Watching Jeanne Dielman

By minute ten, I thought I’d made a mistake. Jeanne had just stepped out of the bath, after almost four minutes of washing herself, silently, unsexily, in a seafoam-green marbled tub. I thought I’d made a mistake; ten minutes in, five words uttered (in French): “See you next week, then,” with nothing else sounding but the mundanities of clanging pots or a creaking door or running water. A static camera surveils her with an unwavering gaze as she drifts around her apartment completing various household tasks. I thought I’d made a mistake. 

I’d stumbled across Chantal Ackerman’s 1983 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles while browsing online for a “good” movie to watch. Drawn by the opinion of Sight and Sound magazine, I resolved to watch the unfamiliar film they’d named “the best of all time,” despite the banal impression it had left after a cursory web search. Perhaps my judgment of banality was accurate, but despite the film’s mostly unwavering monotony, I found myself captivated by Jeanne, surveilling her intently throughout the 202-minute span of Ackerman’s work. The tediousness of each shot allowed me to ponder what I was really looking at, providing space for the vicarious undertaking of an incredibly intimate experience. I filled Jeanne Dielman’s blankness with projections of my own. In her, I saw my mother, my grandmother, my friends, and, most of all, myself. 

The portrayal of women in art generally abides characterizations of submissiveness, stupidity, flagrant promiscuity, exaggerated suffering, or complete invisibility, and given that a vast majority of public art has been mediated by men, these depictions have been perpetuated as normative. With the profound power of art comes an equivocal sense of responsibility. Viewers are susceptible to the influence of an artwork, and may inadvertently adopt its attitudes and ideologies, in many cases sustaining the annular course of our cultural standards. This responsibility is often neglected, which is precisely why Ackerman’s work is so important: She breathes life into Jeanne, a character who otherwise wouldn’t be deemed worthy of the screen, providing a nuanced representation of a woman eroded by the standards imposed upon her. Through the exposition of Jeanne’s languid daily activities, including cooking, cleaning, and prostitution, all of which are done to support her son, Ackerman tackles the burdens of traditional womanhood. The film is banal and perhaps even dejecting, but with good reason: It is realistic. 

The realism of Ackerman’s work lies in its account of the conditions, standards, and responsibilities forced upon women through male imposition. Historically, men have dictated female autonomy, essentially prescribing the meaning of the “woman” through abuses of their social control. Within this realm exists the concept of the male gaze, which articulates that women have been conditioned to view themselves and others through the dominant male perspective. The power of the male gaze renders the contrapuntal “female gaze” as inconceivable — male dominion has denied women the ability to see and know themselves, uninterrupted by male interference. So what does it actually mean to be a woman? 

I’ve disputed this question in a variety of ways throughout my adolescence. At seven, I cut my own hair in the mirror and unabashedly rocked a choppy-banged bob. At eight, I went to Daffy’s with my mother and picked out my own outfit for the first time, which consisted of a cropped leather jacket and a pink Eiffel Tower-print legging and shirt set. At nine, I co-authored a 24-page fantasy book. At ten, I got my first real haircut and went to a Taylor Swift concert. At eleven, I stole a pair of tiny, ripped jean shorts that my mom refused to buy me. At twelve, I started middle school. At thirteen, I spoke less. At fourteen, I wore push-up bras daily and said a nightly prayer for new boobs. At fifteen, I started skipping meals. At sixteen, I didn’t say no.  

And now, on the edge of eighteen, I look back on my experiences and wonder what led me to them. I think of where I am now, of the steps I’ve taken to escape the impressionable, subservient girl I ignorantly became as I matured. I find comfort in believing that I’ve done it, that I’ve abandoned her in the place I reserve for idiocy, but I haven’t. Each day when I partake in a six-step skincare regimen or put on makeup, I know I haven't. When I try on clothing and stare, objectifying myself in the mirror, I know I haven’t. When I permit being spoken over, when I apologize first, when I shout but refuse its release, I know I haven’t. I allow patriarchal ideals to persist with their dictation of my womanhood and remain incapable of subverting my inclination to indulge the male gaze. My facade has simply been refined, and I can write and act and appear as if I have progressed, but I have not eluded my past self. And I shouldn’t try; she led me to where I am now. 

