Performative Visual Directing

I set out to learn more about Performative visual directing. More specifically how the directors interact with their actors to be able to achieve this. I found that looking for information and material on this subject proving to be quite difficult. So instead I just focused on the word performative.

The dictionary definition of performative is:

- relating to or of the nature of dramatic or artistic performance.

"films which push past the limits of current performative trends"

- characterized by the performance of a social or cultural role.

"many feminist theorists have come to stress the contextual and performative aspects of gender"

- relating to or denoting an utterance by means of which the speaker performs a particular act (e.g. I bet, I apologize, I promise).

adjective: performative

Focusing on the first part ‘films that push past the limits of current performative trends’ I started to look at directors that had done just that in their careers.

Both Mike Mills and Lars Von Trier come to mind when I think of this. Specifically, Mike Mills’, 20th Centaury woman. The basis of the film is about mills relationship with his mother, however the further you get into the film you can see how the film is broaching on ‘sensitive’ subjects for the time it was set. Similarly, Von Trier raising quite controversial topics within his films.

Von Trier is a well-known critically acclaimed film maker and his films are certainly performative, however he is also widely disliked by a majority of the leading actors that have stared within his films. the way that Von Trier was able to use his actors to so as to create the controversial, confrontational films that he is widely known for. The was that he is able to do this is by using the theme of the films, that are precoitally about the female characters enduring incredible social duress, to intimidate the actors with which he is working with. Both Nicole Kidman and Björk have described their time working with Von Trier as a punishing experience. Though through this process he has helped his female leads to be able to deliver unforgettable performances as he drives both the characters in his films and the actors who play them to the brink of self-destruction and social horror, and though as much as his actors suffer while working with him, it would be a grave mistake to regard their misfortune as just a result of the sadistic pleasure of the film maker and director. Because as Von Trier is working in an extremely melodramatic format for his films in which the female leads’ misfortune and misery is mostly caused by the controlling men either directly or indirectly, as with most of his films the male characters majority portray the brutality of the world, reason, authority and domination and the women signify the sacrifice, suffering, and the battle with patriarchy. These representations within Von Triers films have been unsurprisingly widely criticized for how they implicitly deny the women characters any subjectivity or creative agency of their own.

So, the way that Von Trier is able to deliver performative and stimulating films both emotionally and mentally is by creating an environment in which he is able to completely control how his actors are feeling and use this to conjure the proper responses he wants from them. He uses any means necessary to create a specific mentality within his actor so that they then go on to portray the character in the way that he specifically wants.