Freud, the horror genre and "vagina dentata"

Just look at this. I said to myself back at the beginning of February, it's a new semester! That means, Katharine, you best be writing on that blog of yours a lot more than you did in the Fall, because you're only taking three seminars so you'll have allllll this time on your hands! No reason to not be writing every day on every topic you find interesting! You can DO IT!

And now just look at me. An entire week and a half has passed since my last entry. So much for staying focused.

Well, actually, I have been quite focused. Like, 180 pages of reading a week focused. I've been focused on so many papers and articles and books that don't require me to enter The World Wide Web™ in order to read them that I haven't been taking what I've been reading and moving my thoughts and ideas into cyberspace. And since my boyfriend will be in New York this weekend (starting tomorrow night! *doeslittledance*), odds are I won't even be doing much thinking about class at all. So here's an attempt to rectify my extreme inactivity.

The title for my Sexual Personae class this week is "Exploitation!" with the readings including an interview with subversive filmmaker Doris Wishman and a brief history of sexploitation films from the book Incredibly Strange Films, as well as two chapters from the text The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis by Barbara Creed. The latter two chapters on a feminist look at Freud and Lacan and how their psychoanalytic theories can be applied to the horror genre are certainly a refreshing piece of psychoanalytic feminist film theory for someone who is quite burnt out on Laura Mulvey's defeatist attitude toward the helpless gaze inflicted upon women in cinema.

Creed is able to turn Freud's ideas of the castrated female - a quite passive and pathetic figure that, in Lacanian terms, represents "lack" due to her absence of a phallus - into an object that inspires fear in the male not because she represents the possibility of castration, but because she represents an active, potential figure who can castrate. For Creed, the female is seen as the castrating, not the castrated, with this fear of the castrating female usually established through the idea of the toothed vagina, or vagina dentata. The depiction of vagina dentata in many filmic forms - the mouth of a vampire, for instance, or the shark's mouth in Jaws, or the blood flowing from a hallway (The Shining), or Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors - represents this fear of the castrating female, for the victims in almost all cases are primarily male. Some of the characters she notes as castrating female characters - the mother in Psycho, the story of Medusa and her head of snakes, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct - had never taken on this dimension for me before, and I found it completely fascinating.


I thoroughly enjoyed her refusal to accept Freud overlooking the possibility of the female as castrating as opposed to castrated. Although, I do believe that her analysis does not do enough to challenge Freud's insistence on positioning the child figure as almost consistently male, never completely pursuing the idea of what a female child's process of identification might be upon the first sight of her father's genitals, and how this works into the concepts of viewing herself as either castrated or capable of castrating - or of being injured or lacking, or otherwise empowered.

I remember reading an essay in one of my mother's old issues of Bitch magazine that discussed a different aspect of women characters in the horror genre that has always stuck with me, but I am not quite sure where - or if - it fits in with Freudian concepts. This analysis I read positioned women in horror films not in the almost empowered(1) roles as a castrating figure, but as weak and easily possessed figures because of their vaginas, because of this orifice that allows possession by a foreign entity. In the case of The Exorcist or Poltergeist it is a demon or a spirit that possesses a female character, presumably because she is more susceptible due to her cavernous absence between her legs. With films such as The Evil Dead the forest literally enters one of the women as tree branches snake along the ground, raping and thus possessing and turning evil the female character through their entrance into her vagina. There was also something in the Bitch article about a menstruating woman, and how being a virgin in a horror film affects the outcome of the female character's ultimate conclusion, but I can't seem to remember the nuances. If anyone can point me in the right direction, or still has a copy of that magazine (*coughcough* Mom?) please, let me know. As for now, let me just say I highly recommend reading Creed. Those of you who are far better versed in the horror genre will probably get a lot more out of it than I did.

(1) This is not to imply that I believe the violent act of castration is empowering, or any violent act for that matter. I'm simply saying that this idea of the woman not as castrated - as in Freud - or as "lacking" - as in Lacan - but instead as in possession of the possibility of castrating allows the female to assume a far more active role because it is a far more frightening one for the male, therefore giving the female the slight upper hand in a formerly oppressed relationship to the male figure.

