Performing Excess, Performing Affect

"Performing Excess, Performing Affect:

An Affective Investigation of Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #27"

Cindy Sherman is a female contemporary artist who is best known for how her performative film stills destabilize the traditional mores of femininity. Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills series is composed of sixty-nine images taken from the artist’s own black and white B grade films, framing the artist herself into various feminine stereotypes, in order to expose the patriarchal undercurrent of Western society’s mythical representations of femininity.[1] Sherman films her own body, disguised in costume and make-up, to perform various female stereotypical characters, particularly those who transgress the normative boundaries of femininity. Marvin Heiferman affirms that Sherman’s film stills unconventionally perform a series of “self-portraits” that were not intended to be read as “autobiographical,” but rather to subject viewers to “an undercurrent of darker ideas, of emotions that were unfunny, troubling, and uncomfortable.”[2] In particular, Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 functions on a multifaceted level; while Sherman invites the viewer to consider the “type” of femininity she performs in the image, she also provokes an internal dialogue within the spectator as they become increasingly aware of themselves, and what they are not [fig. 1]. Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 depicts the artist as an excessive woman; she is in costume and wig, sitting at a bar with a martini glass, as mascara and eyeliner stream down her face. By definition, excess is a state or instance of surpassing the usual, proper, or specified limits.[3] Historically, visible excess has been strategically employed in visual culture to shame, or degrade, those human or material bodies that threaten to expose the fragile boundaries which govern Western society’s gender and societal mores.[4] As Julia Skelly has argued, “[t]he choice to embrace excess is not without risks,” thus signifying Western society’s shameful response to women that exceed the feminine norm. Sherman embodies and performs an excessive woman in order to illuminate the ways in which women who transgress the norm (and witnesses of such) are shamed by others, and as a result, become ashamed of themselves. Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 reveals the powerful gendered norms upheld in Western contemporary society, while at the same time, she reflects back at the viewer their anxieties and shameful responses to the visibly transgressive female body. Ultimately, Sherman fashions herself as a metaphorical mirror that affectively reveals more about the viewer than of herself, or her performed character.

Fig. 1: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #27 (1979)

Throughout this essay, I will consistently refer back to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theory on the affect of “shame,” which she discusses in her important book: Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003).[5] She affirms that “shame attaches to and sharpens the sense of what one is,” in relation to another.[6] In other words, to feel shame, or to be ashamed, is “both peculiarly contagious and peculiarly individuating,” as the spectator recognizes the boundary which separates their body from the other.[7] For Sedgwick, shame is not a single-body experience, as “someone else’s embarrassment, stigma,…or strange behaviour, seemingly having nothing to do with me, can so readily flood me.”[8] The risk of shame is not that it affects the body of the ashamed, but rather the idea that shame reflects back at the viewer to reveal his or her own apprehensions towards bodies that do not conform to society’s ideals. This infectious quality of shame cannot be contained within the image as this indirect affect occurs both while viewing the image, but also upon revisiting the memory of this initial encounter. Like excess, shame is an affect that cannot be contained; the inherent risk involved with shame and excess is their joint capacity to infect (and reflect) shame onto the separate social body, as neither affect can be contained within the picture frame. This illuminates the contagious affect of shame that occurs between the excessive woman in Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 and the anxious viewer.

Performing Excess: The Transgressive, Emotional Woman

The female body and performative femininity were two essential points of interest for second-wave feminist artists and theorists. Feminists were particularly interested in performativity through its capacity to interrogate the politics of femininity and gender, through the presence of the female body in contemporary visual culture. In Bodies that Matter (1993), Judith Butler argues that gender is performative.[9] She writes, “[w]ithin speech act theory, a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names.”[10] On that account, the female body is recognized as a woman through her performance of femininity; this establishes a tradition of evaluating a woman’s character through her adherence to the visual codes and signs which define society’s idea of femininity as an indicator of both virtue and morality. Therefore, feminist artists used the female body in their performance artworks to deliberately interrogate and subvert the visual politics of femininity. Particularly, Sherman self-identifies as a performance artist—rather than a photographer—because of her reliance on her own body (or bodily fluids) throughout her Untitled Film Stills series.[11] Peggy Phelan contends that Sherman challenged traditional representations of femininity by disguising herself as ostensibly problematic female characters portrayed in contemporary Western media.[12] For Phelan, “[p]erformance uses the performer’s body to pose a question about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity and the body…[m]arking the body itself as [a] loss” of femininity.[13] In this case, Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 represents an ostensibly problematic woman through her body that does not conform to the traditional aesthetics of femininity; she appears in the film still as an antithesis to “female nude.”[14] Sherman’s body is neither composed nor contained, signified through her emotional distress, besmirched makeup and ostensible alcohol consumption. The result is that Sherman’s character is perceived as a threat to social order because her problematic “presence” in the image exposes a kind of femininity that would otherwise be concealed from the public gaze.[15] The artist’s visible corporeal existence within the film still reveals a disturbing reality that indeed deviant women are not mythical creatures, but rather they exist within and amongst society.

