Barbara Creed published ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’ in 1986, a revised and expanded version of which later appeared as The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. The first edition of The Monstrous-Feminine was published by Routledge in 1993 and was soon established as a seminal classic that redefined not only feminist film theory but film itself. Here, where critics and theorists had previously assumed the female victim of a phallic (male) monster in twentieth-century horror, Creed famously coined the monstrous-feminine to refer to woman-as-monster in films such as The Exorcist (1973), Carrie (1976), Alien (1979), The Brood (1979), and The Hunger (1983). As Creed so painstakingly evidences through close textual analysis, these films and their monsters largely reflect men’s fears of the abject female body, associating women’s reproductive health with the horrific and therefore perpetuating deeply misogynistic (imaginary) myths about women.
Given Creed’s emphasis on cine-psychoanalysis and heterosexist male spectatorship, the subject of endless critique, some have argued for the usefulness of Creed’s archetype while dismissing the first edition of The Monstrous-Feminine itself as an outdated form of scholarship. Such an argument is to decontextualise Creed’s work in the development of feminist film theory, however, which at the time radically reinterpreted the misogyny of Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis through Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection. Indeed, where theorists had previously defined woman only in relation to phallic masculinity, ‘subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound’ (Mulvey 1975: 7), the feminism of Creed’s intervention allowed the monstrous-feminine to be defined wholly in her own right.
Kristeva reminds us that in early development, the child’s first experience with authority is that of ‘maternal authority’, typified by the mother’s active role in sphincteric training. Maternal authority predates the child’s later identification with the ‘paternal laws’ of the father, those which are tied to heteropatriarchal order, abdicating the father of all being and power by demonstrating the child’s unequivocal need for the mother (Kristeva 1982: 72). Notably, for Creed’s purposes, ‘the child learns, through interaction with the mother, about its body: the shape of the body, the clean and the unclean, the proper and improper areas of the body’ (Creed 1993a: 12). It is precisely because of this that bodily waste (faeces, menstrual blood, pus, urine, vomit, etc.) is so vile, so disgusting, so abject in the Western imaginary; bodily waste is ‘semiotic’ of maternal authority and, were it not culturally programmed to repulse, it might otherwise serve as a reminder of the archaic mother who was self-sufficient and powerful enough to exist without the father (Kristeva 1982: 72). Kristeva subsequently defines the abject as that which ‘does not respect borders, positions, rules’, ‘what disturbs identity, system, order’, because the very process of abjection disrupts heteropatriarchal law, harkening back to the semiotic realm of maternal authority (Kristeva 1982: 4).
As Creed proceeds to evidence how twentieth-century horror characterises the monstrous-feminine in relation to the maternal body and abjection, only by considering the male spectator’s abject fascination with the archetype can she begin to scrutinise heteropatriarchal power structures. Denouncing the male spectator’s sadistic identification with the phallic (male) monster—an abject creature that, himself, is emasculated as he takes on ‘characteristics usually associated with the female body’ (Creed 1993b: 118)—the monstrous-feminine is powerful in the fear she elicits. Through her transgressions that threaten heteropatriarchal identity, system, order, ‘the horror film sets out to explore the perverse, masochistic aspects of gaze’, liberating the male spectator from the strictures of aggression. ‘Through the figure of the monstrous-feminine, the horror film plays on his possible fears of menstrual blood, incorporation, domination, castration and death’, situating the male spectator in a ‘powerless position’ that otherwise disrupts the law of the father (Creed 1993a: 154-5). Despite the emancipatory possibilities of the male spectator’s willing submission and unconscious desire for maternal authority, however, her presence nevertheless remains grounded in misogyny; something to be afraid of, a problem to be so violently dealt with.
As Creed appropriates the language of psychoanalysis, the heteropatriarchal discourse of which she and her contemporaries weaponised as metaphor to ‘advance our understanding of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in which we are caught’ (Mulvey 1975: 7), Creed brings the language of horror and the monstrous-feminine to the conscious of our minds, allowing practitioners to then radically reappropriate the language of film through feminist filmmaking and other counter cinema practices. And, indeed, with the ‘New Wave’ of feminist horror at the turn of the millennium, the political project of Creed’s work came to fruition. This is the subject of Creed’s more recent Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema (2022), which turns to Kristeva’s work on revolt as a necessary process of renewal and regeneration that allows people to navigate and transgress in the symbolic order. But how does this explicitly relate to abjection?
