The artist biopic and posthuman feminism: Maudie (2016) as ‘bio-zoe-geo-pic’

Abstract

This article discusses Aisling Walsh’s 2016 biopic about disabled Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, Maudie, as a ‘posthuman feminist biopic’. Reading the film through a posthumanist lens with reference to concepts such as posthuman feminism (Rosi Braidotti), transcorporeality (Stacy Alaimo), vibrant matter, thing power, assemblage (Jane Bennett), and companion species (Donna Haraway), it argues that the portrayal of Maud diverges from traditional artist biopics. While artist biopics usually strongly hold on to humanist values such as individuality and self-sufficiency, Maudie foregrounds ideas of relationality and collectivity. It emphasizes how the human (an artist in this case) is intertwined with the more-than-human-world and inseparable from its surroundings. The film creates an equilibrium between human and non-human elements, showing how the artist is embedded within the material realm. It portrays ‘things’ not as passive objects but as actants, suggesting that things, humans, and non-human animals are in constant relationship with each other. It reframes art not just as an individual human act but as the result of multiple human and non-human interactions. The article concludes that Maudie revises not only the conventions of the artist biopic subgenre but also opens up reflections on the term ‘bio-pic’, suggesting that it needs to be rethought to include the idea that humans are in constant relationship with each other, the non-human and the world. In this light, it proposes the term ‘bio-zoe-geo-pic’.

Introduction

‘This tree has red leaves; this tree has green. What season is it?’ Taken aback by this interpretative question about one of her paintings (Fig. 1), Maud stumblingly replies: ‘Ehh . . . well . . . I guess . . . Everything that’s pretty about all seasons’. This dialogue in the 2016 biopic Maudie (dir. Aisling Walsh), about Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, highlights that Maud’s paintings are not an exact copy of reality. She does not paint a spring or summer or autumn or winter landscape but combines multiple seasons into one painting. She paints the reality around her, but by making creative decisions, she creates her own, fictionalized version of it.

This idea of art as a fictionalized version of reality can be extended to the film Aisling Walsh made about Maud Lewis’s life. Like every biopic, it is based on reality but fictionalized as filmmakers have to make creative decisions (cf. Vidal, ‘The Biopic and its Critical Contexts’, 3). These creative decisions also greatly impact the representations of their characters in an ideological sense, and thus also whether or not the representations of the characters can be considered feminist, and in which ways they can be so. In biopic theory, four types of biopics about women’s lives have been distinguished: the classical female biopic, the second-wave feminist biopic, the postfeminist biopic and the #MeToo/fourth-wave feminist biopic (cf. Bingham, Polaschek, Bekers and Willems, Bekers), which respectively portray patriarchal, second-wave feminist, postfeminist and fourth-wave feminist representations of their protagonists. In the wake of recent studies that link posthuman (feminist) theory to film studies, it is high time to consider the posthuman in relation to the biographical film genre. Indeed, this article argues that we can add the ‘posthuman feminist biopic’ to the aforementioned categories of biopics about women’s lives.

To arrive at this point, it will analyse the biopic Maudie, about the life of Canadian artist Maud Lewis, who suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis. The film narrates how she becomes a live-in maid of the surly local fish vender Everett Lewis, whom she eventually marries, while dedicating her life to painting. Starting out by painting flowers and birds on the walls of her house, she eventually paints postcards and canvases that make her (relatively) famous. Very simply, the story recounts her quiet life as an artist living in the Nova Scotian countryside.

This article contends that the filmmakers’ creative decisions in narrative and form resulted in Maud and her story being depicted with a posthuman feminist sensibility. The main references for the theoretical framework of this analysis will be Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman feminism, Stacy Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality, Jane Bennett’s notions of vibrant matter, thing power, and assemblage, and Donna Haraway’s idea of companion species.

This reading of Maudie through a posthuman feminist lens will show how the film challenges the individualism and humanism that traditionally characterize the biopic genre (Vidal, ‘The Biopic and its Critical Contexts’, 18). As Belén Vidal (‘Feminist historiographies’, 73-74) points out, particularly biopics of artists are bound to sustain humanist ideas of individual geniuses, which means that the artist is usually presented as being self-centred, self-contained, and defined by their separateness from others (North 83, Baccanti 147). Maudie, instead, offers a new, alternative instance of the conservative artist biopic genre, foregrounding a relational, posthuman representation of the artist.

