body horror – Bitch Flicks

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically — that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

This guest post by Ariel Smith originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby employs aesthetic strategies and themes from horror cinema in order to push back against stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and critique contemporary neo-colonial systems. Barnaby has been known to recall conventions from both body horror and dystopian science fiction in order to present dark, disturbing narratives in which Mi’gmaq characters navigate through gruesome representations of abjection and assimilation. In his first feature film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), we see Barnaby drawing from another sub-genre of horror cinema, that of the rape revenge film.

Revenge tropes in the hands of Jeff Barnaby are used to not only tell the story of the female lead’s experiences of violation, but also to articulate a visceral, rage-filled revenge fantasy on behalf of a violated peoples.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set against the backdrop of Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

For those who don’t know, from 1884 to 1948, it was compulsory for Indigenous children under 16 years of age living in what is now known as Canada to attend colonial government-funded, church-run day and boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed from their families by Indian agents, and families were threatened with fines or prison if they failed to send their children. Children as young as 5 could be kept away from their parents for months or years at a time, were prohibited from speaking their language, and were issued severe corporal punishment for any expression of non-Christian cultural, social or spiritual practice. The Indian Residential School System’s express and specific, methodical intention was to “Kill the Indian in the child“ and resulted in cultural genocide that Indigenous nations are only now beginning to heal from. Many children experienced heinous sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as being subjected to publicly documented sterilization efforts and starvation experiments. The last residential school closed in Canada in 1996 and this colonial system has resulted in multiple, consecutive generations with both stolen childhoods and parenthoods. Even Indigenous children who did not attend residential school are affected by inter-generational trauma, as their parents and/or grandparents most likely attended.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls takes place on a Mi’gma reserve in the late 1970s. The lead protagonist, 15-year-old Alia, makes her living dealing pot. One of her most pressing expenses is paying off the corrupt and evil Indian agent, Popper, in order for herself, and other kids from her community to not be taken away to the residential school, where they will undoubtedly be physically and sexually abused. Alia winds up being double crossed and taken against her will to the school, but she soon breaks out and on Halloween night, together with a posse of other kids from the rez, enacts violent, bloody, revenge against the school’s abusive staff.

For me, the violence and graphic nature found in Barnaby’s work is fitting and appropriate due to the themes he engages. Barnaby’s films trigger visceral responses by exposing the audience to poetic and raw depictions of colonial violence against Indigenous bodies. As Indigenous people, we understand genocide and trauma; we understand horror, we live it. Barnaby’s films frame a space where non-Indigenous people must look at the screen and feel repulsed, afraid, and unsafe by facing the terrifying and grotesquely violent truth and reality that is colonial nation building.

The sub-genre of rape revenge is often categorized under an umbrella of exploitation cinema, famous for its use of shock value and extreme scenarios. However, Indigenous filmmakers’ contributions to the rape revenge canon do not require exaggeration. We do not need to think up imagined incidents of vicious macabre torture. The Marquis de Sade has nothing on Canada’s residential schools. The horror, the terror — it’s all around us, it is the foundation that the colonial states are built upon. We walk in it every day, and prove our resilience through continued survival.

Another example of rape revenge themes within Indigenous cinema can be found in Niitsítapi/Sami filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers‘ short film, A Red Girl’s Reasoning.

Tailfeathers presents us with a narrative in which an Indigenous woman, who is raped, is failed by the justice system and becomes a vigilante, seeking and delivering violent revenge against her own and other women’s rapists.

“According to Statistics Canada the national homicide rate for Indigenous women is at least seven times higher than for non-Indigenous women… There are also a greatly disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls among long-term missing persons cases. In Saskatchewan, Indigenous women make up only 6 per cent of the population of the province, but 60 per cent of its missing women are Indigenous.”

Media coverage and police support is often far less for missing or murdered Indigenous women than in the case of a white woman. Rape and sexual assault have been used as a tool of colonial conquest since contact and the epidemic of stolen sisters is a reflection of how Indigenous women continue to be devalued and dehumanized by white settler society.

The vengeance scenarios portrayed in both Rhymes for Young Ghouls and A Red Girl’s Reasoning resonate deeply with Indigenous audiences as they tap into our collective pain and anger. These films serve to disrupt the dominant visual culture, which excludes Indigenous perspectives and representation and has all but erased Indigenous peoples from the imagination of settler consciousness. Indigenous filmmakers provide visual allegory for what feminist and author bell hooks has called the “killing rage,” which is described as, “The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism… and the finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change.”

Approaching and calling attention to the full depth of monstrosity that is colonial transgression is what makes Indigenous cinema, in general, such a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence. Indigenous cinema is bigger than the individual movies we make. Regardless of content or form, Native filmmakers have not yet been afforded the luxury to create work that is not automatically placed under a socio-political lens. As Indigenous peoples living in post-colonial/neo-colonial times, our presence — our very existence — is in itself a political statement, and our artistic expression is in itself a beautiful declaration of sovereignty, and self-determination.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Courage and Consequences in Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Ariel Smith (Nêhiyaw/Jewish) is a filmmaker, video artist, writer and cultural worker currently based on unceded Algonquin territory, also known as Ottawa, Ontario. She has shown at festivals and galleries internationally including: Images (Toronto), Mix Experimental Film Festival (NYC), Urban Shaman (Winnipeg), MAI (Montreal), Gallery Sans Nom (Moncton), and Cold Creation Gallery (Barcelona, Spain). Her film Saviour Complex (2008) was nominated for Best Experimental at the 2008 Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Ariel’s video Swallow (2002) was the winner of the Cynthia Licker Sage Award at the 2004 imagineNative Film Festival, and Jury Third prize at the 2003 Media City Festival of Experimental Film and Video. Ariel’s writing and has been published by The Ottawa Art Gallery, The Ottawa International Animation Festival, imagineNative Festival of Indigenous Film and Media Art, and Kimiwan Magazine.

