Page - 53 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Visionary Critique | 53www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 45–66 perpetuating the dualistic split between body and mind with its gendered as- sociations of women with their body and men with their mind,16 the film avoids the objectification and sexualization of Rosetta’s body and instead echoes the feminist concern that we are our bodies, men and women alike, experiencing and expressing ourselves through our bodies, emotions and actions.17 Yet Rosetta’s embodied self is situated in a social context that is marked by gendered violence against women in their bodies, which the film notes in a dis- turbing scene when Riquet, Rosetta’s colleague and friend, follows her to the campground where she lives. Feeling threatened, Rosetta attacks him and they wrestle on the ground in a way that could easily be read as an attempt at rape as Rosetta’s skirt rides up and it becomes unclear who fights whom. Although Riquet only came to tell her the good news that she got a job with his boss in a small waffle factory, viewers are left with a sense of the potential dangerous slippage of friendship into predatory behavior and the precariousness of the young woman’s physical integrity. This sense of permanent threat is further underlined by the way in which Rosetta tends to stake out a situation, looking carefully around a corner before entering it or checking over her shoulder for potential enemies. As Mai notes, Rosetta (1999) is indeed intended by the directors as a film about war,18 and Rosetta is the lonely soldier who has to fight for her daily survival against the capitalist system at large and its male representatives in particular, such as her employers who hire and fire her as best fits their capitalist needs, without atten- tion to her predicament as an underage young woman who carries the weight of responsibility not just for her own existence but also for her mother’s, or the campground supervisor who relentlessly uses his power over the necessities of life (water, gas, electricity, free movement, access to food) and exploits her mother sexually. The film centers on Rosetta’s urgent desire – and need – to find paid work so that she can support her mother and herself. Rosetta can be seen as a typical example of a woman who is disadvantaged by the masculine identity of the eco- nomic system with its ideal of the autonomous, independent worker,19 and is made vulnerable by her commitment to a relationship of care with her mother. As Christine Firer Hinze describes the ideology of domesticity, the ideal worker, conventionally male, is complemented by the female whose family and care work enables the ideal worker to dedicate his attention and strength to work outside the home.20 While in the late 20th century, the ideal worker role was 16 See for the long history of the gendering of body and mind Lloyd 1984. 17 Cf. Moltmann-Wendel 1995. 18 Cf. Mai 2010, 70. 19 Cf. Albrecht 2002, 148. 20 Cf. Hinze 2009, 72.