While classical female, second-wave feminist and postfeminist biopics are characterized by individualism, some recent biopics, such as those labelled ‘#MeToo biopics’ by Willems and Bekers, emphasize collectivity and collaboration by emphasizing the communities of people of which the protagonists are part (cf. Shachar, Bekers and Willems, Baccanti, Bekers). Maudie, as will be argued below, takes this idea of collectivity and relationality a step further by also emphasizing its human protagonist’s entanglement in posthuman, non-hierarchical, collective, bilateral, and harmonious relations with animals and non-human elements.

Posthuman feminism: theoretical framework

The emergence of posthuman feminism marks a significant shift in feminist theory in times of the present historical condition of the Anthropocene, characterized by social and economic injustices, the extinction of species and a decaying planet, and the fourth industrial revolution that entails new, far-reaching technologies that redefine the condition of the human (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 3–4). As a feminist theory that critically engages with these shifts, posthuman feminism pushes beyond the boundaries of traditional humanism and anthropocentrism (Braidotti, ‘Posthuman Feminism and Gender Methodology’, 101), reassessing the category of the ‘human’ from the perspective of those marginalized or excluded by traditional humanism, including non-humans. As pre-eminent posthuman feminist scholar Rosi Braidotti (Posthuman Feminism, 66) explains, humanism, rooted in Enlightenment ideals of rationality, individualism, and scientific reason, is biased and exclusionary. Its conception of the ‘universal’ human as male, white, Western, heterosexual, reproductive, able-bodied, and urbanized excludes those who do not fit this mould (Colebrook 91; Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 15). Posthuman feminism addresses these exclusions by integrating indigenous perspectives that have long recognized the human as part of a larger, vibrant ecological system, as part of a continuum of active matter and life forms, rather than sovereign over it (Niccolini and Ringrose 2).

The concept of a ‘human/non-human continuum’ is pivotal to posthuman feminism, as it challenges the traditional separation of ‘bios’, or human life, from ‘zoe’, the life of animals and non-human entities (Braidotti, ‘Posthuman Feminism and Gender Methodology’, 112). This biocultural continuum emphasizes the interdependence of all forms of life, leading to what Braidotti (Posthuman Feminism, 80–84) terms ‘zoe-centered egalitarianism’, which prioritizes egalitarian relations among all living beings. Accordingly, posthuman feminism rejects the notion of human exceptionalism, instead defining the human as a ‘complex’ and ‘heterogeneous multi-species collectivity’ (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 92). Moreover, Braidotti further extends this multi-species collectivity by including ‘geo’—the earth—and ‘techno’—technology—as well (Braidotti, ‘Posthuman Feminism and Gender Methodology’, 116). This expresses the idea that humans are part of a larger whole that consists of technology, animals, and the environment. According to Braidotti, ‘accepting to be zoe-geo-techno-matter’ can lead to potential alliances (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 139). This view fosters empathic relations between humans and non-humans, promoting solidarity, care, and justice across species boundaries (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 236–242).

Posthuman feminism draws heavily from New Materialism, a theoretical framework that highlights the interconnectedness and mutual influence between human and non-human entities (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 107–139). This perspective emphasizes embodied and embedded forms of existence, recognizing that human life is deeply enmeshed with non-human forces and materialities. As Jasmine Ulmer points out, posthumanism has brought renewed attention to materiality, vitalism, ecologies, climate, and the interconnections between living and non-living systems (in Niccolini and Ringrose 2).

The posthuman and film

Much of the academic literature on the intersection of posthumanism and film focuses on the specific interconnection between posthumanism and science fiction, as is apparent from the title of one of the (few) major book-length publications on the topic, namely Feminist Posthumanism in Contemporary Science Fiction and Media (Empey and Kilbourn). As William Brown (72) notes, however, posthumanism is not just about the future but can also explore and rewrite the past: it can reconsider the past through those excluded by humanism. Therefore, it is relevant to study film genres other than science fiction, such as those that engage with historical times. In their recent volume, Screening the Posthuman, Missy Molloy, Pansy Duncan and Claire Henry claim to offer a ‘comprehensive overview of screen representations of the posthuman’. While they consider a laudable number of film genres, the book does not discuss the genre of the biopic, which is a crucial genre to study when one wants to examine the contemporary conceptualization, status, and understanding of ‘human life’ in film. As the current article will argue, despite not having been discussed in scholarly work before, the posthuman has considerable implications for the biopic genre.

