The Perversity of Drunk Feminist Films

Among the contemporary proliferation of participaction cinema events in Toronto, the Drunk Feminist Films screening series has provided a symbiotic space where hosts and spectators interact with each other and with the filmic text. Films with complicated identity politics have been screened by the collective while improvised commentary is enacted by permanent Drunk Feminist Films hosts and guest hosts. The hosts invite spectators to drink, to gesture, and to speak back at recurring tropes that are specified in a paper program distributed during the screenings. This method of live performative criticism recalls media theorist Janet Staiger’s notion of perverse spectatorship, where audience reception is not possible to place within categories of perception and interpretation. These film events are also useful to think about within the framework of Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide films, where cinematic images convey pervasive discursive formations that are not evident when initially viewed or in the film’s mainstream marketing.