Evalutation of Fiction Stories
The word Desvinc means, in a nutshell, ‘detach from the Patriarchy.’
The aim of this test is to promote and stimulate the imagination in fictional stories, disassociating itself from the inertia of the patriarchal nuclei. Knowing that fictional stories, besides being a product of escape, create
consciousness by advocating aesthetic or moral values of society that describe, almost always based on the patriarchal scheme and, therefore, too often exalting violence as a way of relating human beings.
Desvinc Test Proposal
There are two parts divided: the basic test, which consists of three minimum analytical parameters to accomplish, and an extended test that offers a decalogue of proposals to be promoted.
Basic test
The ultimate INTENTIONALITY of the STORY should not be sexist or misogynist, even if they appear clichés of patriarchal historical normality.
- At least one WOMEN with a certain role of active presence must appear. And her subjectivity must have its own entity. The equal share of women is an added value as long as these women do not reinforce the patriarchal creed.
3. There should not be any indication of free promotion or banalization of VIOLENCE (real or symbolic), RACISM or HOMOPHOBIA, presented as a natural occurrence, unless it is analysed in its context and does not occupy in the plot a central place.
Extended Test
DECALOGUE: Assessable proposals that undo the inertia associated with the Patriarchy.
A. Is there any kind of society where there are no relations of domination?
The knowledge of the existence of different models of society can encourage intrinsic mimetic desire in the human gender. We know that the Patriarchy has not always existed and that, previously, there was a society of maternal family clans that did not exercise coercive power as a group and cooperated with each other.
Social reality reproduces and perpetuates or recreates and transforms itself through human action. To move towards a more harmonious civilization and change the destiny of humanity, it is necessary to stimulate cooperation instead of competition, and take into account the society sustainability.
Ex. Movie:
The women s kingdom (2006) by Xiaolin Zhou.
The Heiresses (2017) documentary by Anna Boye
B. Does the belonging idea or link with the nature of which we are a part appears?
Acculturation in uprooting with respect to nature has meant unscrupulous predation on it. In the ecological aspect, we are in the stage called “anthropocene”. Since the emergence of life, about four billion years ago, no species had ever changed global ecology alone. Mainly, the changes were caused by forces of nature. Now instead, there is the express imprint of the humans that transform it. “We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the wonders of nature without an owner have no economic value. We are able to block the sun and stars because they do not offer dividends.”[I]
Ex. Movie:
Olive three (2016) by Icíar Bollaín
[I] Judt, Tony (2010) . El món no se’n surt. Barcelona: La Magrana, p. 132. (Translate: D.Reguant)
C. Is the women relationship complicity or between mother and daughter promoted?
The definitive transfer of the patriarchal family, replacing the primary social group of maternal clans, represented a turning point. Previously matrilocal clans protected all members of the community. The man did not lose his relevance when changing residential group. On the other hand, when paternal law integrated women and creatures in the father’s clan (that is the patriarchal family), this led to the woman’s exile, generating division and isolation in home confinement. At the same time, the change of affiliation from matrilineal to patrilineal promoted male as universal determinism and the mother-child figure pattern.
Ex. Movie:
A second mother (2015) by Anna Muylaert.
Journey to a mother’s room (2018) by Celia Rico.
D. Are there behavioural examples of dissident masculinities of the imposed stereotype?
Gender, as a social construction determined by biological sex, is not universal in all societies. In patriarchal society, in contrast, there are archetypal models of exclusively male or female gender. The idea of femininity in women and masculinity in men is strongly promoted. As for the mystic of masculinity, to which we refer, it is based on a set of behaviours, symbols, values and behaviour norms that justify domination, competitiveness, aggressiveness and possessiveness. And on the contrary, the contempt of any sign that can be considered “effeminate” such as tenderness, vulnerability, sensitivity or flexibility. In opposite, the new alternative masculinities are dissenting of the adjudicated archetypes as determinants
Ex. Movie:
Living is easy with eyes closed (2013) by David Trueba (example of male non-androcentric archetype).
E. Is the world of feelings and emotions promoted as a tool of transformation?
The Cartesian dualist theory, which has taken root throughout history, separates mind / body and, as a consequence, reason / emotion, man / woman, subject / object or public / private, has no scientific basis. Neurobiology demonstrates that the brain and body form an organism integrated through biochemical and neural circuits that interact with each other and that previously informed emotions provide cognitive information directly and through feelings. In this way, each emotion prepares the organism for a different response, whether positive or negative, of joy, surprise, hope, compassion or anger, fear, guilt, jealousy. These responses will contribute to our well-being or discomfort. Ii]
The idea of “the reason”, understood as an imperative force, has served to dominate the world and, at the social level, to divide the public sphere (with political and economic power) of the private home, care and sustainability of life, a world more prone to emotions denied to men (for example, crying as a symptom of weakness).
In the rupture of this dichotomy, and give the “personal” a political character, there is still a long way to go. And even more, in what we might call “reverse parity”: the fact that men enter the private sphere in a common and equitable way. As this happens, values are reversed: change the concept of patriarchal family, reinforces empathy in the relationship of parents with daughters and sons and, obviously, freedom is generated in the relationship between adults.
