Fits + Starts: Gestures towards Feminine Development (An Audiovisual Collage)

Written By Desirée de Jesus

In these films, female hysteria is something like a virus...and a rite of passage. Girls' bodies shake and quiver. Pubescent girls faint or experience uncontrollable fits of laughter. Hysteria can also be a bodily language used to express what it feels like having to conform to feminine ideals. This video explores and mimics the symptoms of teen girl hysteria.

For educational purposes only.

Filmography:

  • Summer Magic (James Neilson, 1963)

  • Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)

  • The Falling (Carol Morley, 2014)

  • The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)

Desirée de Jesus
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