Feminism In Powers Of Horror

For example, Frankenstein is afraid of the female creature’s “reproductive powers” and her aesthetic as a whole that seeing as her monstrous stature defies the stereotype that “women should be small, delicate, passive, and sexually pleasing” (7). On top of this, Mellor claims that Frankenstein’s unwillingness to complete the female monster stems from being “afraid of an independent female will” that “cannot be controlled” , thus implying that “female sexuality is strikingly repressed”

him or her involved in the film - how often have you been watching a

Luce Irigaray in “Women on the Market,” put forth the theory that “our own culture, is based upon the exchange of women” and that women are relegated to three social roles. Those roles are “mother, virgin, prostitute” (807,8). She then states that the “enigmatic character of women” comes from “the form of the needs /desires of man” (806). We are mother or prostitute determinate on man’s need. She also argued that man’s libido is “another name for the abstraction of energy in a productive power” (806). Men use their libido to control nature. She then argues that “another name for the subordination of the specific qualities of bodies to a neutral power that aims above all to transform them, to possess them” (806). Men transform women to his need, hence the role of mother or prostitute, and thus possess them. In Frida Kahlo’s painting, A Few Small Nips and in Angela Carter’s shorty story The Bloody Chamber, both share the theme of death as transformation for man to possess the main characters.

When many aspects of a woman life are controlled for her and she can no longer make decisions for herself, she becomes a slave to her oppressor. Throughout the class, the theme of women being controlled by other oppressing forces, can be seen in many texts. Women have their decisions made for them in terms of their, food intake, appearances, and lifestyle choices. These ideas are seen in Beyond the Lights, where Noni’s mother Macy both what Noni eats as well as how she looks. Again in “The Gilded Six Bits,” Missie May’s hunger and food intake are controlled and judged by Joe, who believes because he is a working man, his hunger is more important. In Color Stories: Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century, society controls women’s appearances by pressuring them to look a certain way to be considered beautiful. In both Not That Kind of Girl and Borderlands: La Frontera, women’s decisions about their bodies in a sexual manner are controlled by the pressures of men. Oppressing forces play such a strong role in so many of the texts covered in class this semester, it makes one wonder if this oppression and forceful control is an accurate representation of our society today.

The Traffic in Women: The “Political economy” of sex by Gayle Rubin is an exploration of the origin of women’s oppression. Rubin’s main objective is to arrive at a more fully developed definition of the sex/gender system, otherwise referred to as “mode of reproduction” and/or “patriarchy”. She further develops her definition through the analysis of the work of Levi-Strauss and Freud from a marxist perspective. Rubin provides the following preliminary definition of the sex/gender system “A set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.” (159) She attempts to add to her definition of the sex/gender system through the analysis of the overlapping work of Claude Levi- Strauss and Sigmund Freud. Despite implications with their work, Rubin believes that both Levi-Strauss and Freud provide conceptual tools in describing the sex/gender system. Rubin looks at a Marxist analysis of sex oppression, as well as, Engels theory of society which integrates both sex and sexuality. Furthermore she incorporates aspects of each theory addressed into her own working definition of the sex/gender system. By shifting between Marxist, structuralist and psychoanalyst explanations of sex oppression, Rubin is able to construct a multi-dimensional definition of the sex/gender system that is not only inclusive but also provides a basis of which to build from.

Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House, explores the cultural anxieties in the mid 20th century. Specifically, men use womanhood (societal norms) as purposely infantilizing women in order to confine the female mind. Jackson utilizes symbolism, metaphor, and anaphora in her novel in order to convey the message for men to stop infantilizing women. Moreover, Jackson spreads awareness that women are being confined by a system that men developed: womanhood. Hence, in effect, the novel serves as an informal protest against male repression through a medium that can be read by a wider audience —more importantly an indirect challenge to male readers. According to Krolokke, Second Wave Feminism became prominent due to cultural discontent with patriarchy during the mid 20th century. Moreover, Krolokke informs the readers that Second Wave Feminism influenced women to challenge traditional family roles and male ideologies about women not belonging in the workplace (11-12). Mid 20th century is also when Jackson published The Haunting of Hill House. So, with these historical and cultural contexts in mind, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House ends the novel with Eleanor killing herself because she wants women to challenge the ideas of patriarchy into effect. Hence, Second Wave Feminism has a connection to Eleanor having a childlike personality (can not think for herself) because she wants women (especially young and single women) to explore their rights (their choices) and

Second, Bartky claims that women are victims of cultural domination. She argues that the history and culture of women are that those of men (Bartky, p. 107). They have no alternative culture or identity to refer to and are forced to accept male supremacy as the norm: there is no cultural autonomy. Third, Bartky claims that women are sexually objectified. By this, she means that women’s sexual function and parts are reduced to an instrument and extended to all areas of life separate from their personality and capabilities. She points to examples such as catcalls and whistles that humiliate and objectify women. As a result, women are forced to see themselves as men see them. The objectified become the ones who objectify themselves while attempting to conform to images of a perfect woman (Bartky, p. 109). Consequently, Bartky argues that these forms of oppression are dehumanizing and depersonalizing because it targets personhood (Bartky, p. 110). The oppressed are unable to exercise their autonomy and qualities of being a person and believe it is the fault of their incapability of being a person. Specifically, they are alienated from the construction of their personhood and abilities as a human (Bartky, p. 111).

