Anyone with a healthy interest in horror film theory must admit that the vast majority of it constantly reasserts psychoanalytic theory. I cannot be the only one frustrated with this repetitive psychobabble framework.
Freudian thought is almost inescapable; it is an insidious force that lurks in behind all things, hunting incessantly, resolutely refusing to die.
This predetermined behavioural and psychological patterning based almost entirely on sexual difference is entirely suffocating. But because it is often relied upon to explain and analyze horror genre trends, psychoanalytic theory has been cemented as the essential source for reading a horror film.
Granted, it is important to know and understand established theory, especially in order to stimulate discussion such as this one. But horror film criticism is often limited by a desperate clinging to "foundational" theory that is by no means flawless, while neglecting the usefulness of alternative approaches.
Below is a lamentation and dissection of the exhausting stranglehold of psychoanalytic theory and the traditional forms of female characters types in horror cinema. More importantly, it is also an offering of other forms of character types in horror cinema, ones which do not doom the female form to that of either (i)a victim, (ii) a sexual monster, or (iii) the equivalent of a teenage male.
(The following is a synopsis of an article presented at the 2012 Popular/American Culture Association National Conference, in Boston, MA, and is also included in a forth coming anthology tentatively entitled, Horror in the Terror Age; ideas contained within are pending copyright).
TITLE:
“I’m Not Your Fucking Mommy”: The Ontological Horror
of ‘Women’ and Women in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan (2009)
"The trap of traditional
gender assumptions in horror cinema are rooted in the frequent exploitation of
psychoanalytic theories of the patriarchal ‘Other’, what Barry Keith Grant
identifies as the ‘dread of difference’. Recent horror film theory has
suggested that the audience is predominantly young and male (Clover), that the
women who appear in these films are either helpless victims (Williams) or
abject monsters (Creed), and that when female characters have heroic roles (the
Final Girl) they can function only as stand-ins for the teenage boys in the
audience (Clover). These theories no longer compliment a genre whose
self-awareness often challenges patriarchal expectations. With the growing
recognition of female viewers in the horror film audience, onscreen female
representations should also be readdressed.
Previous female horror archetypes are frequently limited
characterizations, maintaining conventional notions of gender and perpetuating
patriarchal demonization of female gender and sexuality within a strictly
hetero-gendered, binary structure. In contrast, the female representations in
Jaume Collet-Sera’s film, Orphan (2009)
present gender difference as the “differences of women from Woman”(De
Lauretis), thus destabilizing the opposition of ‘male versus female’, and
traditional notions of ‘Woman’. It illustrates alternative character types,
such as the anti-hero – or rather the
anti-heroine – and the anti-villain, indicating “a return to
woman as woman as independently existing.”(Casebier) These two figures
correlate through a moment (or moments) of recognition, where commonalities and differences in experience are
acknowledged. Ultimately, this film conveys that horror consists of more than
the ‘dread of difference’; it is also the shock
of similarity."
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