The Piano Jane Campion 1993

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The Piano Jane Campion 1993

• There is a silence where hath there been no
  sound.
• There is a silence where no sound may be in the
  cold grave, under the deep, deep sea.

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Motifs

• The Piano Silence and Sound
• The Environment Freedom and Entrapment
• Clothing, objects, and mores Civilized and
  Uncivilized
• Angel Wings Innocence and Knowledge

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The Piano Silence and Sound

• Adas voice (Holly Hunter) is the pianos sound.
• Why did Ada stop speaking at the age of six? Why
  might a child become silent at that age?
• Who is responsible for her arranged marriage?
• How does Ada use the piano to communicate?
• What is her bargain with Baines? How does the
  bargain change?

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The Voiceless Woman

• When a woman is treated as an object, she cannot
  be the speaking subject of her knowledge.
• Men answer their questions themselves telling
  women what they are.
• It is always easier to project ones thoughts
  onto someone who remains silent. Silence can be
  construed as assent or consent.

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What is the Piano?

• Given what we have discussed, what does the piano
  represent in this film, and why does Ada choose
  to remove it?
• Remember that the piano is abandoned, sold,
  deconstructed, reconstructed, touched, and played.

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The Environment

• Ada and Flora (Anna Paquin) leave the Old World
  for the New.
• The Old World is one of Order, civilization,
  and supposed safety.
• The New World is dangerous, unpredictable, and
  hard.
• How does the cinematography underline these
  dangers?

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Clothing, Objects and Mores

• Which objects are used as signifiers of emotion?
• Consider the birds-eye of Stewarts tea cup.
• How does clothing represent the restrictions on
  behaviour in a Victorian age?
• How do the minor female characters represent
  Victorian mores?

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The Victorian Period and The Piano

• Ada is a modern woman negotiating the problems
  plaguing the Victorian Period.
• Set during the Victorian era, when a womans
  sexuality was repressed or presumed not to exist
  at all

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An Angels Wings

• What do Floras wings represent?
• At what points in the film does Flora wear the
  wings?
• What is the significance of the forked path in
  the woods?
• Whose loyalty shifts or is questioned?

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Themes

• Colonization Domination and Possession
• Sexual Abuse and Coercion
• Violence Against Women
• Existential Responsibility
• Passion, Sex, and Love
• Feminism

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Colonization Domination and Possession

• The English domination of the Maori parallels the
  19th century view of women as property.
• How is property significant in terms of plot and
  meaning?
• How does Stewart (Sam Neill) reflect these
  attitudes toward the Maori, toward Ada, toward
  Flora?

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An Exposé of Colonial Attitudes

• The Colonial Period is tied to this issue of
  power between men and women
• How are the Maori depicted in this film in regard
  to
• Sexuality?
• Technology?
• Intelligence?
• Culture?

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Sexual Abuse and Coercion

• How does Stewart attempt to control Ada through
  confinement? What is Floras response?
• At which points in the film does Stewart attempt
  to use Ada for sex? What is the result? Would you
  call this behaviour attempted rape?
• Why does Stewart reject Adas touch? Why does Ada
  touch Stewart in the first place?

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Sexual Abuse, Coercion or Love?

• Baines (Harvey Keitel) is the Scotsman who has
  become bushedre-made himself as the Primitive.
• How does Baines coercive behaviour transform
  into love?
• What is Baines relationship to Hira? Note how
  she sleeps on the floor outside his door.

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Violence Against Women

• The film contains a very powerful mutilation
  scene.
• What other elements in the plot mirror or
  foreshadow this scene?
• How does Ada seek to continue this abuse toward
  herself?
• How does she break free?

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Existential Responsibility

• According to existentialism, we are responsible
  for our actions, and our actions make us who we
  are.
• What choices does Ada make that define her?
• Which characters make authentic choices?
  Inauthentic choices? Which characters lie to
  themselves about consequences?

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Passion, Sex, and Love

• How does the film equalize the sexes visually? In
  terms of plot?
• Eroticism can be defined as a mutually fulfilling
  sexual experience or imaginative concept that
  includes respect for anothers autonomy.
• Pornography, rape, and abuse reject others and
  foreground the self.
• How does Ada learn to distinguish passion, sex,
  and love or does she? Are these intertwined or
  exclusive concepts? Do men and women define these
  things differently?

Are the sex scenes different in this film than
in other films made by men?
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Feminism

• Is this a feminist film?
• In what way can it be argued to be pro-feminist?
• In what ways can feminists criticize the film?
• Which is the stronger viewpoint in terms of the
  overall message of the film?
• If it is not a feminist film, then how can one
  describe The Piano?
• Campion herself talks about The Piano as a film
  about womens unspoken or hidden desires.

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The Piano and Feminism

• A strong-willed woman is at the center of the
  text.
• Her relationship is ambivalent compared to
  traditional family structures.
• Notions of protest voicelessness as a form of
  protest.
• For many feminists, The Piano is constructed as a
  master narrative it reveals the story of what
  it means to be female in a world where women are
  not valued, or valued only for their bodies or
  what they can provide for a man.

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The Piano and Anti-Feminism

• On the other hand, we have a film that has a
  crucial, but gruesome scene of mutilation.
• A virtual castration for a woman who is being too
  much like a man she is punished for
  non-compliance.
• Also, we have a scene where Ada is coerced into
  passion with Baines, but she turns to him in
  spite of this.
• All a woman needs is a good man.
• Reinforces the belief that every woman (no matter
  how willful) wants sexual brutality from a
  primitive man.

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The Ambivalent Ending

• What do you think about the ending of this film?
• Does Ada choose to sink with her piano, or is it
  an accident?
• What a death! What a chance! What a surprise! My
  will has chosen life.
• Is this ending just another binary that Campion
  has chosen to work with?

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Reading Ideology A Film of Contrasts

• Male/Female
• Voiced/Mute
• Native/Colonial
• Expression/Repression
• Imprisonment/Freedom
• Savage/Civilized
• Which of these does the film value? Note that
  characters in the film depict attitudes that the
  film as a whole may want us to question.

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Conclusion

• Jane Campion was the first female director to win
  the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festivala
  prize here-to-fore only won by men (and shared
  with a male director in this case).
• Other films include An Angel at My Table about
  the life of the brilliant New Zealand author
  Janet Frame, wrongly placed in an insane asylum.
• A contentious film for many reasons, The Piano
  has resonant significance as a womens film of
  the 1990s in spite of its historical setting.