I wanted to return to this quote that I posted at the beginning of my study:
"I like women. If they are pretty and have a good figure, I'd rather watch them be murdered than a fat ugly man."-Dario Argento
When I first found this quote, I thought it was amusing, but couldn’t find any deeper meaning. I assumed it said something of masochistic behavior and voyeurism, but as I was reading Creed, this idea jumped out at me:
“[In Carol Clover’s view] women are chosen more often as victims because they are permitted a greater range of emotional expression. ‘Angry displays of force may belong to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging for mercy belong to the female. Abject terror, in short, is gendered feminine” (125).
I buy this, and I think Argento would too. Screaming and shrieking make for good horror cinema, don't they?
But I don’t think it’s safe to restrict the reasoning for female victims to their ability to deliver theatrical displays. I think that women are victims because men fear them – and I agree with Creed that this fear is rooted in the belief that women (and their vaginas) are capable of castration.
It’s not coincidental that so many slasher films (and horror films in general) juxtapose moments of sexual intimacy with murder and death. According to Royal Brown (as cited in Creed 125), this stems from “‘anti-female aspects of a very American brand of the Judeo-Christian mythology’ in which woman, because of her sexual appetites, is held responsible for man’s fall from innocence.” It’s a story as old as that of Adam and Eve, folks, and it’s told over and over again. For instance, consider Stephen King’s Thinner, where a man runs over a person while driving and receiving a sexual favor from his wife, and later becomes the recipient of a terrible curse. The sexualized woman is the root of all evil (so says Mrs. White in Carrie.
I think it’s interesting to consider this supposed insatiable appetite in women alongside the numerous cultural myths that portray vaginas as devouring mouths. There are stories of toothed vaginas from populations in all areas of the world, and these speak to male fears of castration. This treat of castration or of being devoured is often accompanied by some sort of sexual promise, though. The Sirens lured men with their beautiful bodies and signing, but when the men swam too close to the Sirens on shore, they were ripped apart by the jagged rocks underneath the surf. We also see the threat of castration paired with sexual fulfillment when we analyze vampire films. The bloodied mouth and its apparent fangs are often parted in pleasure. And when those fangs pierce the neck of the vampire’s prey, it seems the mood is usually erotic, and not so horrifying at all.
To me, this seems to suggest that there is something pleasurable about the fear of castration. I now recall Creed’s discussion of fetishism as man’s way of “phallusizing” woman. The fetish object is a substitute for woman’s missing phallus, and the fetishist develops his fetish as a way to “believe that woman is like himself.” I’m not sure I understand why there exists in man a desire to see woman as himself. Is this because it masculinizes the woman and therefore eliminates fear of her being “other” or different? And if she does possess a phallus, does she then lose the terrifying vagina that is capable of castration?
And now, after considering all of this, I'd like to ask Argento why he really likes women.
Posted by Kate Cielinski at October 2, 2004 5:15 PM