Ewa Mazierska
(School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Central Lancashire)
Abstract:
My paper concerns the cinematic representation of cleaners (a broad category, which also includes maids/domestic servants, as well as housewives) in contemporary cinema. It is divided into two parts. The first part consists of discussion about the economic and social position of ‘real cleaners’ and the specificity of their labour. My argument is that cleaning can be seen as an activity suspended between work and non-work, hence as an epitome of contemporary work, which is equally borderless and diffuse. This, in my opinion, is to the disadvantage of cleaners, as it makes them vulnerable to exploitation. In the second part I focus on contemporary portrayals of cleaners, in films such as ‘Yes’ by Sally Potter, ‘The Maid’ by Sebastian Silva, ‘Pani z Ukrainy’ by Paweł Łoziński and ‘Roma’ by Alfonso Cuarón, comparing them with the film from 1975: ‘Nightcleaners’ (1975) by Berwick Street Collective. My argument is that, although nominally all these contemporary films are sympathetic to the plight of cleaners, they ultimately normalise their conditions as precarious workers. There is no attempt in them to liberate cleaners, most likely because they are made by people who themselves use them. My talk also touches on the issue of the difference between representation ‘from above’ and self-representation.
Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies, at the University of Central Lancashire. She published over twenty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music. They include Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology (Routledge, 2018), with Lar Kristensen, Poland Daily: Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema (Berghahn, 2017), Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking the Cold War Paradigm (Palgrave, 2016), Marxism and Film Activism (Berghahn, 2015), with Lars Kristensen, Relocating Popular Music (Palgrave, 2015), with Georgina Gregory, From Self- Fulfillment to Survival of the Fittest: Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present (Berghahn, 2015) and European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory, Politics (Palgrave, 2011). Mazierska’s work was translated into many languages, including French, Italian, German, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Estonian and Serbian. She is principal editor of a Routledge journal, Studies in Eastern European Cinema.