FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 743

described as castrated or as representing threats evoking male castration anxiety.

CYNTHIA A. FREELAND These theories also standardly presume some connection between gazing, violent
aggression, and masculinity, and they suggest that there are particularly “male” moti-
FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR vations for making, watching, and enjoying horror films.
HORROR FILMS Feminist psychodynamic approaches to film in general were launched by Laura
Mulvey’s influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975).! Mul-
vey’s model presupposes a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective and draws upon key
Lacanian conceptions of castration anxiety and visual fetishism, and the association
of the “Law of the Father” or patriarchy with such traditional film features as narra-
tive order. Mulvey argued that narrative forms characteristic of mainstream Holly-
wood cinema differentially use women and serve men. There is a dual analogy
between the woman and the screen (the object of the look), and between the man and
the viewer (the possessor of the look), A tension arises in the viewer between libido
and ego needs, and this tension is resolved by a process of identification, whereby the
[male] viewer identifies with the [male] protagonist in the film. Thus possessing the
film character of the woman by proxy, the viewer can proceed to focus energy on
achieving a satisfactory narrative resolution.
Mulvey’s view has come in for a number of persuasive criticisms by other feminist
film theorists, and she has even revised it herself.? Nevertheless, it will be instructive
to begin by extrapolating trom her basic model so as to generate a simple feminist,
The horizon for feminists studying horror films appears bleak. Since Psycho’s infa- psychoanalytic account of horror, as follows: The tension between the viewer's desire
mous shower scene, the big screen has treated us to Freddie’s long razor-nails emerg- to look and the ongoing narrative of a film is especially acute in the horror film. Typ-
ing between Nancy’s legs in the bathtub (A Nightmare on Elm Street 1), De Palma’s ically in horror, the woman or visual object is also the chief victim sacrificed to the
exhibitionist heroine being power-drilled into the floor (Body Double), and Leather- narrative desire to know about the monster. Horror flirts directly with the threat of
face hanging women from meat hooks (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre). Even in a castration underlying the fetish or visual appearance of the woman, and this means
film with a strong heroine like Alien, any feminist point is qualified by the mon- that looking (visual pleasure) is even more immediately at odds with narrative in hor-
strousness of the alien mother, the objectification of Sigourney Weaver in her under- ror films than in other mainstream Hollywood movies. The woman's flesh, the real-
wear, and her character Ripley’s forced assumption of a maternal role. , ity behind the surface appearance, is made visible, and horror shows the “wound” that
Despite all this, there has been some feminist work on horror, and Ibelieve there we are revolted to look upon. To make up for this horror, this account continues, the
is room for more. In the first part of this paper I shall survey and criticize currently viewer must turn attention to the narrative thrust of the investigator, typically a male,
dominant psychodynamic feminist approaches to horror. In the second part, I propose who will complete the story for us.
an alternative framework for constructing feminist interpretations of horror films by
critically interrogating their gender ideologies. My proposal focuses less on the Psy:
chology of viewers than on the nature of films as artifacts with particular structures ‘Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” originally published in Screen 16 (1975);
Teprinted in Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); my page
and functions. In the third part I illustrate my recommended framework by sketching references are to the repinted version in Issues in Feminist Film C) riticism, ed. Patricia Erens (Blooming-
readings of Jurassic Park (Spielberg 1993), The Fly (Cronenberg 1986), and Repul- ton: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 28-40.
sion (Polanski 1965). ?Feminist critics have argued against Mulvey on various grounds, particularly that she-ignores the social
and historical conditions of gendered subjects and oversimplifies the role of the viewer/director/camera
(so
that, for example, a subtler view may be necessary to account for the ambivalence of certain film directors
PART I: PSYCHOANALYTIC FEMINIST like Hitchcock). See, for example, Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade, Theorizing the Female
Spectator,” in Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, pp. 41-57; Jane Gaines, “Women and Representation:
APPROACHES TO HORROR We Enjoy Alternative Pleasure?” also in Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, pp. 75-92; Marian
Can
Keane, “A
Closer Look at Scophilia: Mulvey, Hitchcock, and Verti go,” in The Hitchcock Reader, ed. Marshall
Most current feminist studies of horror films are psychodynamic. That is, though
Den-
telbaum and Leland Poague (Ames: lowa State University Press, 1986), pp. 231-248; and Naomi
Sche-
they may consider films as artifacts, recognizing such aspects as plot, narrative, or man, “Missing Mothers/Desiring Daughters: Framing the Sight of Women,” Critical Inquiry
15 (Autumn
1988): 62-89, Mulvey’s revisions of her view may be found in “Afterthoughts on
point of view, their chief emphasis is on viewers’ motives and interests inwatching Visual Pleasure and Nar-
tative Cinema,” in Visual und Other Pleasures, But for limitavions that seem to persist in this
volume, see
horror films, and on the psychological effects such films have. Typically this sort of my critical review of Visual and Other Pleasures in the APA Newsletter on Feminism and
Philosophy 89,
feminist film theory relies upon a psychoanalytic framework in which women are 2 (Winter 1990):52-55.
 FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 7A: 5
144 FILM GENRES