By being concerned with ‘bio’ (human life), the current study diverges from books on posthumanism and films that put the human aside, such as Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human (Anat and Narraway) and The Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object (Ezra). This article is still very much concerned with the question of the human and its place in the world, albeit from a posthuman perspective.

Next to mainly being drawn to science fiction, much scholarship on posthumanism and film is also closely tied to a focus on technology and tends to be more akin to transhumanism. Transhumanism diverts from posthumanism in that it sees the term ‘posthuman’ as referring to the ‘next phase of (human) evolution’, i.e., human enhancement by scientific and technological developments, instead of ‘going beyond the human or deconstructing it’ (Molloy, Duncan and Henry 40). As Molloy, Duncan and Henry (15) critically point out, a work like The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television (Hauskeller, Philbeck and Carbonell) seems to be more concerned with that perspective.

In their own book, Screening the Posthuman, Molloy, Duncan and Henry aim to go beyond posthumanism as transhumanism and simultaneously also beyond the focus on science fiction as the default film genre for studying posthumanism and film. Furthermore, they also propose the posthuman as a ‘trans-generic genre’ in itself: according to them, the posthuman on screen has its own set of ‘shared thematic, narrative and formal elements’ that ‘seek to confront the posthuman as figure, event or phenomenon’ (Molloy, Duncan and Henry 28). While not claiming to present a full taxonomy of this trans-generic genre, they put forward a few conventions that make certain films posthuman films (Molloy, Duncan and Henry 28). According to them, films can be posthuman in the following ways: (1) by ‘propos[ing] new ways of understanding the self and relating to others in a more-than-human-world’, (2) by ‘explor[ing] technologies that push bodily boundaries of the human in the context of efforts to overcome physical limitation’, and (3) by ‘detail[ing] the affective oscillation between threat and hope in our entwined past, present and future with technology’ (Molloy, Duncan and Henry 28).

As the current article’s case study Maudie does not intra-diegetically deal with technology¹, the latter two of these conventions are not so applicable here, but, as the analysis below will show, Maudie is significantly in accordance with the first type of posthuman film that Molloy, Duncan and Henry present, namely the type of films that ‘propose new ways of understanding the self and relationships with others in a more-than-human-world’ (Molloy, Duncan and Henry 28). Yet, the specific posthuman filmic strategies that Molloy, Duncan and Henry single out in the films they analyze differ from the ones in Maudie. The posthuman techniques in Maudie are more closely related to those employed in the films Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold 2011); Beau Travail (Claire Denis 1999); and L’avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni 1960, 1961, 1962) analyzed by Michael Lawrence, Laura McMahon and Paolo Saporito. The analysis below will also propose some previously undiscussed techniques that, from a posthuman feminist perspective, can be read as elements that shape the posthuman sensibility of a film.

The posthuman subject: Maud as otherwise enabled

Centring a woman who has a disability, Maudie takes as its subject a person that has traditionally been excluded from the category ‘human’, if ‘human’ is defined as ‘the creature familiar to us from the Enlightenment’ (Braidotti, The Posthuman, 1). As Margrit Shildrick (2–3) points out, in Western modernity ‘the (broken) body’ and ‘the feminine’ are considered ‘the other of the humanist subject’, and therefore the disabled woman is an exemplary posthuman subject (Empey and Kilbourn 2). Thus, from a posthuman perspective, Maudie takes as its focus a posthuman subject.

The film indeed centralizes a mode of embodiment that defies the expected standards of normality in terms of the humanist conception of what it means to be human (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 163). In line with posthuman feminism, it affirmatively sees the disabled body not as less but as different, defining it as an ‘otherwise enabled’ body (163).