Ariel also works in Indigenous media arts advocacy and administration and is currently the director of National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC).

Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: ‘Ginger Snaps’

This guest post by Kelly Piercy appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Turn on any TV at primetime and you’ll likely see a sex worker dead in a dumpster. Or you’ll see a sex worker telling a cop all about that other sex worker who ended up dead in a dumpster. Because being aware and/or in control of your sexual identity can often be the most dangerous thing a woman in pop culture can be. Slasher films are overpopulated with hot young ripe things just ready to be plucked by a cartoonish serial killer. There will be jeering. There will be mutilation. Of this we can be sure. These things are sold to us on a regular basis.

What we can’t be so sure of however, is what fresh hell each teenage girl experiences with their hormones on an individual basis. Or what really happens when you get bitten by a werewolf. There will be blood in both instances, yes. But there will be a whole host of weird surprises. In Ginger Snaps, those two things just so happen to combine in one film, and you’ll soon become endlessly irritated that you didn’t think of it yourself. It is one of body horror’s great allegories. And there is so much room for snark. With Ginger Snaps, we have one of the most interesting examinations of violence in this bleak world that is representation in film. Certainly the only one where the teenage girl does the mutilating. And truth be told, it’s hard not to feel completely exhilarated by it. Even when you’re heaving.

Describing Ginger Snaps in a sentence might sound something like “an excellent example of subversion of genre norms coupled with language that belongs in the pop culture hall of fame.” Something that would also work is “two teenage girls being fucking awesome.” Because in Ginger Snaps, teenage girls are smarmy and moody – of course they are – but also passionate and resourceful. The dialogue is funny and brimming with wicked imagery as opposed to sleeping through clunky exposition and gender conformity. Horror films have a history of violent transformation or destructive host and the repercussions of these changes in public spaces, but not many examine the female body specifically and it’s place in society, the specific “monstrous feminine.” The genre path of teenage sexual behaviour leading to monstrosity strangely never stopped to think about periods. Ginger Snaps takes a long hard look at “the curse” and plays with both its stereotypes and its biological facts incredibly honestly.

Ginger, despite morphing into a werewolf, becomes our protagonist killer in a very human way, and the complexity of her journey is a cinematic rarity. A large part of its appeal is the addictive excitement-and-relief cocktail that comes with seeing your experiences reflected on screen–to see menstruation from a menstruating perspective. Who wouldn’t see want to see the violence of their PMS daydreams being played out? Ginger Snaps gives its characters a small town and a big world, and the result for its viewers reflects as both deeply personal and pure escapism. Also known as the ingredients for the perfect horror. Get ready to fall in love with the Fitzgerald sisters.

How early does the violence start in Ginger Snaps? A more appropriate question might be “How many films can you recall opening with the massacred corpse of a family dog?” Marley and Me, this isn’t. There’s a wild animal killing the canine population of the sleepy town of Bailey Downs, and nobody really seems too concerned. But we don’t have time to dwell because soon we’re met with the sight of 15-year-old Brigitte, both slouchy and creepy, emerging from her garage, hooked up with tools. Like Dick Van Dyke with all his instruments in Mary Poppins, but a teenage girl with wires and shit. I’m not going to get into Emily Perkins’ physicality in this film because the level of scowl perfection alone is truly inspiring, and it deserves an article in its own right. Suffice to say, this is when I knew I was with Ginger Snaps for the long haul.

As well as Brigitte, we also get the privilege of Ginger, who is the older, edgier, decidedly more daring sibling partner in crime. Ginger and Brigitte muse on suburban mundanity in their shared basement bedroom, while Ginger traces her arm with a knife: “Wrists are for girls, I’m slitting my throat,” she scoffs. We move to Ginger impaled on their garden fence, ruptured at the abdomen, limbs splayed, blood everywhere. Then Brigitte leans in and takes a photograph. Yes. These little shits are staging various death poses for a school project! It is so glorious I smile immediately, wickedly even. I feel pure joy radiate out. This is my comfort zone. And so our titles roll and with them comes dozens of DIY photos of Brigitte and Ginger, meeting variously creative gruesome ends. They’re showing this as a slideshow to their classmates, for a school project. It drips with bad taste. Their teacher can’t believe it. I told you you’d love the Fitzgerald sisters.

It’s not long before the fake blood is replaced with real blood. Sixteen-year-old Ginger’s first period and her transition into a werewolf happen simultaneously. What a day, huh? Society punishes women for being women, this is another one of those things we can be sure of. In this particular instance, Ginger is punished for becoming a woman by being violently savaged by a wild beast, which doesn’t sound too different from the online comments section. In a lot of ways Ginger Snaps seems even more relatable in today’s climate than in 2000, the year of its release.

Ginger’s own metamorphosis masquerades as regular, as mundane. Adult women assure her of her normality. But one transformation is obscuring the other, as highlighted by the excellent scene with the school nurse that hits every parallel beat with precision. Menstruation is the birth of Ginger as a threat. Hurtling toward womanhood, she is now decidedly different than a male, she is now the monster that lies within the feminine, and more accurately the feminine that intimidates the masculine. The unattainable, confusing and unfathomable, the unknown onto which the fear is projected. Oh, and she’s also physically becoming a gnarling brute that really wants to rip human flesh to shreds. So there’s that.