I can recognize that, having been born into a structuralist society, some pre-determination was unavoidable. The world around me worked only toward sexualizing and subordinating women, and that inevitably affected the way I matured. That culture informed my discernment of womanhood, and all I am really guilty of is continuing to act in accordance with it. I cannot strip away the years of social conditioning I’ve been subject to, suddenly recognizing myself for who I really am, but I can work to understand how I’ve arrived here and where I’m going. 

Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon posits that being under constant surveillance, or simply believing we are, causes us to engage in self-surveillance, initially shaping our actions, and eventually shaping our souls. A prominent application of this exists within prison design, in which panopticism is actualized by the construction of an arena of prison cells centered around a single watchtower containing a guard who is imperceptible to the prisoners. Bentham believed this structure to be the quintessential prison model; the prisoners are under the control of an ever-present, unverifiable power, imposing a ceaseless sense of surveillance upon the conscience, resulting in better behavior and more efficient work. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher who engaged with Bentham’s panopticon, addresses the way in which this sense of permanent visibility elicits the formation of a performative identity, stating, “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.” Under the authority of a surveilling power, we may internalize imposed regulations, and in turn, adopt them as habit. 

Though it was never intended for application to feminism, feminist theorists have used panopticism as a reference for understanding the impact of the male gaze. Just as the supposed presence of the guard’s attention could regulate prisoners, the demands of the male gaze can subconsciously regulate women’s behavior. Why do we default to crossing our legs, captiously examine our bodies in the mirror, and over-analyze how we are perceived? It could be accredited to the surveillance we internalized as we came to understand our culture which objectifies, sexualizes, and abases women. Margret Atwood addresses this tension in her 1993 novel The Robber Bride, 

“Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy… Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own … unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” 

Perhaps it is due to male-imposed self-surveillance that we become the effectuators of our own subjugation and shape our souls in acquiescence. 

Still, I hope to refashion this narrative, and I think I know where to start. Re-enter Jeanne Dielman: Over the course of her story, Jeanne is increasingly perturbed by the conditions of her life, displayed first through slight breaches of composure, and ending in major upheaval. Initially, a button is missed on her cyan coat, then she drops a fork, and lastly, she kills a man who pays her for sex. Though I don’t particularly like the extremity of the film’s ending, its progression speaks clearly to me: I can see myself in Jeanne’s stable beginnings, but also in the way she is broken by her complacency to routine and tradition. I know I must combat this; I owe it to myself to remain intact, but more so to the woman in my life that has permitted me this decisiveness. 

My mother has always told me to live unbound by the fetters of guilt and regret, yet I’ve watched her struggle ceaselessly to do so herself. Over the years, she’s balanced a family, career, and personal life, without adequate support, exerting herself to meet the expectations set for her. My mom went into labor with me during a meeting at work, and returned to the office just five weeks after my delivery. She told me she’d wanted to prove that her pregnancy did not impair her ability to perform her job. She was torn between fulfilling the role of the “mom” and maintaining a stable career, and she recently expressed to me that she feels she ultimately abandoned motherhood to satiate the demands of professional success. Yet, each night when I return home, my mother is in the kitchen. On most nights she remains in her tapered blazer, toiling under the dim stove lights, to serve a thankless table of three, myself included. The table is often tense and our conversations consist of respective complaints about our days. My mom may try to crack a joke, and I respond by rolling my eyes.

I’ve tormented my mother with far too many eye rolls over the years. In accordance with the dominant male perspective, I’ve been blind to her labor, expecting from her exactly what the world expects from her, despite my own refusal to conform. My mother spreads herself thin to envelop others in support, and I can only hope that she knows that my gratitude stretches just as vastly. I haven’t been able to truly see her, or thank her, until writing this piece, because I’ve known her compassion so familiarly my entire life. 

Still, I don’t want to be like my mom. I want my womanhood to be selfish. My lived experiences will define my womanhood, not the voices that announce me to be a mere figment of the male mind. As women, we should be moldable by our own hands and conceivable by our own brains, independent, liberated, and resolute. That is the reality we necessitate, and those are the criteria under which I can begin to conceive the true meaning of the woman. I hope to finally see myself, uninjured by internal and external scrutiny alike.