In Creed’s second edition of The Monstrous-Feminine, she most vividly frames the Feminist New Wave as a global phenomenon, focusing on a more varied sample of films that otherwise reflect the global impact of contemporary liberation movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA2S+, Earth Day, and PETA. No longer is the monstrous-feminine an antagonist that trades in masculinised fears, but she emerges as the subject of identification for marginalised communities around the globe, creating a sense of wholeness, reverting the fragmentation of the self in a neoliberal regime that demands fierce individualism. She is the ‘mother of plenitude’ that Gaylyn Studlar (1984) wrote of, addressing global audiences at the various intersections of marginalisation, allowing for the formation of a collective political front that revolts against the symbolic order through the monstrous-feminine’s transgressions. Given the emancipatory possibilities of the Feminist New Wave, then, engaging the monstrous-feminine in an act of ‘radical abjection’ that does not simply disturb but wholly redefines identity, system, order, why does this review of The Monstrous-Feminine’s second edition focus more so on the first?
Neoliberalism works in insidious ways; not only does it have the ability to permeate progressive or even radical liberation movements, but it can assimilate them into the symbolic order, maintaining the status quo while appeasing us with ‘feel-good’ moments in the phantasmic realm of the horror film. Certainly, our affective (emotional) responses to the horror film might be politicised, but these bodily responses are not inherently political, and it is important not to misrecognise a politics of emotion for the doing of political activism. And just as feminist filmmaking and other counter cinema practices have allowed us to reclaim representations of the monstrous-feminine in more recent years, it is important not to forget that she is susceptible to the symbolic order that defined her as ‘monstrous’ in the first place. Take, for example, those self-reflexive examples in the Hollywood mainstream such as Mom in Smile (2022) or The Mother in Barbarian (2022). ‘Mommy loves you to death,’ reads the tagline of Evil Dead Rise (2023), and while her destruction of the family might be satisfying, wallowing in female rage, one must question how her children might possibly overthrow heteropatriarchal order when she herself is attacking them.
Given Creed’s emphasis on cine-psychoanalysis and heterosexist male spectatorship, the subject of endless critique, some have argued for the usefulness of Creed’s archetype while dismissing the first edition of The Monstrous-Feminine itself as an outdated form of scholarship. Such an argument is to decontextualise Creed’s work in the development of feminist film theory, however, which at the time radically reinterpreted the misogyny of Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis through Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection. Indeed, where theorists had previously defined woman only in relation to phallic masculinity, ‘subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound’ (Mulvey 1975: 7), the feminism of Creed’s intervention allowed the monstrous-feminine to be defined wholly in her own right.
Kristeva reminds us that in early development, the child’s first experience with authority is that of ‘maternal authority’, typified by the mother’s active role in sphincteric training. Maternal authority predates the child’s later identification with the ‘paternal laws’ of the father, those which are tied to heteropatriarchal order, abdicating the father of all being and power by demonstrating the child’s unequivocal need for the mother (Kristeva 1982: 72). Notably, for Creed’s purposes, ‘the child learns, through interaction with the mother, about its body: the shape of the body, the clean and the unclean, the proper and improper areas of the body’ (Creed 1993a: 12). It is precisely because of this that bodily waste (faeces, menstrual blood, pus, urine, vomit, etc.) is so vile, so disgusting, so abject in the Western imaginary; bodily waste is ‘semiotic’ of maternal authority and, were it not culturally programmed to repulse, it might otherwise serve as a reminder of the archaic mother who was self-sufficient and powerful enough to exist without the father (Kristeva 1982: 72). Kristeva subsequently defines the abject as that which ‘does not respect borders, positions, rules’, ‘what disturbs identity, system, order’, because the very process of abjection disrupts heteropatriarchal law, harkening back to the semiotic realm of maternal authority (Kristeva 1982: 4).
As Creed proceeds to evidence how twentieth-century horror characterises the monstrous-feminine in relation to the maternal body and abjection, only by considering the male spectator’s abject fascination with the archetype can she begin to scrutinise heteropatriarchal power structures. Denouncing the male spectator’s sadistic identification with the phallic (male) monster—an abject creature that, himself, is emasculated as he takes on ‘characteristics usually associated with the female body’ (Creed 1993b: 118)—the monstrous-feminine is powerful in the fear she elicits. Through her transgressions that threaten heteropatriarchal identity, system, order, ‘the horror film sets out to explore the perverse, masochistic aspects of gaze’, liberating the male spectator from the strictures of aggression. ‘Through the figure of the monstrous-feminine, the horror film plays on his possible fears of menstrual blood, incorporation, domination, castration and death’, situating the male spectator in a ‘powerless position’ that otherwise disrupts the law of the father (Creed 1993a: 154-5). Despite the emancipatory possibilities of the male spectator’s willing submission and unconscious desire for maternal authority, however, her presence nevertheless remains grounded in misogyny; something to be afraid of, a problem to be so violently dealt with.