Let's tear Freud to the ground: Laura Mulvey and Feminist Film Theory

Why does Laura Mulvey say that the film form is best suited for representing “the image of woman as passive raw material for the active gaze of man?” (forgive the length on this one).

With her text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” (1992) Laura Mulvey was one of the first to write about classical Hollywood cinema through the literal lens of the feminist perspective, paying special attention to the deconstruction of psychoanalysis and theories behind the male-driven gaze and narrative of film, essentially developing the beginnings of the feminist point of view on cinema in the late 20th century. Mulvey challenges audience members to understand the cinema of the past in order to change the cinema of the future, and the first step in understanding the older, antiquated mode of cinema, she claims, is to intentionally destroy pleasure and beauty through rigorous analysis. Divided into two dominant sections, Mulvey’s article intends to analyze 1) the pleasure in looking vs. fascination with the human form and its relation to Lacan’s mirror stage, the ego and psychoanalysis, and 2) woman as icon, with man as bearer of look. Through these two main points, Mulvey outlines how the passive image of the woman in narrative cinema is only there for the gaze of the male audience member and the men within the filmic world.

Focusing mainly on Lacan and Freud, Mulvey opens her article with scrutiny of the male-dominated realm of psychoanalysis and its relationship to the construction of the ego. In Lacanian theory, the mirror stage of self-identification is essential to construction of the ego of the young child, allowing the male who once saw himself only in his mother to now have an identity separate from the castrated image of this dominant female figure in his life. In a way, Mulvey argues, cinema acts much like a mirror, creating a protagonist with which the male audience member can identify, as well as relating this image to a likeness of himself on screen, larger than life, feeding the ego of the man. A woman in Hollywood cinema, however, is forever “tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning”, is caught in a patriarchal order that can only be reversed by a deconstruction of psychoanalytic theory (343).

Mulvey believes that males essentially drive the plot in classical Hollywood cinema and that women do nothing to advance the plot whatsoever; this allows the male audience member to use this mirror image of a strong, plot-driving male as a reflection of himself and an echo to his own ego, boosting his own self-image to greater heights than a woman could ever achieve while watching a film in which her only relation on screen is an objectified, passive woman. Women have trouble utilizing this mirror self as seen on screen as any sort of ego-boosting or morale-lifting device because traditionally, Mulvey believes, the woman serves two functions in narrative cinema: 1) she is the “erotic object” for on-screen characters, and she is also 2) the erotic object for the spectator in the theater.

With this point that women are the passive object when projected on screen and seen through the lens of the camera and the social scope of the audience, film in general is proven to be masculine and reflects the power relationship between men and women: Mulvey states that

“woman then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (343).

The fact that the woman cannot be maker of meaning but only bearer of meaning much like she is bearer of children and life also puts her in a role of narrative passivity, never allowing her to take charge within the narrative of the film or of the direction of the camera’s gaze.

An example of women not allowed to take charge and instead remain in a passive role is personified and symbolized in the 1960 film Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, a film for which Laura Mulvey herself later wrote the DVD commentary. The film is about Mark, a man who lives out his male sexual and primal “phantasies” through the lens and the equipment of the camera. Mulvey uses this narrative to further explain her theories written in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Not only does the tripod come to symbolize the phallic and the brutal weapon as it supports, protrudes from and literally holds up the camera, but the camera itself is never operated or touched by women. When Mark, (played by German actor Carl Boehm), was younger, his father passed on to him the gift of a camera, phallic in the symbolic because of the lens and phallic in reality because it is an extension of his father’s masculinity, an extension of the father’s power of the dominant gaze that is passed down to his son. It is now Mark’s camera, and it is now his way to control and to view women.

