Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Screening of "Daughter Rite" by Michelle Citron
While watching "Daughter Rite" I was confused as to whose autobiography was being told. Does this film fit into the autobiography genre that we have discussed? There was a narrator who talked as if reading diary entries, and the narrator spoke of an "I" with the juxtaposition of old home videos made of two daughters with their mother. However, there was also the story of two sisters interacting and sharing stories/making discoveries about their mother. At the end of the film, it mentioned that the two actresses were "role playing" these two sisters. For me there is confusion about how the ongoing story of the two sisters relates to the diary-entry-like narrations. The one clear relation is the mother-daughter relationship and how daughters have a fear that they will be like their mothers - for good or for bad. As a viewer, it did not seem that the narrator, the author, and the protagonist were the same "I" and consequently, is it possible to consider this autobiography? Can it be autobiographical? If so, whose story is this?
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Hi, Having recently watched Daughters Rite myself very similar questions arose for me as you pose here. Can this film be said to be autobiographical? I presume this question arises in the mind of viewers because as informed viewers we watch the film with the prior knowledge that scenes are staged. However, what is autobiography? Does autobiography always equate to truth? my thinking is it can never be truth so to look for truth as a mode of validation for autobiography will always falter. Memories, personal history and experience even if they are the guidlines by which we may live our life are not, imo, relible nor readable in terms of a universal truth. I don't know if the narrative, for example the rape story, is Citron's own experience re-told but I do think the construction of these intertwinning elements in the film may reveal more about Citron's attempt to communicate than any plane assertion of autiobiographical truth (if there were to be such a thing).
If I may brandish another opinion I don't think autobiographies can ever to singular, we are implicated in and by those around us, discourse and culture and so no story can ever be purified and autonomous. For instance to hear or know another autiobiography, to know autiobiography in itself requires another - 2 at least and more no doubt.
Do you have any more thoughts about it? realize you poseted that quite some time ago.
immi
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