Jake St Clair L&S Arts & Humanities
Sites of Extraction: the Political Economy of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Far from mere free market capitalism, Wendy Brown explains neoliberalism as the prevailing political rationality of our time. It follows that many American media productions we consume would appeal to this rationality. This project takes the 2014 film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night as a case study in this process. The film, written and directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour, was performed in Farsi and shot in California. Critics claim that by featuring a rebellious, chador-cloaked female vampire, Girl should be celebrated as a feminist triumph, and indeed it has been. Screened at festivals around the world and endorsed by figures like Margaret Atwood and Elijah Wood, the film was well received. Petroleum-based merchandising has also been released including vinyls, graphic novels, and DVD sets. Underexplored, however, is how the film’s representation of gender, sexuality, and ability intersect with secularist discourses of Islamic Fundamentalism and liberal democracy. How is it that a film commonly viewed as politically emancipatory could simultaneously promote the values of individual responsibility, consumer culture, and U.S. exceptionalism? And how can this be contextualized by the history of oil imperialism in Iran and the rise of neoliberal capitalism?
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