The desire to control the ostensible “threat” of women has been a common theme throughout Western society and its medical discourses. In Mary Russo’s introduction to The Female Grotesque, she defines the grotesque as a body that which transgresses, or exceeds the norm, and links these “types” of bodies to contemporary social and sexual deviances.[16] Russo argues that “the grotesque is related most strongly to the psychic register and the bodily as cultural projection of an inner state.”[17] As Russo affirms, the grotesque is an embodied experience that begins within the psyche and translates onto the body.[18] This contagion process that begins with the mind and moves outwards onto the body, suggesting that the threatening potential of the grotesque relies on its inability to be contained, and this outward projection presents itself as a potential contagion to not only the exterior body, but also the social body. It is significant that Russo identifies “the Hysteric” as one of several “stereotypical grotesques,” as she illuminates the way in which the physical body becomes a visible site for reading the psychological disorder on the body; through this translation, the body becomes grotesque.[19] Without the body, the grotesque is neither legible nor visible to the viewer’s gaze. Hysteria, as we know, was a nineteenth-century pseudo-medical condition that primarily affected women who were perceived to be emotionally excessive, as they ostensibly occupied “too” much space within society.[20] In an issue of The British Medical Journal published in 1935, Dr. W. R. Russell affirmed the idea that hysteria was legible on the body.[21] He writes, a “feature of individuals subject to hysterical attacks is the extraordinary degree of suggestibility which they show,” illuminating that idea that indeed hysteria was a condition that was made visible to an outside observer.[22] Russell’s reliance on the visible in order to diagnose hysteria pertains to Russo’s understanding of the female grotesque as both depend on sight as a primary mode of discerning the problematic body from the healthy social body. Therefore, as Russell contends, hysteria manifests itself through the woman’s visible excess; the pseudo-psychological condition moves outward from the brain, onto the body, and then projects onto society. Coupled with Russell and Russo’s reliance on visibility in order to identify hysteria and the grotesque, Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 captures a compelling view of the ostensibly problematic, emotional woman. However, the idea of performativity in Untitled Film Still #27 preserves the ambiguity of Sherman’s character

In “The Autonomy of Affect,” Brian Massumi discusses “intensity” as an autonomic, “nonconscious” state of suspense that acts as the precursor to emotions.[23] Massumi argues, drawing on Spinoza, “the affection is immediately, spontaneously doubled by the repeatable trace of an encounter…[t]he trace determines a tendency, the potential…for the autonomic repetition and variation of the impingement.”[24] As Massumi and Spinoza suggest, Sherman’s tears in Untitled Film Still #27 may also be read as traces of the affective response, and this trace indicates the potential for this emotional episode to reoccur. The trace of an encounter in Untitled Film Still #27 illuminates not only the suggestion that Sherman’s character may very well cry again, but also, and more importantly, the viewer is unable to forget this emotional distress as it is unmistakably marked upon her face.[25] The viewer’s inability to avoid Sherman’s poignant mark of her distress is compelling yet troubling, as there is no clear evidence that confirms the event which initiated this character’s pain. Therefore, Sherman’s tears do not begin at the surface of the body, but rather they are the affective response to an unknown psychological disturbance which moves outwards onto the body; by extension, this moves outward into society, moving out of the picture plain onto (and into) the viewer. The viewer witnesses Sherman’s distress. The viewer’s response to this unorthodox, uncontained, woman fabricates itself in the form of shame. As Sedgwick argues, “shame attaches to and sharpens the sense of what one is, whereas guilt attaches to what one does.”[26] This suggests that Sherman’s character in Untitled Film Still #27 is not necessarily condemned for what she does within the image, but rather the significance of her behaviour—her lack of composure—within the image serve as indicators of her internal state. Sherman’s disheveled appearance is the accompanying affect to her internal moral degrade; the grotesque, hysterical, exterior is merely a product of what began within the psyche.

