narrative order is restored.
A Study of Popular Horror Films through Feminist Lenses There has been some feminist work on horror films and most contemporary feminist studies of horror films are psychodynamic. Within the psychodynamic theory the films may be considered as artifacts where such aspects as plot, narrative or point of view may be recognised, however the chief interest lies in the viewer’s motives and interests in watching horror films and on the psychological effects such films have. Horror as a genre has been popular and it is precisely what the psychodynamic feminist theories speculate about why we are interested in horror and more basically about why certain things are horrifying. Typically, these feminist film theories …show more content…
Therefore the purpose of this paper would be to locate women within the genre of horror, where they are described as representing threats evoking the male castration anxiety. Also to point out the fact that their bodies are used by this genre to serve certain purposes like the depiction of violence or terror and the furthering of the narrative, including the revelation of the monster. Horror is the genre that seems to endlessly repeat the trauma of castration as if to “explain” by repetitious mastery the originary problem of sexual difference. These theories as a standard presume some connection between gazing, violent aggression and masculinity and they suggest that there are particularly “male” motives for making, watching, and enjoying horror films.
More recently film critics have turned to the work of Julia Kristeva. Barbara Creed has adapted Kristeva’s work on literature to study visual horror which she talks about in her book The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Here there is a shift from the woman as a victim to the notion of motherhood as “abject” in horror films. In contradiction to what has been discussed so far, Kristeva locates the origin of horror not in the …show more content…
Popular cinema of the past decade has proffered alternate views of maternity. It’s Alive opens with a woman in labour, trying to quell a premonition that something is dreadfully wrong. The sequence ends with bloodied doctors evacuating a delivery room where they have inadvertently birthed her murderous monster. This eerie scenario is extended in the film’s two sequels: It Lives Again and It’s Alive III. In The Brood, a female mental patient incubates horrible foetuses in external belly sacs, similarly in Embryo and Eraserhead the theme of malignant extrauterine conception is explored. Hence these serve as examples of misappropriation of the female body again to turn pregnancy into a Gothic spectacle. The film Rosemary’s Baby elicits horror from its audience through Rosemary’s violation and the spectacle of her pregnant body, which nourishes a monster. Although it exploits pregnancy as abject embodiment, Rosemary’s Baby turns horror to feminist ends rather than seeing it as misogynist refutation of the maternal body or the “monstrous feminine” which Creed has identified as cinematic horror. In her study of the horror genre, Judith Halberstam states that the Gothic is “a narrative technique, a generic spin that
A Study of Popular Horror Films through Feminist Lenses There has been some feminist work on horror films and most contemporary feminist studies of horror films are psychodynamic. Within the psychodynamic theory the films may be considered as artifacts where such aspects as plot, narrative or point of view may be recognised, however the chief interest lies in the viewer’s motives and interests in watching horror films and on the psychological effects such films have. Horror as a genre has been popular and it is precisely what the psychodynamic feminist theories speculate about why we are interested in horror and more basically about why certain things are horrifying. Typically, these feminist film theories …show more content…
Therefore the purpose of this paper would be to locate women within the genre of horror, where they are described as representing threats evoking the male castration anxiety. Also to point out the fact that their bodies are used by this genre to serve certain purposes like the depiction of violence or terror and the furthering of the narrative, including the revelation of the monster. Horror is the genre that seems to endlessly repeat the trauma of castration as if to “explain” by repetitious mastery the originary problem of sexual difference. These theories as a standard presume some connection between gazing, violent aggression and masculinity and they suggest that there are particularly “male” motives for making, watching, and enjoying horror films.
More recently film critics have turned to the work of Julia Kristeva. Barbara Creed has adapted Kristeva’s work on literature to study visual horror which she talks about in her book The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Here there is a shift from the woman as a victim to the notion of motherhood as “abject” in horror films. In contradiction to what has been discussed so far, Kristeva locates the origin of horror not in the …show more content…
Popular cinema of the past decade has proffered alternate views of maternity. It’s Alive opens with a woman in labour, trying to quell a premonition that something is dreadfully wrong. The sequence ends with bloodied doctors evacuating a delivery room where they have inadvertently birthed her murderous monster. This eerie scenario is extended in the film’s two sequels: It Lives Again and It’s Alive III. In The Brood, a female mental patient incubates horrible foetuses in external belly sacs, similarly in Embryo and Eraserhead the theme of malignant extrauterine conception is explored. Hence these serve as examples of misappropriation of the female body again to turn pregnancy into a Gothic spectacle. The film Rosemary’s Baby elicits horror from its audience through Rosemary’s violation and the spectacle of her pregnant body, which nourishes a monster. Although it exploits pregnancy as abject embodiment, Rosemary’s Baby turns horror to feminist ends rather than seeing it as misogynist refutation of the maternal body or the “monstrous feminine” which Creed has identified as cinematic horror. In her study of the horror genre, Judith Halberstam states that the Gothic is “a narrative technique, a generic spin that