CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Burkush, Kateryna |
|---|---|
| Title | Revising 'Monstrous-Feminine': Madness, Sexuality, Perversion in Contemporary Psychohorror |
| Summary | In my thesis I explored various forms of female filmic monstrosity in The Piano Teacher (2001), the Black Swan (2010), and the Antichrist (2009) arguing that they belong to the hybrid ‘post-modern’ genre of psychohorror. Having compared the main characters of these films to the ‘empowered’ figures of female castrating monsters such as Ripley in the Alien (1979) and Carrie in Carrie (1976) and a trope of the ‘final girl’ I identified a conservative ‘backlash’ in the genre of horror. I argued that the main site of ‘abjection’ of these characters and the root of their monstrosity is uncontrolled un-reproductive sexuality, represented in films as perverse and dangerous for social order and therefore subjected to further repression. The ways of ‘monstrification’ of female sexuality overlap through films along the lines of fear of ‘maternal authority’ (The Piano Teacher and the Black Swan), madness, and heroines’ engagement into sphere of artistry (The Piano Teacher and the Black Swan) or academic research (the Antichrist) that forms the binary of production/reproduction in which (creative) production is connoted as anti-feminine in terms of its narrative alignment with excessive (perverse) sexuality and identity crisis. |
| Supervisor | Barát, Erzsébet |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/burkush_kateryna.pdf |
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