blurred and threaten- aries out the threat of transgressing them, and about the need to do so. Hene
For example, in Psycho, we, like Janet Leigh, see the vague emp asizes the duality of our attraction/repulsion to the horrific.
shower curtain. But after this central murder cence she
ing shape of the attacker behind the an applying this theory to Alien, Creed stresses the film’s repeated birth scenari
camera look into the blind eye of the victim. Since the horrific "Aion
scene, the audience and and numerous versions of the engulfing, threatening, voracious,
no longer be looked upon,
woman herself can no longer see, and her beautiful body ce 8 toothed vagina, the monstrous-feminine as the cannibalistic mother"
once our identification with
we viewers are forced to proceed beyond her vision. And 1 offers an explanation n of why, , in the final scenes
shifts to the male investig ators who will s i (notorious! )
of Alien
the woman/victim has been disrupted, it Sigoumey Weaver undresses before the camera, strolls around in her thin undershne
ly to the male psychiatrist
solve the crime and identify the murderer, and ultimate ane cvermually returns to her sleeping pod with the small orange cat she has rescued:
who, in the film’s words, “has all the answers.” pley’s body ts pleasurable and reassuring to look at. She signifies the ‘acceptab .
I have just sketched is offered
A modified version of the simple Mulveyan schema form and shape of woman.”
aspects of Mulvey’s
by Linda Williams, who scrutinizes one of the more vulnerable Cc . a viable
et eparts incenain important .
males and the pleasur es of looking or respects from the simplistic Mulveyan model I
theory, her straitjacketed association between 8 . She emphasizes, . contra the Mulveyzyan-Lacaniai n position,
out that often in horror, contrary to mainstream cin- iti that h
spectatorship.? Williams points importantly concerns not J just womenasas victi
“the gaze.” That is, they are typicall y the first to get to see, victiins—women who are attacked beczvause
ema, women do possess they present a horrific vision
s of a castrated body—but also monstrous
s may threaten the women who
inquire about, and know the monster. Similarly, although monster t
threaten to castrate men. . “Virt ually all horror texts represent th mnonstrous feminine
and monster s are often linked. ini
bodies of women in horror, even so, the fates of women in relation to Kristeva’s
s notion of maternal authority
the patriarc hal order. (Think of vampire i and; the snapp
mappi of fthe
ingalt °
Both may somehow seem to stand outside clean
c and proper body.”® More specifi
seduces women away from i
pecifically, Creed thinks that horrvor tents all erecta
stories, for example, where a fascinating foreign Dracula illustrate
strate “the work rk of of | abjection.”?
fathers, undermi ning the patriarc hal institut ions of law, marriage, yjection.”’ They do so ini three basic ways.
aye.
ays. Fist
Fi howe
First, horror
their husbands and depicts images or abjection, such as corpses and bodily wastes; second, horror is con
tions about the short-
motherhood, medicine, and religion.) Despite these observa 1 ed with borders, > with things§ that threaten the e stability
remains consiste nt in its outlines stabili of the' symbolic
‘ ; i
comings of a Mulveyan account, Williams’s account third, horror constructs the maternal figure as abject.
just sketched . William s argues that women * Forder ane
with the sort of Mulveyan view J have um pause now for
and who become aligned with monster s, are typically some assessment. As I have noted, both the Mulvey-
who possess the gaze in horror, iaeanien ane Creed Kristevan frameworks for feminist film theory build upon a psy
to require punishm ent.
shown themselves to represent threats to patriarchy and hence ytic foundation.
i Despite all the details8 of theireir different
films reinforc e con- di pictures,
i
In the end Williams seems to accept the basic idea that horror
each vi ew
(suffering) female object. construes the
cone u familiar tensions
E of horror or ini terms of an opposition between enen “female”
“female’
“female”
ceptions of the active (sadistic) male viewer and the passive neycholog spect, whens these are understood or defined within the terms of depth
and a sort of masculine
Women are punished for their appropriation of “the gaze,” ps 'y. . i in other words, .
Father) is restored. There is, s
a tension between spectacle or the horrifici fem-
narrative order (what Lacan would call the Law of the mn
inine ted
(associated w
of one of Lacan’s with ;
the castrated wom.1 an, preoedipal
: i mother, . or castrati ing woman),
More recently, feminist film theorists have turned to the work oe Plot or narrative resolution (associated with the patriarchal order that the whit
man)
Kristeva . Kristeva ’s book Pow-
successors, the French feminist psychoanalyst Julia after resolving the Oedipal complex). In broad
literature and not film, but her
ers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection* focuses on oan
choanalysis,sis, innal}
all these theseS theortties s (Mulvey’s, : Creed’s,
by Barbara Creed, in a 1986 , and Wilkeros's)
. ond Williams’
jiams’s) the he eeefocus isi snip
also
views have been adapted to the study of visual horror : ms ory tht aan an is, there is some presumed general or universal psychological
and in her more recent book The Monstrous-Feminine
Screen article about Alien,
the sources and origins of horror is their analysis. To back up speculations of this s
Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis.* Kristeva locates .example,
2 . begins her book by 'y appealing
of the infant’s ambivalence I ali gtto both universal
i tural
cultural practices
not in castration anxiety, but in the preoedipal stage
practicesices ance
and clas-
meal mymnology. Psychodynamic feminist theorists speculate about why
ies and forge its own ego identity. “we” ate
toward the mother as it struggles to create boundar Kine fq in horror and more basically about why certain things are horrifying. These
primitive, and impure or
The mother is “horrific” in the sense of being all-engulfing, of uestion0 are seen to require an answer withi in a psychologiea
menstrual blood. Kris- i l theo . hi
defiled by bodily fluids—particularly breast milk and flowing remains the chief concern even when the theorist
psychic conditi on inspired by this i speaks about h ySSaerpret™
teva uses the term “abjection” to designate the such1 films or about what various
, horror is fundame ntally about bound- ous aspects of these films. “represent.” osont The Thedeep”
“ * aorta.
image of the horrific mother. For Kristeva hations
on Tee offered are (putative) psy sychologica
ps: i
logical i
explanations. inste
VorFor instance,
instance, hee isi Cecd
here Creed

n: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Mary

3Linda Williams, “When the Woman Looks,” in Re-Visio 1984), pp. 33-99, and
Regan’s carnivales:
a sque disdisplay of her: body reminds us quite
qui clearly of i
Williams (American Film Institute,
Ann Doune, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda appeal of the abject. Horror emerges from the fact that woman has broken,
Film Quarterly 44 (Summer 1991): 2-13. wit her proper
“Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” bia
4Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, tran. Leon Roudiez (New York: Colut
University Press, 1982). Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, p. 13.
y Abjection,” Screen 27, 1 (1986):
SBurbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginar (London: Routledge, 1993). TIbid., p. 10.
45.70. and The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis
746 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS TAT

feminine role—she has “made a spectacle of herself”—put her unsocialized body on dis- versial even within feminism; she has been criticized for, variously, essentialist
theo-
play. And to make matters worse, she has done ail of this before the shocked eyes of two rizing, promoting anarchy, idealizing maternity, or adopting views that are fascistic,
male clerics.8 apolitical, or ahistorical.!! Luce Irigaray offers both scathing critiques of Lacan and
intriguing alternatives to some of Kristeva’s most basic claims.!2
The theoretical approaches of feminist film analysts like Creed, Mulvey, and
Clearly, within psychoanalysis, we can identify many alternatives to Lacanian or
Williams are significantly constrained by their psychodynamic framing, and more
Kristevan frameworks that might also be fruitful for film studies, Stanley Cavell, for
particularly (and significantly) by the theoretical apparatus of psychoanalysis. I here
present six objections to such approaches. ; ; ; example, borrows from traditional Freudian psychoanalysis to offer quite subtle and
First, psychoanalysis is itself a very problematic enterprise that is far from achiev- complex accounts of viewers’ desires and interests in relation to both male and female
actors’ embodiments of film characters’ roles.!3 He seems to provide a promising
ing anything like general acceptance as a psychological theory. Feminists adapting
framework for the analysis of certain types of films, such as melodrama or the genre
the views of Lacan or Kristeva do so either in ignorance of or indifference to force-
ful philosophical critiques of psychoanalysis offered by Crews, Griinbaum, Deleuze he calls the “comedy of remarriage.” Alternatively, for all we know, J ungian or
and Guattari, and others.? Attempts to defend psychoanalysis by reconceiving it as Reichian psychoanalytic theories might be intriguing psychological theories to put to
the test in film studies. Jungians, with their theory of universal unconscious arche-
hermeneutic explanation are also problematic, because they loosen the theory from
its crucial underpinnings in causal hypothesizing, leaving key theses, about, say, typal structures, might pay more attention to cross-cultural considerations in films, or
abject preoedipal mothers, castration anxiety, and so on, as, at best, hermeneutical to films’ links with various kinds of fairy tales and myths. Reichians have the virtue
of emphasizing concrete external sociomaterial factors in identity formation and
aids to reading film “texts.” Such hermeneutical aids should be taken seriously only
insofar as they produce valid readings. But typically in film studies, psychoanalytic repression. Perhaps Homey’s notion of womb envy or Klein’s of the bad mother
interpretations are advanced a priori, rather than in an open-minded spirit of testing would enable us to offer better interpretations of certain films, like Frankenstein or
The Brood.
how well they actually work. Though a Kristevan reading may seem illuminating for
Third, moving away from the particular restrictions of psychoanalysis, I find that
Alien, with its many birth scenarios and theme of monstrous mothering, why should
we believe in advance that it will work equally for all kinds of examples of horror? Psychodynamic theories often tend to be weak as film readings because they are too
reductive. They tend to utilize a one-dimensional system of symbolic interpretation.
The notion of abjection expands in Creed’s theory so as to be almost vacuous,
For example, even when a Kristevan interpretation seems illuminating for certain
because we are to understand in advance that all the varieties of horrific monstrous-
aspects of a film, as for example it does when Creed uses it to comment on horrific
ness we can think of really just are “illustrations” of the “work” of abjection. This
aspects of the climactic birth scene in The Brood, her focus on this aspect of the film
includes an astonishing variety, ranging from Alien’s monstrous mother to the disin-
tegrating cannibalistic zombies in Night of the Living Dead, or from Seth Brundle’ s alone seems to lead her to neglect many other important features of the film.!4 Inmy
view this film offers a critique of several concrete contemporary social problems: the
hideously gooey and amoral fly to the Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s cannibalistic
evils of charismatic psychotherapists, and the ways in which child abuse gets perpet-
family. In what sense is a psychological theory of abjection “explanatory when it
uated from one generation to the next. It is limiting to translate a social critique into a
becomes so broad? And in any case, why can’t it be the case that there are unique.
that abjec- depth-psychological thesis about how we all (allegedly) have deep ambivalences
distinctive, sui generis human fears of a variety of things? Keep inmind
about our abjected mothers. Even more of a problem is the fact that Creed’s frame-
tion in a Kristevan framework always refers at bottom to the necessity of separation
work locates the film’s chief source of horror in the freakish mother (Samantha Eggar),
from the primal mother. Why must all other fears somehow equal or be reduced to
. setting aside the film’s apparent depiction of the megalomaniac psychiatrist, Dr. Hal
fear of the primal mother?
one were to grant that psychoanalysis is aworthy Psy Raglan (Oliver Reed), as its central villain. Creed’s account thereby becomes insensi-
Second, even supposing
tive to historical allusions the film makes (and that Cronenberg quite typically makes)
chological theory, this is not an argument for the particular psychoanalytic views Oo!
to the tradition of mad scientist horror films. She also misrepresents the structure of
Lacan or Kristeva. There are many alternatives; so why settle on these? Lacan makes
the film’s plot, which depicts an appropriate punishment that Dr. Raglan suffers for his
problematic and philosophically disputable metaphysical assertions about the self,
hubris—as he is destroyed by the monstrous children he has so freakishly “fathered.”
the nature of desire, and so on.!° Kristeva makes equally problematic quasi-empirical
claims about, say, the infant’s acquisition of language. Her views are quite contro-
"Sce Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-Bind (Bloomington: Indiana
University
J Press, 1993), introduction, “Oscillation Strategies,” and chapter 1, “The Prodigal
'Dpid., p. 42. See ibid., chapter 7, for discussion of Irigaray’s differences with Kristeva.
Child.”
OSes Frederick Crews, “The Unknown Freud,” The New York Review of Books 11, 19 (November 6, Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage
1993): 55-66; Adolf Griinbaum, The Philosophical Foundations of Psychoanalysis (Berkeley: Universi it University Press, 1981); for feminist departures that build upon Cavell’s work,
(Cambridge: Harvard
et al.
ofCalifornia Press. 1984); Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. by Robert Hurley “Missing Mothers/Desiring Daughters: Framing the Sight of Women,”
see Naomi Scheman,
: Viking, 1977). , ; ; Critical inquiry 15 (Autumn 1988):
62-89,
Nie hy “Woman, TReveated or Reveiled? An Approach to Lacan via the Blithedale Romance of
M4Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, pp. 43-58,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Hypatia, a Journal for Feminist Philosophy (Fall 1986): 49-70.
748 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 749

