In The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Creed outlines the forms the monstrous feminine can take in film. After reading about “the archaic mother” and “the monstrous womb,” and after watching the films Creed uses to illustrate these forms (Alien and The Brood), I have to conclude that there is a more encompassing (even if more general) form of the monstrous-feminine: the evil mother.
According to Creed, “the archaic mother is the parthenogentic mother, the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end.” The mother alien in Alien fits this description. Her reproductive capacity is unlimited; she spawns an innumerable amount of offspring throughout the series without the aid of a male counterpart. The set design (the twisted, dark caverns of the spaceships and the large vaginal entrances to the foreign spaceship) echoes the female body and reproductive system. The internal structure of the spaceship appears dark, mysterious, and threatening, suggesting that there is something sinister about the female body.
And while Alien constantly refers to this dark image of woman’s reproductive role, it is not so different from what we see in other horror films where “mothers” are concerned. Mothers, regardless of the form they take, whether it is as an archaic being or as a monstrous womb, are inherently bad. And if the mother is not bad, then her offspring surely will be (Rosemary’s Baby), and she is to be blamed for her child’s monstrosity.
In The Brood, Nola is depicted as inheriting her neurosis from her mother and father. At the end of the film, Cronenberg suggests that Candy has inherited this same behavior from her mother; like Nola, she is beginning to develop strange sores on her body, a possible sign that her rage is beginning to surface. I also think that the mother alien and Nola are similar characters because both are capable of spawning children by relying on their own devices. And in The Exorcist, Regan MacNeil is possessed by the devil. It’s hinted that the devil invades the MacNeil household because it lacks a father figure, which suggests that women like Chris MacNeil are threats to the patriarchy. Women in both their reproductive and maternal roles are threats to the patriarchy, and I think this accounts for the portrayal of mothers as destructive beings.
Considering Freud, there are a number of threats that mothers pose to their children. They are objects of desire and sexual frustration (Oedipal complex). They are either castrated, or capable of castrating (the lack/Little Hans). They enforce the law about physical cleanliness and purity during the psychosexual stages of development, and they possess magical reproductive powers (babies grow inside of them! Egads!).
In this sense, mothers are threatening figures, period. I don’t see any need to subdivide mothers into different sub-types of the monstrous-feminine, because the source of their power stems from their reproductive abilities. Whether the mother is giving birth to disfigured, evil children (The Brood) or spawning legions of alien offspring (Alien
Posted by Kate Cielinski at October 3, 2004 2:53 PM