2020

Guy

Gunaratne

Born in London

in 1984, Guy

Gunaratne turned

to fiction after

working as

a journalist and

film-maker in global crisis zones. The

energy of his childhood streets forms

the lifeblood of his debut novelIn Our

Mad and Furious City, whichlays bare

thedisconnect between London’s sleek

centre and turbulent margins. He won

the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize, and was

longlisted for the Booker Prize and

Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Oyinkan Braithwaite

The 31-year-old Oyinkan Braithwaite’s

darkly comic 2018 crime thrillerMy

Sister, the Serial

Killer s alreadyi

a bestseller. Set

in her native

Lagos, her debut

novel was

included onthe

Booker longlist.

Braithwaite is an energising voice in

both the British and Nigerian

publishing scenes, also performing

spoken-word poetry and writing

short stories.

Nana

Oforiatta

Ayim

This year has

been busy for

Nana Oforiatta

Ayim, a

multidisciplinary talent who is bringing

African culture to a global audience.

Born in 1976, she curated the first-ever

Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice

Biennale, is in the midst of creating a

pan-African “Cultural Encyclopaedia” in

54 volumes, and has released her fiction

debutThe God Child. With lyrical prose,

the narrative echoes Ayim’s own

upbringing between her native Ghana,

Germany and England, and interweaves

her preoccupation with art heritage.

Ocean Vuong

The grandson of

an American

soldier and

Vietnamese farm

girl, Ocean Vuong

pours his

extraordinary

family history into his writing. Now

living and lecturing in Massachusetts,

the 31-year-oldwon the TS Eliot Prize

for his 2016 poetry collectionNight Sky

with Exit Wounds. His debut novelOn

Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 2019), a(

queer coming-of-age story, was

published this year.

Elaine Castillo

Filipino-American

Elaine Castillo,

born in 1984,

foregrounds her

personal politics in

her writing. In her

acclaimed novel

America Is Not the Heart 2018), she(

maps out immigrant realities in America

through three generations of women in

a Filipino family. Returning to the US

after eight yearsin London, she has

become popular on public speaking

circuits and has lectured on Asian-

American studies.

Madeleine Pollard

the same way. And yet: the person’s

attention is not guaranteed; they

could look up from their phone at

any moment. Online, you are

unable to judge facial expressions,

unable to see a shrug or nod, unable

to touch. It’s the perfect form for

capturing the digital psyche: simul-

taneous isolation and interaction.

For writers, it also offers the

opportunity to break out of

traditional prose, in a nod to

the novel’s earliest — episto-

lary — form. But while letters

and prose arewritten after

consideration, messages

must seem off-the-cuff.

InLeaving the Atocha

Station, Lerner uses

G - c h a t. Ad a m , i n

Madrid, logs in to talk to

his friend Cyrus in Mexico.

Slowly it becomes clear that

Cyrus has recently witnessed a

stranger drowning. Adam’s jokes

and interruptions from the beginning

of the chat suddenly feel wildly inappro-

priate yet impossible to retract:

ME: jesus

CYRUS: she was screaming and water was

ME: jesus

CYRUS: getting in her mouth and she was

struggling against the current in the wrong

way

ME: couldn’t somebody get her

The artifice of online chat means you

need to confirm your presence, even if

it’s a small exclamation: jesus, Adam

chimes, jesus. Lerner’s use of G-chat

heightens the difficulty of connection.

The conversation is confused, harrow-

ing, then deflated. Emotion is caged in

by the confines of online chat. Although

there has been an intense revelation,

there has been no real connection. It

ends with a mundane switcharound

that has a strange pathos in its dullness:

CYRUS: Thanks

CYRUS: How is Spain?

InConversations with Friends, Rooney’s

protagonist, Frances, searches through

the log of her conversations with her ex-

girlfriend Bobbi. She types in “feelings”

and unearths a conversation from their

second year of college:

Bobbi: well you don’t really talk about your

feelings

me: you’re committed to this view of me

me: as having some kind of undisclosed

emotional life

me: I’m just not very emotional

me: I don’t talk about it because there’s

nothing to talk about

Bobbi: i don’t think ‘unemotional’ is a

quality someone can have

Bobbi: that’s like claiming not to have

thoughts

It’s a plot tool that meansRooney’s pro-

tagonist an see past conversationsc

without having to flashback, or stage a

memory recall. These conversation logs

assure accuracy too: a character’s mem-

ory would be fallible. Rooney uses it to

trigger this conflict of intimacy and iso-

lation. Frances digs in; seeking old con-

tent that once felt intimate. But though

the search results are immediate, they

are also nostalgic: they are a souvenir of

something that no longer exists. If any-

thing, they affirm her loneliness.

This false sense of company can take a

disturbing turn. Alice, in Olivia Sudjic’s

Sympathy 2017), shape-shifts, obsessed(

with Mizuko, a woman whose Insta-

gram account she stalks, flip-flopping

between wanting to be her and be with

her. Soon, sheinfiltrates her life, unset-

tlingly crossing the barrier of online.

Sympathy egins at the end of the story:b

with Alice unfollowing Mizuko. It’s

meant to be symbolic, assuming she’d

still haveaccess. But the account has

gone private — she can see nothing. For

Alice, “More than her physical absence,

it was this whiteout that was disorient-

ating. There was little to suggest that

time was passing.” Technology and real-

ity invert, onlinemore real than life.

Isolation haunts many of the new

breed of dissociative, digital-age prota-

gonists. The ease of connecting inspires

disconnection. We can feel desensitised

by overstimulation. Millie, inThe New

Me, is cold and unempathetic. Everyone

Digital technology can be dizzying, offering

new ways to be and to communicate. How

are novelists responding? ByRebecca Watson

FIVE TO WATCH Rising writers

Only

connect

NextGen

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