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Gender Segregation and Embodiment of Women Friendship in the Israeli Film “Zero Motivation”

Mon, December 17, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Cambridge 2

Abstract

Talya Lavie’s smart dark-comedy from 2014 Zero Motivation (in Hebrew, אפס ביחסי אנוש) calls attention to the ways in which women operate under various sets of constraints in the highly masculine oriented environment of a Jewish-Israeli military base. The film offers new ways of conceptualizing what it means to be a woman in such circumstances, and demonstrates a variety of creative ways to assert individuality within the often-rigid realms of the symbolic order.
My paper maps the trajectory of the relationship between two young women soldiers, whose marginality is constituted at the intersections of hierarchical military structure and gendered inequalities. The female soldiers are invisible to the military system that does not care about their individual needs, abilities or desires. The soldiers then adopt a range of strategies and practices that serve as a mechanism for surviving such oppressing military service. My presentation delineates the emotional tone of the film, which portrays the universal battlefield of men and women relationship. It then turns to address the less explored themes of women relationship: female camaraderie, intense rivalry and thorny, though long-lasting friendship. I argue and demonstrate how the drama between the two women, Zohar and Daffi, slowly takes over the narrative of the film. Their own battlefield is marked by the highly coherent geography of the military office. With the imaginary landscape of computer games and the substitution of real weapons with office supply, the war between the two friends is not less real than any other war or struggle depicted in the film. What is striking, as the presentation shows, is the women’s effective ability to ultimately achieve just what they want by creating social and cultural chaos within the boundaries of a system that is almost entirely blind to their existence.

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