Lars von Trier's Women

The Danish director Lars von Trier is undoubtedly one of the world's most important and controversial filmmakers and arguably so because of the depiction of women in his films. He has been criticized for subjecting his female characters to unacceptable levels of violence or reducing them to masochistic self-abnegation as with Bess in<i> Breaking the Waves</i> 'She' in <i>Antichrist </i>and Joe in <i>Nymphomaniac</i>. At other times it is the women in his films who are dominant or break out in violence as in his adaptation of Euripides' <i>Medea</i> the conclusion of <i>Dogville </i>and perhaps throughout <i>Nymphomaniac</i>. <i>Lars von Trier's Women </i>confronts these dichotomies head on. Editors Rex Butler and David Denny do not take a position either for or against von Trier but rather consider how both attitudes fall short of the real difficulty of his films which may simply not conform to any kind of feminist or indeed anti-feminist politics as they are currently configured. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis and acknowledging the work of prior scholars on the films <i>Lars von Trier's Women</i> reveals hidden resources for a renewed 'feminist' politics and social practice.