Fourth, psychodynamic film theories that depend upon very basic distinctions equality, or on technologies of representation in ways that would seem readily adapt-
between males and females—whether as viewers, objects of the gaze, or pursuers of able to film studies.
distinct sorts of pleasures—rely upon certain notions of gender that are themselves Sixth and last, | doubt that whatever insights are produced by psychodynamic read-
problematic and under question by feminists. Many feminist and other critics have ings of horror films require a grounding in some particular psychogenetic theory that
pointed out that assertions about fears of castration, or about the masculinity of logic allegedly explains viewers’ interests and responses in general filmic narratives and
and language, may be radically culture- and era-bound. To make very broad general- representations. As I have noted, psychoanalytic feminists construct genderized
izations about “male” or “female” viewers blocks the recognition of significant indi- accounts of the tensions in horror between key features of spectacle and plot. But it
vidual differences among viewers that surely affect how they experience films. These is entirely possible to construct a theory of horror that emphasizes these same ten-
include significant differences of social class, sexual orientation, age, race, and so on. sions without genderizing them. As far back as the ancient world, Aristotle’s account
For example, given that racial identity seems an important factor in some horror of tragedy in the Poetics recognized a tension between the aesthetic effects evoked by
movies, such as Night of the Living Dead and its sequel Dawn of ihe Dead, it seems tragedy and its narrative structures.1? Noél Carroll's The Philosuphy of Horror fol-
unreasonable to presume that white and black female viewers will experience the lows Aristotle and similarly pays central attention to the dichotomy horror typically
film, its “gazes” and its “visual objects” in just the same ways. These films seem depends upon between the cognitive pleasures of following out the narrative and the
explicitly to pair white females and black males as sharing a certain “victim” status.'* emotional pain of art-horror associated with monsters and spectacles.'* If an account
Even the most basic assumption of psychodynamic feminist film theorists, that it like Carroll’s grasps these same tensions and offers reasonable explanations of them
is conceptually useful and appropriate to distinguish between male and female view- without alluding to either gender or depth psychology, it is hard to see why as femi-
ers, and even between heterosexual and homosexual men or women, have been nists thinking about horror we need to resort to such theorizing. To my own mind, if
placed under attack in recent theoretical work in queer and performance theory by there is any particular merit in the sort of comment that Creed makes about The Exor-
writers like Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick. A focused awareness of issues in queer cist in the passage | quoted above, we can make this judgment by looking at the
theory could lead, for example, to intriguing re-visions of a movie like. The Silence movie, without any special devotion to or even knowledge of the intricate theoretical
of the Lambs. U have in mind not the obvious problems with the film’s homophobic grounding (and jargon) of Kristevan psychoanalysis.
depiction of the “Buffalo Bill” character, but critical textures that may be added to Some of the general problems I have just enumerated will likely arise for other psy-
readings of the film when we focus on its strange pairing of Jodie Foster, who was at chodynamic feminist approaches to horror, even ones that do not begin from a strictly
the time of the film’s release controversially “outed” by ActUp, with the villainous psychoanalytic framework, such as Carol Clover’s “gender rezoning” proposal in her
yet charming “Hannibal Lecter” character whose fussy mannerisms allow him to be recent book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
read as “an old queen,”!® ; Clover’s approach does have much to recommend it: she discusses subgenres of hor-
Fifth, another difficulty with a psychodynamic, especially a psychoanalytic, Tor rather than trying to create a wholly uniform theory; she attempts to locate horror
framework for feminist film studies is that this view has mysteriously acquired a pre- films within their sociocultural context; and she recognizes and indeed focuses on
dominance within feminist film theory that is completely disproportionate to its sta- some of the elusiveness of gender categories. Her theory is much less subject, then,
tus within contemporary feminist theorizing in general. British, American, and to my fourth objection listed above.
French feminists differ from one another and among themselves, not to mention from Yet even so, Clover’s account is problematic because, in the place of psychoanaly-
Third World anticolonialist feminists, and major books in both popular and academic sis, she assumes the validity of an alternative theory of gender and of our psycholog-
feminism in the United States have adopted widely divergent theoretical bases—but
these are typically not psychoanalytic. Instead, they range from a rather vague and
MOF course, certain of Aristotle’s sexist assumptions may have had an impact on his evaluational
standard liberalism grounded in the tradition of John Stuart Mill, to more radical schema for tragedies; for more on this, see my “Plot Imitates Action: Aesthetic Evaluation and Moral Real-
forms of Marxist socialism; and from Foucauldian emphases on disciplinary tech- ism in Aristotle’s Poetics,” in Essays on Aristotle's Poetics, ed. Amelie Rorty (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
niques of knowledge and bodily control to new, visionary feminist work on ecosys- versity Press, 1992), esp. pp. 126-28. - :
‘8Noél Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990).
tems and the possibly liberating role of technology. Surely these diverse and flour- Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
ishing forms of feminist theory also have something to offer to film studies. Many of
(Princéton:
Princeton University Press, 1992). See also my review in Afterimage (March 1993),
them focus, for example, on subjectivity and desire, on visual objectification and 2Despite her attention to “rezoning” of gender distinctions and to social factors in horror film plots,
Clover still seems at times to fall prey to reductive generalizations or rather simplistic dichotomies and
associations between viewer characteristics and stereotyped gender notions. By her own admission,
she is
mainly interested in why the predominantly male viewers of horror subject themselves to being
“hurt” (=
‘For a particularly acute critique of feminist Lilm theory’s neglect of race issues, see Jane Guines, “feminized”) by the genre. Her fourth chapter, “The Eye of Horror,” examines the role
of eyes, watching,
“White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory,” in ed. Issues in Fem- and gazing in horror films like Peeping Tom (1960). On the one hand, Clover argues that this film depicts
p. 197-214. . , , what she calls the “assaultive gaze” of the camera, which is “figured as masculine” (“A hard
inist Film Criticism, look and a
oe erhis observation vas made by Douglas Crimp in a lecture he delivered at the University of Houston hard penis mean the same thing”); but on the other hand, it also critiques that gaze and showcases the “reac-
in the fall of 1991. tive gaze,” “figured as feminine, of the spectator” (p. 181).
750 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 751

