Castration Anxiety, Projection, and the Authoritarian Masquerade: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Lars von Trier, with Feminist and Queer Interventions (and a Strindbergian Mirror)
- Eric Anders
- Mar 9
- 28 min read
Foreword: A Longstanding Engagement with von Trier and Lacanian Theory
My engagement with Lars von Trier’s work and its fraught intersections with psychoanalysis dates back to 1998 when I presented my first paper on the topic at the Nordisk institutt for kunnskap om kjønn (NIKK)—the Nordic Institute for Knowledge about Gender—in Oslo, Norway. This was a feminist research organization dedicated to the study of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory across the Nordic countries. My invitation to speak at NIKK came from my sister, Diana Anders, who was working there at the time and would later go on to earn her Ph.D. in Rhetoric under Judith Butler at UC Berkeley.
The paper I presented that day was an early version of my critique of von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) and Zentropa (1991) in relation to Lacanian psychoanalysis. My argument positioned both as deeply problematic in their treatment of female subjectivity. I sought to demonstrate how Lacan’s theory of the symbolic order, with its phallocentric structuring of meaning, marginalizes and instrumentalizes the feminine, much as von Trier’s narratives aestheticize and fetishize female suffering. I contended that while Breaking the Waves masquerades as a tragic love story about devotion, it is, in fact, a cinematic martyrdom fantasy in which the female protagonist’s complete self-annihilation is framed as spiritually redemptive. Similarly, in Zentropa, von Trier’s early exploration of cinematic hypnosis, the film’s aestheticized violence and authoritarian overtones reinforce a masculinist gaze that dictates the trajectory of its female characters.
Despite the rigor of my analysis, the reception from the feminist scholars at NIKK was less than warm. Many in the audience were either sympathetic to Lacanian theory or admirers of von Trier, neither of which positioned them to be particularly receptive to a critique that called out both their theoretical framework and their cinematic icon. Given that von Trier had not yet been widely “outed” as a vile misogynist, some attendees bristled at my assertion that his films were neither radical nor subversive, but rather extensions of a long tradition of male-authored cinematic sadism. As the only male in the room, I found myself on precarious footing—delivering an argument that many in attendance were not eager to hear.
Following the presentation, in an effort to shift the mood, I turned to my sister across the lecture hall and asked if we could go get pølse med lumpe, the classic Norwegian snack of sausage wrapped in a potato flatbread. Unfortunately, my Norwegian had grown rusty, and instead of saying pølse med lumpe, I said pølse i rumpe—which translates, more or less, to “sausage in my ass.” A handful of my sister’s colleagues, already unimpressed with my contrarian psychoanalytic critique, seemed to decide then and there that my work did not need to be taken seriously—after all, the only male in the room was not only challenging their theoretical and cinematic convictions but also accidentally declaring his preference for rectal sausage consumption.
This moment, absurd as it was, encapsulates something crucial about the reception of critical psychoanalytic readings in certain intellectual circles. At the time, von Trier’s feminist defenders saw his work as subversive rather than reactionary, and his aesthetic of female suffering was still largely framed as deeply empathetic rather than as a performance of authoritarian projection. Meanwhile, Lacanian theory still held an untouchable position in many feminist circles, despite its reliance on rigid phallocentric structures that perpetuate the very gendered hierarchies it claims to dismantle. To challenge both in the same room was to invite rejection—not on the merits of the argument, but on the basis of ideological allegiance. The unfortunate linguistic mishap that followed only solidified my status as an outsider in that space, an interloper whose provocations could be dismissed not because they were untrue, but because they were inconvenient.
The essay that follows represents a much deeper and more expansive critique of these same issues, now with decades of additional theoretical and historical context. Von Trier, of course, has since been fully outed as the misogynistic provocateur that I argued he was all those years ago, though his defenders remain. Likewise, Lacanian theory continues to hold a paradoxical place in feminist discourse, simultaneously useful and yet steeped in the very phallocentrism it often seeks to resist. My work remains committed to interrogating both, situating von Trier’s authoritarian aesthetic within a broader psychoanalytic critique of projection, castration anxiety, and the refusal of care.
And yes—despite everything, I still enjoy "pølse med lumpe" whenever I’m in Norway. But I take great care to pronounce it correctly.
Introduction
Lars von Trier has built a reputation as a cinematic provocateur, but beneath the shock value of his films lies a deeper ideological and psychological pathology. Over a decades-long career, von Trier’s work has launched what one critic calls “the most sustained and unrelenting assault on the female body… that the film industry has ever seen.” Such extremity is not mere edginess or abstract allegory; it is symptomatic of a worldview steeped in misogyny and a kind of malignant narcissism that compels him to orchestrate suffering for artistic validation. His controversial statements off-screen—from ill-judged Nazi jokes to self-aggrandizing claims—further underscore an ego-driven persona that finds outlet through the domination and torment of his female characters. Rather than treat his provocations as isolated stunts, we should approach them as expressions of a pathological ideology: a fusion of gendered contempt, authoritarian impulse, and self-indulgent cruelty presented as “art.” In this sense, von Trier’s cinema becomes a case study in how personal pathology can intertwine with cultural narratives, normalizing disturbing ideas under the guise of aesthetic daring.
