대안영화로서의 제인 캠피온의 <피아노>

Abstract

The dominance of Hollywood's film industry all thorough the world functions to diminish the film production of third worlds including independent and feminist film productions. This essay discusses the suppressive impact of mainstream Hollywood films on female and minority values and then thereby suggests the necessity of an alternative cinema. Hollywood films have idealized the obedient and, at the same time, sexually attractive female figures for the masculine desire. The critique of capitalistic and patriarchic Hollywood cinemas leads to seek for the production of alternative cinemas in which the values of women and minorities are not endangered. Produced by a third world, namely Australia, woman director Jane Campion, The Piano can be read as an alternative cinema to Hollywood films. Ada, the heroine of the film, does not have a speaking voice. Her communication with the world and other people is done through her body. The bodily communication without a speaking voice is a struggle to defend femininity in opposition to the dominant masculine order constructed by the male centered language as the Lacan's notion of the name of the father suggests. The candid presentation of female and male bodies in the film meticulously undermines the ways of the sexual presentation of human bodies in Hollywood films. In the historical context of the film in the 19th century colonial world of Australia, the presentation of a trade privileging use values over exchange values is a critique of the Western capitalistic colonialism that has threatened the harmonious unity of man and nature in the indigenous society of Australian Aborigines.