But at first Ginger doesn’t recognise her yearning for splattered organs, she just thinks she needs to get laid. Pre-menstrual, Ginger is vaguely disinterested in boys at best. When the schools resident Bro Boy first makes a move she is almost puzzled, and a simple “Er, no…” will suffice as she continues walking, a fly swatted. Later, when he tells her about his sisters and insists that when it comes to cramps “nothing takes the edge off like a toke,” she replies simply again, “Maybe I like my edge, thanks.” The way that Katherine Alexander’s delivery complements the dialogue is unmistakeable in many of Ginger’s best lines. Her attitude could be reactionary, bratty, and dramatic, but instead it is deliciously restrained. This brings with it an awareness of the shouty, quick tempered, usually improv-based insult scenes prevalent in films currently–the “say the grossest thing you can as loud as you can” approach. Getting increasingly shouty in a very short space of time seems to be the default in a lot of comedies (looking at you, America) and Ginger Snaps felt like a reminder. Shouty is funny when it’s the rarity. And a lot of comedies could benefit from Ginger Snaps’ example of less is more. They could also benefit from Mimi Rogers’ more is more, perfectly cast as the girls’ excessively perky mother. The implication being that Ginger Snaps is not only a superior horror film, but a superior comedy as well.

But back to Ginger. Her sexual ambivalence is marked by a classic slow motion strut-slash-glide through the school hallway. She is now Sexually Awakened™ and interested in Bro Boy. After getting rough with him in the back of his car, Brigitte finds her in their bathroom. “I get this ache,” Ginger says, head in the toilet, hair silver and covered in blood, “I thought it was for sex, but it’s to tear everything to fucking pieces.” She just lost her virginity, and it could have essentially been soundtracked by Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf.” So she killed a dog after.

Ginger’s acts of violence are now accelerating, with her temper becoming increasingly explosive. Both the hockey field and the neighbour’s garden offer chances for instant relief, but it’s not enough. Ginger’s hunger is all-consuming. Hormones multiplied by a taste for blood equals death and infection. Brigitte’s got a real problem on her hands trying to fix this. As she panics, racing to find a cure to save her sister, Ginger remains devilishly nonchalant. She justifies her actions simply: “No one ever thinks chicks do shit like this. A girl can only be a slut, a bitch, a tease, or the virgin next door. We’ll just coast on how the world works.” You can’t fault her insight. But Brigitte is in a dangerous situation now, facing off with GingerWolf, so it sounds like it’s about time for a knight in shining armour to draw a sword and fight the Big Bad, doesn’t it? Nope, Ginger Snaps still doesn’t let you down, because when Brigitte’s drug dealer sidekick Sam (think Canadian Jason Dean) suggests taking the cure and fleeing the monster, Brigitte shouts “HOW ABOUT NO!” in his face. The sisters have a pact, “out by 16 or dead on the scene, but together forever.” In the end, we know that Brigitte has to figure this out alone.

Throughout their lives, the Fitzgerald sisters operated exclusively as a unit. Ginger can be bolder, domineering and baiting, and Brigitte grounds her, more prone to analysing and logistics. There is a repetition of the mantra “this is so us” coursing through – if Ginger leaves the dinner table, Brigitte follows, if Ginger offers up a judgement, Brigitte extends it. They have matching bone pens. They are functioning as one, in spite of an obviously unbalanced power dynamic and personality difference, and they are both aware of this, becoming increasingly vocal about it as the film progresses. When Ginger’s acts of violence become more heinous, the distinctions between the two of them mobilise and the separation gains speed. As Ginger becomes a killer, Brigitte becomes an individual. Brigitte forces her own journey to Werewolfdom by actively sharing blood with Ginger, and she proceeds with complete self-awareness, in control of her body and the changes she knows are coming. She goes into the fight equipped not only with the experience of witnessing Ginger’s destruction, but with the necessities to survive womanhood: a strong sense of self, the courage to call out bullshit, and a fierce possessiveness of your own body.

Despite always wanting to be a screenwriter, I have never wanted to write horror. Now I do. This is representation in action, folks! I am living proof of it! Power to the Ontario Gothic. This is how it’s done.

Kelly Piercy is a Lit grad and comedy writer based in London. She mostly enjoys Leslie Knope, Sleater Kinney, and Cher’s twitter feed.

‘Splice’: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist

‘Splice’ explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.

This repost by Mychael Blinde appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

NSFW | Trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault

Warning: Spoilers abound!

Splice explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.

Though it received somewhat lackluster reviews, I encourage anyone interested in feminism and film to give Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi body horror film a try. Splice features female characters who are intelligent, emotionally complex, and in control. They’re not perfect, but they are three-dimensional characters whose decisions drive the story. (One of them morphs into a male, but we’ll get to that.)

Splice asks a lot of questions about the terms and conditions of conception, gestation, birth, and motherhood, all without stabbing the viewer in the eye with reductive answers.

It also features some campy moments. Hipster scientists shout things like “It was the only way!” Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody expresses his frustration by throwing down not just his jacket, but his scarf as well!

If you can stomach the juxtaposition of big thinky concepts and stilted clichéd dialogue, you will find Splice a thoroughly enjoyable mindfuck of a film.

Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) and Clive Nicoli (Brody), long-term partners in romance and biochemistry, have developed a method to splice the DNA from various animals together to create hybrid creatures.

Viewers are actually birthed into the film from the perspective of Fred, the couple’s latest scientific endeavor, a male companion to their first hybrid, Ginger.

Elsa and Clive aspire to splice human DNA to develop cures for genetic diseases, but the pharmaceutical company funding their research puts a halt on all splicing until the duo can synthesize the medicinal protein necessary to create a commercially viable lifestock drug.

