-dyked- Arielle Faye And Mindi Mink - Under Her... -

Drawing on feminist geographer Gillian Rose’s work on the politics of spatiality (1993), we examine how the film’s central setting—a traditionally furnished, heteronormative home—is systematically transformed into a site of lesbian authority. The titular act of “dyking,” here used as a verb, signifies a structural and symbolic intervention: the literal and figurative reframing of a space designed for patriarchal or hetero-monogamous scripts into an arena for queer control. From the opening frames, Dyked establishes its protagonist’s (Mink) domain as a pastiche of bourgeois domesticity. The set design features floral wallpaper, a well-appointed kitchen, and a master bedroom with a four-poster bed—what art director Judith Halberstam (in a separate commentary) might call “the visual grammar of compulsory heterosexuality” (2018, p. 44). Mink’s character, initially presented as the aggressor, moves through this space with the ease of a homeowner, but the film’s framing quickly subverts this assumption.

Architecture of Control: Power, Materiality, and the Subversion of Domestic Space in Dyked (Dir. Arielle Faye and Mindi Mink) -Dyked- Arielle Faye and Mindi Mink - Under Her...

A key sequence involves a shift in lighting from high-key, neutral tones to a low-key, crimson wash. This chromatic change signals not a threat, but an intimacy of control . The film’s dialogue, sparse and direct, replaces conventional power threats with a lexicon of negotiation. “You’re under her…” the title suggests, but the film answers: “Under her gaze, under her command, under the same roof.” This ambiguity dismantles the clear victim/aggressor binary, proposing instead a mutual recognition of desire as a form of equalizing constraint. The most provocative theoretical contribution of Dyked is its redefinition of “dyking” as a material practice. In lesbian subculture, the term has a fraught history—as both a reclaimed identifier and a verb for certain sexual practices. Faye and Mink extend this into architectural and object-based territory. The film’s third act shows Faye’s character using a length of rope not to escape, but to rearrange the furniture, pulling a sofa away from the wall to create a new, diagonal axis across the room. Drawing on feminist geographer Gillian Rose’s work on

The arrival of Faye’s character—coded as a visitor who becomes the captive—triggers a re-negotiation of spatial power. Close analysis of the blocking reveals that every doorway, countertop, and piece of furniture is used to delineate zones of control. Where a mainstream thriller might use chains or locked doors as primary restraints, Dyked uses proximity and access . The titular act of “dyking”—rendered through a series of close-ups on Faye’s hands as she repurposes mundane household objects (belts, ties, furniture legs)—transforms the domestic from a site of comfort into a site of deliberate, eroticized constraint. Central to the film’s argument is the fluidity of power. Mink’s performance oscillates between dominant and vulnerable, while Faye’s captive wields a different form of power: narrative attention. The camera, co-directed by the actors themselves, refuses the male-gaze tropes of fragmentation (Mulvey, 1975). Instead, Dyked favors medium and full shots that emphasize relational geometry—how bodies occupy and contest space together. The set design features floral wallpaper, a well-appointed