Horror and the Monstrous Feminine
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
According to Barbara Creed's Horror and the Monstrous Feminine a male's relationship with the mother and other females is complicated by his use in horror and science fiction as we are forced to confront the feminine as horrific and abject.
Through an analysis of the film Alien (1979) and the female roles and representations, Creed explains how females are often related to the object of horror, be they as the object of horror or the object of the actual horrors desire/hatred. The conclusion is that through monstrous representations of the female or the Mother, the audience is drawn into viewing them as abject rather than subject or object. The aliens themselves from the film in question are often described as having phallus-like appendages in the shape of their head and tongue, while maintaining an almost female form. Their interaction with the human crew takes on very abject roles as one crew member, a male, is forcibly impregnated (clearly as a product of rape) with an alien that eventually rips itself from the male 'womb' in a horrific scene of blood and gore. The process of a male being impregnated through the mouth, gestating in a being that has no womb and ripping itself free in a shower of blood is one way in which this film abjectifies female roles.
Introduction
- "Monstrous little women, mad moppets, deadly dollies, deranged daughters, sinister sisters--call them what you will, there is no doubt that multifarious images of the evil girl-child haunt the celluloid corridors of popular cinema. A far cry from her innocent sisters, the monstrous little woman is capable of truly shocking crimes. Images of evil children, circulated in posters and film books, are predominantly of feminine furies: Regan, from The Exorcist, murdering clerics, spewing green bile and rotating her head full circle on her neck; Carrie, an avenging monster, drenched in pig's blood, burning up the entire school; and Lolita, the child-woman, sunning herself in her bikini, supremely indifferent, yet fully aware of her devastating effect on the wretched professor." --cinema.ucla
See also