To illuminate this dynamic, consider a provocative thought experiment: What if a feminist woman filmmaker made Antichrist, but with the gender roles reversed? Imagine a film in which a grief-stricken husband descends into madness, mutilates himself and his spouse, and posits that men are inherently evil—all crafted by a female auteur with the same graphic intensity von Trier brings. The very premise feels jarring, precisely because we are unaccustomed to seeing male pain and vileness aestheticized the way von Trier aestheticizes female suffering. This reversal throws into relief the double standards at play in both filmmaking and reception. We are conditioned to accept extreme violence against women on screen as “art” or “entertainment,” while violence against men—especially if framed as a systemic indictment—would likely be met with outrage or dismissal. The casual ubiquity of gendered violence in pop culture attests to this imbalance: as one feminist critic wryly noted, classic rock songs like Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” (which casually narrates a man shooting his “old lady”) play as “the background music of our lives,” contributing to a culture in which “male violence against women is so normalized.” Yet if the tables turn—say, a woman artist sings about killing an abusive husband—the backlash is swift and shocked. By introducing a gender-swapped Antichrist, we set the stage for a critical examination of von Trier’s oeuvre: how it normalizes the spectacle of female pain and what that reveals about authoritarian and narcissistic undercurrents in both the artist and the society that praises him.
In the following analysis, we will probe von Trier’s aestheticization of female suffering, connect his artistic choices to frameworks of authoritarianism and malignant narcissism, and explore the implications of reversing the gendered gaze. The goal is not merely to condemn von Trier but to unpack how his work exemplifies a malignant cultural script—one that thrives on the subjugation of women and aligns disturbingly well with authoritarian ideologies. Through comparisons to other filmmakers, theoretical perspectives from feminist film criticism and psychoanalysis, plus new insights from scholars such as Ingrid Ryberg, Patricia White, and Eva María López Ruiz (whose work is associated with Camera Obscura), we can better understand why Antichrist and its brethren are more than just “outrageous” art-house provocations. Instead, they emerge as artifacts of a pathological narrative tradition: what feminist theory calls phallogocentric master narratives, stories centered on male power and female guilt, propped up by aesthetic techniques that compel the audience to participate in the spectacle of women’s suffering. By imagining an alternate Antichrist, we hold up a mirror to these narratives, asking what they truly reflect—and whose purposes they serve.
Von Trier and the Aestheticization of Female Suffering
Few directors have so consistently turned female pain into spectacle as Lars von Trier. From his early European arthouse successes to his later controversial hits, von Trier’s films construct narratives of female suffering with an almost fetishistic devotion to detail and intensity. In Breaking the Waves (1996), a devout young wife endures sexual degradation and ostracism, ultimately sacrificing herself for her husband’s spiritual and physical recovery. In Dancer in the Dark (2000), an innocent single mother is falsely accused of murder and executed by hanging—a protracted martyrdom orchestrated to the strains of a Björk musical elegy. Dogville (2003) places a trusting heroine at the mercy of an entire town that beats, rapes, and enslaves her. Each of these works earned von Trier critical plaudits, in part due to the undeniable power of the performances (Emily Watson, Björk, and Nicole Kidman all won acclaim for these roles). Yet the through-line is unmistakable: “in [von] Trier’s films, women are beaten, raped, depressed, falsely accused, murdered, and commonly said to side with the devil.” Female characters are put through hellish ordeals, portrayed with an operatic mix of realism and stylization that invites the audience to linger on their pain. Von Trier doesn’t just tell stories of women’s suffering—he aestheticizes that suffering, turning it into grand tragedy, religious allegory, or horror spectacle, depending on the film.
Antichrist as Extremity
Antichrist (2009) represents the most extreme iteration of this tendency. Billed as an “art-horror” film, Antichrist scandalized Cannes with its graphic depictions of sexual violence and self-mutilation—including an infamous scene of female genital mutilation enacted by Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character upon herself. The film’s premise is steeped in misogynistic lore: a mother (identified only as “She”) descends into guilt-ridden madness after the accidental death of her son, comes to embrace the idea that women are inherently evil, and ritualistically tortures herself and her husband amid visions of a satanic Nature. Von Trier literalized his theme by crediting an actual “misogyny researcher” on the film—an academic consultant tasked with providing historical ammo for the notion that “women are evil.” As The Independent noted, Antichrist “even has an official ‘misogyny researcher’ listed in the closing credits” and was duly “crowned at [Cannes] with an ‘anti-prize’ for being ‘the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world.’” Critics described the film as “one of the most vicious movies ever made” and saw in it a conflation of archaic myths of female depravity with modern horror tropes. Despite the outcry, von Trier’s technical prowess—his use of slow-motion cinematography, dreamlike editing, and surreal set design—led others to hail Antichrist as a bold cinematic experiment. The abiding question is whether the film critiques misogyny or revels in it.
Feminist film theorists, building on Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze, have long warned of the dangers in representations where female pain is sexualized or aestheticized. Von Trier’s work, especially Antichrist, pushes that envelope further than most. The extended scenes of violence against Gainsbourg’s body become something akin to a ritualized porn of suffering—filmed with excruciating detail and stylized with arthouse flourishes. This is precisely the kind of representation that Ingrid Ryberg’s scholarship on feminist porn and sexuality might find deeply troubling. Ryberg, who studies how feminist and queer porn aims to reconfigure depictions of desire and bodily autonomy, would likely question the ethics of representing female self-harm and violence as a spectacle for the camera. Where feminist porn endeavors to stage consent and mutuality, von Trier’s cinematic approach underscores coercion and trauma, effectively flipping the script from empowerment to torment. By analyzing such scenes through a lens informed by Ryberg, one can see how Antichrist leans into a sensational depiction of female sexuality entwined with suffering, minus any sense of a “safe space” or genuinely empowering representation. The result is a disquieting portrait of woman as site of both terror and punishment—exactly the patriarchal trope that feminist porn scholarship and activism work to dismantle.