Newstead Pharma’s financial interests are represented by Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu), who insists Elsa and Clive begin “Phase Two: The product stage.”

Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) in Splice — Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) in *Splice*

Joan doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but her brief appearances are a pleasure to watch. She’s articulate and always in control. It’s awesome to see a woman kicking ass in the role of the money-grubbing corporation, and Joan is a stellar example of how to do it right.

After their splicing research is shut down, Clive suggests they quit, but Elsa convinces Clive to proceed with the human splicing and to generate an embryo.

Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) in Splice — Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) in *Splice*

In both the romantic and the professional relationship between Clive and Elsa (and this is a movie very much interested in the conflation of work and sex), Elsa is in charge.

Over and over, Elsa insists that they take the next step. She is the opposite of what I call the Male Protagonist’s Girlfriend — a pretty lady bystander who supplements the male protagonist’s story arc.

Elsa and Clive also deviate from the typical representation of long-term monogamous heterosexual partners: it is he, not she, who desires to have a child:

Elsa: “You are talking about having a kid.”
Clive: “Is that so unreasonable?”
Elsa: “Yeah, because I’m the one who has to have it…”
Clive: “Come on. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Elsa: “How about after we crack male pregnancy?”

Meaningfully, this discussion is cut short by an alert sent from the machine housing the hybrid fetus. When they arrive at the lab, the embryo is all grown up and preparing to evacuate the biochemically engineered womb.

Though Elsa doesn’t gestate and birth the baby from her own body, the birth experience is physically traumatizing for her. She becomes trapped in the birth canal and is injected with poisonous serum. In a rare moment of control, Clive saves Elsa. But after the birth, Elsa again takes charge: she refuses to allow Clive to kill the female hybrid and insists that they raise her in the lab.

Weirdly, the couple begins to function less like scientists and more like normal parents: frustrated because the baby won’t eat, stressed out because it won’t stop crying. However, unlike most parents, their baby has a stinging whip tail, and they are forced to relegate their progeny to the laboratory’s basement to keep her existence a secret.

Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice — Elsa (Sarah Polley) in *Splice*

Elsa becomes more and more emotionally attached to the creature, and eventually names her Dren. Clive is worried about their secret being revealed and disturbed by Elsa’s displays of maternal affection. Nevertheless, he resigns himself to raising her, and Dren grows to be a young adult in a matter of months.

One night, Clive and Elsa realize they haven’t boned down lately. Clive doesn’t have any condoms, but Elsa says, “What’s the worst that could happen?” – suggesting that she’s decided she wouldn’t mind gestating a child, maybe? – and they have at. This is the first of three sex scenes in Splice.

Cinematically, their lovemaking is depicted as underwhelming. Neither Elsa nor Clive take off any clothing. Creepily, Dren watches.

Meanwhile, pressure is building at the pharmaceutical company.

Their presentation at the shareholders’ meeting goes disastrously wrong. Unbeknownst to Clive and Elsa, their specimen Ginger has changed into a male, and Ginger and Fred tear each other apart and splash guts and blood all over the audience. Not good PR.

In deep shit with the company, Clive and Elsa are forced to relocate Dren to Elsa’s deceased mother’s farm.

Here we learn the backstory of Elsa’s childhood; themes of feminism, motherhood, and family history come into play.

We learn that Elsa’s mother forbade Barbies and makeup. Elsa explains that “She said makeup debased women.” The word “feminist” is never used in Splice, but Elsa’s mother’s Barbie-banning and makeup-denying seem emblematic of a certain type of feminist parenting.

We also learn that Elsa’s mother raised her in substandard living conditions, relegating her to a ramshackle, barely furnished bedroom.

Initially I viewed this as a problematic conflation of being a feminist with being a neglectful person and bad mother. But it’s far more complicated than that.

Elsa expresses her love for Dren by giving her the very things her mother denied her.

Dren (Delphine Chanéac) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice — Dren (Delphine Chanéac) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) in *Splice*

But the Barbie and the makeover don’t make Dren happy; in fact, the Barbie explicitly makes Dren sad. Looking into a mirror, she holds the doll’s long blonde tresses against her bald head and becomes upset.

Over the course of the film, Elsa locks Dren up in a lab, then a basement, and eventually her mother’s barn, and Dren resents her for it. Elsa seems unable to break the cycle of her own mother’s physical and emotional neglect.

Perhaps the idea is that makeup is not a substitute for ideal living quarters and engaged parenting. What matters isn’t whether or not you give your daughter a Barbie, but whether or not you lock her in a barn.

And it turns out, Dren really is Elsa’s genetic daughter. To his chagrin, Clive discovers Elsa used her own DNA to create Dren: “Why the fuck did you want to make her in the first place? Huh? For the betterment of mankind? You never wanted a normal child because you were afraid of losing control. But an experiment…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but it seems clear that Elsa is using science as a way to disassociate herself from motherhood while still being able to create and raise a child. Presumably we’re to understand that Elsa’s desire for complete control stems from her tragic upbringing: “Look at your family history,” Clive exhorts.

Elsa tries to convey her genetic connection to Dren by explaining to her: “You’re a part of me, and I’m a part of you. I’m inside you.” She strives to smooth over their mother-daughter animosity, but the two wind up in a physical altercation that results in Elsa knocking Dren unconscious, tying her up, stripping her naked, and removing her tail and stinger. This scene has undertones of both castration and rape. Elsa has become a monstrous mother scientist.

Clive is horrified by Elsa’s actions, but she informs him that she is going to use Dren’s amputated stinger to finally synthesize the protein and heads to the lab, where she succeeds.

