5 - Film, Gender, Gaslighting

Summary

This chapter explores the political themes in Cavell’s philosophy of cinema by reading the film Gaslight in the context of contemporary American politics. This reading will serve two purposes. First, by focusing on a single film, the chapter demonstrates the political dimension of Cavell’s writing on film. Second in the last few years some critics of Trump have argued that he deploys gaslighting (a term developed from this film) to manipulate the American public. Therefore a reading of Gaslight can provide resources This chapter explores the political themes in Cavell’s philosophy of cinema by reading the film Gaslight in the context of contemporary American politics. This reading will serve two purposes. First, by focusing on a single film, the chapter demonstrates the political dimension of Cavell’s writing on film. Second, in the past few years, some critics of Trump have argued that he deploys “gaslighting” (a term developed from this film) to manipulate the American public. Therefore, a reading of Gaslight can provide resources for contemporary political theorists to think through political deception in contemporary American life. Gaslighting is one of the most powerful forms of political manipulation in the post-truth-politics era because it tricks its targets into doubting what they know. This chapter offers an theoretical analysis of gaslighting. It considers how Cavell’s interpretation of gaslighting as a gendered practice relates to Cavell’s understanding of the gendered nature of skepticism. Cavell suggests that to resist gaslighting one must cultivate modes of response to one’s intuition in order to reclaim one’s voice. The chapter concludes by analyzing how this way of responding to gaslighting can help us to make sense of Trump’s gaslighting of America and similar forms of populist propaganda.