ical conceptualizations of it—Thomas Laqueur’s “one sex” model. According to in cultural studies that examines the history of horror in relation to specific sociocul-
Laqueur, sex is primitively conceived as involving one norm, masculinity, of which tural contexts.23
femininity is a defective version. Clover thinks this model is somehow operative both Further, feminist psychodynamic accounts do not seem sensitive to the dazzling
in the construction and in the experience of works in the horror genre. There are sev- diversity of horror’s subgentes: gothic, mad scientist, alien invader, slasher-psycho,
eral distinct questions to raise here. First, one might ask on what basis we should be fape revenge, B-movie, cult film, science fiction, monster, possession film, zombie,
persuaded to adopt this particular theory of gender. Laqueur isa historian of science comedy, Japanese horror (Godzilla), and so on—even music video horror (Michael
whose views are by no means universally accepted, and so relying on his theory is a Jackson’s Thriller)! In light of all this genre diversity, | doubt there can be any one
rather strange and arbitrary choice. It seems doubtful to me that any book of film the- “feminist theory of horror.” Reflecting on the astounding variety of styles, nuances,
ory can argue convincingly for the truth of a particular psychological theory of gen- and tones within this genre would also lead me to doubt any particular theory that
der. Next, we might ask Clover to argue for the applicability of this theory of gender associates gender with the kind of looking, or monstrousness, or victimization that is
to the horror genre. She does make a stab at this, but only vaguely, by asserting that typical of horror, or with some “work” of abjection that horror films necessarily
horror originated in the time of the rather primitive science that Laqueur is analyzing. “illustrate.” Films within a single subgenre like the vampire film may present male
This claim itself needs more detailed defense. Does it even hold of the early works monsters as distinctive as the emaciated Kinski Nosferatu, the campy Bela Lugosi,
Frankenstein and Dracula for instance? I doubt it. Finally, even granted that her his- the languid Frank Langella, the sinister Christopher Lee, and the macabre ball-goers
torical claim about the psychological theories prevalent during the creation of early of Polanski. A quite horrific and gory movie can also be wildly funny (Texas Chain
works of horror were correct, Clover ought to recognize that such a theory is hardly Saw Massacre Hl, An American Werewolf in London). Horror films can be very eerie
predominant any longer. Accordingly, it would seem reasonable for us to expect more and subtly creepy (The Dead Zone), or they can revel in over-the-top, hair-raising,
recent forms of horror to reflect the current state of public knowledge and scientific outrageous effects (Evil Dead If). They can be depth-psychological “family
theorizing about sex. My doubts about all the gaps in Clover’s exposition lead me to romances” (Repulsion) or virtual cartoons (Predator 2). They can be historical cos-
question her particular observations about individual films. Again, where I find such tume dramas (Herzog’s Nosferatu, Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula) or
observations insightful, I am inclined to think that their value stems more from how technophilic futuristic visions (Alien). They can be vividly realistic (Jurassic Park) or
acutely they “read” film texts than from how accurately they reflect the real human ridiculously fake (Godzilla). They can be incredibly original (Scanners, Brain Dead),
psychology of actual viewers. mindlessly imitative (Silent Madness, Orca), or a little of both (Body Double).
J assume, then, that a promising feminist approach to cinematic horror should be
PART 2: A PROPOSED FEMINIST FRAMEWORK FOR historically aware and also broad and open enough to work for all of these varieties
READING HORROR FILMS of horror. In light of these observations, as well as the list of six criticisms I made in
Part 1, the task of building a “feminist theory of horror” may seem monumental. And
In Part 1 [described various approaches to horror within contemporary feminist film in fact, this is not exactly what | aim at here. My proposal is perhaps best understood
studies and identified problems in these approaches, some involving specific psycho- not as a “theory” of horror, but as an attempt to begin making good on some of the
analytic tenets, others, more general problems about psychodynamic approaches. But deficiencies and positive requirements I have outlined. I suggest a strategy or frame-
the feminist theorists I have examined are limited by more than their problematic uni- work for constructing feminist readings of horror films. My strategy would empha-
versalizing views about human psychosexual development. They also lack a deep and size the structure of horror films and place special weight on their gender ideologies,
well-grounded historical awareness of horrot’s roots and varieties. Clover’s book does in a sense I shall explain further below.
focus on a range of horror plots and on their social and cultural contexts, but only on First, it is useful to distinguish various roles that feminism can play in film studies.
horror films of the past two decades. Horror has a much longer, more complex history. For convenience I shall label these roles, somewhat pretentiously, the “extra-filmic”
It originated from the gothic novel, a fact in itself important for feminists to note and “intra-filmic.” By the “extra-filmic” role, I mean to refer to feminist investiga-
because of the unusual prevalence of women as both writers and readers in this genre. tions, in a sociological, anthropological, or historical vein, into actual concrete issues
Much good feminist work has been done in recent years concermng gothic romance concerning the historical context, production, and reception of horror films. In. this
and the origins of horror in works like those of Mary Shelley.? Ideally, feminist read- role, feminist critics would ask questions, for example, about women’s motives and
ings of horror films would benefit from awareness of this research and of related work experiences in producing, writing, directing, editing, and acting in horror films. Alter-
natively, they might explore reception theory, looking at actual examples of how var-
ious kinds of periodicals and audiences, such as feminist and lesbian audiences,
(New York:
2IBugenia de la Matte, Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic ;
ford University Press, 1990)
1988);
On esas ‘Anne K Mellon Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Methuen, See James Twitchell, Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy af Modem Horror (Oxford: Oxford Univer.
and Susan Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Aitic) (New Haven: Yale University Press, sity Press, 1985), and Andrew Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror
1979), especially chapter 7, pp. 213-47. Movie (London: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
752 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 753