This ethos strongly marks the film’s opening scene. While the rest of the film takes a chronological route, in which we see Maud getting older, the opening scene—before the opening title—is a flash forward in which we see Maud painting at the end of her life. Notwithstanding her far-developed arthritis which manifests in her struggle to manipulate her paintbrush—one of her hands supporting the other –, she demonstrates resilience, creativity and determination in her artistic pursuit. By emphasizing her ability to create despite her physical obstacles, the film challenges traditional notions of disability and redefines her identity in terms of her ‘otherwise embodied capabilities’ (Braidotti and Roets, Kafer, Goodley et al.)². By not showing Maud as a mere victim of her physical limitations but instead as a talented painter, it reconsiders the hierarchical binary opposition between the abled and disabled.

Next to taking a posthuman subject as the protagonist of the film, Maudie’s posthuman feminist sensibility is apparent in its showcasing that this subject is not at all self-sufficient, self-centred, autonomous, and separate from the rest of the world. The film emphasizes that she is part of zoe and geo, i.e., a harmonious, equal-levelled collectivity of humans, non-human animals, non-human beings, and Earth. This will be further discussed below.

The environment

Through three filmic techniques that foster a non-anthropocentric visual style, the film emphasizes that Maud is part of the larger environment. Firstly, it does so through repeated expansive wide shots of the landscape of Newfoundland, standing in for Nova Scotia, wherein characters appear as diminutive figures amidst vast surroundings³ (Fig. 2). By situating the characters as minor elements within expansive landscapes, the film blends them in their surroundings, thereby disrupting hierarchical distinction between human and non-human and diverting the anthropocentric focus to a focus on Anthropos as part of ‘geo’, i.e., earth (cf. Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 125–126). These wide shots are reminiscent of the paintings Maud makes in the film, suggesting that her immersion in the big landscapes inspired her work.

Second, recurring shots of Maud viewed from behind windows further reinforce the blurring of boundaries between human and non-human environments. Remarkably, each time we see Maud through a window, her surroundings are reflected in the windowpane through which she gazes. In this way, the reflections of the natural world outside effectively superimpose her (Fig. 3). This visual layering underscores the coexistence of body and landscape, resonating with Stacy Alaimo’s concept of ‘trans-corporeality’, which is a ‘time-space where human corporeality, in all its material fleshiness, is inseparable from “nature” or “environment”’ (Alaimo 238). This notion emphasizes that the human is always entwined with the ‘more-than-human world’ and inseparable from its surroundings (238).

In traditional cinematic depictions, women gazing out of windows are a recurrent image that symbolizes entrapment (cf. Paszkiewicz 5). In Maudie, the shots of Maud as seen from behind a window could be interpreted like that as well. Everett does indeed insist on keeping Maud indoors—in one scene he aggressively sends her inside when his coworker comes by –, highlighting the traditional tension between women’s confinement and men’s liberation. However, the window scenes in Maudie do not necessarily contribute to this discourse. The layering of Maud’s face behind the window with the reflection of her surroundings on the window glass invites an alternative interpretation as this image dissolves spatial boundaries, merging interior and exterior realms. Maud does not have to be freed from one realm into the other. The reflection in the window goes beyond dichotomies altogether: by merging interior and exterior—culture and nature—, the movie dissolves what Alaimo (240) describes as ‘the gendered dualisms ( . . . ) that have been cultivated to denigrate and silence certain groups of human as well as nonhuman life’.

Finally, a third visual technique in Maudie that decentralizes the human, is what Michael Lawrence (188) calls ‘focus shifts’⁴, i.e., shots with alternations between (a) sharp focus on human figures and blurred non-human surroundings and (b) blurred human figures and sharp focus on non-human surroundings. In Maudie, we see such shifts of focus in the scenes in which Maud paints, as for instance Figs 4 and 5 show. In Fig. 4, the focus is on Maud, while her painting equipment is blurred. In Fig. 5, contrastingly, the paintbrush is in sharp focus, while Maud’s face is hazy. The combination of these kinds of images establishes an equilibrium between human and non-human elements, thereby circumventing an anthropocentric focus.