A Tradition of Female Martyrdom
While Antichrist is an extreme case, it is not anomalous within von Trier’s oeuvre or, indeed, within Western cinematic history. The film taps into a long cinematic tradition of female suffering that has been elevated to high art—from Hitchcock’s blonde victims to the martyrdom of women in Bergman’s films to the sadomasochistic thrillers of Polanski. These characters often serve as conduits for male anxiety and aggression; they exist on screen primarily to be punished (and through that punishment, to serve some allegorical or aesthetic aim). In von Trier’s hands, the suffering becomes ever more explicit, even pornographic, leading critics to wonder if he is a “misogynist” or a “provocateur exposing misogyny.” Patricia White, a prominent feminist and queer film scholar at Swarthmore College and an associate of the Camera Obscura tradition, would caution us not to conflate a female character’s centrality in the narrative with genuine female agency. Indeed, White’s feminist film theory perspective highlights how a film can center female suffering while still reinforcing patriarchal tropes, especially if the storyline is structured around humiliating or destroying that heroine. In the case of von Trier, the repeated pattern of female martyrdom across multiple films strongly suggests that her suffering is the central spectacle, the raison d’être of his cinematic universe. Even if we can glean some critique of patriarchal sadism, the question remains: does the repeated, graphic portrayal of that sadism end up glorifying it?
Eva María López Ruiz, who has examined aesthetics and narratives in modern European filmmakers, might contextualize von Trier’s approach as part of a broader continental tradition of extreme cinema that deliberately merges art-house stylization with transgressive violence. Directors ranging from Michael Haneke to Gaspar Noé have used shocking imagery to jolt audiences out of complacency. Von Trier’s distinct innovation is to ground that shock in a highly emotional, intimate focus on female anguish, often shot in quasi-documentary style (especially in the Dogme95 era). The result is a cinematic texture that combines realism (immediate, raw performances) with stylized horror (slow-motion sequences, surreal interludes, intense close-ups of mutilation). López Ruiz’s emphasis on European cinematic experimentation clarifies how von Trier’s aesthetic both draws from older arthouse traditions and pushes them toward a psycho-sadistic extreme. The consistent presence of a violently tormented heroine in those experiments, however, underscores how intimately von Trier’s formal daring is tied to the female body’s subjection. Put differently, the “innovation” of the film’s form often rests on the aestheticization of a woman’s agony—making her a canvas for the director’s anxieties, obsessions, or personal crises.
Authoritarianism, Narcissism, and Gendered Violence
Moving beyond immediate questions of representation, we must ask: what drives von Trier to repeatedly script and film such ordeals for his female protagonists? One answer lies at the intersection of personal psychology and broader authoritarian ideology. Critics and colleagues have frequently remarked on von Trier’s merciless directorial style—he is known for pushing actors (especially actresses) to extremes to capture raw emotion. Björk, who delivered a harrowingly authentic performance in Dancer in the Dark, later described the collaboration as a form of abuse, alleging that von Trier sexually harassed her and created a hostile environment on set. Nicole Kidman similarly found filming Dogville a “gruelling experience.” Such accounts paint a picture of a director as authoritarian figure, exerting power and control in ways that mirror the domination depicted onscreen. It is as though von Trier’s authoritarian pathology operates both within the fiction (where female characters are subjugated under cruel moral orders) and in reality (where the director’s will to power tests professional ethics and the performers’ resilience).
Psychologically, von Trier’s behavior and artistic obsessions align with what Erich Fromm and later clinicians term “malignant narcissism.” This syndrome combines grandiose self-importance with aggression, paranoia, and sadistic tendencies. In a malignant narcissist’s worldview, other people exist primarily to serve as extensions of the self—or to be punished if they do not. We can see reflections of this in von Trier’s filmmaking. He often identifies closely with his protagonists, using them as avatars to work through his own emotions, yet he also sacrifices them for dramatic impact. Tellingly, von Trier has admitted that he uses female characters to channel his personal struggles because if he used male characters, the result would simply appear as “brutality and cruelty.” By his own account, women are better suited as vessels for his depression, fears, and anger, because viewers might empathize rather than recoil. This comment reveals the narcissism at play: the female characters are extensions of von Trier’s self, vessels for his darkness. The director’s psyche effectively uses the female form as both mirror and punching bag—a dynamic of ego-driven manipulation that resonates with the sadistic streak in malignant narcissism.
