Female flânerie and the nexus of the star in Leni Riefenstahl's Das blaue Licht (1932)

• Main Author: Revell, Stephanie
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2013
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/44353

This paper seeks to contribute to the search for the female flâneur in Leni Riefenstahl's figure of Junta in the 1932 mountain film Das blaue Licht. It will use the literature from and of Weimar modernity and feminist cultural theory and contributes to the project of “understanding female subjectivity” in women's studies and cultural studies. Here understanding is informed by the search for the female flâneur in modernity, and female subjectivity is understood as a visible and “spectacular” one consisting in the occupation and manipulation of modernity's images. I will introduce the phrase “nexus of the star” to incorporate the various terms and discussions surrounding this experience, and explain how female flânerie informs its definition. This paper acknowledges the term flâneuse as traditionally used to refer to a potential female flâneur, but does not engage with it here. This paper also acknowledges the use of such phrases as “modern man” which are only used and intended in their original contexts signifying the “modern subject.”