Spinning Bodies into Gold

Thread, Labor and Choice in Karen Russell’s “Reeling for the Empire” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread

Greenhough, Amy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2421-8252 (2024) Spinning Bodies into Gold. Marvels and Tales, UNKNOWN. ISSN 1521-4281 (In Press)

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Abstract / Summary

The image of the golden thread that Rumpelstiltskin produces in his story can eclipse not just his role in producing it, but also the various and complex commercial exchanges embedded in a narrative that centralizes the idea of “spinning in exchange for human life” (Tatar 132). I use the tale of “Rumpelstiltskin” here, then, as a framing device to examine two contemporary fairy-tale inspired texts, Phantom Thread and 'Reeling for the Empire', and to illuminate the ways in which thread, production and bodies have been historically bound in the European fairy-tale tradition. I argue that it is through contemporary depictions of labor in the context of thread or garment production that these contemporary texts are poised to highlight the oft hidden and murky exchanges embedded in advanced capitalist systems of the present. It is in these systems that women—despite their long history as spinners of yarns both literal and metaphorical—so often become trapped; “caught in the spinning machine of the global economy” (Braidotti, 2013: 7).

Item Type:	Article
ISSN:	1521-4281
eISSN:	1536-1802
Subjects:	Film & Television > Film Literature Creative Art & Design > Fashion, Textiles & Costume Design
Courses by Department:	The School of Communication
Depositing User:	Amy Greenhough
Date Deposited:	25 Nov 2024 11:43
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2024 11:43
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/5838

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