In flesh and metal: Automachinic femininity in Titane

IF 0.7 4区社会学 Q3 CULTURAL STUDIES

French Cultural Studies Pub Date : 2026-02-09 DOI:10.1177/09571558261418002

Melissa Barchi Panek

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Abstract

This article examines how Julia Ducournau's Titane (2021) reconfigures the cultural coding of the automobile in French cinema by merging it with female corporeality to construct what I term automachinic femininity . Challenging the long-standing masculinized framing of both cars and women as objects of spectacle, the article argues that Titane fuses flesh and metal through a grotesque yet generative aesthetic. Through textual and semiotic analysis, the study situates the film within a lineage of French cinema while emphasizing its radical transgression. Central to this analysis is the figure of the Metallic Madonna, a mythic cyborg hybrid that reworks Marian iconography through machinic pregnancy and birth. By destabilizing binaries such as masculine/feminine and organic/mechanical, Titane positions the female body as a site of posthuman transformation rather than passive display. The article concludes that Ducournau's film offers a feminist posthuman framework for rethinking gender, technology, and embodiment in contemporary cinema today globally.

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肉体和金属：泰妮的自动机械女性气质

本文探讨了朱莉娅·迪库诺（Julia Ducournau）的《泰坦》（2021）是如何重新配置法国电影中汽车的文化编码的，通过将其与女性肉体相结合，构建我所谓的自动机械女性气质。这篇文章挑战了长期以来将汽车和女性作为奇观对象的男性化框架，认为泰娜通过怪诞而又富有创造性的美学融合了肉体和金属。通过文本和符号学分析，本研究将这部电影置于法国电影的谱系中，同时强调其激进的越界。这一分析的核心是金属圣母的形象，一个神话般的半机械人混合体，通过机械怀孕和分娩重新制作了玛丽安的图像。通过破坏男性/女性和有机/机械等二元结构，泰娜将女性身体定位为后人类转化的场所，而不是被动的展示。文章的结论是，迪库诺的电影为重新思考当今全球当代电影中的性别、技术和化身提供了一个女权主义的后人类框架。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

French Cultural Studies Multiple-

CiteScore

0.70

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： French Cultural Studies is a fully peer reviewed international journal that publishes international research on all aspects of French culture in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Articles are welcome on such areas as cinema, television and radio, the press, the visual arts, popular culture, cultural policy and cultural and intellectual debate. French Cultural Studies is designed to respond to the important changes that have affected the study of French culture, language and society in all sections of the education system. The journal encourages and provides a forum for the full range of work being done on all aspects of modern French culture.