review and read horror films—perhaps in unusually creative and nonstandard ways.” It might be thought that the strategy I favor resembles a somewhat old-fashioned
Another type of extra-filmic exploration would be that of the cultural historian who feminist approach to film studies, the “images of women” approach.*® On this
aims to locate specific periods or varieties of horror movies within the sort of histor- approach, one would analyze a genre of horror like the slasher film, say, by observ-
ical and social context that I find absent in most current feminist theorizing. In this ing how images of women arc presented in these films. Thus, typically, young women
role, feminist critics could examine the links between horror films and related works are shown either as tomboys or as teenaged sex fiends who somehow deserve their
of literature. ; dismemberment at the hands of a Jason or Michael Myers. 1 do recommend that to
Though I consider all the types of extra-filmic exploration that I have just men- explore a film’s gender ideology, we ask various questions that would also be asked
tioned very important, my own focus, stemming in part from my own perspective in on this approach, such as, How does the film depict/represent women—as agents,
philosophy—a notoriously nonempirical discipline —will instead be on what T call patients, knowers, sufferers? or, What role do women play vis-a-vis men in the film?
the intra-filmic questions about horror. My proposal for producing feminist readings However, I take feminist ideology critique to go beyond this rather simple set of ques-
or interpretations of horror films is that we should focus on their representational con- tions in two main ways.
tents and on the nature of their representational practices, so as to scrutinize how the First, I want to emphasize films as complex functioning artifacts composed of a
films represent gender, sexuality, and power relations between the SEXES. I suggest wide variety of elements, including more than simply the representation of charac-
that feminist readings of a horror film proceed by looking at various crucial sorts of ters. Obviously, films also include technical and formal filmic features such as edit-
film elements. Some of thesc elements concern the representation of women and ing, visual point of view, ighting, sound, and costuming, as well as features shared
monsters within films. Others explore how the film is structured and how it works. with literary works such as plots, dialogue, audience point of view, and narrative
Within my recommended framework, we must shift attention away from the psycho- structure, Feminist ideology critique will explore any or all of these features that
dynamics of viewing movies, and onto the nature of films as artifacts that may be seem relevant to understanding a film’s presentation of gender ideology. This may
studied by examining both their construction and their role in culture. To study their include focusing on what Noél Carroll has called rhetorical strategies, such as the
construction we look at such standard features as plot, characters, and point of view. elicitation of audience presumptions in completing gaps in the story.2? So on my
To study their role in culture—that is, to inquire about this as feminists—we exam- approach we would ask questions like these: How do the film’s structures of narra-
ine their gender ideology. This is my chief goal in producing feminist readings of hor- tive, point of view, and plot construction operate in effecting a depiction of gender
ror films. ; roles and relations? Does the film offer a “heroic modernist” narrative of mastery,
Let me offer some clarifying comments here about my proposal. The label “ideol- centered upon a male character, offering up either a clear resolution or a noble
ogy” I borrow from Marxist theory, supposing that an ideology is a distorted repre- tragedy? Or, is there a nonstandard narrative centered upon female characters, offer-
sentation of existing relations of power and domination. In the particular project I am ing, perhaps, a more open-ended and ambiguous conclusion? Does the film reference
interested in, obviously, these would be relations of patriarchy or male domination historical or genre precedents—suay, a particular earlier vampire film, or the mad sci-
(together with any relevant associated relations of class or race dominance). Feminist entist genre in general—and if so, how does it comment upon, replicate, parody, or
ideology critique is a deep interpretive reading that criticizes or analyzes a film’s revise the gender thematics of its predecessors? What are the film’s implicit rhetori-
presentation of certain naturalized messages about gender—messages that the film cal presuppositions about natural gender roles and relations? Does the film present
takes for granted and expects its audience to agree with and accept. These will typi- Possibilities of questioning or challenging these presumptions?
cally be messages that perpetuate the subordination and exploitation of women; they Second, I do mean something by calling feminist ideological critique of horror a
por-
present gender hierarchy or genderized roles and relations that are somehow “deep” interpretive reading. An interesting and creative feminist reading of a film
trayed as normal in the discourse of the film.?5 Or, occasionally andmore interest: may look “below” its surface representations of male or female characters to consider
ingly, an analysis of the film’s ideology might show that the film itself is raising ques- gaps, presumptions, and even what is “repressed,” by which I mean simply blocked,
tions about “normal” relations of gender dominance. omitted, or avoided, in these representations. My strategy accords with advice laid
out by the French feminist Luce Irigaray in her discussions of how te construct dis-
Tuptive feminist readings of the discourse of the male western philosophical tradition:
Best,” by Elizabeth Ellsworth,
244s a parallel, see “Illicit Pleasures: Feminist Spectators and Personal
p. 183-96, | 26For discussion of this approach, see Noél Carroll, “Ihe Image of Women
i i inist Film Criticism, in Film. A Defense of a Par-
takes a different approach wn
° ror antennae ofan ideological examination of horror films that adigm,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48, 4 (Fall 1990): 349-60.
Film and Postmodern ie
mine, see Tania Modleski’s “The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror ar
| ?7Noél Carroll has discussed a somewhat different notion of the ideological effects of cinema. The par-
Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, Tania Modleski, ed. (Bloom ticular conception Carroll criticizes, the “Althusserian Model.” rather narrowly alleges that films’ contents
ory,” in Studies in Entertainment:
d set of reas sy
ton: University of Indiana Press, 1986), pp. 155-66, Modleski advances a complicate
and formal structures function to present a certain distorted. Picture of the viewing subject. Carroll offers
horror films for eee the
rejecting the ways in which certain postmodern theorists have championed some Persuasive objections to this approach and considers an alternative rhetorical analysis that draws upon
She sees these films as attac! ne Aristotie’s, to show how “rhetorical strategies may be implemented in narrative film” (p. 223). Noél Car-
deconstructing the sclf, revealing the primacy of spectacle, and so on.
culture; examples she ais roll, “Film, Rhetoric, and Idcology.” in Explanation and Value in the Arts, ed, Salim Kemal and Ivan
feminine through their attacks on representatives of the family or consumer
cusses are Halloween and Dawn of the Dead). [See this cdition, pp. 764—73.] Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 215-37.
754 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 755

“The issue is not one of elaborating a new theory ofwhich woman would be the sub- tural messages about the virtues of masculinity by presenting a villain who is defec-
ject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of suspending its tively masculine—often someone pudgy, awkward, shy, or seemingly impotent—and
pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning that are excessively univo- a heroine (the “Final Girl”) who is more masculine than feminine. I would call this a
cal”? Referencing Irigaray may seem inconsistent on my part, given that she oper- “deep” reading because it shows that the apparently male villains are actually bad
ates within the Lacanian psychoanalytic tradition, However, Irigaray has in fact writ- because they are culturally coded as feminine. Where I part ways with Clover is that
ten some of the strongest feminist critiques I have read of the most basic assumptions Ireject her assumptions about the need for grounding this sort of reading in the truth
of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Further, I do not believe that a use of a given psychosexual model (Laqueur’s), or about the processes through which
of her recommended strategies of reading—for philosophy, literature, or film—must slasher audience’s psychological investment (and hence pleasure) in these movies
rely on any specific psychosexual assumptions. That is, as strategies of reading they alleged reflects certain standard, universal, gender-associated psychological interests.
work much like deconstructive textual strategies that are logically separable from My recommended approach is continuous with previous approaches to artworks in
those psychological assumptions. A brief example may help show this. - , the Western aesthetic tradition, ranging from Aristotle’s account of tragedy in the
Irigaray has written critically about Plato’s and Aristotle’s treatment of form an Poetics and Kant’s Critique of Judgment to more contemporary works like Kendall
matter in their metaphysics. She shows how they regard form as more valuable Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe. Philosophers have typically supposed that it is
because they associate it with masculinity and order. Now, it could weil be saidthat appropriate in aesthetic theory to discuss aspects of the psychology of our response
Irigaray proceeds by offering some sort of depth psychological reading of how these to artworks, but they have done so without presuming any particularly detailed the-
philosophers treat matter: Plato, as the “womb,” Cave, or receptacle; Aristotle as tl ory of the psyche. They emphasize that paintings, tragedies, or even landscape gar-
“envelope” or penis sheath. This sort of reading could be regarded as an analysis 0: dens are a particular kind of phenomenon, intentionally created and structured to pro-
their motives or of the ongoing appeal of Greek philosophical frameworks to subse- duce a certain kind of effect—catharsis, aesthetic distance, the free play of the
quent, mostly male philosophers. However, it strikes me that Irigaray s critique fant. imagination, and so on. It is enough for purposes of philosophical aesthetics to
tions equally as a deconstructive reading that enables one to question some of the employ commonsense, everyday notions of human psychology, to assume that we are
most basic assumptions of the discourse she is examining, in this case, ancient meta- capable of being frightened, excited, horrified, and so on, by artistic representations,
physics. One can find actual passages in which these philosophers associated form and then proceed to try to analyze how this occurs.
with masculinity. So, Irigaray’s “deep” reading conforms with my conception of ide- Adopting my proposed framework means simply that a feminist critic will con-
ology critique, in that she questions the most basic ways in which an apparently new struct a reading that focuses on gender representation within a film, beginning with a
tral and objective field, metaphysics, conceals and contains hierarchized gender list of specific questions that can vary as appropriate—according to the film’s
own
notions. One need not accept any psychoanalytic tenets to use this style of reading so period, style, and tone. Distinct feminist readings of the same horror film could eas-
as to query the particular discourse at issue, asking in this case, not only why form ily be constructed. It is indeed always possible that a film may not have much to say
was associated with masculinity and considered by the ancient Greeks as more valu that is particularly exciting or illuminating on the subject of gender. Also, and impor-
able than matter, but also what an alternative metaphysical schema would looklike." tantly, a feminist reading need not be a “complete” reading of the movie that purports
Similarly, to try to transfer the point of this ast paragraph to film studies, Carol to attend to all its many elements.
Clover, in her examination of the depiction of the feminine in slasher films, has pro- I believe that my proposal to use a basic sct of questions about gender ideology as
vided something like an Irigarayan “deep reading” that criticizes an existing form of a broad strategy for feminist film readings helps overcome some of the defects of cur-
discourse. She points out first, the obvious, that these films typically show young Tent feminist film theorizing I enumerated in Part 1, and I want to explain more
here
women as somehow bad—too sexy and alluring—before they are attacked by a male. how I see it as an improvement. Recall that my first two objections concemed
the
Beyond this, she offers a “deeper” reading by arguing that slashers also reinforce cul- problematic assumptions of a particular psychoanalytic theory or of psychoanalysis
generally. Obviously, my proposed strategy does not encounter these problems.
It
does not adopt any particular psychodynamic theory or theory of sexual or gender
8Luce Irigaray, “The Power of Discourse,” in Ingarsy This Sex Which Is Not One, tran. Catherine difference. My third objection queried currently dominant presumptions about gen-
roe Ithaca,
more thoughts about University
N.Y.: Cornel! Press,of 1985),
the usefulness 78.
p. approach ; a -
Irigaray’s fora nonpsychoanalytic femin eof der dichotomies between, for example, the aggressive masculine gaze and the passive
lytic philosophical reading of historical texts, see my “Nourishing Speculation: A Feminis ene Bat female spectacular body. I avoid these sorts of assumptions about gender
precisely by
Aristotelian Science,” in Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Essays on Plato an rato ee nn foregrounding as my first question the issue of how a film depicts gender.
Ami Bar On (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1994), pp. 145-87, and “Reading Irigaray Reading. versity My fourth
objection was a challenge to the theoretical reductivism of dominant
Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist Essays on Aristotle, ed. Cynthia Freeland (Pennsy! ania eas feminist film
Press: forthcoming), pp. 126-42. Kelly Oliver offers a somewhat similar een . wnie she a tet criticism; on this point, I would hope that my strategy opens out
to connected issues
ideology critique in drawing upon both Irigaray and Kristeva's theories, inher once r e ct ies amas concerning race, class, and so on.
pretation: The Case of Bergman's Persona,” in Philosophy and Film, ed. | vat oh Teetan an aan My fifth objection concerned the narrowness of psychodynamic
E. Wartenberg (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 233-48. However, [believe iver shows mi feminism in com-
sympathy to psychoanalytic accounts of, say, “the maternal’ than I do. parison to other important forms of feminist theorizing. One could use the
map I
 FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 757
756 FILM GENRES

