Cache Film Analysis

Both the film genres of La Journée de la Jupe and Caché, as intense and dramatic psychological thrillers, affect their film form, narrative, and meaning as well as allow for characters possessing ‘outlaw’ emotions to surface. Because both La Journée de la Jupe and Caché primarily function as psychological thrillers, it affects their prospective narrative film forms. In Caché, the audience watches as Georges and Anne, specifically Georges, become more and more unhinged with the appearance of videotapes of their home. When we see static shots of certain locations, like their home, we understand that it is because someone is videotaping their every move. We realize this because at the very onset of the film, in the very first shot, we are subjected

In La Journée de la Jupe, I would argue that Sonia Bergerac is considered to possesses the ‘outlaw’ emotions as expressed by Alison Jaggar in “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology”. As Jaggar states, “people who experience conventionally unacceptable, or…. ‘outlaw’ emotions, often are subordinated individuals who pay a disproportionately high price for maintaining the status quo.” (166) We can see that Sonia is one of these subordinated individuals because Sonia is obviously mistreated by her students, who barrage her with sexist and racist abuse, often violently. This led to her taking her classroom hostage, which eventually led to her death, making her an “individual who pay(s) a disproportionately high price for maintain the status quo.” (166) These ideas also help explain how Sonia’s students eventually came to understand and support her point of view because, “conventionally inexplicable emotions, particularly though not exclusively those experienced by women, may lead us to make subversive observations that challenge dominant conceptions of the status quo.” (167) These emotions led her to make observations and state facts that challenged the dominant ideology within her room of students, affecting their status

As Jaggar states, ‘outlaw’ emotions, “may help up realize that what we are taken generally to be facts have been constructed in a way that obscures the reality of subordinated people, especially women’s reality.” (168) This idea, while completely true for Sonia in La Journée de la Jupe, is also applicable to Majid and his son in Caché. Their entire life has been shaped by the fact that they have been treated as less than, due to their Algerian background. Majid and his son’s ‘outlaw’ emotions stem from this and explain their actions throughout the film. When Majid kills himself in front of Georges, we can understand that it was this point in the film when Majid reflected on his “initially puzzling irritability, revulsion, anger, or fear,” (167) which brought into “consciousness the ‘gut-level’ awareness that we are in a situation of coercion, cruelty, injustice, or danger.” (167) He finally expressed emotions that reflected the injustice and pain that he had been