The Authoritarian Aesthetic
This conflation of self and other, artist and victim, hints at an even broader framework: the authoritarian aesthetic underlying von Trier’s narratives. Authoritarianism in art can be understood as a mode that glorifies domination, demands absolute submission to an overarching will or idea, and often aestheticizes violence as a means of enforcement. Though von Trier’s films appear edgy and subversive, they exhibit the hallmarks of authoritarian storytelling: a ruthless, deterministic universe in which dissenting heroines face retribution. In Breaking the Waves, Bess’s community punishes her sexual transgressions; in Dogville, an entire town exploits Grace’s vulnerability until she unleashes a greater violence. Despite superficial critiques of patriarchy, these films often reinforce a conservative moral order—female transgression must be met with overwhelming punitive force. Even when the female protagonist achieves a kind of posthumous sainthood or vengeance, the patriarchal logic remains intact: the film’s structure ensures that the woman’s suffering is central, and her ultimate “triumph” rarely undoes the oppressive power structure. This is reminiscent of real-world authoritarian regimes, which rely on spectacles of punishment—particularly of women—to maintain control and instill fear.
Feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva introduced the term “abjection” to describe how the dominant order expels or renders monstrous those elements it cannot assimilate—particularly aspects tied to the maternal or the feminine. Von Trier’s repeated spectacles of female degradation align with this dynamic: by objectifying women’s bodies as the locus of shame, guilt, or mental breakdown, his films seem to abject the feminine. They dwell on the borderline between horror and fascination, forcing audiences to witness the female body in states of extreme suffering or moral condemnation. This dynamic is precisely what Ingrid Ryberg’s approach to feminist and queer representation in porn or erotically charged film aims to counter. Where feminist porn tries to reclaim female (and queer) bodies from the male gaze and offer spaces of mutual pleasure, von Trier’s aesthetic is arguably more about dominating that body and intensifying the male gaze. The repeated emphasis on controlling or punishing the female body—taken to extremes in Antichrist—reveals how intimately authoritarian worldviews rely on gendered violence to assert power.
Parallel with Strindberg: Castration Anxiety and Male Ego Under Siege
To deepen the analysis, we can turn to Mads Bunch’s comparison of von Trier with August Strindberg. In his essay “Castration Anxiety and Traumatic Encounters with the Real in the Works of August Strindberg and Lars von Trier,” Bunch details how both artists revolve around the theme of castration anxiety, projecting male dread of female power onto paranoid and destructive narratives. Strindberg’s Captain Adolf in The Father (1887) famously descends into madness due to suspicions about his child’s paternity—anxiety about the mother’s secret power to determine lineage. In parallel, von Trier’s male protagonists (and by extension his directorial stance) often exhibit dread of the maternal figure, culminating in Antichrist’s literal demonization of the grieving mother as an agent of cosmic evil. Just as Strindberg’s Captain Adolf attempts to impose patriarchal authority over his wife, von Trier’s male characters attempt to impose rational therapy (He in Antichrist), paternal discipline (Dogville’s father is a gangster-lord), or moral condemnation on the female protagonist. Yet these efforts at control unravel spectacularly. The man’s, or director’s, terror of female autonomy leads him to a paranoid intensification of power—an authoritarian masquerade that ultimately collapses under its own brutality. This reflection of the male psyche’s precariousness resonates with the concept of castration anxiety that underscores so many of von Trier’s narrative arcs.
Reversing the Gaze: If a Woman Made Antichrist
To fully appreciate the double standards at work in both von Trier’s filmmaking and its reception, it is illuminating to reverse the gaze. What if Antichrist were made by a feminist woman director and presented men as the cosmic evil? Envision a film in which a grieving father goes insane, concludes that “man is inherently corrupt,” and graphically mutilates his genitals and tortures his wife. Would such a film be hailed as a profound exploration of grief and the psyche? Or would it be dismissed as misandrist exploitation—the deranged polemic of a “man-hating” director?
By comparing von Trier’s Antichrist to such a hypothetical scenario, we see how thoroughly normalized female suffering is in cinematic tradition—and how reflexively we might balk at a symmetrical representation of male suffering. This disparity is not just hypothetical: female artists who depict violence against men often face charges of “agenda-driven misandry” or find their works marginalized as provocative stunts rather than philosophical inquiries. Catherine Breillat, for example, explores female violence and sexuality in disturbing detail (as in Fat Girl or Anatomy of Hell) but is often relegated to “niche” or “controversial” status, whereas von Trier’s equally disturbing explorations of violence against women are lauded in mainstream art-house circles as “genius.” One reason is that cinema has historically (and globally) habituated viewers to the sight of female bodies in pain. Flip that script—put a man’s body through the same humiliations, especially under a female director’s control—and it becomes an intolerable breach of the masculine status quo.
Misogyny vs. Misandry in Reception
Would critics have labeled a woman-directed, gender-reversed Antichrist “profoundly misandrist”—and condemned it outright? Quite possibly. Antichrist was extensively debated, with some critics calling it misogynistic, others defending it as an unflinching depiction of grief and madness. But the controversy never quite reached a point of complete consensus rejection. Instead, defenders insisted that von Trier was “holding a mirror to misogyny” rather than endorsing it, or suggested that the film was a self-conscious critique of patriarchal myths. A film that so explicitly demonized men’s sexuality or fatherhood would likely be less tolerated by the mainstream arthouse establishment. This double standard reveals that female-directed violence against men is quickly labeled “man-hating,” whereas male-directed violence against women is more likely to be read as a universal statement on human nature or a symbolic dramatization of the male artist’s suffering.
