Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror

Description

Women occupy a privileged place in horror film. Horror is a space of entertainment and excitement, of terror and dread, and one that relishes the complexities that arise when boundaries – of taste, of bodies, of reason – are blurred and dismantled. It is also a site of expression and exploration that leverages the narrative and aesthetic horrors of the reproductive, the maternal and the sexual to expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of women in horror films through an exploration of ‘gynaehorror’: films concerned with all aspects of female reproductive horror, from reproductive and sexual organs, to virginity, pregnancy, birth, motherhood and finally to menopause. Some of the themes explored include: the intersection of horror, monstrosity and sexual difference; the relationships between normative female (hetero)sexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; embodiment and subjectivity in horror films about pregnancy and abortion; reproductive technologies, monstrosity and ‘mad science’; the discursive construction and interrogation of monstrous motherhood; and the relationships between menopause, menstruation, hagsploitation and ‘abject barren’ bodies in horror. The book not only offers a feminist interrogation of gynaehorror, but also a counter-reading of the gynaehorrific, that both accounts for and opens up new spaces of productive, radical and subversive monstrosity within a mode of representation and expression that has often been accused of being misogynistic. It therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film specifically, while also providing new insights in the broader area of popular culture, gender and film philosophy. Introduction: mapping the gynaehorrific imaginary Defining gynaehorror Gynaehorror from virginity to menopause Gynaehorror in context Gynaehorror as convention and challenge 1. Roses and thorns: virgins, vagina dentata, and the monstrosity of female sexuality Defining virginity Virginity in horror film The virgin’s other: vagina dentata Imag(in)ing the vagina Vagina dentata in horror A different sort of Teeth: reframing vagina dentata Heteronormative horrors 2. The lady vanishes: pregnancy, abortion and subjectivity Framing pregnant subjectivity Keeping house: female corporeality in horror Home invasions Vessels and environments Foetal visibility and the dissolution of the female subject Inside: competing subjects Abortion and taboo ‘Pro-life’ and Pro-life 3. Not of woman born: mad science, reproductive technology and the reconfiguration of the subject Science, culture and masculinity ‘Mad science’ and men making life Fearing science Mad scientists and madwomen Re-gendering mad science in Splice Brave new worlds: cyborg futures and female subjectivity 4. The monstrous-maternal: negotiating discourses of motherhood Psychoanalytic discourses of motherhood The legacy of Mrs Bates: Norma, Thelma and Nola Essential and ideal motherhood Motherhood as instinct and imperative The legal implications of transgressive motherhood Millennial mothering and the horror of the single mother States of Grace: competing discourses of motherhood Monstrous motherhood 5. Living deaths, menstrual monsters and hagsploitation: horror and/of the abject barren body The abject barren body Menstrual horror The horror of menopause Ageing women in cinema Psychobiddies, grande dames and horrific harridans The ageing woman as (American) horror story Afterword: monstrous miscarriages and uncanny births