she has never heard of chaos theory, and the male mathematician lan Malcolm (Jeff
propose in combination with many types of feminism. For example, to diagnose the
Goldblum) explains it to her in the context of a teasing sex scene that treats her like
gender ideology of a film, one could adopt the viewpoint ofa Marxist or liberal fem-
a silly teenage bimbo. This sort of depiction is further enforced by the fact that she is
inist; in either case I would suppose one could be critical, though of different aspects blonde, pretty, slender, and at least ten years younger than her male scientist col-
of the film, and to different ends. Similarly, a feminist theorist steeped in Foucault or
league and lover. Further, through most of the film she, unlike any of the mate char-
Donna Haraway might ask about some of my questions by looking at very different acters, consistently wears little shorts that show off her long coltish legs.
features of a film—at, for instance, how it portrays disciplines of the female body, or
; _ Similarly, the young girl (Ariana Richards) spends most of the film in abject fear
how it depicts women in relation to technology. of the T-rex. She is even afraid of the large gentle brontosaurus, who sneezes all over
My sixth objection stated that one might equally well achieve the insights of fem-
her and makes her look ridiculous. The fact that she is a computer hacker is intro-
inist psychoanalytic film theory without its propping in a psychodynamic theory. I duced rather casually and coincidentally toward the end of the film and does not seem
think that some of the questions I have listed above actually do this, that is, would
especially well integrated into her character. When she manages to get into the com-
work to take the place of others posed on the more problematic basis of, for instance,
puter system, her task is the relatively minor one of figuring out how to get a door to
depth psychoanalysis. Questions about “the gaze,” the sadistic male viewer, the mas- close properly.
culine narrative order, and so forth, are replaced here by questions about whether the
Next, how is monstrousness in the film related to femininity? All the monsters
film presents women as primarily suffering and tortured physical beings, orwhether
(dinosaurs) in the movie are female, but initially it seems that not much is made of
they are also shown to be alert, curious, intelligent, capable of independent investi-
this—nothing particularly horrific about primal mothers on the scale of Alien, at least.
gation, and so on, and also by questions about whether the women characters help
It is not easy to read the femininity of the monsters here, since it is not uniform, but
move the narrative along, or are simply targets of the horrific spectacle. I would hope
seems to permit a great range of difference: some varieties are huge and voracious;
that a careful consideration of these questions would avert reductivism and allow
others (the raptors) are smaller, clever, and vicious; yet others are large, gentle, cow-
flexibility in recognizing that horror movies often have very complex, mixed repre-
like beings vulnerable to indigestion or colds. I would suggest that the film presents a
sentations of women.
standard array of culturally coded, negative messages about females through its depic-
tion of these various dinosaurs. Some dinosaurs, like some women, are fat, sweet, and
PART 3: ILLUSTRATIONS gentle; and others are thin, vicious, and scheming. (There can be, in other words, no
sweet, smart dinosaurs!) One could go further in noting that from the perspective of
It is time to illustrate how I would use my own recommended strategy to generate
the male scientists who create and study the park, all female dinosaurs have a myste-
critical feminist readings of horror films and their gender ideologies. I will first dis-
rious sexuality that is “other”: their peculiar threat lies in their frog-derived ability to
cuss Jurassic Park and The Fly, films I choose specifically because, on the surface at
convert their sex so as to be able to reproduce independently. Thus on a deep reading,
least, they seem to present positive images of strong, intelligent, and active women.
the female dinosaurs represent a culturally coded threat centering upon a kind of
This makes them especially interesting to read for underlying ideologies. Next I shall
uncontrolled, rampant female sexuality, as well as awesome reproductive abilities.
compare these films to Repulsion, a film that on the surface seems problematic
Another question to ask about in assessing a film’s gender ideology concerns who
because it features a horrific female slasher/murderer, but which I find to present a
. moves the narrative along, who its chief agents are; here, clearly in Jurassic Park it
surprisingly radical questioning of existing gender ideology.
the film represent women? Superficial] iy is not the woman or girl. There are no women involved in the creation or operation of
Ibegin with Jurassic Park. First, how does
the park itself. The key human agents of the movie who initiate the chain of events
at least, it displays a contemporary, 1990s feminist vision of women and girls, The
presenting the movie’s central problem—the park mogul, the shark lawyer, and the
female paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is presumably well-educated and
computer wizard—are all men. Men are thus shown in the film as running the show
authoritative in her own field; she shows enthusiasm and expertise in classifying the in all the relevant senses: setting up the problematic situations, making them worse,
ancient plants in the park. She is courageous and physically active, and she makes and then resolving them. True, girls can be hackers and scientists, but this seems
cracks about the other characters’ sexism. And the young girl is said to be a computer peripheral to their chief roles, since during most of the action sequences of the movie
hacker. 7 ;
achievement . they are relegated to functions of nurturing the ill or taking care of men. Ellie is not
Nevertheless, we can hardly call the movie an unmitigated feminist
deep or rel- at the center of the key scenes that depict the children’s being threatened, then escap-
The paleobotanist’s own scientific expertise is never treated as especially
ing, the tyrannosaurus. Instead, the male scientist/father figure does this, while she is
evant. It is rather the male scientist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) who espouses a con- confined mainly to nursing, first the sick triceratops, then the wounded mathemati-
con-
troversial theory (about dinosaurs’ close relation to birds) that will gettested and cian. Her sudden interest in the sick triceratops seems poorly explained by her alleged
firmed in the park. Ellie is shown enthusiastically identifying plant species in the park Scientific expertise in the plants it eats, but it furthers a general depiction of her as car-
but, importantly, the plants themselves are not intrinsically interesting here but func- ing and nurturing. She has, literally, the ideal human mother’s ability to deal with
tion only as fodder for the dinosaurs. Thus, even in her scientific role, the womatt mounds of shit!
could be said to be chiefly concerned with nourishment and caregiving. Amazingly,
758 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 759

