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Abstract

The article is devoted to the nomination “gynocide” emerged in feministic literature of the 1970s. The author examines the origin of a lexeme and the nature of its use in the scientifi c and art sphere. The authorship of the term belongs to the American feminist Andrea Dworkin. Combining the millennia-old Chinese tradition of foot binding and the prosecution of witches in medieval Europe, Dworkin implies the underlying crime of Patriarchal culture against women in the invented lexeme. She characterizes the studied cultural practices as an expression of the fear of the feminine nature and the desire to establish control over it in order to ensure the dominance of masculinity in the culture. Dworkin’s occasionalism came both in modern scientifi c vocabulary and in modern artistic culture. The primary subject of the article is the work of the contemporary Danish fi lm screenwriter and director L. von Trier. The analysis of the image system of the fi lm “Antichrist” in conjunction with the analysis of functioning the concept “gynocide” in it as well as other analysis of movie texts by L. von Trier allows us to refute the common opinion about anti-feminism of his work. The author of the article concludes that the cinema of Lars von Trier reveals the deep drama of the women’s position in the culture. The analysis is carried out on the material of the series “Depression Trilogy” which includes the fi lms “Antichrist” (2009), “Melancholia” (2011), “Nymphomaniac” (2013). The paper has been written in an interdisciplinary way: the gender anthropology is combined with a lexical analysis of genesis and the analysis of cinematic text.

Keywords

occasionalism, feminism, Christian anti-feminism, Lars von Trier, image of the woman

Olga N. Turysheva - Ural Federal University, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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