Filming Excess: Abject and Confession

On the other hand, tears also signify the transgressive female body, recalling Julia Kristeva’s theory on abjection. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), Kristeva discusses and defines “abjection” as a psychoanalytical concept that provides a way of thinking about the body and the repulsions that occur within the viewer when the ostensibly stable boundaries of the body “collaps[e].”[27] “It is thus not a lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection,” Kristeva writes, “but what disturbs identity, system, [and] order” that becomes abject, and ultimately a source of anxiety for the viewer.[28] Kristeva’s analysis of abjection suggests that Sherman’s character in Untitled Film Still #27 is indeed not a closed and contained body, but rather a transgressive body that has crossed the boundaries of its own borders. Significantly, Kristeva identifies “tears” as a sign of matter that has “traversed the boundary of the body.” [29] Sherman’s character is depicted with her face besmirched with eye make-up, which exists an indexing reminder of the teardrops that were expelled from her eyes. As Russo argues, “Sherman’s literalization of the metaphoric relationship between the female and bodily abjection” are “literally ‘played out’ in the expulsion of the body from its earlier representation.”[30] Sherman’s character in Untitled Film Still #27 uses tears to identify her own body as abject in order to illuminate the way in which the body turns back in on itself, and attempts to expel the traditional closed, and contained, female nude that has established the Western modes of viewing (and validating) the female body. Her physical body is unable to contain the abjection from within as this dangerous fluid finds its way outside of the body through the woman’s weak bodily margins. Sherman’s tears in Untitled Film Still #27 thus too serve as a dangerous reminder that her excess might leak through the image and spread outwards into the public sphere and through society.

However, Sherman’s decision to self-fashion her own body in Untitled Film Still #27 as an excessive woman is indeed strategic. In Undoing Gender (2004), Judith Butler examines the relation between language, the body and psychosis by focusing on the act of confession.[31] Butler cites Foucault who argued that confession functions as a verbalized “self-sacrifice,” in that “the sacrifice involved in confession is a giving up of desire and the body.”[32] Butler continues, “To publish one’s act in language [or performance,] is in some sense the completion of the act,” as though the “very claiming” of the act “is also to commit another deed.”[33] Butler unravels her argument through Sophocles’ play, Antigone, and the moment in which Antigone confesses her crime to the authority figure; to say that “I did it and I do not deny it” not only reveals her refusal to obey the “edict,” but also negates the possibility of being forced into a state of denial.[34] This excerpt that Butler discusses is not unlike the affect of Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27. By self-fashioning herself into the personified trope of the transgressive woman, Sherman deliberately refuses to obey Western society’s powerful gendered norms of femininity, while at the same time she also negates the possibility for her body to be read as a detached identity. Thus, the viewer is positioned as a “pastor or judge,” a witness to Sherman’s confession, and asks them if they feel comfortable in their scrutinizing role.[35] The apparent irony behind Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 suggests that the artist was aware of the historical degenerate assumptions about the excessive female body. Sherman’s apparent embodiment of this deviant trope visibly confirms her refusal to obey society’s gendered norms, while unapologetically negating the possibility to be read as anything but excessive.

While the title, “Untitled Film Still,” does not identify the character or the performed subject matter, it does however refer to the medium: cinema. Sherman’s deconstruction of traditional “Hollywood” films function as a metaphor for the deconstruction of patriarchy and the politics of the female gaze.[36] In “Visual Pleasure from Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey argues that “alternative cinema” exists in opposition to the traditional Hollywood films, comprised of narrative and a “formal mise-en-scène.”[37] Alternative cinema became important for feminist artists “daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations” of femininity; this medium allowed female artists to subvert the powerful masculine gaze by reframing the female body as an object of spectacle by, and for, the female viewer.[38] Female artists used cinema to re-claim their image as “active controllers” of the gaze, subsequently “always threaten[ing] to evoke the anxiety it originally signified.”[39] As conveyed through the title, Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 represents a fragmented image of the female body within the film’s unknown narrative. In “The Promise of Touch: Turns to Feminist Film Theory,” Anu Koivunen discusses film as an popular affective medium for feminist artists through its emphasis on experience and embodiment. Koivunen cites Linda Williams’ essay on the “body genres” of pornography, horror, and melodrama, in which she argues that studying film is an “embodied practice.”[40] Koivunen writes, “low status genres of the ‘spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion,’ aiming to elicit a visceral viewing response (sexual arousal, shuddering, tears), Williams suggested, challenged theoretical models built on classical realist narrative cinema and its action-centered, goal oriented narration.”[41] Therefore, by reading Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 in the same light, Williams’ argument suggests the visceral viewing response to this particular image that depicts a female body “caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion.”[42] While this image may not elicit sexual arousal the same way that pornography perhaps does, the viewer’s affective response to this image is dependent upon his or her social prejudices, thus its reception is culturally contingent. In the same way, shame is not individually derived, but rather is an affect that is produced by culture. Sedgwick cites Ann Cvetkovich who argued that “affect should be understood as discursively constructed.”[43] For Cvetkovich, “affect is itself a construction. Like sexuality and other physical processes, affect is not a pre-discursive entity,” but rather, it is developed and framed through the viewer’s cultural environment.[44] Although Sedgwick takes problematizes Cvetkovich’s misuse of the term “theory” outside of the scientific context, Cvetkovich’s argument proves relevant in order to understand the way in which the human affective capacity is framed by an outside force, in this case the mores of culture and society.