This equilibrium gets further also consolidated by the heightened materiality and hapticity of the paint blobs that are shown in the film (Figs 6 and 7). Illuminated by light, the paint takes on a glistening quality that accentuates its creaminess and viscosity and enhances its three-dimensional nature. This focus on texture evokes a sense of enworldedness and grounds Maud’s work in material reality⁵. Especially when her hands merge with the paint (Fig. 8), her art becomes embodied. Moreover, through this merging of body and paint, her body becomes an instance of the posthuman body as an ‘aperture to the nonhuman outside’ rather than a ‘guarantor for human exceptionalism’ (Molloy, Duncan, Henry 22). This invites us to read Maud’s representation as an artist as one that goes beyond the typical, humanist mind-body dualism and instead suggests a ‘mind-body continuum’ (Braidotti 31). These aesthetic choices highlight that Maud’s artistic talent is fully embodied and embedded within the material realm, rather than only transcendental, intellectual genius. She creates her art through her being in this world and her immanence. As such, her environment is a co-constituent of her art.

Things

The film’s focus on painting materials calls for a New Materialist reading for which Jane Bennett’s concepts of ‘thing power’ and ‘vibrant matter’ lend themselves to further analysis. In her book Vibrant Matter, Bennett points out that while humans generally consider objects to be passive, things are actually actants in the sense that they have the capacity to ‘animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle’ (6). As an example, she recounts a moment in which she encountered some debris on the street (a glove, pollen, a dead rat, a cap, and stick) and realized that these were not passive objects but rather provoked affects in her, such as making her feel repulsed and influencing her behaviours (Bennett 4). Resonating with this idea, in Maudie, some remarkable objects are not depicted as passive objects but as actants.

One of these is a pot of green paint. When interacting with it, Maud handles it very slowly and carefully. She does not just grab it to use it as a tool but instead observes, touches, and almost caresses it. Gracefully she dips her thumb in the squelchy, wet substance that sticks to the lid of the pot. Then, with the paint on her fingertips, she pauses for a bit, meditatively receiving the paint’s vibrancy. The effect the paint has on her is made perceptible to the viewer as very delicate guitar chords become audible at this very moment: they evoke the small sparks of excitement that the paint makes her feel. Soon, a soft violin accompanies the guitar chords and adds a long note with a rich vibrato, after which the sweet, soft melody rises to a crescendo when a second violin joins, showing how the paint awakens a dreamy, growing passion in Maud.

The paint pot’s active role is further heightened by the framing of the scene. Rather than focusing on Maud, the camera focuses on the pot, centralizing it in the frame, and leaving most of Maud’s body—including her head—out of the shot (Fig. 9). Hence, the focus of the scene is not on Maud, who finds the pot, but on the pot itself, and its agency. It is not merely a passive object for Maud to use. Rather, the framing suggests that the pot exerts a pull on her. This dynamic interaction portrays the paint not just as a tool but as an active participant in Maud’s creative process, a co-creator with its own force. Significantly, after being attracted by this pot of paint in this scene, Maud starts her journey in painting. In this sense, the pot of paint plays an important, active role: it determines the course of her life and thus steers the film’s plot.

The same holds true for some wooden boards. In a scene a bit before the middle of the film, we get to see a shot of some discarded tools and objects that lie around the house. When Maud walks into the frame, she first seems to just walk past the objects, until the wooden boards attract her attention. The staging of this event steers the focus to the non-human objects by situating them in the foreground of the frame. Maud picks up one of the wooden boards, observes it, and once again lets the material affect her before proceeding her way. While her body moves towards the left side of the frame, however, it seems to be pulled back by the objects on the left side: while her body keeps moving to the left, her face turns to the right. The spreading of her limbs—one of her legs remains towards the left, whereas her upper body is drawn to the objects on the right (Fig. 10)—evokes the active power the objects have. While she seems to want to continue her route, she cannot resist the objects’ pull and bends down to pick up another wooden board. The wooden boards not only change her movements but later also effectively affect her artistic practice, as they allow her to make ‘real’ canvas-based paintings and thereby alter the type of work she makes from paintings on walls, windows, and tiny pieces of paper to work that is ‘sellable’ as art.

According to Bennett’s concept of ‘assemblages’, defined as a web of materials that all affect each other, these interactions between Maud and the non-human world illustrate the ‘distributed agency’ that operates between humans and things. Maud’s artistry is shaped in part by materials and things. Some objects in Maudie—whether they are a pot of paint or wooden boards—occupy an active place in the narrative, guiding Maud’s actions and shaping her artistic output. This once again shows that the idea of individuality and self-sufficiency of the genius myth is untenable and needs to be revised.

