Table Of ContentRe-reading the Monstrous-Feminine
‘Re-reading the Monstrous-Feminine offers a welcome, far-reaching and
much-overdue re-appraisal of one of the most influential pieces of scholarship on
women, horror, and psychoanalytic film theory.’
—Erin Harrington, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
‘It is long past time for an extended appraisal of Barbara Creed’s ground-break-
ing conception of the “monstrous-feminine,” and this collection makes clear the
continued relevance of Creed’s theory to a proliferating array of bodies and texts.’
—Dawn Keetley, Lehigh University, USA
This book provides a critical reappraisal of Barbara Creed’s groundbreaking work of femi-
nist psychoanalytic film scholarship, The Monstrous- Feminine, which was first published
in 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine married psychoanalytic thinking with film analysis
in radically new ways to provide an invaluable corrective to conventional approaches to
the study of women in horror films, with their narrow emphasis on woman’s victimhood.
This volume, which will mark 25 years since the publication of The Monstrous-Feminine,
brings together essays by international scholars working across a variety of disciplines who
take up Creed’s ideas in new ways and fresh contexts or, more broadly, explore possible
futures for feminist and/or psychoanalytically informed art history and film theory.
Nicholas Chare is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Film Studies
at the Université de Montréal, Canada. He is the author of After Francis Bacon (2012) and
Sportswomen in Cinema (2015) and the co-editor with Liz Watkins of Gesture and Film
(2017) and with Katharina Bonzel of Representations of Sports Coaches in Film (2017).
Jeanette Hoorn is Honorary Professorial Fellow and a former Director of Gender Studies
and Associate- Dean EO in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
In 2014 she designed Sexing the Canvas, filmed and taught at National Gallery of Victoria,
Museum of Modern Art New York, and Huntington Library in Pasadena on the Coursera
platform https://www.coursera.org/course/sexingthecanvas. Her books include Australian
Pastoral: The Making of a White Landscape, 2007; Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art
in Australia, 2009; Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism in the Pacific,
2001; Idylle Marocaine, Hilda Rix Nicholas et Elsie Rix en Maroc, due October 2019
with Afrique Orient. Her essays have appeared in Art and Australia, Screen, Third Text,
Continuum, Transnational Cinemas, Hecate, Australian Historical Studies; Photofile.
Audrey Yue is Professor in Media, Culture and Critical Theory, Head of Communications
and New Media, and Convenor of the Cultural Studies in Asia PhD Programme at the
National University of Singapore. She is author, co-author and co-editor of Sinophone
Cinemas (2014), Transnational Australian Cinema (2013), Queer Singapore (2012), Ann
Hui’s Song of the Exile (2010), AsiaPacifiQueer (2008) and Mobile Cultures: New Me-
dia in Queer Asia (2003). Her recent essays appear in Media and Communication; In-
ternational Journal of Communication; Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and Urban Studies.
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
Emotion in Animated Films
Edited by Meike Uhrig
Post-Production and the Invisible Revolution of Filmmaking
From the Silent Era to Synchronized Sound
George Larkin
New Approaches to Cinematic Space
Edited by Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez
Melancholy in Contemporary Cinema
A Spinozian Analysis of Film Experience
Francesco Sticchi
Found Footage Horror Films
A Cognitive Approach
Peter Turner
Affect and Embodied Meaning in Animation
Becoming-Animated
Sylvie Bissonnette
Classical Hollywood Film Cycles
Zoë Wallin
Re-reading the Monstrous-Feminine
Art, Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis
Edited by Nicholas Chare, Jeanette Hoorn and Audrey Yue
Ethics of Cinematic Experience
Screens of Alterity
Orna Raviv
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
Re-reading the
Monstrous-Feminine
Art, Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis
Edited by
Nicholas Chare, Jeanette Hoorn
and Audrey Yue
First edition published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Nicholas Chare, Jeanette Hoorn and Audrey Yue
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949347
ISBN: 978-1-138-60294-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46936-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Re-reading The Monstrous-Feminine: New Approaches
to Psychoanalytic Theory, Affect, Film, and Art 1
NICHOLAS CHARE, JEANETTE HOORN, AND AUDREY YUE
PART I
Introduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis 35
NICHOLAS CHARE, JEANETTE HOORN, AND AUDREY YUE
2 Symmetry and Incident: Laura Mulvey in Conversation
with Nicholas Chare 43
LAURA MULVEY
3 A Dream of Bare Arms: ‘Womanliness’, Dirt, and a
Quest for Knowledge 53
ANNETTE KUHN
4 Feminism, Film, and Theory Now 66
ELIZABETH COWIE
PART II
Introduction: Expanding the Monstrous-Feminine 89
NICHOLAS CHARE, JEANETTE HOORN, AND AUDREY YUE
5 The Monstrous-Feminine, Then and Now: Barbara
Creed in Conversation with Nicholas Chare 95
BARBARA CREED
vi Contents
6 Abjection beyond Tears: Ellyn Burstyn as Liminal
(On Set) Mother in The Exorcist 106
MARK NICHOLLS
7 Carrie’s Sisters: New Blood in Contemporary Female
Horror Cinema 121
PATRICIA PISTERS
PART III
Introduction: Reproductive and Post-Reproductive
Bodies and the Monstrous-Feminine 139
NICHOLAS CHARE, JEANETTE HOORN, AND AUDREY YUE
8 ‘I Will Not Be That Girl in the Box’: The Handmaid’s
Tale, Monstrous Wombs and Trump’s America 146
TARA BRABAZON
9 ‘From a Speculative Point of View I Wondered Which of
Us I Was’: Re-reading Old Women 161
SNEJA GUNEW
10 The ‘Monstrous-Feminine’: Dementia, Psychoanalysis,
and Mother-Daughter Relations in Dana Walrath’s
Aliceheimer’s 173
E. ANN KAPLAN
PART IV
Introduction: Rethinking the Monstrous-Feminine
through a Transnational Frame 187
NICHOLAS CHARE, JEANETTE HOORN, AND AUDREY YUE
11 Polluted Water: Demotic Thai Cinema and Queer
Abjection in the Films of Poj Arnon 193
BRETT FARMER
12 The Monstrous-Feminine in the Millennial Japanese
Horror Film: Problematic M(O)thers and Their
Monstrous Children in Ringu, Honogurai mizo no soko
kara and, Ju-On 209
VALERIE WEE
Contents vii
13 Women in the Way? Re-reading The Monstrous-
Feminine in Contemporary Slovenian Cinema 230
POLONA PETEK
14 In-Your-Face: The Monstrous-Feminine in Photography,
Performance Art, Multimedia, and Painting 241
JEANETTE HOORN
List of Contributors 255
Index 259
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Michelle Gewurtz, Wilson Koh and Silvestra
Mariniello for their help and practical support at various stages of the
preparation of this manuscript. We are also indebted to Jane Brown
at the Visual Cultures Resource Centre in the School of Culture and
Communications at the University of Melbourne for her help in sourcing
images and permissions.
Additionally we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for
their helpful comments and insights regarding an earlier draft of the
volume. We are also grateful to Suzanne Richardson, Karthikeyan
Subramaniam, Felisa Salvago-Keyes, Richa Kohli, Eleanor Catchpole
Simmons and Isabella Vitti at Routledge who have been a pleasure to
work with throughout.
