The Ass I Kick Today May Be the Ass I’ll Have to Kiss Tomorrow: What’s Up with the Sacrifice of Women in the Films of Lars von Trier?

Abstract

Should we refrain from watching the films of Lars von Trier as some critics, philosophers, feminists, and cultural theorists have suggested? Trier’s films and his public antics have certainly given his critics ground upon which to defend the claim that we should stop watching him. However, there are multiple depths that may be plumbed in order to understand that which his films have to offer. For instance, he may be sacrificing women for some sort of cheap thrill that may be experienced by himself and his audience; he may be deploying a kind of irony that seeks to make explicit the sacrificial treatment of woman as something written into Western cultural practices—a sordid practice that he believes ought to be stopped; he may be exorcising some of his own psychosexual demons; and he may be exploring the relationship between all these possibilities. This chapter seeks to clarify these possibilities through an examination of his trilogies and through an examination of his own public and private commentary about the issue.