She tells off her obnoxious supervisor: “When some real scientists get here, come take a look.”

While Elsa’s away, Dren seduces Clive. If Elsa’s sin is her obsessive need to control, Clive’s sin is his inclination to relinquish control.

This is the film’s second sex scene. Cinematically it is sensual, queer in a fantasy-mythical-creature sort of way, strange but beautiful. Ominously, Dren grows back her tail stinger. Then Clive notices Elsa has come back and is watching them. She storms out and he chases her. Back at their apartment, Clive and Elsa decide that they finally have to kill Dren.

But when they return to the barn, it turns out Dren is already dying. After she dies, Clive’s brother (who also works in the lab) and their supervisor show up. He announces he knows their secret and demands to see the human-spliced creature. Elsa informs him that Dren is dead, throws a shovel at him and says, “See for yourself.”

Except Dren is no longer buried behind the barn. Like Ginger, she has morphed into a male, and in the film’s climax, he kills everybody but Elsa.

Dren as male in Splice — Dren as male in *Splice*

A note on the gender transition: I am uncomfortable with the representation of Dren’s metamorphosis from female to male. It is predicated on the idea that transitioning from a female body to a male body is horrific, and it exploits trans individuals by sensationalizing the transitioning body as evil and freakish. It’s not trans positive. I understand that Splice’s story necessitates this metamorphosis and that Dren isn’t exactly a human, but let’s call out problematic shit when we see it.

Chasing women through the woods at night is a staple of slasher flicks, but this movie isn’t about slashing – it’s about splicing. Dren chases Elsa through the woods, but instead of slaughtering Elsa, Dren rapes her.

This is Splice‘s third sex scene. Cinematically it is gut-wrenchingly horrifying, as any rape depicted onscreen needs to be in order to convey the awfulness that is sexual violation. Dren’s rape of Elsa is as disgusting and awful as Dren’s sex with Clive is beautiful and sensual.

When Elsa screams, “What do you want?” Dren replies: “Inside…of…you.”

Clive stabs Dren with a branch (wielding the metaphorical phallus) as Dren orgasms, but Dren is not killed, and attacks Clive. Elsa pulls her pants back on and bashes Dren in the head with a big rock. This critically injures Dren, who takes a moment to survey the situation – then stabs Clive with his tail. Elsa bashes Dren in the head again, killing Dren once and for all.

Elsa is the character who cut off Dren’s stinger and the one who deals Dren the death blow. And yet in his final moments, Dren chooses to kill Clive. Why?

Because inside of Elsa is a womb, the growing space for a new creature. And sure enough, in the film’s resolution we discover that Elsa is pregnant. Of the three sexual encounters that take place in this movie, the reproductively viable encounter is the rape. Elsa lives to be the final girl not because she wields a chainsaw, but because she wields womb. (And a big rock.)

Unlike Veronica of The Fly (“I want an abortion!”) or, more recently, Elizabeth of Prometheus (“Get it out of me!”), Elsa decides to gestate her monster progeny to term.

I appreciate both The Fly and Prometheus because each asks its audience to empathize with a woman who desperately needs an abortion. I also appreciate Splice for asking its viewers to honor Elsa’s decision not to abort. Joan makes it clear that Elsa has a choice: “Nobody would blame you if you didn’t do this. You could just put an end to it and walk away.” (Would that this were the standard response to women experiencing unwanted pregnancies!)

But Elsa does not to put an end to it. Why does she decide to bring it to term?

Sure, the company’s giving her a shitload of money for gestating Dren’s offspring. But throughout the film, Elsa has insisted on moving forward with human splicing experiments. Perhaps she sees this as a necessary extension of that research.

Or maybe this is another chance for Elsa to use science to mediate motherhood. Is the pregnancy Elsa’s punishment, or her redemption? We’ll never know. All she says is, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The film closes with a shot of the two women, the film’s only surviving characters, looking out a window.

Mychael Blinde is not a scientist, but she is afraid to give birth. She is interested in representations of gender in popular culture and blogs at Vagina Dentwata.

‘American Mary’: In Praise of the Amoral Final Girl

Directed by the Soska sisters, ‘American Mary’ features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

Written by Mychael Blinde as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Directed by the Soska sisters, American Mary features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

Trigger Warning: American Mary is a rape/revenge film and this essay discusses sexual violence.

This post is Spoiler Free! I want you to see this movie. (If you can stomach it.)

The film in a nutshell: We meet Mary (Katharine Isabelle) as she’s carefully practicing her surgeon stitching on a turkey in her kitchen.

Mary is a med student whose financial situation has become dire. She “interviews” to become a stripper and by awesome happenstance winds up entering the underground world of extreme body modification.

After she is suddenly and horrifically physically violated, Mary spends the duration of the film torturing the hell out of her attacker and becoming famous in the body mod community. I want to avoid spoilers, so suffice it to say that eventually, the shit hits the fan.

American Mary’s directors, Jen and Sylvia Soska, are Canadian twin sisters, and they make an appearance in the film as German twins who want to exchange their left arms to remain symbolically together forever. The Soskas’ production company is Twisted Twins Productions, and their first film is titled Dead Hooker in a Trunk.

For an awesome interview with Sylvia and Jen, look no further than this Bitch Flicks piece: “Talking with Horror’s Twisted Twins.”

The sisters discuss representations of violence against women in film, and they remark on the ability of horror films to inspire conversations that address our critical need to make the world a safer place for women:

Sylvia: The prolonged death of the Hooker in [Dead Hooker in a Trunk] was made with the intention of being very difficult to watch. We didn’t create the term “Dead Hooker in a Trunk,” there is a society wide stigma on these women that devalue them as worthless human beings…We are at a point in time where we need to get a zero tolerance for horrendously vile acts against women. We put these moments in these films because we want to open up a dialogue about it and it’s a lot easier to do with a genre film than other platforms.

