For those already familiar with the study of the portrayal of women in horror films, Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis should be a recognizable, if not sacred, text. I’ve recently completed Part I of Creed’s book, and so far, I’m excited by the approach she has taken.
The main reason for why I value Creed’s book is because she argues that “the presence of the monstrous-feminine in the popular horror film speaks to us more about male fears than about female desire or feminine subjectivity.” Other scholars (such Gerard Lenne), have viewed women in horror films only as victims, and have focused on the attractiveness, not the monstrousness, of female monsters. I think there is something empowering about Creed’s argument because she aligns the monstrous-feminine with the ability, the POWER, to instill fear in men, instead of viewing female monsters as merely victims or as bodies to be scrutinized.
Creed constructs most of her ideas around Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what exactly defines “the abject," but these resources have helped to clarify Creed’s summary. Kristeva’s defintion of abjection is “that which does not ‘respect borders, positions, rules’, that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order’.” Because the abject is concerned with borders, positions, and identity, Creed will argue that the abject is that which “threatens life.” Therefore, we will find women to be monstrous characters if they do not adhere to systems, ie: their expected position in society.
The character of Regan MacNeil (and possibly her strong-willed, independent mother, Chris) in The Exorcist serve as examples of abject women. Regan is a figure of the abject because her body is possessed by the devil, which indicates that the boundaries between the self and the other have somehow been violated. And if one assumes that the devil is a male entity, then the case is more severe, because gender boundaries have also been broken.
Creed is also concerned with defining the abject in terms of the physical body. Where the mind must be trained to respect rules and order, the body must also adhere to certain rules, mainly that of a “clean and proper self.” I link Creed’s exploration of this idea to Freud’s theory of psychosexual development; in attempting to adopt certain behaviors, an infant learns how control its bodily fluids in a socially acceptable way. Regan is adject in terms of her own body because she rejects our expectations of a clean, pure self. She spews bile, spits on priests, wets herself, and bleeds vaginally due to self-inflicted trauma. Her body is evidence of how she rejects proper rules of conduct.
Regan represents ‘woman as possessed monster,’ just one of the forms that the monstrous-feminine can embody in film. I will next analyze ‘woman as the archaic mother,’ as portrayed in Alien.
If you’re unfamiliar with Creed’s work, I imagine you’d be a bit lost at this point. This text is pretty meaty, and I’m still grappling with it. It is, however, a remarkable read. If you have any interest in this subject at all, I recommend this book. I would love to see this taught in a classroom setting; it has the potential to unlock incredible class discussions!
Posted by Kate Cielinski at September 26, 2004 2:11 PMWonderfully clear discussion of a very difficult subject! I agree that Creed really explains abjection well through horror cinema -- focusing on the psychology of the film's representation of women as threat to the social order. For more, Kristeva's POWERS OF HORROR would make a fascinating but difficult read. Regardless, your point about male fear hits it right on the nose. Although she's very good at talking about film, Creed has a tendency to see the representation of woman as a fixed graphical icon of male fear, rather than a character in motion throughout the plot -- the task for the critic, I think, becomes to trace how representations of the abject change across the narrative. She does this to some degree, but the Lit teacher in me always wants more. So, in the case of The Exorcist, for example, a primary question is how theories of the abject help us to understand the ending of the film and the way characters change. Has Regan been purified -- and the social boundaries rebuilt -- in the end? Has Karras, therefore, been feminized when he takes on the demon -- or has patriarchy been reified in this move? The method by which the "exorcism" takes place is a fascinating study in this regard.
Are there other films you've seen in recent years to which you'd say this theory is obviously applicable?
Posted by: Mike Arnzen at September 27, 2004 9:01 AM