Excess and Affect: Distancing the Self from the Strange

The role of the spectator when viewing Sherman’s film stills is discussed by Elisabeth Bronfen in her chapter on “The Other Self of the Imagination: Cindy Sherman’s Hysterical Performance.” Bronfen examines the ways in which Sherman’s performance stills are indeed “intended to deceive; or whether beneath the surface, beneath the media composite, an autonomous self nevertheless does exist.”[45] Bronfen cites Schultz-Hoffmann’s interview of Sherman from 1991 when she declared: “I’m trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me” in the image.[46] This notion illuminates the way in which Sherman attempts to affect the viewers through her performances that invite the viewer to consider their similarities and/or differences to the character on display. While Bronfen does not explicitly engage with Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27, her argument applies to this work in order to suggest the intersubjective affect between the viewer and the female body, within the pictorial frame. Sherman’s character presents a constructed performance of femininity and alcohol consumption that is rarely made visible in the realm of High Art. Yet, by doing so, Sherman invites the viewer to read themselves in relation to this image of femininity through visual signs that pertain to the individual woman’s lived existence. Sherman’s awareness to the spectator’s gaze deliberately “stages herself as a hybrid being, oscillating between the empowered subject [on display,] and [the] disempowered object of the gaze.”[47] Bronfen cites Craig Owens who argues that “Sherman’s photographs themselves function as mirror-masks that reflect back at the viewer his own desire…specifically, the masculine desire to fix the woman [into] a stable and stabilizing identity.”[48] Therefore, Sherman forces the viewer into the position of the shamer, and asks them if they feel comfortable in their scrutinizing role. Sherman invites the viewer to internally reflect on how their presuppositions affect their viewing of Untitled Film Still #27 in order to illuminate the ways in which excessive women are still criticized in contemporary society.

The troubling affect that an artwork may have on a viewer is dependent upon the pre-conceived prejudices that exist in his or her social environment. Catherine Malabou argues that neural “emotional and affective mechanisms are not predetermined,” but rather the brain is an malleable organ that is “open to external influences and affects,” therefore how something affects an individual is primarily a product of his or her environment.[49] Malabou cites the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who discussed Spinoza’s understanding of “occursus,” which translates to mean “the encounter.”[50] For Deleuze, an affect is undeniably linked to an encounter that occurs through an individual’s initial interaction with an object, or his or her own environment.[51] Consequentially, this initial encounter taints the memory of the experience entirely; thus, the positive or negative affect related to the encounter endures (and reoccurs) through the individual’s subsequent experiences that evoke the same emotions conjured through the initial encounter. Deleuze’s theory applies to Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 in order to understand the affect that occurs when the viewer observes an image that causes anxiety or displeasure. As noted earlier, there is indeed an enduring apprehension towards women—or images of women—who are excessive. These anxieties are produced through the viewer’s experience within his or her own environment which degrades women that appear transgressive in that they lack a sense of self-control over their own bodies and their excessive behaviours; the idea that an individual is unable to control themselves suggests that they are also unable to be controlled by society, and it is this lack of controllability that is fundamentally threatening. Moreover, Malabou cites Mark Solms who argues: “There is a predictable relationship between specific brain events and specific aspects of who we are.”[52] Solms illuminates the “profound correspondence between the brain and subjectivity,” as the brain is what determines the self as an entity that is separate from the other.[53] This discrepancy illuminates what Derrida identifies as “heteroaffection”: a psychological doubling between the body and the other; the idea that there is an unknown dimension of human subjectivity that occurs within the subconscious, in addition to the idea that “what affects me is always somebody other than myself.”[54] The initial “encounter” with a threatening image or human body triggers an emotional affect within the viewer, and this affect can be re-imagined (and re-experienced) by remembering this dangerous “encounter.”[55] In this case, Solms’ argument by way through Malabou, suggests the desire and repulsion that occurs when viewing the ostensibly threatening woman in Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27; as the viewer is drawn towards the image, they are simultaneously being pushed away by their psyche’s desire to separate itself from the threatening body in the film still.[56] Similarly, Sedgwick affirms that “without positive affect, there can be no shame: only a scene that…you thought might delight or satisfy can disgust.”[57] This notion between delight and disgust illuminates the way in which the viewer is drawn towards the image, yet pushed away at the same time. This pushing away is through the viewer’s recognition of danger, and thus they attempt to remove their body from being infected by that which is shameful; they ironically attempt to avoid this contagious affect of shame which has already swept over their psyche.

