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Exploring the 'Monstrous-Feminine' in Australian Cinema
Feminist film theorists have long maintained that women in film are merely projections of male values, fantasies, and desires. In this manner, the woman is positioned in relation to the man who ultimately defines her in terms of her sexuality. If the female deviates from an accepted position under male dominance, her sexuality undermines order and her lack brings the threat of castration. The symbol of Woman's sexuality that is most apparent on screen is her body. The body itself is most threatening because it represents man's desire, man's disgust, and man's creation (birth). In Sweetie, Dawn's sexuality, her otherness, is apparent in her body: she is large and strong; her painted nails resemble claws; she wears thick dark make-up like a mask; she is clothed in black, tattered, revealing garments; and she is almost always filthy. This monstrous body is a sign of her insatiable libido and the unnatural, incestuous relationship she has with her father. As if driven by her deviant sexuality, Dawn abandons any semblance of humanity and becomes an animal. She barks and growls, attacks with her claws and her teeth, and she devours inedible objects as would a mythical beast. Dawn also violates the sanctity of the body by exhibiting her bodily fluids. In her attempts to eat Kay's porcelain horses, Dawn allows her own blood to spill from her mouth down her chin. It can be read that she is spitting herself out (that which is human, that which is woman) in that blood is symbolic of life (in religious terms-Christianity) and womanhood (menstruation). Dawn also uses her waste as marker like an animal would. She urinates outside of the car to mark it as her place, the place she must inhabit if she is to be reunited with her mother. Violation of the sanctity of the body through expulsion of its fluids is also important in Going Down. The abundance of vomit in the film illustrates the body's revulsion of the unacceptable acts being imposed upon it like a poison. Throughout the film Jane abuses her body and embraces drugs and sexually deviant acts. She becomes monstrous in that she refuses to accept a proper, submissive role of the feminine body in favor for perverse indulgence. For example, in the bathroom scene at the concert she slithers around on the floor looking for her drug fix that she finds at the feet of a vomiting man. Upon recognizing the man she pulls herself up toward him and places her mouth on his in a passionate embrace. This act serves to mock the conventions of the romantic kiss prompting a response of perverse horror and shock in the viewer. In Celia (a.k.a. Celia: Child of Terror), the presence of bodily fluids is connected to ritual. Ritual embodies abjection in that it deviates from accepted Christian values - Christian values, of course, being patriarchal values. Ritual is an important aspect of how Celia relates to the world. In play with the children next door she'll often prick their fingers and ask them to mix their blood with her own as an oath (being that blood and wounds are often representative of menstruation, this act seems to be a substitute for her pre-pubescent body's inability to bleed vaginally like a woman's). Although this violence may be minimal, childish, it is merely a foreshadowing of the violence that she is inevitably driven to. Gradually her rituals become more sinister. Like Dawn in Sweetie, Celia uses make-up as a mask, drawing primitive style markings on her face with lipstick. She fashions voodoo dolls of those she hates (most importantly her father) and dances around a great bonfire, chanting for the Hobbyahs to take them away. Celia seems to represent societal fears of the witch - a woman of magic, who can see into darker realms and is capable of conjuring demons. Celia even has her familiar, the rabbit Mergatroid. With the death of Mergatroid, Celia defies conventional belief of the corpse as the ultimate filth and embraces it close to her heart. Her devotion to the animal can be read as blasphemous in that Christian doctrine insists that animals are soulless creatures created solely for human utility. Yet her love of this soulless creature is so strong that she will ultimately kill for it. Celia's hatred (in this case for her uncle, the police officer, who she blames for Mergatroid's death) seems to be the catalyst in the breakdown of the border between the real world and the world of the Hobbyahs. For Celia, Inspector Burke's true identity is revealed as the woman (and rabbit) snatching monster of her fairy tales. Her decision to kill him seems as much located in her disappointment that the Hoobyah did not perform the task for which she summoned it as it is in her need to avenge