Fassinbiner

Though I am tempted to regard Elvira's braving of this mess as a sign of her inner health, because she is willing to see with her own eyes the destructive energies that others repress from conscious thought, I also see that she is quickly co-opted by these destructive energies. On an irrational level, this abattoir is the locus of Elvira's death wish. It's in this scene of “murder” and death that she really comes alive; we hear her talk uninterruptedly for nearly the only time in the whole film (until the very end, when her voice, on a tape recorder, is heard playing after she is already dead). She, a victim of the same systemic mass-production that has classed her as a second-rate citizen and subjected her to a different kind of butchery (the sex change), is at home here, in her element: sadly, this is what “gives life its meaning”, as she says. Serenely, as if meditating, she surveys the killing of the cows and is, as it were, restored by it.

Again, these brutal, disturbing images are recontextualised by their “forced” interaction with Elvira's monologue. We hear her begin to speak just as she and Zora enter the slaughterhouse, but there's an odd disconnect to Elvira's speech in this scene: it's completely disembodied. I know that Elvira is addressing Zora in this monologue, but, when