The only acceptable way to represent sexual assault is to represent it as horrible and horrifying, and in American Mary, the Soska sisters succeed: their representation of Mary’s rape neither exploits nor glosses over her violation.

Jen: The reason we put violence against women in our films is because it is so common in real life. It’s so common that people just turn a blind eye to it. The amount of letters and emails we’ve received from women who’d been sexually assaulted and had their attacker go unpunished was disgusting. They were so happy to see Mary get her revenge because there is so little justice in the world.

The directors also talk about depicting flawed female characters:

Sylvia: There is such a famine of a representation of women, it’s almost like you have to make an excuse for a female character if she does something that isn’t perfect or proper. But women are flawed. We’re human. We’re just like men, and we can be interesting and crude.

I’ll address the film’s depiction of Mary, her flaws and the flaws in her representation (there’s really just one little thing that bugged me) later on in this piece, but first, let’s take a sharp left turn and talk about body modification.

In horror, the mutability of the human body is typically presented as uncontrollable, and therefore terrifying. In American Mary, we get to see the creepy yet beautiful possibilities of controlled bodily mutability. Here, body modification isn’t horrible; it’s aspirational.

Body modification is an ancient practice. Human beings’ adeptness at manipulating our environments is a defining characteristic of our species, so it should come as no surprise that for pretty much all of human history we’ve been manipulating our bodies as well. (Cf. piercings, tattoos, circumcision.)

Courtesy of Bradley University’s Body Project:

We tend to think of human bodies as simply products of nature. In reality, however, our bodies are also the products of culture. That is, all cultures around the world modify and reshape human bodies. This is accomplished through a vast variety of techniques and for many different reasons, including:

– To make the body conform to ideals of beauty
– To mark membership in a group
– To mark social status
– To convey information about an individual’s personal qualities or accomplishments

People may seek to control, “correct” or “perfect” some aspect of their appearance, or to use their bodies as a canvas for creative self-expression.

Our society tends to be accepting of body modification that seeks to attain a look that’s more aligned with our conventional standards of beauty, but we tend to reject modifications that seek to depart from the hegemonic norm.

American Mary asks the viewer to like and root for characters who seek more radical transformations and unorthodox forms of self-expression. Though we are primed to expect these strange looking characters to be scary weird bad people, the body modders are actually the most likable folks in the entire film. They are helpful and thankful and kind. And while their modification choices may seem bizarre, their decisions to seek augmentations are presented in a way that is respectful both to their characters and to the community they represent.

First, we meet Beatress (Tristan Risk):

Beatress: “I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to make myself look on the outside the way I feel on the inside.”

She explains: “In my travels, I met another girl like me, but she hasn’t been able to find someone to finish her. I want to hire you…She’s a nice girl who wants an unconventional operation.”

Then we meet this nice girl, Ruby (Paula Lindberg), who asks Mary (and by extension, the viewer):

Ruby: “I don’t think it’s really fair that God gets to choose what we look like on the outside, do you?”

As individuals, we should all have power over our own bodies, whether we want to shave our legs or dye our hair or pierce our skin or modify our secondary sex characteristics. We as a society should accept and respect the bodily autonomy of every individual, regardless of that individual’s personal choices.

Sometimes people want to make changes to their bodies that deviate from that which is culturally sanctioned. Who are we to stop them?

This guy had his penis and his balls removed and he’s doing just fine. This guy is famous in the body mod community for implanting magnets in people’s fingers. (With a magnet implanted, you can FEEL electromagnetic fields. I WANT ONE — how amazing to have an electromagnetic sixth sense!)

Whether aspiring to become more “normal” or more unique, we should all be afforded the opportunity to safely seek alterations to our bodies. Our bodies are our own.

Or at least they should be. With the terrifying depictions of both Mary’s rape and her revenge, the loss of control over one’s own body is the driving force of horror in this film.

Another facet of the film’s horror is the age-old adage that appearances are often deceiving. In American Mary, everything is the opposite of what the viewer has been cultured to expect: the body mod freaks are the good people, the seemingly respectable doctors are the villains, and the Mary we see at the end of the film is not the Mary we thought she’d become when we first met her stitching up her turkey.

Let’s talk about Mary and American Mary’s representation of an amoral lady protagonist:

Mary is depicted by the Soska sisters and portrayed by Katharine Isabelle as smart, strong, resourceful, and funny. She has agency and complexity. She is a fully formed, dynamic character. She propels the narrative. This is her story. No Male Protagonist’s Girlfriend here.

Some reviewers feel that Mary’s sexy attire detracts from her ability to be considered a true icon of feminist horror. Courtesy of I Just Hate Everything:

In an interview with the Soska sisters, Steve Rose of The Guardian points out that “Katharine Isabelle’s wardrobe in the movie consists primarily of lacy negligees, lingerie and fetishistic surgical outfits.”

In response: “We’re very into third-wave feminism, where a woman can own her sexuality and not shy away from it,” says Jen.

There are moments in American Mary when the filmmakers play up Mary’s sexy sexiness more than necessary, but there are also moments when they utilize women’s scantily clad or naked bodies in ways that are refreshingly subversive.

I don’t think we need two lengthy sequences of the strip club owner’s fantasies of Mary dancing sexy dances for him.

