Macabit Abramson

My Research: “The new Psyche” in the cinema and her journey facing the dark man

Beauty and the Beast: My research proposes a new model of femininity by way of investigating the link between Eros and Psyche – characters from mythology – and classic and post-modern films. The woman that I am researching is “the other”: She has no place in a patriarchal world based on materialistic values. She is a feminine woman, gentle and loving, with a masculine animal hiding within her. Only when she recognizes that part of herself and expresses the contradictions within her does she create a personal place for herself in the world and experience self-fulfillment as a woman who is an original and exceptional individual.

“The woman that I am researching has no place in a patriarchal world based on materialistic values.”

Pioneers: I grew up on a kibbutz in a pastoral world filled with nature walks, cotton fields, orchards and expanses of untouched land. My mother was a pioneer and a dairy farmer. My father lived in Tel Aviv and came to visit us a few times each week. On the kibbutz in those days, we were considered to be an unusual family, and my father was “the other.”

Psyche’s World: I hope that my research will be recognized, and the concepts of beauty and the beast as per my analysis become a part of our vocabulary. I would like to write a book, direct films and create an interactive website that presents this other woman.

Macabit is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts at the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts.

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