One word of warning to potential readers is that the book, being a decade old, does not consider more recent horror films. Creed asserts that there are a variety of different appearances of the monstrous feminine which all reflect female sexuality: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, possessed monster, witch, and castrating mother. Her argument that man fears woman as castrator , rather than as castrated , questions not only Freudian theories of sexual difference but existing theories of spectatorship and fetishism, providing a provocative re-reading of classical and contemporary film and theoretical texts. Creed's work using the psychoanalysis framework validates its usefulness in the feminist film theory field.

Barbara Creed’s classic remains as relevant as ever and this edition will be of interest to academics and students of feminist theory, nonhuman theory, critical animal studies, race, and queer theory. The ‘primal uncanny’, as Creed looks at, was firstly discussed in Freud's work as just the ‘uncanny’ that linked to ideas of psychoanalysis and castration.In Darwin's Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema, Barbara Creed examines the uncanny through Charles Darwin's works regarding sexual selection and origins. Primarily, Barbara Creed's works focus on the horror genre, and the impact of patriarchal ideologies upon the genre. Creed challenges this view with a feminist psychoanalytic critique, discussing films such as Alien, I Spit on Your Grave and Psycho. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

In this, "lack" signifies the female, wherein male monsters are identified as abject, lacking; ultimately feminine. Women in horror films have been consistently represented and portrayed as weak, submissive, and highly sexualized. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report.

Creed reflects back to the Renaissance where the uterus is depicted in connotation with evil and the devil. The term vagina dentata was coined by Sigmund Freud and follows the myth that female genitalia are monster-like, having teeth. So one of the faces of the Monstrous Feminine, therefore, is the "femme castratrice", or female castrator. Media Matrix also examines the role of media and news in the modern era, with a particular interest to how an overwhelming majority of fiction showcases the horrific, evokes fear, and the abject.

Creed's ideology of the woman's reproductive system is similarly analyzed within the works of Kristeva. Creed argues that the monstrous feminine horrifies her audience through her sexuality, as she is either constructed as a virgin or a whore. Overall, Creed's work is of interest to feminist theory and psychoanalysis and how these theories can be applied to horror films.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. 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. She currently works within the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne where she is a professor of Cinema Studies. Exploring these figures within folklore and fairy tales, as well as in contemporary horror revisions such as films The Lure (2015) and Ginger Snaps (2000), we find rampant appetites unleashed at puberty and messy bodies beyond the control of society.

Creed examples that in examples where the monster is clearly defined as male, its status as male identifies it with a lack, and hence defines it as feminized. Creed argues that a woman's deep connection to natural events such as reproduction and birth is considered ‘quintessentially grotesque’. The Monstrous Feminine - an online day course with Dr Elizabeth Dearnley and Dr Katharine Fry takes place on the 11th of March. Coming of Age: The Monstrous-Feminine as Virginal Dentata: Ginger Snaps: (2000), Teeth (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009).

Point by point, Barbara Creed has shown that the faces of the Monstrous Feminine as seen in the horror film, are based in the actual psychology of the developing child in the early experiences of childhood and infancy. She has recently edited an anthology of scary fairy fiction, Fearsome Fairies (British Library, 2021), and is currently working on a new project about the Cottingley Fairies and writing a book about the relationship between forests and fairy tales. The Monstrous-Feminine is a brilliant book and I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in a unique portrayal of gender in horror film.