There are several point-of-view shots from the perspective of the camera as Mark gazes at the women in his life who will eventually become victims of murder after they become victims to the brutal, scrutinizing, voyeuristic gaze of the camera. The women in Peeping Tom cannot use the camera because they have no control, they have no literal phallus, and the camera is ultimately a phallic object. This exemplifies Mulvey’s claim that film is the best medium through which to depict the passive woman, the iconic, pin-up fashion of female objectivity.

Our conscious thoughts are driven by dominant order, which, at least in narrative American cinema, are male-centric. Mulvey believes that the world in which we live is one where there is extreme “sexual imbalance”, a world where the female in film “holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire” (346). If one wishes to argue with the “sexual imbalance” of this society, please take note of the number of men who make films as compared to the number of women, or the target audience for most moneymaking blockbuster films (males aged 18 to 24, usually), or the percentage of films in which men are the main protagonist versus films in which it is the woman who drives the narrative.

I believe there to be several recent female-driven plots lines, but according to Mulvey the filmic medium does not allow for a female-driven narrative, period. One could look at, for example, Thelma and Louis (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991), but this film also falls victim to the male gaze: we see Geena Davis in several sexual situations, and although it is Brad Pitt’s character who is usually exampled as being fetishized by the camera the audience still sees Geena Davis fragmented by the camera’s gaze, depicted in sexual situations, and punished for both instances on sexual expression, first by rape and next as a victim of theft. This film also suggests that the only way to get away from horrible, detrimental marital situations is to commit suicide, something that I think Mulvey would completely attack and scrutinize.

There is this concept of looking to which Mulvey continuously returns, that men are the bearer of the look directed at the fragmented, iconic, displayed female forms on screen. This look is presented for all in the theater, but the darkness that is present out in the house of theater makes the viewing experience into a selfish and personal one, and a shift of the look occurs: the female who is literally on display for all, flickering within the lights of the screen, now slips into the possession of one, and suddenly the only person watching the screen is the scopophilic male, oblivious to everyone around him, believing this narrative is being played out for his pleasure alone in complete ignorance of everyone else in the theater. The filmic world is a private glimpse into the lives of others, thus enhancing its voyeuristic appeal. This is, as Mulvey states, a classic example of scopophilia, or the pleasure of looking, developing into narcissism. Curiosity mingles with likeness and recognition, and the male audience member as well as the male protagonist are free to enjoy the performance of the woman as it plays out in front of them.

Voyeurism, Mulvey would argue, is an inherently masculine trait. Voyeurism and film are quite similar in that film constructs viewing that reflects this pathology of the instinctual pleasure of scopophilia. We are forced to look at the screen in a theater, forced to focus on it, which is precisely a way of enforcing that gaze, imposing it as the only possible way of interpretation. When we look at the other side of this, which is narcissism, film concentrates on the human form. We look at people acting on screen, we gaze at these humans and are attracted by our likeness to these characters. In these characters, we recognize ourselves. In a way, film is a way of looking at others while at the same time looking at ourselves and judging ourselves on the basis of these characters.

When one looks at the differences between the focused, attentive gaze required for viewing the cinema and the unfocused, distracted gaze required of, say, television or the Internet, the fact that film is the best suited for the active male gaze becomes apparent. One could argue that television and the Internet as media are intended for distracted audiences who are capable of multi-tasking (arguably female audiences), and the content within the media is formatted with this in mind. For example, a film is presented on a large screen in an amphitheatre as an event for which the audience pays good money, and therefore undivided, undistracted attention is required of the medium and the content. Television has reruns, events such as Internet videos and web pages can be accessed at any time, and modern digital video recorders allow the audience to rewind, fast-forward, skip, and repeat recorded television programs on a whim. Film is unique in its viewed setting, its format, and its creators; while some could argue that men dominate television programming (at least in the upper tiers of production), most programs cater to and are made for women. While some could argue that the fragmentation and accompanying fetishization that is inherent in female representation on the film screen also occurs on the smaller screen of the television, this is solely out of necessity of aspect ratio and screen size and should not be focused on much within this argument.