Abstract
In this essay, I explore the connection between women’s mental health and gender violence within the Italian family through the analysis of a destructive mother-daughter relationship and the resulting transgenerational transmission of psychological problems that allow, from a female perspective, gender discrimination to perpetuate. With this intent, I discuss the story of domestic violence as portrayed by director Francesca Archibugi in her 1993 film Il grande cocomero (The Great Pumpkin), interpreting it as a case of Münchausen Syndrome by proxy (a form of child abuse), whose origins lie in the mother’s conformity to misogynistic sociocultural norms. I therefore perceive the mother’s mental disorder not as the result of a decontextualized individual pathology, but from a feminist perspective, regarding it as a symptom of a collective problem, caused by the unequal way in which relationships between genders are structured in a patriarchal society.
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Filmography
Mignon è partita (1988)
Verso sera (1990)
Il grande cocomero (1993)
Con gli occhi chiusi (1994)
La strana storia di banda sonora (1997)
L’albero delle pere (1998)
Domani (2000)
Renzo e Lucia (2004)
Lezioni di volo (2006)
Questione di cuore (2009)
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© 2013 Maristella Cantini
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De Pau, D. (2013). Healing the Daughter’s Body in Francesca Archibugi’s Il Grande Cocomero . In: Cantini, M. (eds) Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336514_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336514_6
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