Patricia White’s feminist film theory offers a way to articulate why. She notes that female-authored works that center violence against men can be hastily dismissed as “excessive,” whereas male-authored works featuring violence against women get folded into a revered tradition of “daring” or “transgressive” cinema. The difference in reception reflects cultural assumptions about which subject position is “neutral” or “universal” (male) and which is “political” or “biased” (female). Consequently, von Trier—like many male directors before him—can depict female torment to extremes and still have it read as “exploration” or “art,” whereas a woman director who subjected men to symmetrical torment might face immediate condemnation or be pigeonholed as radical feminist propaganda.
The Double Standard of Cinematic Violence
We see, then, that von Trier’s Antichrist was palatable (or at least debatable) for many precisely because it fit within a cultural comfort zone: violence against women as compelling art. The project of reversing the gaze highlights how deeply rooted that comfort zone is. From the mainstream horrors of slasher flicks to the arthouse parables of von Trier, female suffering is accepted as a valuable narrative commodity—one that can be “aestheticized” for awards or intellectual debate. But flip the script? Depict male sexual mutilation or men as inherent sources of evil? That might be seen as hateful. This reveals a double standard: a film that lingers on women’s violation can be praised as “edgy,” “brave,” or “thought-provoking,” whereas an equivalent film featuring men’s violation is likely to be seen as “gratuitously violent,” “misandrist,” or simply “too disturbing to be art.”
Integration of Camera Obscura Scholars: Ryberg, White, López Ruiz
Ingrid Ryberg: Her emphasis on feminist porn’s ethics underscores how cinematic depictions of sexual acts hinge on questions of who controls the scenario and for whose pleasure. In a film like Antichrist, the female protagonist’s sexuality is portrayed as destructive not only to herself but to her partner—sexual encounters devolve into violence, self-mutilation, and homicide. If one applies Ryberg’s lens, it’s evident that there is no mutual negotiation of desire here—rather, it’s a grim performance of patriarchal (and perhaps also female self-hating) fantasy that ends in bloodshed. The female body is again placed under violent scrutiny, lacking the safety or empowerment that feminist and queer porn aims to establish.
Patricia White: Building on White’s frameworks, Antichrist can be critiqued for how thoroughly it denies the female protagonist any consistent, coherent agency. She exists to embody contradictory male fears (she’s both helpless and monstrous) and to demonstrate how “woman is chaos.” The film’s style and perspective remain tethered to the husband’s rational vantage, even when it purports to show the wife’s interior meltdown. White would likely question whether the film ever truly upends the male gaze, or if it merely dramatizes male paranoia in a sensational manner.
Eva María López Ruiz: From a European cinematic standpoint, von Trier’s shock tactics—his aesthetic blending of realism and stylization—situate him in a lineage of arthouse provocateurs. López Ruiz’s insight into how contemporary European cinema often marries extreme content with philosophical reflection helps explain von Trier’s success on the festival circuit. The “historicization” or “aesthetic trap” Mads Bunch identifies in Antichrist resonates with López Ruiz’s broader point about how directors like von Trier manipulate arthouse codes (chapter headings, dream sequences, confessional voice-overs) to lend a veneer of high art to content that might otherwise be deemed exploitative.
By weaving these scholars into our discussion, we underscore that the acceptance of a film like Antichrist depends on longstanding arthouse traditions that excuse male dramatizations of female suffering as explorations of “the universal human condition,” whereas female or queer sexualities are rarely granted such interpretive generosity. In short, von Trier’s film benefits from a patriarchal interpretive framework that normalizes the depiction of women’s bodies in pain.
Castration Anxiety and Traumatic Encounters: The Role of the Maternal Sublime
Another critical psychoanalytic layer is the maternal sublime: the terror-awe dynamic that arises when the mother figure is perceived as all-powerful. Mads Bunch and Judy Gammelgaard both delve into how von Trier’s female characters can be read through a lens of primal fear and castration anxiety. In Antichrist, the wife is not merely a grieving mother but also a figure of monstrous fecundity—Nature itself, replete with rotting vegetation, talking foxes, and demonic storms. She suggests the raw, unbounded maternal that patriarchal culture has historically labeled “witch” or “evil.” The husband’s therapy-based rationalism (symbol of paternal law) fails to contain her, leading to catastrophic violence.
Gammelgaard’s “Like a Pebble in Your Shoe” examines Breaking the Waves and Antichrist as works that revolve around a sinthome—a psychic knot in Lacanian terms—that resists integration into the symbolic order. The result is a breakdown of meaning, culminating in scenes where female pain or madness overwhelms the narrative. For Bess in Breaking the Waves, this emerges in her sacrificial sexual transgressions and subsequent death. For She in Antichrist, it erupts in literal gore. Both reflect a director grappling with unresolved maternal fantasies: female characters function as stand-ins for a beloved-hated mother figure who is, in psychoanalytic parlance, both the nurturer and the possible castrator. The maternal sublime—the mother as a force beyond comprehension—saturates von Trier’s imagery, culminating in violent climaxes that restage the male director’s terror of being consumed or undone by female power. The catastrophic ends for Bess or She become cinematic exorcisms of that fear.
Authoritarian Masquerade and the Caricature of Masculine Strength
Von Trier’s recurrent reliance on phallogocentric master narratives—stories that revolve around male authority and female guilt—cannot be separated from his personal style as an auteur: an approach we might call the authoritarian masquerade. Time and again, von Trier sets up scenarios where the male viewpoint or paternal figure imposes structure, only for that structure to collapse in chaos. The director’s off-screen persona likewise toggles between claims of absolute creative control (the self-proclaimed “best director in the world”) and confessions of crippling anxiety or depression. This tension forms the backbone of his cinematic grammar.
