He bravely made a movie about women’s sexual addiction, which caused countless controversies-Season 1

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Danish director Lars von Trier’s 2013 film “Nymphomaniac” was already worthy of discussion, and his public mockery of Cannes at the Berlin Film Festival after being expelled from Cannes made the film even more topical.

But beyond the gimmicks, “Nymphomaniac” is undoubtedly the best work of Lars von Trier, who is dedicated to filming female-themed films.

The film’s original English title, “Nymphomaniac,” literally translates to “female nymphomaniac” or “female maniac.” Nymphomaniac, as a medical diagnostic term, dates back to 19th-century Europe, specifically referring to women with hypersexuality. It has since lost its gender-specific designation and, along with the term “male nymphomaniac” (satyriasis), has become the medical term for hypersexuality, a clinical condition common to both men and women.

The root word “Nymphomanie” has a derogatory and discriminatory connotation, with strong cultural tendencies, value orientations and “sexual morality” connotations in the historical context. It is rarely used in human medical literature and is currently commonly used in veterinary medicine.

Lars von Trier used it as the title of his film, emphasizing its gender orientation, making this four-hour film, which had to be divided into two parts and contained a large number of erotic scenes, seem to have more gender declaration implications.

But if we analyze the text carefully, we will find that “Nymphomaniac” does not actually have the challenge to male power as its initial or main motivation. Its stance is ambiguous or pluralistic. Lars von Trier weaves the text of a thesis film through the protagonist’s self-narration and discussion, exploring how women in contemporary society use sex as a channel to pursue and explore themselves, and are thus confined to the dilemma of society and themselves.

1、Body “Autonomy” – Swinging Love and Sex

The film’s structure begins with the self-identified nymphomaniac heroine Joy’s retrospective narration of her sexual experiences to the “asexual” and “psychic” man Selman. Her diverse sexual experiences and activities seem to be a challenge to the patriarchal society by a woman using her body as a weapon.

At the end of the film, Selman also criticized male power: “If your behavior were placed on a man, then the whole story would become boring, but if you are a woman, you need to bear the blame.”

But the reality is far from that.

For a long time, modern civilized society, which has inherited the feudal era and is trapped in a patriarchal structure, has placed strict demands on women, forcing women to place their own sexual needs within a sexual morality and legal system that complies with patriarchal sexual ethics.

Civilized sexual morality holds that marriage is the sole purpose of all sexual inclinations (desires). “Patriarchal civilization demands chastity from women. While men are more or less recognized as having the right to satisfy their sexual desires, women are confined to marriage. For them, sexual behavior not permitted by law and marriage is a loss, a degradation, a failure, a defect.” Only by submitting to the structures of patriarchal culture and to love-oriented sexual behavior can women achieve the “legitimacy” and “propriety” of fulfilling their desires (in traditional sexual culture, women are passive or even “sexually asexual”).

Women’s sexual behavior and bodies are subject to external social morals and patriarchal structures. “Except for slavery, women tend to be treated as objects. Before marriage, they are the property of their fathers or brothers. If the father or brother transfers their ownership through marriage, the husband becomes the owner of the sexual field and its labor. She grants him the field and allows him to use her labor.”

The ownership of the body and sexuality, and even the social functions, do not belong to women themselves. Women themselves and their gender, physiological and social identities all exist with difficulty in such a model.

But is it true, as Jules Laforgue said, that “women have no weapons other than their sexual organs”? By using sex as a weapon to declare war on patriarchy, can we achieve the possibility of transcending gender identity and gender power to a certain extent?

The answer doesn’t seem so optimistic. Simply liberating behavior and exercising bodily autonomy also face dual pressures from society and within oneself—after breaking established rules, how can new ones be established?

Joy in “Nymphomaniac” became aware of her vagina at the age of two, a manifestation of her self-awareness. As a teenager, harboring what she calls a “ridiculous fantasy,” she proactively invites a stranger, Jerome, to take her virginity, asking him, “Would it be a bother if I asked you to take my virginity?” This behavior reveals Joy as a woman with autonomy over her body and sexuality. For her, losing her virginity no longer serves as a validation of chastity or a surrender to paternal law. Instead, it becomes, as Joy describes it, a functional, “imperative” step, opening the door to the adult world and defining her own sexual experiences. Self-determination becomes the sole criterion for her behavior.

