Meshes of the Afternoon #4

Meshes of the Afternoon is a radical avant-garde film. Maya Deren steps outside the traditional system and creates new forms. Deren disrupts classical identification. The woman in the film is the main character, and Deren uses the female gaze rather than the male gaze. Besides, she also uses distanciation to help viewers stay distanced and critical. Deren makes the story strange and unusual, so when we are watching the movie, we have to figure it out. The items in the movie symbolize something we need to bring our own interpretation forward to understand the film. I believe that Deren also creates a disjuncture between the visual and the sound. In the movie, a lot of sequences are without background music. In Dream 2, for instance, when Deren walks lightly up the stairs, we cannot hear any sound. The whole movie is without conversation. It gives me a feeling that Laura Mulvey mentioned in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: women caught within the language of patriarchy. Deren deliberately chooses to design films without dialogues in the movie is also a way to disrupt Hollywood’s classic pattern. As a choreographer, she incorporates dances into the movie. Her dances in the movie make the audience feels like she is psychotic. I believe that Deren uses these uncommon features in the movie to help her break down the mainstream of Hollywood movies.

Author’s Notes:

Hahaha🤪, i got 40/40 on my assignment!!!