Similarly, Julia Skelly’s analysis of shame and addiction illuminates the way in which ostensibly threatening female bodies are read and received by society. Although Skelly’s study primarily focuses on the female alcoholic, her argument pertains to Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 as she discusses the ways in which non-normative female bodies are read and criticized through social reception, and their excessive behaviours. In Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919: Wasted Looks, Skelly argues that by recognizing the female body as a “named identity,” there is indeed a certain degree of shame associated with this loss of humanness; the excessive woman becomes an embodied personification of the derogatory prefix to her identity, or what Skelly calls “the monstre par excès.” [58] Skelly continues, “a person can experience shame on behalf of another whom they feel ‘should’ be ashamed of themselves.”[59] The ostensible shamefulness of addiction, like excess, is socially constructed and culturally contingent.”[60] By reading Skelly’s theory on shame in relation to Sedgwick, they reveal the intersubjective affect of shame on both the viewer and the spectacle.

Fig. 2: Installation view, ‘MoMA2000, Open Ends,’ Sept 2000.

Moreover, this viewing process is suggested by Sedgwick in her chapter on “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James’ The Art of the Novel.” Sedgwick comments on Silvan Tomkins, and argues that shame occurs when “one wishes to commune with another person but suddenly cannot because he is strange.”[61] For Sedgwick, shame is the affect that occurs when the viewer recognizes an individual’s actions and attempts to separate themselves from the problematic individual as they feel anxiously involved as witness to this character’s moral degradation. Sedgwick affirms that “shame attaches to and sharpens the sense of what one is,” as “shame is both peculiarly contagious and peculiarly individuating.”[62] This implies that by recognizing a problematically “strange” individual—in this case the excessive woman—the viewer ultimately experiences the binary sense of shame: the viewer is ashamed of the spectacle as they discern that the individual should be ashamed of themselves.[63] In this sense, Sedgwick presents shame as something which “points and projects,” suggesting the transgression on shame between the shamer and the ashamed, between the sitter and the viewer. In the same way, mirrors are devices which point and project the viewers image upon the surface. Considering that the physical dimensions of Untitled Film Still #27 are 24 x 17 cm, the scale of the image itself plays an important function. Remarkably, Untitled Film Still #27 is thinner in width than the average piece of A4 paper, thus requiring the viewer to physically move their body closer to the image in order to thoroughly examine it within a gallery. Considering that when Untitled Film Still #27 was displayed by the MoMA in their Open Ends exhibition, the image was matted and framed [fig. 2].[64] Not only does the frame act have an aesthetic purpose, but it also functions as an important container for Sherman’s image that provides a protective barrier between the viewer and image. However, at the same time, the glossy finish of Sherman’s gelatin silver print, Untitled Film Still #27, has a reflective surface which acts as a mirror to capture and reflect light back at the viewer. Depending on how the light was situated in the exhibition, the image could very well reflect a shadow of the viewer upon the image itself. The literalization of the viewer’s body pointed and projected upon Untitled Film Still #27 makes physical (and thus visible) the affect of shame between the viewer and the image; the viewer’s shame is literally projected upon Sherman’s character through their shadow which is casted upon the image. The power of Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 relies on the viewer recognizing his or her own response and attitudes towards what in fact makes this woman shameful. In doing so, they learn more about themselves through viewing this image than they confirm the unknown qualities about Sherman’s character.

