The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fictions Series)

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However, I would suggest having a brief look at Creed's ideas in advance just so you know, what you are getting into as some topics in the book can be quite 'heavy' or even controversial. In Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny, [5] Barbara Creed reflects on the representation of men in the horror genre, with a specific focus on how they are portrayed in comparison to women. One example is that when a boy sees the female genitalia for the first time, he assumes that she has lost her penis; it must have been cut off. In this book, she managed to introduce the psychoanalysis of the woman as a monster portrayed in horror films very clearly and engagingly.

This opening session traces the history of monstrous women, through the gorgons and sirens of Greek mythology to Early Modern witch hunts and 21st-century media narratives, before turning to two enduring archetypes: the witch and the mother. I have used the term “monstrous-feminine”’, she wrote, ‘as the term “female monster” implies a simple reversal of “male monster”’.Creed argues that a woman's deep connection to natural events such as reproduction and birth is considered ‘quintessentially grotesque’. Kristeva's theory therefore can be applied to the monstrous feminine, particularly the themes of the mother-child relationship and the mother's womb, which both relate to the ‘ archaic mother’. Exploring these figures within folklore and fairy tales, as well as in contemporary horror revisions such as films The Lure (2015) and Ginger Snaps (2000), we find rampant appetites unleashed at puberty and messy bodies beyond the control of society.

Whereas Freud believed that the Father was the one viewed by the child as the castrator, Barbara Creed has shown it is actually the mother.

Creed reflects back to the Renaissance where the uterus is depicted in connotation with evil and the devil. Barbara Creed FAHA (born 30 September 1943) is a professor of cinema studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Throughout this piece, she makes connections to the notion of the ‘primal uncanny’, which suggests that men as monsters. Her argument that man fears woman as castrator, rather than as castrated, questions not only Freudian theories of sexual difference but existing theories of spectatorship and fetishism, providing a provocative re-reading of classical and contemporary film and theoretical texts. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.Mis]conceptions of female sexuality are inherent within the horror genre, as a common motif is that virtuous or "pure" women survive to the end of the film, and women who exhibit sexual behaviour commonly die early into the narrative.

Her argument that man fears woman as castrator , rather than as castrated , questions not only Freudian theories of sexual difference but existing theories of spectatorship and fetishism, providing a provocative re-reading of classical and contemporary film and theoretical texts. Medusa is a mythological creature whose stare can turn people to stone, particularly men, and who has a head covered in snakes, which Creed argues is a deadly symbol of the vagina dentata. The bottom line is, Creed has traced these archetypes of the Monstrous Feminine to childhood experience. She explains that concepts of the monstrous feminine within horror arose from male concerns regarding female sexual difference and castration.

However, some of her arguments regarding the construction of the monstrous feminine in horror in relation to women as mothers, witches, vampires and so on is certainly interesting.