Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines how Julia Ducournau's Titane (2021) reconfigures the cultural coding of the automobile in French cinema by merging it with female corporeality to construct what I term automachinic femininity . Challenging the long-standing masculinized framing of both cars and women as objects of spectacle, the article argues that Titane fuses flesh and metal through a grotesque yet generative aesthetic. Through textual and semiotic analysis, the study situates the film within a lineage of French cinema while emphasizing its radical transgression. Central to this analysis is the figure of the Metallic Madonna, a mythic cyborg hybrid that reworks Marian iconography through machinic pregnancy and birth. By destabilizing binaries such as masculine/feminine and organic/mechanical, Titane positions the female body as a site of posthuman transformation rather than passive display. The article concludes that Ducournau's film offers a feminist posthuman framework for rethinking gender, technology, and embodiment in contemporary cinema today globally.
Source: French Cultural Studies
Author: Melissa Barchi Panek
Institution: Brooklyn College
Language: English
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7128424104