In Antichrist, Willem Dafoe’s character is a therapist who believes he can cure his wife’s grief through rational exercises, effectively placing himself in the role of father-doctor-lawmaker. Yet his “masculine strength” is quickly revealed as brittle and performative—he cannot handle the depths of maternal rage or guilt that She embodies, leading to mutual destruction. The more he tries to dominate, the more violently She resists, exposing how fragile his sense of mastery is. This dynamic resonates with Ingrid Ryberg’s commentary on sexuality as performance: the male character’s “performance” of reason and authority disintegrates under the weight of the female partner’s traumatic experiences—a phenomenon that reveals how illusions of masculine dominance can be caricatures rather than genuine resilience. If genuine strength means tolerating vulnerability and acknowledging the other’s subjectivity, von Trier’s male protagonists typically fail that test. They impose their worldview on female partners, punishing them (and themselves) in the process.
Brian De Palma is sometimes offered as a counterexample: a male auteur also obsessed with violent spectacle, yet his cinematic style often includes self-reflexive winks or campy exaggerations that mitigate the raw sadism one finds in von Trier. De Palma’s Carrie ends with a teenage girl using telekinetic powers to avenge herself—a female meltdown that ironically garners viewer sympathy. Von Trier’s meltdown, by contrast, yields an even bleaker outcome: the woman is pathologized, demonized, and ultimately extinguished. The difference underscores von Trier’s more authoritarian posture: in his films, the final triumph rarely belongs to the female figure. The male domain (religious elders, paternal law, narrative closure) reasserts itself in some form, even if it is just to show how thoroughly the heroine is destroyed.
Sadistic Projection vs. Healthy Fantasy in Art
Comparisons to Shakespeare illustrate how a work of art can sublimate personal or cultural anxieties into forms that offer universal insight or catharsis—without forcing the audience to bear the artist’s unprocessed trauma. Shakespeare’s tragedies, for all their brutality, often provide a balanced interplay of perspectives, a depth of empathy across multiple characters, and a sense of moral reflection that transcends mere shock. By contrast, von Trier’s cinema more closely resembles acting out than working through, to borrow psychoanalytic terms. He repeatedly stages sadistic fantasies on screen—women brutalized, humiliated, or sacrificed—and invites the audience into a complicity that offers no real resolution.
Ingrid Ryberg’s Feminist Porn Ethos vs. Von Trier’s ‘Trauma-Porn’
From Ryberg’s perspective, we might label von Trier’s approach “trauma-porn,” in the sense that it serves up explicit sequences of female agony for the audience’s voyeuristic consumption. Instead of forging a space where women’s sexuality can be explored on their own terms (the feminist porn ethos), von Trier’s films revolve around capturing the female body in distress, forcibly subjecting her to narratives not of her own making. This dynamic short-circuits the possibility of what Ryberg might call “ethical spectatorship.” Ethical spectatorship requires a sense that the performer (or character) is entering sexual situations with autonomy and that the audience is mindful of power differentials. In von Trier’s universe, those power differentials are heightened and exploited, not critiqued or balanced. Even in Breaking the Waves, which can be read as a love story, Bess’s “choices” are governed by her husband’s desires and a fanatic religiosity. The result is not empowerment but a masochistic spectacle culminating in her death.
Patricia White on Suffering, Agency, and the Queer Gaze
Similarly, Patricia White would question the extent to which von Trier’s female protagonists truly enjoy narrative subjectivity. White’s scholarship in feminist/queer film theory urges us to see how women’s “agency” on screen can be an illusion if it is always constrained by a male perspective. While Bess or She may drive the plot through their actions, the context in which they act is shaped entirely by patriarchal or paternalistic norms—both within the story and from the vantage of an off-screen male auteur. White might also wonder whether any queer reading is possible in a filmography so fixated on normative heterosexual conflict. Indeed, the intense focus on mother-child bonds, paternal law, and “Edenic” marital units leaves little room for alternative sexualities. The only “queerness” might be in the films’ perverse extremes—like Antichrist’s surreal visions or The Idiots’ playful subversion of able-bodied norms. But the overarching emphasis remains on controlling the female body, which is not what White or queer feminist scholarship typically champion. They prefer works that open up spaces of female desire or subvert patriarchal scripts. Von Trier’s works toy with subversion but rarely deliver it in ways that truly free the female figure from patriarchal constraints.
Eva María López Ruiz’s Take on European Aesthetics and Authoritarian Spectacle
Finally, Eva María López Ruiz places von Trier in the broader context of European art cinema’s tradition of combining formal innovation with philosophical or existential inquiry. She might note that the director’s authoritarian aesthetic—manifest in dogmatic rules (Dogme95) and oppressive narrative arcs—both continues and distorts the legacy of postwar European auteurs who used film as a vehicle for personal vision. The difference is von Trier’s sadistic edge, which transforms formal constraints into something that intensifies female suffering. Where a filmmaker like Robert Bresson employed austerity to achieve spiritual clarity, von Trier’s austerity in Breaking the Waves or Dogville imposes a moral cage around his female characters, highlighting how they are trapped by social or cosmic forces. López Ruiz’s lens helps us see that while von Trier’s style belongs to a recognized tradition of European experiment, the specific content—an almost compulsive focus on female torment—marks an extreme where that tradition bleeds into a spectacle of cruelty. The paternal or directorial figure, claiming moral or aesthetic authority, orchestrates violence for the sake of existential reflection. The net result is a cinema that is at once “serious” (in an arthouse sense) and “exploitative” (in its graphic portrayal of bodily harm). That tension often makes von Trier’s films simultaneously mesmerizing and repulsive.
