Konstruerad utsatthet : En bildsemiotisk analys av Nathalie Djurbergs stop motion-filmer Greed och Cave

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to analyse how the exposedness is constructed in the Swedish contemporary artist Nathalie Djurberg’s two stop motion-films Greed and Cave. Five stills from Greed and three stills from Cave will be examined from a feminist perspective with a theoretical viewpoint based on theories from both art history and film studies. The method applied is visual semiotics which focuses on how meaning is created within an artwork rather than what the meaning is. The stills from Djurberg’s films are analysed first on a denotative level and then on a connotative level. Furthermore, visual semiotics theorises that everything is made up of systems of signs which allows this essay to study how the women in Djurberg’s movies functions as signs. The essay demonstrated that the women in Djurberg’s films can be seen as passive objects under the power of the male gaze. However, the analysis also displayed that the woman in Cave can be perceived as someone who defies the patriarchal norms for how a woman should behave and look. Nonetheless, the exposedness of these women seems to be constructed firstly in their bodies and how they are represented, both in looks but also how they are posed to reinforce patriarchal conventions in the female representation, and secondly in their relation to male characters - or the implied male gaze from a spectator - in the films. The women in Djurberg’s films can thus be understood as signs for male sexual desires, as signs for the Woman posing as the Man’s opposite, as the objective for His gaze.