Animals

As Donna Haraway elaborately argues in her book When Species Meet, next to being in constant interaction with objects, humans are also always in a reciprocal relationship with other species. With the term ‘becoming with’ she points at the idea that humans and other species/animals shape each other through their interactions. Noting that only ten percent of the human body consists of human genomes, while the rest of it consists of fungi, bacteria, and the like, she makes clear that it is an illusion to think that to be human can just mean ‘to be one’ (Haraway, When Species Meet, 3). In contrast: ‘To be one is always to become with many’, she states (4). Haraway’s ideas around companion species connect with Braidotti’s (Posthuman Feminism, 84) concept of ‘zoe-centred egalitarianism’, which denotes the posthuman idea of egalitarian relations among all living beings, challenging the hierarchical structures between species.

These ideas of companion species and zoe-centred egalitarianism are embodied by Maud in Maudie. Her gestures of kindness and affection towards animals, such as cheerfully greeting horses on the road; addressing Everett’s dogs with warmth and curiosity while petting them; and closely observing a bug on a window with admiration, highlight her recognition of the intrinsic value of all living creatures. Furthermore, her gentle and remorseful attitude when she has to kill a chicken to make stew for Everett exemplifies her empathy and ethical consideration for animals. Treating the chicken with deep respect, she approaches her most gently, comfortingly, and repeatedly whispers that everything is okay and that she is sorry. The fact that Maud even memorializes the chicken through her art by painting it on a wall of her and Everett’s house demonstrates her refusal to participate in systems of domination and exploitation and actively works towards fostering a more inclusive and compassionate worldview. In this way, Maud’s actions serve as a reflection of the transformative potential of posthuman feminist ethics in challenging hierarchical power structures, and advocating for a more caring, respectful and interconnected world.

Interestingly, Maud’s treatment of the chicken aligns with Haraway’s view of animals as co-creators of a shared world. The chicken is not a passive object. On the contrary, it affected Maud and made her paint its image on a wall. Through their relationships, humans and animals create and are created. Once again, this shows that the idea of the artist as a complete individual is illusionary. Artists (like people in general) are in constant relation to other species and vice versa.

‘“We”-who-are-not-one-and-the-same-but-are-in-this-together’⁶

Not only Maud’s relationship with things and animals, but also her relationship with her husband Everett is characterized by a spirit of togetherness and sharing. She demonstrates remarkable altruism and a sense of partnership with him, which is exemplified by her decision to sign his name on her paintings. Despite herself being the sole creator of the artwork, Maud views their relationship as a collaborative endeavour and believes that every painting is equally his, saying: ‘I figured we’re doing business together, every painting is half yours, your name should be on it, too’. This gesture challenges traditional notions of artistic ownership and reflects Maud’s belief in the interconnectedness of their lives and endeavours. Maud signing her paintings with Everett’s name out of free will, rather than being forced by Everett to do so (he is puzzled when he sees his name in the right bottom corner of one of her canvases), was screenwriter Sherry White’s deliberate choice (Interview 24 March 2024). She did not base this practice on historical evidence but explicitly wanted to give agency to Maud in this way.

The significance of Maud including Everett’s name on her paintings out of free will speaks to larger cultural narratives surrounding gender and creativity. In many biopics and stories about female achievement, women’s successes are appropriated by their male partners, managers, or husbands, unrightfully and outside of the woman’s will. Biographical films that portray women’s stories in that way are termed by Dennis Bingham as ‘classical female biopics’. Similarly, in what Katrijn Bekers and Gertjan Willems call ‘#MeToo biopics’, women are also deprived of recognition for their own achievements by men in their entourage, but the difference with classical female biopics is that women in #MeToo biopics find themselves fighting to reclaim their agency and voice from the men who silenced them. Maud’s choice to include Everett’s name in her work, in contrast, diverges from these types of narratives. As said before, it is Maud’s own, free choice to put Everett’s name on her work, rather than him appropriating it. With her agency, Maud underscores her sense of partnership and mutual respect between her and Everett. Aligning with the principles of posthuman feminism, Maud challenges the notion of individualistic achievement and instead foregrounds interconnectedness and interdependence.

