Subordination of the Feminine in "Because I Said So."

Because I said so is a film about an overbearing mother who is all too eager to ensure her daughters are happy by making sure they are all with men --and in relationships. According to Irigaray, "One must assume the feminine role deliberately." In this case, the “feminine roll” to be assumed is being a partner to a male.

Essentially, society has created this mother (Diane Keaton) into a woman that believes her daughters must be in relationships or with men in order to be happy, healthy and prosperous in their lives. This very fact brings the "subordination [of women] into an affirmation" (795). That is to say, the mother is affirming the idea that women are subordinate creatures by falling into the myth that they need to be with men to be "independent creatures."

This mother, perhaps without realizing it, is exploiting her daughters to the subordination of women. “For to speak of or about women may always boil down to, or be understood as, a recuperation of the feminine within a logic that maintains it in repression, censorship and nonrecognition” (796). Irigaray believes that if thought patterns continue as such, subordination is a thing that will never go away.

Work Cited
Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2008.

Thirst, Water and Post-Structuralism.

Derrida's idea of the signified and signifier are much like the idea that one cannot truly have a complete appreciation for water until they have known intense thirst. Without water, or liquid, it could be argued that one could not know what thirst actually is or exists. Because of the idea that no truth can be realized without another, "...as a result, [it] will always be incomplete" (258). That is, each truth will be unfinished, so to speak. "If every object derives its identity from its difference from other objects, then every thing or object and every idea or concept refers to something else to be what it is" (259). This means that no thing, object or thought can be complete on its own.

In the case of thirst, this truth cannot be known without water. If one is thirsty they quench this thirst with water, therefore learning what it is to thirst and what water is. Without water, this new gained knowledge would be very difficult to obtain. "...[A]ll reality is textual...That is, it is made possible by difference..." (259). This ties in closely with Derrida's idea of "inside" and "outside." It would be very hard for one to know the truth of an inside without realizing what outside actually is, or using outside to explain was inside means.

Work Cited
Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2008.