On the whole, then, the gender ideology of Jurassic Park seems to be to confirm closer up, so to speak, the hideous transformations that occur as the fly takes him
that women, even when they are brave and scientific, must remain pretty, flirtatious, over.*!
and nurturing. From the very start the film represents it as a central aim in Ellie’s life The particular horrific threat of this movie is an invasion by the other species of
to convince her lover to have children. Thus in the film’s trajectory, Grant fulfills his both the male and female body. It does take a specific turn against women when the
chief aim, demonstrating his scientific hypothesis about dinosaurs, while she fulfills scientist seeks his own rescue by demanding to use, and corrupt, her reproductive
hers in parallel, as one of the film’s closing scenes shows her smiling happily (in a abilities (showcased in a disgusting nightmare she has of giving birth to a giant mag-
view we share) at Alan, now appropriately fatherly, sleeping with the two children he got). Yet ultimately it is he and not she who suffers; he is punished for his scientific
has saved cuddled in his arms. The film’s ending thus depicts a resolution that pro- hubris, as she fights for survival (with some male assistance, but nevertheless she is
duces a happy, relieved, and idealized nuclear family. It includes none of the for- very courageous) and resists his final appeals to sacrifice herself for him. It is diffi-
eigners who are lowly park laborers, no computer nerds, no greedy lawyers, and no cult to force a reading of the monstrousness here as a feminization of his body; what
black members—just the white surrogate parents and grandfather whose regret sig- makes more sense is to see these transformations as metaphors for aging or for rav-
nifies that he is to be exonerated for his mistakes in the otherwise “innocent” desire aging illnesses like cancer or AIDS.
to entertain people. Even more significantly, the very last scene of the film is a vision The Fly’s narrative has a very traditional, male-centered and male-driven form: the
of flying birds—pelicans who, seen in silhouette over the water, resemble ptero- male scientist exceeds his role and must pay for it. The male acts, the woman feels.
dactyls. Thus the film concludes with a subtle message that reinforces the “heroic” She occupies a traditional role in the sense that her emotions and perceptions are
male scientist’s creative vision and theoretical achievement in hypothesizing cor- clues to guide us, the film viewer, to regard the man, despite his hubris, with love,
rectly about the bird-like nature of dinosaurs. pity, and sympathy. In The Fly as in Jurassic Park, the mad scientist who creates the
I move now to my second example, David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly, In this crux of the story is a man, and the woman has to deal with the man’s problem; love
film, the heroine, Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), is represented as an ambitious, and empathy are the key female traits. There is no real challenge to this gendered divi-
intelligent, pragmatic, and successful career woman, a science writer. She is also sion of labor or to the idea that stories are primarily about men, only secondarily
charming, funny, beautiful, and sexually forward—either a fantasy woman who falls about the women who love them. Consider, for example, the fact thal Veronica’s own
straight into bed with men, or the confident new woman assertive about her own sex- tragedy in this movie is in itself a subordinate tragedy brought about by Brundle’s
ual desires. True, she could be said to behave in unprofessional ways (having first mistake, and one centered in the realm of her body and her emotional life: the loss of
slept with one of her college professors, who is now her editor, and later with the sub- a lover, together with a forced abortion. The movie makes absolutely nothing of the
ject of her current research article)}-—-but so do the men in the movie. More problem- fact that she loses oul on what could easily be the biggest scientific scoop of her jour-
atic is the fact that she only seems to exist in the film in relations of subordination to nalistic career! (Indeed, wouldn’t the savvy and competitive woman journalist she
men. As a science writer her position is more lowly than that of the creative scientists seemed to be at the start immediately begin writing up the whole thing, complete with
whose genius she will simply record and report on to the world. Similarly as a writer, video illustrations?) In other words, just as in Jurassic Park, beneath the surface
she is subordinate to her editor at the science magazine. depiction of an independent career woman in The Fly lies the ideological message
These relations of subordination parallel Veronica’s position in the film’s plot and that women are primarily creatures of their emotions who exist first and foremost in
narrative structure. She exists in the movie primarily in a dependent relationship to their love relations to men and potential offspring.
the male scientist Dr. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum). The film is a variant on the mad These are two examples of films I have chosen because they sccm to offer positive
scientist genre, and Brundle is the mad scientist at the center of its narrative trajec- depictions of independent women characters which I believe are undermined by
tory. If this film reaches greater tragic heights than many other mad scientist movies, deeper ideological messages. Further, they arc interesting to examine in contrast with
that may be because it fulfills some of Aristotle’s criteria for a tragic plot: the hero typical feminist psychoanalytic views because their depictions of the horrific mon-
is a great man, sympathetic, deserving of our pity, who engages in action that Sters are not the typical ones of castrating woman or primal mother. Instead I would
involves some sort of fatal mistake and hubris bringing about his downfall.” This locate the most problematic aspects in their gender ideology at the level of their nar-
film is a narrative about the man’s activities, his heroism, and tragic downfall. Veron- rative, which is in each case predominantly a narrative focused on male energies,
ica functions in it as an aspect of his tragedy and loss, and also as a modem variant activities, triumphs, or tragedies.
on the ancient Greek chorus guiding our responses of pity and fear (or in this case,
horror). The film often puts viewers into her viewpoint, forcing us to observe from 'David Bordwelt has suggested that a “reading against the grain” approach might take this film to be
a subversive cxposé of the mad scientist's “hypermasculinity” (“Nerd becomes barroom thug and rapa-
Cious seducer”). While this is an intriguing line of interpretation, | do not think it can work, mainly because
of the film’s continued sympathy for Brundle. Here again, as I suggest, the fact that Veronica's love and
For some thoughts about the sexism implicit in Aristotle’s basic articulation of the nature of tragic pity persist despite his ugly behavior and transformation is meant to be our guide as to how to react. I think
plot, see my “Plot Imitates Action: Aesthetic Evaluation and Moral Realism in the Poetics,” in Essays on my interpretation of the movie as a high-end horror mad scientist tragedy is more in accord with the plot
Aristotle's Poetics, ed. Amelie Rorty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 111-32. and its ultimate conclusion when the creature mutely asks to be put out of its misery.
760 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 761