Conclusion: Reflecting Affect

The mirror effect of Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 is best described through Jacques Lacan’s theorization of the “mirror stage.”[65] According to Lacan, comparative psychology first occurs when the human child recognizes his or her own image as such in a mirror.[66] This “identification” moment “establish[es] a relationship between an organism and its reality,” the self as an individual, separate from reality.[67] After this stage, the individual begins to develop their sense of self and in doing so, he or she can recognize the boundary which separates themselves from the other. This “mirror stage” and the recognition between the self and the other is relevant when applied to Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #27 as her unknown identity explicitly marks her body separate to the viewer because he or she cannot identify with her. The identification process occurs, and when the viewer recognizes a certain “strange” quality within Sherman’s character; they attempt to distance themselves from her.[68] This distancing process is the result of recognizing that which is shameful, and thus the viewer begins to feel ashamed of the individual who appears them, framed within the image. As noted earlier, shame, for Sedgwick, operates at the non-conscious, or subconscious level as an affect of disruption that occurs between the self and the other.[69] This powerful affect is employed by Sherman in Untitled Film Still #27 in order to illuminate the enduring anxieties surrounding the female body, and the unease that occurs when she presents herself immersed in, and surrounded by, excess. The shameful response to this image reveals more about the viewer and their prejudices towards the female body than the image reveals concrete facts about Sherman herself, or her performed character. This is the affect of Untitled Film Still #27 as its ambiguity has the capacity to evoke the viewer’s pre-conceived attitudes towards how the female body should be depicted, and the shameful response to this particular image depicting a female body which does not represent the contained, closed, ideal femininity.

*Author's Note: This essay was originally published in CANVAS: The McGill Journal of Art History and Communication Studies in November 2019. Please see the following link.

Plate List:

Fig. 1: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #27 (1979), Gelatin silver print, 24 x 17 cm, Museum of Modern Art

(MoMA), New York City, USA.

Fig. 2: Kirk Varnedoe, Paola Antonelli, Joshua Siegel, “Installation view of the Exhibition, ‘MoMA2000,

Open Ends: Actual Size,’” September 28, 2000—March 4, 2001, IN1874.27, Museum of Modern Art

(MoMA), New York City, NY, (date of last access 09 December 2018).