Mergatroid. This act of murder is also connected to ritual. In order to perform the murderous act, Celia again applies the tribal make-up as if it gives her the power necessary to perform the evil. Abjection and transgression by the women of these films is also represented in their rejection of the Law. In Shame, the "heroine" Asta may conform to civil law but she defies the law of men. She will not lie back and allow herself to be possessed violently by men. She refuses to take her expected place beneath Man, as his possession. Her defiance is manifest in 'masculine' behavior. She is called "Butch" by the men because she is willing to fight back at them (and aggression is not lady-like), she rejects their sexual advances (therefor she must be a lesbian), she wears pants, and she rides a motorbike. Asta is monstrous in her display of traditional masculine (un-feminine) behavior. She is an abnormal hero. She takes the usual place of Man as Law, but she is a woman. For this fact she must ultimately fail. Even though she may have helped instigate change for the betterment of women's lives in this town, she is not able to save Lizzie, the girl she was supposed to protect (her daughter figure). Lizzie herself is monstrous just in being raped, that somehow she wanted it and brought it upon herself. The loss of Lizzie's virginity (her childish innocence) positions her as damaged and inscribes her with a horrible sexuality, even to the men responsible. Furthermore she attempts to fight back following the example of Asta, but without Asta's strength she is doomed to die at the hands of the men to whom she dared show insolence. The consequences of abjection and transgression in these films vary. In Going Down, Jane seems fated to repeat the same self-abusing events until her eventual suicide. Though there is a glimmer of hope that if one of her friends can make it out then maybe she will too, but that seems unlikely. With the loss of one of her friends she has even less motivation to keep living. Despite the contrived happy ending, there is no reason to imagine that Jane will not simply spend then the remaining nights of her life slowly spiraling downward in a storm of drugs and meaningless sex. Her life is a self made prison with little hope for escape. In Sweetie, Dawn finds the end that Jane is slowly moving toward. Her death is brought about by her own monstrous body. She finally slips so deep inside her perverted version of reality that the world breaks apart, literally, and she plunges to her death. Only in Celia is there little consequence for the monstrous. Celia, perhaps the most deviant of all the characters I've discussed, seems to avoid punishment in the protective arms of her mother. It may be that as a pre-pubescent child she has yet to commit the ultimate sin that will position her firmly as a monstrous-feminine, the sin of sex. Going Down, Sweetie, Celia, and Shame represent four different variations on the concept of the feminine as monstrous. Jane is a monster that defiles her own body and mocks its sanctity. Dawn is a lycanthropic monster who comes to embody her animal urges. Celia is the witch who can see into dark realms and conjure demons. And Asta is a monster of defiance that refuses patriarchal oppression and threatens to render it impotent. These monstrous women are defined by qualities of abjection and transgression. Their bodies are abject in their mockery of the proper feminine body. They are one with the natural/primal/animalistic functions (most importantly sex) and fluids of the body without the expected concerns for filth. These women's bodies pose a significant threat to the masculine ideal in that they present an image that is both sexually alluring and physical repulsive. They also threat moral, social, religious, and natural laws (man's law) with acts that embrace pagan/primitive ritual (Sweetie, Celia) and challenge traditional female roles (Going Down, Shame). Clearly, Barbara Creed's theories of the monstrous-feminine are not limited to just horror films. Wherever you find filmic representations of women that threaten dominant masculine ideologies, you'll find the monstrous-feminine. BibliographyCreed, Barbara, "Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine," Dread of Difference, ed. Barry Grant, 35-65. Texas: U of T, 1996 Creed, Barbara, "Feminist Film Theory: Reading the Text," Don't Shoot Darling!, ed. Annette Blensky et al, 280-313. Greenhouse: Melbourne, 1987 Freeland, Cynthia. The Naked and the Undead. Colorado: Westview Press, 2000: 1-21 Morton, Lisa. Crush and Sweetie: the Female Grotesque in Two Contemporary Australasian Films. University of Otago. http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol1no3/morton_issue3.html. 1995 |
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