Customer Reviews

The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fictions Series)

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Those who dislike psychoanalytic interpretations beware! This book is full of them (even one about Little Red Riding Hood!) I don't necessarily agree with them, but I do find them exceptionally fascinating. The readings of Psycho and Carrie are particularly enlightening, as well as that of Jaws (very heavy on the Freudian castration anxiety angle... but now when I watch the film I can't abide by any other interpretation).

Primates spent millions of years as prey to lions, alligators and bears. Our psyche is wired to fear the attacks of these predators. They are the protoype of the monster. It's their hungry maws and slashing claws that we humans instinctively and symbolically fear.

Many of the interpretations in this book are indeed interesting, but that's largely it. Using psychoanalysis on horror films can produce fascinating theories on certain types of films and on specific films (Jaws, Carrie, Psycho), sure, but in the end it doesn't prove a thing, and it's a largely isolated fascination. Psychoanalytic film theory has been pretty much called out by post-theorists like David Bordwell who want to see some kind of evidence. Creed's book is over a decade old now, and theorists like Bordwell state the ball is in the court of the psychoanalysts of film to provide a more substantial theory with empirical evidence to back up these theories.

There is probably something to be learned from studying film in conjunction with psychology. As for psychoanalysis, in books like this, one is reminded how much of the work simply wallows in itself. While the insulated core of film 'theorists' sit in universities and philosophize, the subject has stagnated and has functionally moved nowhere. It's a classic academic construct that succeeds mainly in distinguishing the professors. Given that film is such a broad and popular medium (and to study horror films, no less) it's a shame that some of this work can't be qualified or introduced to 'the masses' who watch these films regularly.

Within film studies, there are many who don't delve into theory, and for good reason. It is largely useless. Even when there are valid points to be made, the work settles into ornate language, as if the only way to express obvious assertions and be taken seriously is to dress it up for the academy. Rarely is any useful evidence offered on how your mind reacts to what you're seeing on the screen and how you put together the references conscioulsy or unconsciously. Too much of the work reeks of elite intellectuallism, a competition to ensure the most impressive terms are invented for unproveable assertions about the beloved medium. To sit around and talk about vaginal representations in Alien and Jaws--not to say there isn't something there if you look at these films closely--with no worry about having to actually prove anything takes a lot of training.

What's most troubling in work like this is the application of constructs like Lacanian psychoanalysis (stemming from seminal Laura Mulvey works) and other debunked theories. The social sciences has a habit of distinguishing works that are based on left-behind theories, something hard sciences simply cannot do seriously. Recommended if you really want to delve into this niche market in the field.