Works Cited: [1] Anna Kércky, “The Woman 69 Times: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills,” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 2003), p. 181. [2] Marvin Heifer, “In Front of the Camera, Behind the Scenes: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills,” “In Front of the Camera, Behind the Scenes: Cindy Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills,’” MoMA, no. 25 (Summer 1997), p. 16. [3] “Excess,” Merriam-Webster.com, (date of last access 05 December 2018), https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/excess. [4] Julia Skelly, “Introduction,” The Uses of Excess in Visual and Material Culture, 1600-2010, ed. Julia Skelly (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 4. [5] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James’ The Art of the Novel,” Touching Felling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 35. [6] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 37. [7] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 35. [8] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 37. [9] Judith Butler, “Introduction,” Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of the “Sex” (London: Routledge, 2011), p. xii. [10] Judith Butler, “Bodies that Matter,” Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of the “Sex” (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 13. [11] Peggy Phelan, “Developing the Negative: Mapplethorpe, Schor, and Sherman,” Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 60. [12] Phelan, “Developing the Negative,” p. 60. [13] Peggy Phelan, “The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction,” Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 2003), p.150-51. [14] Lynda Nead, “Theorizing the Female Nude” The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 6. Nead discusses the socio-political process that occurs when the female “naked” body transforms into the female “nude” through visual culture. The nude represents the feminine ideal of containment, order, and morality. Evidently, the nude has problematically cultivated the mythical representation of femininity in Western society. [15] Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 15. I borrow Amelia Jones’ use of the term “presence” from her discussion on performativity and body art. Jones argues that performance art, as body art, complicates the understanding of the body as a corporeal presence, as its physicality remains absent. The body’s presence exists and endures through the image. [16] Mary Russo, “Introduction,” The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), p. 14. [17] Russo, “Introduction,” p. 9. [18] Russo, “Introduction,” p. 9. [19] Russo, “Introduction,” p. 14. [20] W. Ritchie Russell, “Major Hysteria,” The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 3877 (Apr. 27, 1935), p. 873. [21] Russell, “Major Hysteria,” p. 873. [22] Russell, “Major Hysteria,” p. 873. [23] Brian Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” Cultural Critique, no. 31, The Politics of Systems and Environments, Part II (Autumn 1995), p. 85. [24] Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” p. 92-3; See: Baruch Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) [25] Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” p. 93. [26] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 35. [27] Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection,” The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Rouxiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 1-2. [28] Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection,” p. 4. [29] Julia Kristeva, “From Filth to Defilement,” The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Rouxiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 69. [30] Mary Russo, “Introduction,” p. 3. [31] Judith Butler, “Bodily Confessions,” Undoing Gender, (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p. 161. [32] Butler, “Bodily Confessions,” p. 163. See: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume One, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978) [33] Butler, “Bodily Confessions,” p. 163. [34] Butler, “Bodily Confessions,” p. 167-68. [35] Butler, “Bodily Confessions,” p. 168. [36] Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema [1975],” Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2002), p. 964. [37] Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” p. 965. [38] Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” p. 965. [39] Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” p. 969. [40] Anu Koivunen, “The Promise of Touch: Turns to Feminist Film Theory,” Feminisms: Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), p. 100; see: Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4 (Summer 1991), pp. 2-13. [41] Koivunen, “The Promise of Touch,” p. 100; see: Williams, “Film Bodies,” pp. 2-13. [42] Koivunen, “The Promise of Touch,” p. 100; see: Williams, “Film Bodies,” p. 2-13. [43] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, with Adam Frank “Shame and the Cybernetic Fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins,” Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 109; see: Ann Cvetkovich, Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 30. [44] Sedgwick and Frank, “Shame in the Cybernetic Fold,” p. 109; see: Cvetkovich, Mixed Feelings, p. 24. [45] Elisabeth Bronfen, “The Other Self of the Imagination: Cindy Sherman’s Hysterical Performance,” Cindy Sherman: Photographic Work 1975-1991, eds. Zdenek Felix and Martin Schwander (London: Schirmer Art Books, 1995), p. 15. [46] Bronfen, “The Other Self of the Imagination,” p. 15. [47] Bronfen, “The Other Self of the Imagination,” p. 15. [48] Bronfen, “The Other Self of the Imagination,” p. 15; see: Craig Owens, Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, eds. Craig Owens and Scott Bryson (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1992), p. 182. [49] Catherine Malabou, “Part I: Go Wonder: Subjectivity and Affects in Neurobiological Times,” Self and Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience, eds. Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 27. [50] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” p. 39-40; see: Gilles Deleuze, Lectures on Spinoza at Vincennes, January 24, 1978. [51] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” p. 39-40; see: Deleuze, Lectures on Spinoza at Vincennes, January 24, 1978. [52] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” p. 28; see: Mark Solms, The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of the Subjective Experience, eds. Mark Solms and Oliver Turnbull (London: Routledge, 2002) [53] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” 27-8. [54] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” p. 20; see: Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 34 [55] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” p. 9; see: René Descartes, “The Passions of the Soul,” The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothof, and Dugald Murdock, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 338-39. [56] Malabou, “Go Wonder,” p. 9 [57] Sedgwick and Frank “Shame and the Cybernetic Fold,” p. 116. [58] Julia Skelly, “Wasted Mothers: Reading William Hogarth’s Gin Lane,” Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919: Wasted Looks (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 34; see: Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum, Defects: Engendering the Modern Body (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 11. The monstre par excès is a term that defines a problematic, dangerous human body: the body with excess parts. Deutsch and Nussbaum define the term in relation to the female body, and identify the monstre par excès as a deformation that begins in the womb. The female “monstre” is dangerous from the moment of her conception. [59] Skelly, “Wasted Mothers: Reading William Hogarth’s Gin Lane,” p. 34. [60] Skelly, “Wasted Mothers: Reading William Hogarth’s Gin Lane,” p. 34. [61] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 35. [62] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” pp. 36-37. [63] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 35. [64] Installation view of the Exhibition, “MoMA2000, Open Ends: Actual Size,” September 28, 2000—March 4, 2001, IN1874.27, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, NY, (date of last access 09 December 2018) https://www.moma.org/collection/works/56659?installation_image_index=0. [65] Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function: As Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, eds. Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg (London and New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), p. 75. [66] Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” p. 76. [67] Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” p. 78. [68] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Performativity,” p. 37. [69] Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity,” p. 37.