(no subject)
May. 27th, 2009 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreSo. I am reading Men, Women, and Chainsaws because I realized that it was due on the first of June and it's an ILL so I should read it or I would feel ungrateful. Or something. I read Ms Clover's essay on slasher films and Finals Girls several years ago and found it interesting but today, I am really digging her chapter on possession films. Because, much like slasher movies, that is an area of horror film in which I really don't know much - I mean, I've seen The Exorcist and all but that's about it. Unlike slasher films, though, it is an area of horror movies where I would like to see more, I think.
I do think she occasionally defines her categories too broadly, though. I am not really sure that I can count Alien or The Omen as possession films, even if I tilt my head way over to the side.
On the plus side, though, she is not nearly as crazily Freudian as Barbara Creed. (I did not finish The Monstrous Feminine. I do not have the stamina required for that much crazy when it's just for my own entertainment/edification. Also, my gods, way too much freaking incest.)
On the minus side, reading too much about gender and horror makes me terribly sad. Because my genre hates me, you know. (Not that other genres do not hate me - they just have the barest modicum of tact and are sometimes quieter about it.) And because there are really only two ways of making a female monster and they are: a) making her an adjunct to an existing male monster (Dracula's Daughter, the Bride of Frankenstein, Grendel's mother) or b) making the fact that she is female and has a female body the monstrous thing about her (Carrie, Ginger Snaps, The Brood, Rosemary's Baby, etc ad infinitum). Female monsters are made monstrous by and empowered by and ultimately defeated by their genitals always, always, always. Male monsters can say something about humanity as a whole - we are afraid of death and decay and our own more savage sides, all of us - because men are the norm, the default, but female monsters can only say something about what is frightening about women because women (horror says) are monstrous already. We bleed for seven days and do not die. We envelope and swell and bleed again and bring forth squalling new life, covered in unclean fluids. Wait long enough and every woman is a potential monster. I reread Dracula recently and though I still love that book beyond the telling, it is impossible not to notice the degree to which female physicality is construed as being a thing of horror. Vampire!Lucy is a voluptuous carnal "unspirited" creature. Staked!Lucy regains her soul at the expense of her body. We are damned for inhabiting our own flesh.
And when we want to do something particularly horrific to a male character in a horror film, what do we do? We force onto him an aspect of being female. The chestburster in Alien, for example, or the incredibly squicky vaginal slot for videotapes that appears in the protagonist's chest in Videodrome. Male bodies betray their owners by becoming feminine.
The worst part is that, even with all this, I love horror fiction. That's not something I can stop. But I get tired, sometimes, of loving something that so obviously doesn't love me back. I am tired of being told that I'm a monster, just because of the body I inhabit.
I do think she occasionally defines her categories too broadly, though. I am not really sure that I can count Alien or The Omen as possession films, even if I tilt my head way over to the side.
On the plus side, though, she is not nearly as crazily Freudian as Barbara Creed. (I did not finish The Monstrous Feminine. I do not have the stamina required for that much crazy when it's just for my own entertainment/edification. Also, my gods, way too much freaking incest.)
On the minus side, reading too much about gender and horror makes me terribly sad. Because my genre hates me, you know. (Not that other genres do not hate me - they just have the barest modicum of tact and are sometimes quieter about it.) And because there are really only two ways of making a female monster and they are: a) making her an adjunct to an existing male monster (Dracula's Daughter, the Bride of Frankenstein, Grendel's mother) or b) making the fact that she is female and has a female body the monstrous thing about her (Carrie, Ginger Snaps, The Brood, Rosemary's Baby, etc ad infinitum). Female monsters are made monstrous by and empowered by and ultimately defeated by their genitals always, always, always. Male monsters can say something about humanity as a whole - we are afraid of death and decay and our own more savage sides, all of us - because men are the norm, the default, but female monsters can only say something about what is frightening about women because women (horror says) are monstrous already. We bleed for seven days and do not die. We envelope and swell and bleed again and bring forth squalling new life, covered in unclean fluids. Wait long enough and every woman is a potential monster. I reread Dracula recently and though I still love that book beyond the telling, it is impossible not to notice the degree to which female physicality is construed as being a thing of horror. Vampire!Lucy is a voluptuous carnal "unspirited" creature. Staked!Lucy regains her soul at the expense of her body. We are damned for inhabiting our own flesh.
And when we want to do something particularly horrific to a male character in a horror film, what do we do? We force onto him an aspect of being female. The chestburster in Alien, for example, or the incredibly squicky vaginal slot for videotapes that appears in the protagonist's chest in Videodrome. Male bodies betray their owners by becoming feminine.
The worst part is that, even with all this, I love horror fiction. That's not something I can stop. But I get tired, sometimes, of loving something that so obviously doesn't love me back. I am tired of being told that I'm a monster, just because of the body I inhabit.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 02:07 pm (UTC)