I’m not so much bothered by the inclusion of these moments; OK, fine, show us that he’s got a twisted thing for her and remind us that she’s hot, whatever. It’s the lengthiness of these sequences, the extended time devoted to showing us Mary’s sexy body on display explicitly for the male gaze. These moments feel especially unoriginal and pandering in a film that’s otherwise so refreshingly transgressive in its approach to representations of women’s bodies.

For example, the scenes in which Mary performs surgery in her stripper outfit are a clever subversion of horror’s traditional representation of sexy lady torture victims.

In these surgery sequences, the sexy lady is a woman with the power to save or take the life of the whimpering man lying (or hanging) in front of her. She might be clad in thigh-highs, but she’s the opposite of a victim.

I also appreciated the unabashed depiction of Ruby’s surgery. I won’t give away specifics, but let’s just say that American Mary takes a much different approach to naked breasts than any movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a paradigm shift for tits on screen.

While many reviewers enjoyed the first half of American Mary, they often disliked the ending, calling it a “murkier narrative that lamely sputters to its conclusion” (Hollywood Reporter) in which the Soska sisters “allow their film to turn slack and unfocused after an enticingly lurid, wickedly tense first half” (LA Times).

One reviewer (The Playlist) writes (emphasis mine):

Dreams slip into reality and fantasy assumes a nightmarish plausibility as Mary’s rationale melts away; one could argue her transformation into an avenging sadist takes the teeth out of the film’s medical industry critique, turning it into just another gothic story of one who abuses absolute power.

I suspect that these reviewers’ dislike of the ending stems from their discomfort at witnessing the abruptness of Mary’s transformation from a witty, strong, resourceful rebel into a sociopathic monster. Initially, the violence she enacts stems from a sense of righteous vengeance, but suddenly her violent acts are completely unjustified and totally reprehensible. We all start out rooting for Mary, but we wind up repelled by her.

In a wonderful essay entitled “Not Here to Make Friends” — also featured in her excellent book, Bad Feminist — Roxane Gay writes:

Writers are often told a character isn’t likable as literary criticism, as if a character’s likability is directly proportional to the quality of a novel’s writing. This is particularly true for women in fiction. In literature as in life, the rules are all too often different for girls. There are many instances where an unlikable man is billed as an anti-hero, earning a special term to explain those ways in which he deviates from the norm, the traditionally likable. Beginning with Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, the list is long. An unlikable man is inscrutably interesting, dark, or tormented but ultimately compelling even when he might behave in distasteful ways.

Thanks in large part to feminism, our society now generally embraces representations of Strong Female Characters — at least when these Strong Female Characters are presented as morally upstanding. We’re still wildly uncomfortable with depictions of amoral anti-heroines.

There is a longstanding history in the horror genre of the Final Girl character. Traditionally, she is the most virtuous character in the film, the embodiment of morality, and her defeat of the monster represents Good triumphing over Evil. While the Final Girl doesn’t always win the battle (and sometimes doesn’t even survive), she typically remains virtuous throughout.

In a piece for Indiewire titled “American Mary Sets out to Modify the Way You Think About Women in Horror,” the Soska sisters explain their approach to Mary in the context of the history of the Final Girl:

American Mary evolves the final girl once again where not only is the final girl powerful, precise, and fearless, but she becomes her own undoing and takes on the roles of villainess and heroine simultaneously.

We viewers may want Mary to end the film a righteous hero, but to give Mary’s story a happy ending would be to suggest that there is a simple way to right the wrongs of sexual violation. This isn’t to say that survivors of assault can never overcome their trauma, but to point out that there is no easy answer to the question of how to process such violations of the body. Revenge can’t erase Mary’s experience of assault. Vengeance doesn’t make it all okay. Violence begets violence, and everything falls apart.

The final sequences of American Mary may be something of a surprise, but they make sense within the larger thematic context of the film: the horror of losing control of one’s own flesh and the devastation of physical violation.

American Mary is a stellar film and I’m excited to see more awesome work by the Soska sisters!

Mychael Blinde writes about representations of gender in horror at Vagina Dentwata.

The “Blurred Lines” of Body Horror and Rape Culture

The idea of “coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn’t” in regard to the source of most body horror films is very reminiscent of the way we as a society deal with victims/survivors of rape. Why is it that people immediately feel bad for MacReady and the boys when they’re attacked by The Thing without ever telling them they were “asking for it” by playing with a stray animal, but at the same time we’re still seeing news reporters and politicians try and discredit rape victims and assume it was the victim’s fault? Body horror is very closely related to rape culture because it puts a mask on the violence of rape by putting it in the context of an “other worldly invasion” and makes it permissible to revel in the other person’s destruction.

Still from John Carpenter's The Thing — Still from John Carpenter’s *The Thing*

This guest post by BJ Colangelo previously appeared at her blog Day of the Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

Body horror is undoubtedly one of the most complex horror movie subgenres. Rooted in the innate fear of meeting our demise, body horror films have played a prominent role in the expansion of practical effects and social commentary within the horror genre. Body horror can also be called “biological horror,” “organic horror,” or “venereal horror,” classified as a work of horror fiction where the horror is predominately extracted from the graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. The subgenre includes disease, decay, parasitism, mutilation, mutation, anatomically incorrect limb placement, unnatural movements, and fantastical expansion. The fear of the unknown is one thing, but when that fear lives inside of you, there’s no escaping or hiding from one’s own mortality.