As Creed appropriates the language of psychoanalysis, the heteropatriarchal discourse of which she and her contemporaries weaponised as metaphor to ‘advance our understanding of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in which we are caught’ (Mulvey 1975: 7), Creed brings the language of horror and the monstrous-feminine to the conscious of our minds, allowing practitioners to then radically reappropriate the language of film through feminist filmmaking and other counter cinema practices. And, indeed, with the ‘New Wave’ of feminist horror at the turn of the millennium, the political project of Creed’s work came to fruition. This is the subject of Creed’s more recent Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema (2022), which turns to Kristeva’s work on revolt as a necessary process of renewal and regeneration that allows people to navigate and transgress in the symbolic order. But how does this explicitly relate to abjection?
In Creed’s second edition of The Monstrous-Feminine, she most vividly frames the Feminist New Wave as a global phenomenon, focusing on a more varied sample of films that otherwise reflect the global impact of contemporary liberation movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA2S+, Earth Day, and PETA. No longer is the monstrous-feminine an antagonist that trades in masculinised fears, but she emerges as the subject of identification for marginalised communities around the globe, creating a sense of wholeness, reverting the fragmentation of the self in a neoliberal regime that demands fierce individualism. She is the ‘mother of plenitude’ that Gaylyn Studlar (1984) wrote of, addressing global audiences at the various intersections of marginalisation, allowing for the formation of a collective political front that revolts against the symbolic order through the monstrous-feminine’s transgressions. Given the emancipatory possibilities of the Feminist New Wave, then, engaging the monstrous-feminine in an act of ‘radical abjection’ that does not simply disturb but wholly redefines identity, system, order, why does this review of The Monstrous-Feminine’s second edition focus more so on the first?
Neoliberalism works in insidious ways; not only does it have the ability to permeate progressive or even radical liberation movements, but it can assimilate them into the symbolic order, maintaining the status quo while appeasing us with ‘feel-good’ moments in the phantasmic realm of the horror film. Certainly, our affective (emotional) responses to the horror film might be politicised, but these bodily responses are not inherently political, and it is important not to misrecognise a politics of emotion for the doing of political activism. And just as feminist filmmaking and other counter cinema practices have allowed us to reclaim representations of the monstrous-feminine in more recent years, it is important not to forget that she is susceptible to the symbolic order that defined her as ‘monstrous’ in the first place. Take, for example, those self-reflexive examples in the Hollywood mainstream such as Mom in Smile (2022) or The Mother in Barbarian (2022). ‘Mommy loves you to death,’ reads the tagline of Evil Dead Rise (2023), and while her destruction of the family might be satisfying, wallowing in female rage, one must question how her children might possibly overthrow heteropatriarchal order when she herself is attacking them.
References
Creed, B. (1986) ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’. Screen, 27(1), pp. 44-70.
Creed, B. (1993a) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 1st ed. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Creed, B. (1993b) ‘Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film’. In: S. Cohan and I. R. Hark (eds) Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in the Hollywood Cinema. London & New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 118-133.
Creed, B. (2022) Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Creed, B. (2023) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 2nd ed. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (2000) The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, Volume 1. Translated by J. Herman. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (2002) Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, Volume 2. Translated by J. Herman. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen, 16(3), 6-18.
Studlar, G. (1984) ‘Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema’. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 9(4), pp. 267-282.
Creed, B. (1986) ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’. Screen, 27(1), pp. 44-70.
Creed, B. (1993a) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 1st ed. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Creed, B. (1993b) ‘Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film’. In: S. Cohan and I. R. Hark (eds) Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in the Hollywood Cinema. London & New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 118-133.
Creed, B. (2022) Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Creed, B. (2023) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 2nd ed. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (2000) The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, Volume 1. Translated by J. Herman. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (2002) Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, Volume 2. Translated by J. Herman. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen, 16(3), 6-18.
Studlar, G. (1984) ‘Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema’. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 9(4), pp. 267-282.