In the first chapter of the film, “Fishhook”, Joey and his friend B use sex as a game and competition. They bet on a moving train that whoever has sex with more men before the train arrives at the station will win the chocolate candy as a bet.

Sex, which in traditional society must be subject to the structure of love or marriage, becomes a game of pleasure in the confined space of the train. Originally outnumbered, Joey ultimately wins the game by seducing a married man who initially refused to have sex with them.

Here, sexual behavior not only begins to move from the existing one-to-one model to a one-to-many model, but also uses women’s initiative to eliminate the traditional male-initiative model, and even attempts to break the morality of marriage.

In this scene, Joey successfully seduces a middle-aged man who, having failed to seduce B, rushes home to try to conceive with his wife. He then uses oral sex to remove the few sperm he has. Joey considers himself a “bad person” because he “consciously exploits and harms others for his own gratification.”

But at the same time, Joey also admitted that she “discovered her charm as a woman and used it without regard for the feelings of others, which is unacceptable.” She indulged in and enjoyed her sexual enjoyment and sexual advantages as a woman, but while her body was liberated, Joey also clearly knew that her behavior could not be integrated into the social structure and be accepted by others.

The enclosed train, a temporary space detached from social structures, is undoubtedly a metaphor for the vagina. Joey and B’s spontaneous behavior on the train reflects the fantasies of two girls, who have yet to enter the adult world, about the vagina (and adult sex). This behavior caters to the sexual needs of the men, and the men’s reactions on the train reflect their fundamental attitudes toward sex and the vagina.

Compared with Joey and B’s behavior that deviates from social discipline, the men’s reactions are socialized – because their wives reject prostitutes and agree to sexual behavior because of the exchange of benefits.

Joey and her friend B’s unconventional sexual behavior on this train conveys a certain desexualization. They are neither able nor willing to satisfy their sexual needs or gain sexual pleasure from such behavior. Rather, it is more like a childish bet over a bag of chocolates, a childish need for “chocolate” that has nothing to do with “sex.”

Within the norms of the children’s world, within the enclosed space of the train, a symbol of femininity, these behaviors are exempt from social responsibility and consequences. However, upon exiting the train and returning to real life, sexual behaviors primarily motivated by self-gratification, and even driven by egocentric sexual needs and desires, must confront their own dilemmas.

In the second chapter, “Jerome,” Joey and B organize a sex club, singing “Vagina Supremacy Songs” and setting a rule of not falling in love or having sex with the same boy twice. However, this oath does not last long. Even B, the most prolific of the girls, begins to sleep with the same boy over and over again, telling Joey, “The secret of sex is love.”

B, once the most avant-garde advocate of sexual freedom, has returned to the glory of the love myth, cloaking his sexual behavior in a cloak of rationality, legality, and even nobility. But for Joey, she believes that “love is sex with a little jealousy.”

However, not long after, Joy encountered Jerome, the man she had her first night with, and experienced feelings of love with him. Joy was furious about this, believing it was “very abnormal,” saying, “Sex was my need for men, and love distorted everything.” During this time, she forbade other men from touching her body during sex, and soon stopped having sex with other men.

The prohibition of sexual behavior and the openness of sexual behavior are both personal choices of Joey, but under this personal body autonomy, Joey believes that “in my pornographic life, I said yes to all men, but love reduced this instinct.”

In this passage, Joy’s instinctive openness to sexual desire and her physical rejection of men reveal a wavering contradiction. She instinctively demands sex, yet her romantic psychology resists having sex with a man she doesn’t love. Neither the traditional ethos of sexual unity nor the desire for sexual liberation, focused solely on physical pleasure, can translate these inner needs into a unified behavioral pattern.

This is the contradiction that Joey faces, and it is also the contradiction that modern women who pursue sexual freedom may face.

Sex, as an act that can be performed by one’s own body, is an act that Joy herself demands, or in other words, an act that she, the subject of “sexual behavior,” summons herself. In the absence of love and marriage, this act becomes an instrumental demand on men.

She exchanges her body and sex for the physical satisfaction she desires. However, love is not something Joy, as a subject, calls for or demands. Joy tells Selman, “Sex is my need, but love comes uninvited. This foolish love humiliates me.”

The uncontrollability of emotions becomes the opposite of the controllable nature of sexual behavior, causing women who originally hoped to find themselves through physical liberation to fall back into confusion and moral shame.

This is the dilemma and sorrow that women must inevitably face on the road to sexual liberation.