Ex. Movie:
Estiu 1993 (2013) by Carla Simón
Sunday’s Illness ( (2018) by Ramón Salazar
[ii] Damasio, Antonio (1995). El error de Descartes. Barcelona: Destino.
F. Is there any aspect or imaginative gesture that undoes the women objectifying idea or that promotes dialectics in relationships?
From the beginning of patriarchy, there is a sign of cultural symbolic enunciation of women objectification . A survival that continues to acquire new meanings, reinterpretations or contemporary recreations, hindering the success of eradicating sexist violence despite the intentionality of laws and policies. Male fetishism on the woman’s body and sexuality prevents the interlocution of free bodies.
Patriarchy has always divided women into virtuous and whores. Both the idea of “virginity” and “prostitution” are two sides of the same coin. That is, there is either an indicator of the property of the woman’s body or a generic use by the male brotherhood, which has been defined as “the democratic harem.” Sexuality between the same sexes is also regulated and, as a curiosity, Homo Sápiens are the only one among the higher primates that uses these bounded codes of use.
Sexuality as an expression of body language is the gesture that most explicitly communicates the cultural unconscious: in the attitudes of love, imagination, aggressiveness, possessiveness, submission.
Ex. Movie:
Toni Erdmann (2016) by Maren Ade.
((You can see the look on the “naked” woman as a subject and not as the object of a scopophilic look).)
G. Does it meet the emancipatory requirement of a discriminated or exclusive category?
The excluding hierarchy’s of social injustice, following the archetype of the first male/female binomial, have been universalized in a political key and with different territorial significance. They are stigmas that can only be changed if they focus on the causality of the hegemonic political instances that have built them and that have varied throughout history.
There is an incontestable clairvoyance of universal diversity: no human being is equal to another. And it is in the inclusiveness of diversity and the emancipation of these categories that their challenge is found, rather than in the repetitive insistence of binarisms (e. g. whiteness, blackness). In fact, it rather, produces an inverse effect when fixing these signifiers.
Ex. Movie:
Elisa y Marcela (2019) by Isabel Coixet (sexual diversity)
Hidden figures (2016) by Theodore Melfi (empowered African-American scientists).
Gabrielle (2013) by Louise Archambault (emancipation of diverse intellectual capacity)
Je danserai si je veux (Bar Bahar between Two Worlds)(2016) by Maysaloun Hamoud (empowerment of women against fundamentalisms)
Wonder (2017) by Stephen Chbosky (functional diversity emancipation).
H. Are measures generated in the resolution or conflict?
History as a life story of our species is a repeated history of wars and conquests. Both war and violence are Patriarchy structuring elements they fall into the category of heroism. Thus, the imperative of violence or destructive forms is an almost indispensable ingredient of film scripts, with the other’s vision as antagonist or adversary.
These ideas have been installed in the human mind over thousands of generations and have accustomed us to look and perceive the conflict in a natural way, getting violence to be endemic and at the base of desire. In such a way that, often, some positive characters, ethical or emotional actions, cause a short of rejection and qualify them as, for example, tawdriness, superficiality, sweetened, before entering the thesis that the story wants to offer us. It is a difficult click to change given the unconsciousness of this naturalization of violence.
Ex. Movie:
Et maintenant on va ou? (2011) by Nadine Labaki .
La source des femmes (The source of women) (2011) by Radu Mihailenu.
I. Are there any reversal proposals of the pyramid?
Since the beginning Patriarchy has been promoting pyramid geometry and, therefore, verticality. The first idea of “paternity” as a legal figure of the family unit has been progressively evolving, shifting power towards the social figure, that is, towards the Suprafamily institutions, such as the State or the Church (s), until acquire entity in large economic corporations in the present neoliberal current.
The notion of horizontality has to do with the management of collective, social, ecological and solidarity formulas as an alternative to the dominant economy of monetary order and privatization.
Ex. Movie:
Salt of the Earth (1954) by Herbert J.Biberman
Made in Dagenham (Pago Justo) (2010) by Nigel Cole.
J. Does the fantasy of the imaginary science fiction story go beyond patriarchal reality?
In the lucubration of an imaginary world fantasy, current science fiction stories repeatedly show an apocalyptic recreation of dramatic social tensions, far from imagining a world without suffering or aspiring to approaches beyond the patriarchal horizon.
At the same time, scientific knowledge lacks ethical reflection. Currently, we also have another challenge as artificial intelligence prepares to overcome human intelligence and faces an unknown dimension. The success or failure of humanity will depend on how the mapping of the algorithms in future cyborgs or robots will be oriented.
Ex. Movie:
The arrival (2016) by Denis Villenueve .
A rare avis movie that belies the idea that the extra-terrestrial people come to invade us to harm us. A fact as simple as it might be to think that there might be an interest in meeting another population or planet has almost never been a subject of cinematic interest.
On the other hand, this film also breaks the dissociation between science and humanism. And given the reason /emotion dichotomy, it promotes the latter as a transformer.
Ex. literary stories that raise alternative societies:
Herland , by Charlotte Perkins Gilman .
Stories, by’ Ursula K. Le Guin.