The symbolic dialogue exchanged during Maud and Everett’s tender dance on the evening of their wedding encapsulates the idea of interdependence as well. As they sway gently in their bedroom, Maud delicately standing on Everett’s feet, she compares their partnership to ‘a pair of odd socks’—different but part of a whole together. This seemingly simple statement encapsulates one of the core ideas of Braidotti’s posthuman feminism: we might not be the same, but we are all in this environment together (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 103). As our differences do not take away our mutual reliance on each other, we better all recognize this mutuality and care for each other⁷.

Conclusion

Unlike traditional artist biopics, Maudie substantially diverts from the mantra of the autonomous, individual, separated, transcendental genius artist. Instead, the film shows that the idea of the artist’s individuality, autonomy, and separateness is an illusion: the artist (like every human) is in a collective, reciprocally affective, and non-hierarchical relation with the earth, other humans, non-human animals, and things. Maudie foregrounds a representation of its artist protagonist as a posthuman subject that is part of an equilibrium between human and non-human, immersed in its surrounding landscape, embodied and embedded in materiality, and in constant relationship with non-human animals and things that co-create her art. Maud’s art is not just an individual human act but the result of multiple human and non-human interactions.

This is formally and narratively conveyed through the following techniques: the characters are repeatedly portrayed as small figures in big landscapes, representing them as part of ‘geo’; the main character is often filmed from behind a window on which her outside surroundings are reflected, merging her transcorporeally with the environment; focus shifts alternate focus on human and non-human surroundings and things, establishing an equilibrium between the two; through a heightened focus on touch and texture, the protagonist’s body merges with materiality, highlighting her immanent being-in-the-world; through the means of music, acting, framing and staging, non-human things are depicted as actants, establishing an assemblage of humans and non-human things that affect each other; and finally, ideas of connectedness and mutual influence are expressed through storyline and dialogue. These are all techniques that can be added to the list of narrative and formal elements that make up the posthuman trans-generic genre proposed by Molloy, Duncan and Henry.

As such, the branch of feminism that Maudie, a film about a disabled woman, is positioned in, is posthuman feminism, a feminism that ‘extends its analyses of sexualized and racialized hierarchies to denaturalized differences of non-human entities’ and that calls for a ‘recognition of species equality’ and a ‘collaborative sense of interdependence between humans, animals, plants, the earth, the planet as a whole’ (Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 11). Hence, I call Maudie a ‘Posthuman feminist biopic’.

Considering all the above, however, the term ‘bio-pic’ itself does not seem adequate anymore. To better reflect the biopic genre’s (gradual) contemporary movement beyond its typical humanist and anthropocentric focus, I propose a revision of the term ‘bio-pic’ as ‘bio-zoe-geo-pic’⁸, so that it incorporates human life (bio) as well as non-human life (zoe) and earth (geo; cf. Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism, 119). This term indicates that a film about the life of a person is not just strictly about the life of this person, but about how this person’s relationality to and being part of an assemblage of other humans, non-human animals, and things. A film like Maudie highlights this relationality.

Further research could investigate if the posthuman sensibility of Maudie is part of a wider trend in biopics, and whether the proposed terms ‘posthuman feminist biopic’ and ‘bio-zoe-geo-pic’ are applicable on a wider scale. In any case, I conclude that films like Maudie are important as they represent the antidote needed by our wounded world that suffers from deep-seated injustices, environmental decay, and species devastation (Braidotti; Posthuman Feminism; 3–4, 236–242) by envisioning a ‘new sense of community purpose’ (240). Giving an inspirational example of ‘solidarity and ethical relationality that encompass inclusive ways of caring across a transversal, multi-species spectrum encompassing the entire planet’ (241), the film provides the type of fictional story that Christine Daigle (2022, 896) considers to be ‘essential’ for realizing a posthuman transformative ethos in the real world as well.

AI statement

At some points in the writing process, I used ChatGPT as a text editor. In a posthuman feminist way, I can state that as a zoe-geo-techno entangled subject, I do not create as an autonomous individual: technology is a co-creator.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Anne Bekers, Rosi Braidotti, Francesco Cattani, Marta Olivi, and Anastasia Paschou for inspiring me. Moreover, as always, I am very grateful for the support from my supervisors, Gertjan Willems and Sofie Van Bauwel, as well as for the feedback of my doctoral commission, Diana Arbaiza and Birgit Van Puymbroeck. Grant number 11P9924N.

References

Footnotes