Coda: The Pathology of Projection – Von Trier’s Castration Anxiety on Display
We can now synthesize these insights into a broader conclusion about von Trier’s cinematic project. Rather than a neat rhetorical flourish, the final segment of this essay underscores how thoroughly von Trier’s psycho-pathological impulses—particularly his castration anxiety, terror of the maternal, and authoritarian drive—shape both the content and form of his films. What might appear as “provocative art” reveals itself as a compulsive staging of unresolved trauma. He repeatedly returns to scenarios that pit a controlling or moralizing male figure (whether a husband, father, or community) against a female figure who is designated as the locus of sin, madness, or sexual chaos. The female figure is then subjected to ritualistic punishment or self-destruction. The aesthetic—whether austere Dogme minimalism or operatic horror—serves as the performance space for these fantasies, immersing the audience in a disturbing blend of empathy and voyeurism.
One key dimension that emerges from engaging with Mads Bunch’s parallels to Strindberg is the notion of the “traumatic encounter with the Real”—the male subject confronting his lack of control in the face of the maternal-feminine Other. Both Strindberg’s Captain Adolf and von Trier’s men (and directorial persona) spiral into defensive violence when they sense the threat of female autonomy. The notion of “castration anxiety” here is as much symbolic as literal: the man fears the dissolution of his identity, the exposure of his vulnerabilities, and the possibility that he is not the absolute center of the family or cinematic universe. Judy Gammelgaard’s psychoanalytic reading of Breaking the Waves and Antichrist extends this logic to the idea that von Trier’s repeated cinematic breakdowns reflect his own sinthome, his personal psychic knot that ties anxiety to creativity. Each film is an attempt to externalize and exorcise that knot—yet the repeated nature of these attempts suggests that genuine working-through never quite happens.
Integration and Final Reflections
Incorporating the insights of Ingrid Ryberg, Patricia White, and Eva María López Ruiz further underscores the complexity and ethical stakes of von Trier’s oeuvre. Ryberg’s feminist porn framework throws the exploitative dimensions of von Trier’s sex and violence into stark relief, highlighting how profoundly female bodies in his films lack an environment of consent or self-authored desire. White’s feminist/queer perspective situates the female protagonists’ agency (or lack thereof) within the larger power structures of a male auteur’s narrative, urging us to be wary of reading these women as “emancipated” when they exist primarily to suffer or die. López Ruiz’s contextual approach to European cinema reminds us that von Trier’s formal innovations must be read alongside their content: the authoritarian aesthetic—manifest in either austere dogma or extravagant spectacle—enacts the same psychological drives that saturate the narrative. Far from a detached formal choice, it is part and parcel of von Trier’s pathology. Indeed, the tension between hyper-control and meltdown in his films mirrors his personal struggle with depression and anxiety, suggesting that the art is less about critiquing authoritarian structures than about reenacting them as if in a loop.
Some viewers and critics laud von Trier’s willingness to lay bare his demons, to forcibly confront us with the darker aspects of human nature—especially grief, sin, and violence. Others regard his body of work as an indulgent exploitation of female pain, a perpetuation of patriarchal fantasies disguised as arthouse boldness. Both interpretations can coexist because von Trier’s films are indeed ambiguous. Yet from a feminist psychoanalytic standpoint—particularly one informed by the Camera Obscura tradition—the persistent motif of punished femininity remains undeniably suspect. If art is in some sense a reflection of its maker’s psyche, then von Trier’s repeated use of female bodies as sacrificial lambs or monstrous mothers signals a fixation that’s less about “exploring misogyny” than about inhabiting it. Put differently, his cinema seldom interrogates misogyny from a critical distance; it more often saturates us in its logic. The male author retains the final cut, the last word. Even when the female character kills the man, as in Antichrist, she is subsequently murdered by him; or in Dogville, Grace punishes the townspeople but remains overshadowed by her gangster father’s power. The deck is always stacked to ensure male authority—whether paternal or directorial—prevails in some ultimate sense.
Toward a Larger Conversation
Ultimately, to label von Trier’s films simply “misogynist” or “masterful” is to miss the nuance that emerges when we truly engage them through psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and the historical lens of European art film. The contradictory impulses we find—attraction to the feminine as holy or demonic, the mania for paternal law, the vacillation between documentary starkness and lurid spectacle—reflect a psyche in turmoil. Von Trier is not unique in having personal demons, but the extreme forms those demons take on screen demand scrutiny. Ingrid Ryberg, Patricia White, and Eva María López Ruiz each contribute angles of critique that highlight how von Trier’s creative signature is also a symptomatic structure: a repeated pattern of controlling, punishing, and objectifying female characters, all couched in the name of “art.” Meanwhile, comparisons to Strindberg, as Mads Bunch suggests, demonstrate that this pattern has deep roots in modernist misogyny and fear of the maternal. Judy Gammelgaard’s psychoanalytic readings shore up the notion that these stories revolve around a core of unprocessed trauma, thus operating more as acting-out than as any genuine working-through.