Now let me shift and describe a very different example of a horror movie with a story could not be said to be a tragedy in the classic sense, even one like that of The
quite different logic, Repulsion. Again I want to argue that surface appearances can Fly. That is, Repulsion does not offer a narrative of a deed and its consequences, or a
be deceiving. On the surface this is a horror story in which a very beautiful and sexy heroine whose action is somehow flawed, precipitating her tragic downfall. Instead
woman, Carol Ledoux (Catherine Deneuve) becomes a mad slasher and villain who this is a sort of antinarrative that presents an inability to act, a continual waiting, pas-
attacks and destroys men. One might initially suppose then that this is a sort of film sivity, and suffering. Even Carol’s final acts of killing the two men scem to be reac-
noir anticipating the recent genre of Fatal Attraction-style villainess females. Carol tions rather than genuinely intended deeds. Surely Carol does not “deserve” her suf-
seems to be depicted as the alluring yet shy and inhibited femme fatale whose fering, nor is she an evil Fatal Attraction-style femme fatale. To be sure, this film is
repressed sexuality must unleash itself ultimately in horrific acts of violence against not visionary in the sense of offering up an alternative model of gender roles, Never-
the men she desires. This view of her as repressed and even voyeuristic might seem theless, it certainly does call existing roles and attitudes into question ina particularly
to be confirmed by various aspects of the plot and the filmic depiction of her; she interesting way, by implicating the audience in watching this woman—who is indeed
dresses demurely, speaks in a low voice, hides behind her hair, constantly peers out very beautiful—by following her as she walks down the street, by extreme close-ups
the windows of her flat, listens in on her sister’s sexual moans and cries, inspects and of her face and appeatance—so much so that she begins to seem to want to hide from
throws away the shaving glass used by her sister’s lover, and so on. the camera itself behind her long pale hair.
However, I think that this surface reading does not capture much that is going on In The Fly too the heroine’s story revolves around her emotional suffering, but as
in this film. Many of the point-of-view shots in the movie identify the audience mem- I interpreted that film’s gender idcology, it represented such suffering as appropriate
bers with leering men, from her erstwhile boyfriend to the construction workers who for a woman character whose fate is basically subordinated to that of the male hero.
jeer and whistle at Carol as she walks past them on the sidewalk. On the other hand Her suffering functions as a cue for us in the audience, guiding us to react “appropri-
the film also switches to adopt the young woman’s own viewpoint as she is chased ately” to Brundle with sympathy and pity. By contrast, in my view Repusion presents
and visually assaulted by these men. In doing so, it shows her to be a victim who mer- a certain gender ideology in such a way as to raise a number of serious questions
its our sympathy and empathy. Thus the feeling of the scene where she overhears her about it. It constructs a surprisingly critical representation of male sexual desire and
sister’s lovemaking is less one of voyeurism than one of tormented embarrassment the accompanying objectification of women, and it even links this kind of visual
and the desire to escape. Clearly she feels threatened by her sister's involvement with objectification to acts of violence and sexual abuse like incest, Moreover, and finally,
the man and by her departure with him for vacation. Once she is alone in the flat, it suggests that when women fight back against such violence and abuse, their actions
Carol becomes increasingly psychotic and delusional. As she goes mad, the audience may be reasonable and warranted. But it does nor suggest, as do many movies in the
shares her heightened perceptions, nightmares, and hallucinations. Polanski shocks Tecent “rape revenge” genre, that women who fight back against such abuse will
and frightens us in parallel with her by showing faces that suddenly materialize in achieve psychological satisfaction or be backed by a powerful judicial system.°? It
mirrors, hands that reach out from rubbery walls, or menacing shadows creeping would be a less good movie, in my mind, if it did so—more problematically ideo-
from above on the bedroom ceiling, accompanied by weird and threatening grunting logical—because it would misrepresent and gloss over existing power and domi-
noises. Given this increasingly deranged system of perceptions, we can actually be nance relations within patriarchy.
persuaded that Carol’s reaction as she reacts and kills men who enter her apartment
is a reasonable one. This is particularly true when she repulses the advances of her
CONCLUSION
lecherous landlord, who has offered to accept something other than money for his
rental payments. / In closing, I would like to make one cautionary point about my recommended frame-
This means that what is really horrific in this movie is not the female killer (as it work for producing readings of horror films that focus on their gender ideologies.
is, say, in Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction), it is instead lechery, male altitudes of One reason I distinguish my recommended feminist ideological critique from an
lust toward such a beautiful woman. The film highlights Carol’s victimization by men ordinary Marxist sort is that [ want to resist a certain sort of Marxist line that places
and strongly hints that her psychosis and sexual repression stem from a history of great power within the hands of the productive apparatuses of Hollywood, and cor-
child sexual abuse. She cannot escape the pursuit of men who wolf-whistle at her on tespondingly little power in the hands of audience members, treated ‘générically as
the street, press her for dates, or attack her in her own apartment. Her sister’s lover members of one social class. I believe that audience members have the power to cre-
has carelessly scattered his personal hygiene items all around in the bathroom. She is ate individual, often subversive readings of films. To speak of a film’s ideology sug-
even trapped in her job as a manicurist in the industry of making women beautiful so gests that some powerful agent is distorting a message for sinister purposes of dom-
as to please men, By repeated shots linking Carol to the naked, stripped rabbit that ination and control. This is misleading, I think, both because the nature of the agency
rots uncooked on an empty plate in her flat, she is represented as childlike, vulnera- in question in filmic representation is actually very diffuse, and also because it makes
ble, and psychically decaying.
The overall narrative structure of Repulsion reflects a logic of disruption and frag- On the rape revenge genre, see Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws, chapter 3, “Getting
mentation rather than resolution; of suffering and reacting, rather than action. The Even,” pp. 114-65.
762 FILM GENRES FEMINIST FRAMEWORKS FOR HORROR FILMS 763

viewers into powerless Pavlovian dogs. Horror movie viewers are in fact often highly resentations of gender roles and relations, the horrific monster, and the type of reso-
sophisticated and critical; horror movie screenings, in my experience, may be much lution presented, I believe that my proposal offers a more flexible, potentially illumi-
more participatory than other forms of films. If the dominance relations distorted by nating framework than psychodynamic approaches for constructing creative feminist
ideology in my approach are those of patriarchy, | believe that individual viewers, in readings of horror films.
particular female viewers, may either see through such relations or reread intended
1996
ones in subversive ways.
This means that even when a film presents a problematic image of women, the
audience reaction may subvert or undercut it. For example, the audience may react so
as to bring out the potential dark humor of a scene. Let me offer an example here.
Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan, in their book Camera Politica, adopted a more
standardly Marxist view of film ideology than my own. Ryan and Kellner discuss,
among other topics, sexist ideologies of horror films in the early 1980s, which they
interpret as expressing male backlash against feminist advances of the time.*? They
are highly critical, for instance, of the bondage scenes in Cat Peopie; their discussion
seems to assume that the filmmakers had an agenda that would determine audience
responses by buying into their assumed agreement, that is, a shared resistance to new
feminist values. Yet when J saw the film in a crowded theater in New York at the time
of its release, the audience hooted derisively at just these scenes. That is, they seemed
to see through this maneuver of the filmmakers so as to resist the film’s surface ide-
ology. Horror films seem often to solicit just such cynical, subversive audience
responses.
In this paper I have presented not so much a feminist theory of horror films as a
framework that I hope will prove useful for producing readings of horror films. I
would like to emphasize that in my view, for any given film, a number of feminist
readings might be possible. Feminist film readings interpret how films function as
artifacts, and to do this they may successfully explore such diverse aspects of a film
as its plot, editing, sound track, point of view, dialogue, character representations, use
the
of rhetoric, or narrative structures. But film artifacts function within a context, and
context is constantly changing. I do not contend, for example, that the sort of reading
of Repulsion I have offered here would have been possible or even appropriate in
1965 when the movie was released. We may see this film differently in retrospect, for
example, against the contemporary background of Fatal Attraction and Basic
Instinct, as well as by comparison with the recently emerging genre of the rape
revenge movie. Further, there is much greater social awareness in 1995 than in 1965
of problems of incest and child sexual abuse, and these might significantly affect how
a feminist of today sees certain slight allusions in the film.
is
My quick sketch here of film readings of Jurassic Park, The Fly, and Repulsion,
read-
only that, a sketch. I have mainly intended to suggest how such critical feminist
amic under-
ings can be engaged in, and prove potentially fruitful, without psychodyn
Again, | emphasize films as functioning complex artistic artifacts, and I
pinnings.
or totalizing
emphasize audience's critical readings rather than purportedly universal
ask a set of central questions about films’ rep-
psychological responses. My readings

Ideology of Contemporary 34For For aa more extended i i - -

33Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and illustration, see my discussion of Henry: Portrait ofa Serial Killer in “Realist
pp. 136-67. Horror,” in Philosophy and Film (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Hollywood Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988),