The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fictions Series)

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Creed's The Monstrous-Feminine [4] was published in 1993 and clearly draws inspiration from her earlier work on Kristeva.

She currently works within the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne where she is a professor of Cinema Studies. Creed's ideology of the woman's reproductive system is similarly analyzed within the works of Kristeva. In an age at which anthropogenic and patriarchal harms threaten the very survival of the planet, embracing the nonhuman becomes a remedial, even liberating gesture. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. During the Oedipal and pre Oedipal phases of childhood development, the child's curiousity about sexual knowledge can be laden with anxiety.Medusa is a mythological creature whose stare can turn people to stone, particularly men, and who has a head covered in snakes, which Creed argues is a deadly symbol of the vagina dentata. The questions children have regarding the genitals are not explained by rational adults, so the child is left to fill in the blanks. Coming full circle from the maiden back to the mother, our examples include the Wilis, the chorus of thwarted ghost brides in the ballet Giselle, and the murderous pregnant woman in Alice Lowe’s 2016 film Prevenge.

Creed examines Freud's psychoanalytic theory of sexual difference, and the marking of female sexuality as dangerous, as Freud believed women had vagina dentata and that they were castrators of men. Barbara Creed's The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993) [4] investigates the types of monsters that women are portrayed as in horror films, particularly examining archaic mothers, and mythological adaption's of characters. Other than that though, this is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the horror genre, or in film studies in general.In her 1993 study The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Barbara Creed examined ways in which female monsters are often depicted as monstrous for reasons relating to their bodies, gender and sexuality – and proposed a new term to explore this phenomenon. Phallic Panic draws on many examples of male monsters from the classic film adaption of Frankenstein and the male werewolf, to vampires and mad scientists, as well as the relationship between ‘beast’ and man.

The Monstrous Feminine - an online day course with Dr Elizabeth Dearnley and Dr Katharine Fry takes place on the 11th of March. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Coming of Age: The Monstrous-Feminine as Virginal Dentata: Ginger Snaps: (2000), Teeth (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009). In this new edition, Creed does it again, recontextualizing the conception of the monstrous-feminine to track many of the evolutions in the horror genre and this revised edition will continue to shape our understanding of the horror genre in the new millennium. We’ll also work through the maiden-mother-crone tripartite division of women, inviting attendees to discuss whether such labels are useful or damning.

Creed uses the expression "monstrous feminine" because it accentuates the significance of gender in relation to the construction of monstrosity. However, some of her arguments regarding the construction of the monstrous feminine in horror in relation to women as mothers, witches, vampires and so on is certainly interesting. This updated edition includes a new section examining contemporary feminist horror films in relation to nonhuman theory. Creed refrains from using the term "female monster" as it suggests a mere "role reversal of the ‘male monster".