M.A. Alum Ariana DiValentino Published on Best Damn Writing

Friday, Aug 14, 2020

A woman screaming

The Screams Of Women In Film And What “Twin Peaks” Can Teach Us About It

Performance Studies Alum Ariana DiValentino (M.A. '18)  recently had an article published by Best Damn Writing, entitled "The Screams Of Women In Film And What “Twin Peaks” Can Teach Us About It". The article is based on work she began while in the Performance Studies M.A. program.

In the article, Ariana says, "Thanks to the groundbreaking essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey, the idea of the “male gaze” in film (and beyond) is common vocabulary for more than just feminist film scholars. The way that women’s images are exploited onscreen is a recurring conversation in academic and popular culture. But as some scholars have pointed out, we ought to pay the same attention to the way the sounds, not just the images, of female and femme bodies play into the power dynamics of the medium."

Ariana graduated with a B.A. from NYU in 2016 with a major in Dramatic Literature and minors in Film Production and Animal Studies. She is a writer and filmmaker interested in examining and retelling narratives of biology and of history.