For an audience—particularly one aligned with Camera Obscura’s feminist project—von Trier’s cinema becomes a test of critical vigilance. Do we simply consume the images of female torment as an aesthetic achievement, or do we question the underlying power structures that treat the female body as a canvas for male anxieties? The director’s own statements (“I am the best filmmaker in the world,” “I don’t love my mother,” “Women are better at expressing my personal despair…”) reveal an unsettling narcissism that bleeds into the works themselves. Recognizing this narcissism for what it is—and the misogynistic tradition it taps into—equips us to watch von Trier’s films with eyes open to the manipulative, often sadistic undercurrents. This does not necessarily negate the films’ emotional force or occasional bursts of empathy, but it reframes them as products of a deeply ambivalent psyche whose confessions can both enlighten and oppress.
Conclusion: Unmasking the Authoritarian Pathology
In the end, Lars von Trier’s cinema forces us to confront an uncomfortable reality: sometimes art that claims to critique darkness is, in practice, an embodiment of that darkness. After examining Antichrist and von Trier’s broader filmography through the lenses of misogyny, narcissism, castration anxiety, and authoritarian impulses, we arrive at a verdict that is both damning and instructive. Rather than a rebel challenging the establishment, von Trier often operates as a bard of the status quo’s worst impulses—packaging age-old patriarchal violence and despair in auteurist wrapping. His work functions as an extension of his narcissism and misogyny, projected onto the screen with technical bravura. The women in his films suffer and die ostensibly to show us something about injustice or human nature, but more often they serve to validate a worldview obsessed with their subjugation. As critics in the Camera Obscura tradition (like Patricia White) would say: we must be wary of praising an “edgy auteur” without examining how his edge is sharpened on the bodies of women.
A narrower psychoanalytic read might argue that von Trier’s films are best understood as acts of acting-out: compulsive re-enactments of personal trauma or phantasy that never truly reach resolution. Hence the cyclical return to female martyrdom or demonization. A broader, more feminist interpretation sees these cycles as part of a patriarchal tradition that normalizes female suffering as high art. By integrating Ingrid Ryberg’s discourse on ethical sexual representation, we see how fundamentally lacking in mutuality or safety von Trier’s depictions of sex are—leading instead to necrophilic or self-destructive outcomes. By applying Patricia White’s feminist-queer vantage, we see how precarious the notion of “female agency” is in these tales, overshadowed by the male auteur’s controlling gaze. By invoking Eva María López Ruiz’s perspective on European cinematic experimentation, we situate von Trier among directors who harness spectacle to probe existential dread—yet in his case, the spectacle is repeatedly the battered female form.
Hence, the label “authoritarian masquerade” emerges: von Trier’s cinematic authority depends on subjugating women in disturbing narratives that reflect and reinforce patriarchal fantasies. His claims to be “provoking the audience” ring hollow once we observe how thoroughly the films revolve around the same tortured female bodies and the same paternal powers. If there is a final moral or philosophical lesson, it often seems overshadowed by the raw intensity of the violence itself. As with Strindberg, one wonders whether these works challenge misogyny or merely exemplify it in ironically self-conscious ways.
For prospective readers of Camera Obscura or any feminist-psychoanalytic publication, the essay underscores a vital takeaway: we can admire von Trier’s technical skill or formal audacity without losing sight of the unhealthy fantasy at the heart of his narratives. This is not an indictment of all cinematic depictions of women’s suffering—stories of victimization, resilience, and even violence can be told ethically and from a variety of standpoints. But in von Trier’s repeated reliance on punishing female bodies as the main aesthetic event, we see art that might be better classified as symptom than solution. It expresses an authoritarian pathology, offering little in the way of transformation or redemption. Where more integrative art might sublimate violence into universal insight, von Trier’s films remain stuck in cycles of cruelty that implicate both the characters and the audience.
By concluding on this note, we reaffirm that analyzing von Trier is not a matter of moralism or prudery, but of shining a critical light on how misogyny, narcissism, and cinematic form intersect. Von Trier is no simple villain; he is a talented, troubled auteur whose bold experiments serve as a prism for the darkest aspects of patriarchal culture—and for the resilience of that culture’s hold on our collective imagination. Precisely because his films fascinate and disturb in equal measure, they become crucial texts for feminist psychoanalytic critique, bridging the personal pathology of one director and the broader cultural scripts that teach us to see female suffering as art’s ultimate spectacle.
Sources and Works Cited (Select)
Bunch, Mads. “Castration Anxiety and Traumatic Encounters with the Real in the Works of August Strindberg and Lars von Trier.” The International Strindberg: New Critical Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Gammelgaard, Judy. “Like a Pebble in Your Shoe: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and Antichrist.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 94, no. 6 (2013): 1215–1230.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18.
Ryberg, Ingrid. “Safe, Slippery, Liberating: Feminist Pornography as an Ethical and Affective Space.” In New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law, ed. Lynn Comella and Shira Tarrant, 2015.
White, Patricia. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.
López Ruiz, Eva María. “Aesthetic Trap and Historicization in ‘Antichrist’ by Lars von Trier.” (Referenced in broader discussions on contemporary European cinema aesthetics.)
Various critical reviews and festival commentary on Antichrist, Breaking the Waves, Dogville, etc.
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