Growing up girl in the hood: On the bruised aesthetic of Girlhood

Professor Caroline Bainbridge of Roehampton has been invited to give a lecture about the film Girlhood (2014), hosted by Dr. Carolyn Laubender and PPS.

This open seminar is suitable for students or researchers interested in film, race, childhood, gender and psychosocial studies.

Céline Sciamma’s critically acclaimed film, Girlhood, offers a rich and politically nuanced perspective on female subjectivity, social class, gendered and “raced” experience, the bonds of friendship, and sexual identity. Professor Caroline Bainbridge draws on the ideas of Donald Meltzer, Luce Irigaray, and Jack Halberstam to explore the film’s narrative, formal, and stylistic elements, arguing that the ‘bruised aesthetic’ created by Sciamma evokes complex aspects of contemporary feminine experience, providing a timely insight into the entanglement of vulnerability and violence that shapes it. Tracing the trajectory of Marieme/Vic, the film’s protagonist, she identifies ‘gestures of girlhood’ that speak to what Meltzer understands as the ‘girl-gang state of mind’. Bainbridge argues that, in bringing complex and unspeakable emotional pain to the surface, Sciamma’s film queers cinematic narrative and challenges viewers to think anew about what ‘growing up girl’ might mean in a landscape of increasing social inequality and decreasing opportunity.