Horror movies throughout history have been known to have their cheesy storylines or continuous bad acting. Especially horror movies. People nowadays could easily spot the flaws in a film and judge them drastically in reviews. Yet, little do people notice the ongoing discrimination between genders. Horror films tend to portray males and females substantially differently because of stereotypical views. There seems to be a pattern in which each gender takes a certain role in a movie continuously. Females are shown to be “objects” such as sex and emotional symbols, while males are shown as strong or powerful and moreover as the main bad guy. Although some of the newer edition films of the horror genre are displaying each gender more and more equal throughout the ongoing years, the gender discrimination dilemma still exists and can be seen by the statistics in the movie industry in general.

In this paper, I will show how Burns uses horror cinema to expose the male gaze as a form of symbolic violence and portray the trauma of women victimized by this violence. One of the main horror tropes Burns uses to illustrate the objectification of the male gaze is the monstrous. In Black Hole the monstrous mutations are used depict both the objectification of women through their mutations and the implicit violence of this objectification. Not only does Eliza’s mutation make her “monstrous” in the eyes of society, but it also reduces Eliza’s identity to a mutation rather than a human with autonomy. This objectification, furthermore, causes her to become a target of male violence.

Women face two key forms of oppression in this world, powerlessness and exploitation. These two forms fall into Iris M. Young’s ideas of oppression in her article “Five Faces of Oppression”. The definition of cultural imperialism and exploitation used in this essay are taken from Young’s essay. Cultural imperialism is where the dominant customs and morals of a society are rendered as the norm and those who are not in the norm are considered others. Exploitation is a form of oppression where a class structure is present and this class structure includes a dominant group of people who are in power of a subordinate group. Two authors, John Stuart Mill and Simone de Beauvoir, talk about how the oppression of women is not due to nature. It is rather, in Mill’s view, due to a premodern law of force which divides men and women between the strong and the weak. Beauvoir sees this oppression of women as a result from socialization, which conformed women to become immanent. Both these authors have reasonable arguments and have a similar understanding that the inferiority of women is not from the simple nature of being women. Other factors come into play when understanding why women are oppressed, and both authors recognize the fact that society and old habits must change for the equality of women and men to become a reality.

An individual’s impression of control over and ownership of their own body is essential to their feeling of autonomy. Without some sense of bodily autonomy, it is difficult for individuals to establish their own emotional autonomy. Throughout history, this bodily autonomy has been impaired by sexual control and dominance. By painting dystopian societies that heavily restrict reproduction and sexuality, Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, her poem A Woman’s Issue, and George Orwell’s 1984 all convey that sexual repression undermines individual identity and autonomy.

Breaking down meaning by disrupting the distinction between the subject and the object. (Childers & Hentzi 1978:308). Kristeva theorises that because the abject is situated outside of symbolic order, our confrontation with it becomes an innately traumatic experience akin with the disgust we experience when confronted with an object which has been violently cast out of the cultural world, having formerly been a subject (Kirsteva 1982:65). In Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine, Barbara Creed refers to horror as a “crossing of borders”. The abject therefore can be seen as referring to horror itself. That is to say, horror defies the lines of decency, morality and accepted social practice in ways that threaten to jeopardize the stability of order. Creed discusses the representation of the woman as the monster rather than as the victim to a male monster. She associates the monstrous feminine in patriarchal society to sexual difference and castration. The term monstrous feminine emphasizes the signifigance of gender in the formation of her monstrosity. She disputes the notion of the male monster and Freud’s theory of the castrated woman who is established as a victim by nature. The monstrous feminine addresses more regarding male fears than female subjectivity. The woman is more accurately feared as the castrator than the

In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s maddening desire to create a superior being results in a creature, monstrous of appearance yet capable of love and tenderness, who is abandoned by his creator and feared by society. However, literature’s most infamous mad scientist may be eclipsed by Harriet Lovatt in Doris Lessing’s modern day gothic novel, which tells of a family torn apart by a heinous child protected by a guilty mother and shunned by a loathsome family. Each novel is a parable of motherhood, exposing the authors’ fears of maternity, expressed through the thematic conflict between monsters and society.

Since the inventions of television and film, media influences have become extremely important in modern society with people constantly being inundated by images and messages that come from film, television, magazines, internet and advertising. Researchers and theorists such as Carol J. Clover and Jean Kilborne believe that the fact that people are going to be affected by the media is absolutely unavoidable. Films can act as guides to how people, particularly women, should act and look. Women in horror are typically shown as the ‘damsel in distress’ and are usually attacked by the killer after committing a sinful act like having sex or misusing drugs or alcohol. The females are

Psychoanalytic film theory, which is derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, appears in the discussion of cinema early in the 1970s. As the conjunction of psychoanalysis and film theory, scholars use this theory for textual analysis and different elements like the monstrous-feminine, mirror stage identification, and the Oedipus complex are concluded and developed. To reexamine the mother-child relationship, I will argue that these key elements of psychoanalytic film theory are useful to understand the psychic activities of protagonists of Black Swan and The Babadook. Additionally, they provide some evidence to explain the mode of how a mother gets along with her child. I will begin by discussing the term