Due to the sudden emergence of free time in my life, I’ve been reading!! A lot!!!! I’ve read three whole books in the past three days. And I love it.
Today I read King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes. Originally published in French in 2006, the book was one that I couldn’t put down, which is not something I can usually say about books I read for school. It was fun and just really cool in a way that drew me in. The only problem is that it is hard to find (I had to get an eBook version from the library). If you can find it, though, I highly recommend it.
Despentes is a controversial figure in feminist theory, especially after directing Baise-moi, a French film that dealt graphically with rape and revenge murders, featuring real sex. It shocked audiences all over the world and got a lot of hate, which is why she wrote this book as a response. “King Kong Theory” is the term she uses to describe the trend of women being the helpless victim in our culture, something that she wants to eradicate in the novel. This book too was criticized for its content and its generalizations, bringing calls of “not all men” from all sides of the political spectrum.
The book explores feminism from a punk rock, in-your-face perspective that may seem controversial to a lot of people in today’s world. She talks about her experiences with rape, sex work, and the porn industry in a really shocking but enlightening way. I have heard criticisms from even liberal women and men that prostitution is demeaning in all cases and “why would you subject yourself to that?” but Despentes flips that on its head with her own experience as a prostitute in France. She argues that women selling their bodies is nothing new, and that even under the traditional marriage contract women sell their bodies doing chores (and sexual acts) in exchange for their husbands to provide security. She also argues that, controversially, the “demeaning” work is actually empowering, profitable, and freeing.
The first line is as follows:
“I am writing as an ugly one for the ugly ones: the old hags, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckables, the neurotics, the psychos, for all those girls who don’t get a look in the universal market of the consumable chick.”
Wow. Right from the beginning, we get a sense of her vibe, which is steadily maintained throughout the whole book. Essentially destroying the entire fiction of women’s portrayals in films made by men, she argues that male directors make female characters act in ways that they would act as women, using violence without thought and fulfilling their own fantasies of loving men. She criticizes the need to feel/dress/act feminine as well as the need to feel/dress/act masculine, targeting not only women in her audience but also men.
She has some controversial opinions around rape that I don’t even know how to get into. If you read the book, let me know what you think. Other than that, though, I was pretty much agreeing with all that she said.
She talked about insecurity and validation from dressing “slutty,” which from my own personal experience is true even (maybe especially?) among teenage girls.
At one point, she says,
“It’s the tiny-dicked local morons who feel obliged to challenge me, just to show their buddies how they dared to put me back in my place. I won’t go into what happens when these idiots realize that the chicks they’d like to fuck would all rather sleep with me. That really sets them off. Is it my fault if they’ve got less sex appeal than a rusty old Renault?”
Comentarios