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Arbitrated Section

No. 24 (2026): Economía Creativa (noviembre - abril)

Capitalism, Discipline and the Female Body: A Comparative Sequence Analysis of Sweat and The Girl with the Needle by Magnus von Horn

DOI
https://doi.org/10.46840/ec.2026.24.795
Submitted
April 10, 2026
Published
2026-07-29

Abstract

This article analyzes Sweat (2020) and The Girl with the Needle (2024), both directed by Magnus von Horn, as case studies in the audiovisual creative economy. Its objective is to examine how both films represent regimes of valorization, discipline, and exposure of the female body across two represented historical periods: the digital platform economy and postwar urban capitalism. Through a qualitative comparative sequence analysis, the study examines framing, mise-en-scène, sound, spatial organization, point of view, and the connection between formal evidence and theoretical interpretation. The findings show that Sweat represents affective labor, self-visibility, and self-commodification as conditions of platform culture, whereas The Girl with the Needle exposes reproductive precarity, vulnerable maternity, and moral punishment as historical antecedents of contemporary value extraction. The article concludes that Von Horn’s cinema makes it possible to understand the creative economy not only as a productive sector, but also as a symbolic field in which labor, gender, care, and vulnerability are contested.

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