Poster for 1958's The Fly — Poster for 1958’s *The Fly*

1958’s The Fly is arguably the film that pushed body horror into the threshold of the horror pantheon, and the films have only gotten more unsettling and graphic with its successors. Advertising with a slogan of “100 pounds to the first person who can prove it can’t happen!” The Fly took away the fear of “other” and instead rooted horror in the realm of possibility. What separates body horror from the other subgenres is perhaps theirrefutable future of destruction. Afraid of sharks in the sea? Don’t swim. Afraid of Jason Voorhees? Don’t have anything to do with Crystal Lake. Afraid of ghosts in the house? Call a priest or move. Afraid of the monster growing within you? Pray that medical science can assist you, or enjoy feeling yourself crumble to pieces. In body horror, there are no “rules” for survival. Body horror forces us into the world of the unknown, and there would appear to be no way out. In fact, most people will look to other unknowns to help with their own unknown. Religion, theoretical science, voodoo, ancient texts, astrology, and many others have all been cited as resources for those struggling with some sort of internal ailment.

Rick Baker's phenomenal make-up work for The Incredible Melting Man — Rick Baker’s phenomenal make-up work for *The Incredible Melting Man*

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of body horror is that the line between victim and hero is very much often blurred. Those suffering are literally the ones to blame for their predicament. Sure, Dr. Brundle in The Fly should have double checked his Telepods before experimenting upon himself and perhaps the kids from Cabin Fever should have been a little more careful about how they dealt with the infected drifter, but do they deserve the horror inflicted upon their bodies for not being overly cautious? The idea of “coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn’t” in regard to the source of most body horror films is very reminiscent of the way we as a society deal with victims/survivors of rape. Why is it that people immediately feel bad for MacReady and the boys when they’re attacked by The Thing without ever telling them they were “asking for it” by playing with a stray animal, but at the same time we’re still seeing news reporters and politicians try and discredit rape victims and assume it was the victim’s fault? Body horror is very closely related to rape culture because it puts a mask on the violence of rape by putting it in the context of an “other worldly invasion” and makes it permissible to revel in the other person’s destruction. If we see a person raped in a film, we immediately feel a sense of sympathy, but when we see someone invaded by an alien pod or even a tree, we are filled with extreme delight. The over-exaggerated and graphic nature of body horror presents a safe distance for the audience to feel a great sense of schadenfreude.

Ripley 7 in Alien: Resurrection looking a lot like Brother Fred in Monster Man — Ripley 7 in *Alien: Resurrection* looking a lot like Brother Fred in *Monster Man*

Body horror is a parallel to rape toys with those “infected” with the taboo subject of sometimes enjoying their transformation and again being demonized for it. Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby was actually as excited as she was naive, Ripley enjoyed using her conjoined alien DNA to her advantage in the Alien franchise, and Ginger Fitzgerald in Ginger Snaps greatly enjoyed “snapping” into a werewolf. When this happens, our sense of compassion is toyed with and often muddled within the story. How could anyone possibly be okay after enduring something like this? How could they get better? Wouldn’t it be more comfortable for everyone if they just died? — and that’s what’s really screwed up. We champion survivors, but they always seem to have that smell of tainted goods from then on. In the end the “thing” that took over the body is what becomes the defining characteristic of the victim almost to the point of overshadowing the victim. What do you remember about Dawn in Teeth other than the fact she has vagina dentata? Do you care about the demised futures of the people sewn up in The Human Centipede, or are you forever remembering them as the people forced to go ass-to-mouth for eternity? We remember all of the infected folks in Night of the Creeps, but what about their dates? Do you know any of their names? No, because they’re not important. The victim is what is important. Throw that parallel on every rape revenge movie and the picture becomes a little clearer. This isn’t trying to say rape victims “liked” it or anything like that but rather that there are plenty of rape victims who don’t allow the situation to completely destroy and ruin them. Like Ginger embracing her werewolf transformation and making it her own, there are plenty of survivors of rape who live their lives like something other than a character on Law & Order: SVU.

I’m surprised this shot from Slither doesn’t have a BRAZZERS logo on it

Body horror also offers the most thinly veiled solution to the “invader(s)” — kill them. We kill The BrundleFly, we torch The Thing, we squash the Slither slugs, and we kill the “host” of The Brood. This, by proxy, is what also justifies all rape revenge movies. Based cinematically, rape should be a capital crime. The other undiscussed side to body horror is once something is “birthed,” the person that served as the “host” is crazy or unstable if they want to keep it alive and in their care. Madeline is seen as insane for wanting to continue to feed human blood to her baby in Grace when logical people would assume she should just destroy her. Even after knowing the truth about the child, Rosemary smiles and rocks her baby. These actions are seen as shocking and terrifying, but if a rape victim with the ability to become with child wants to rid themself* of their rape-caused pregnancy…they’re monsters. (*Day of the Woman accepts that not all people with the ability to have children are women or identify as women and are continuing to become more open and educated with identification pronouns.) What degree of ownership and responsibility is attached to Body Horror? Audiences often spend the film screaming KILL IT! KILL IT! and find people like Blair in The Thing crazy for wanting to keep the parasite alive. We as humans like to think of ourselves as the most valuable creatures in the universe, but to The Thing, we’re nothing more than a host. In the same regard, human children see “Mother” as nothing more than a host and a means of survival. That’s why most babies cling to their mother more than their fathers. It’s not a matter of preference, it’s a survival tactic. If someone implanted you with a demon baby, you’d be screaming for it to go, but if someone implants you with a rape-caused baby, you’re a demon if you don’t want to raise it. With few exceptions, there aren’t many body horror movies where society has tried to coexist with the issue.

My junior year prom date, or Three Fingers in Wrong Turn 2 — My junior year prom date, or Three Fingers in *Wrong Turn 2*

So what about victims/survivors of body horror that continue to walk amongst us? The most general way to examine these individuals is to look at mutants. Mutant horror films are just whitewashed body horror. These individuals cannot control the way that they are but because they live unconventionally and are seen as “damaged,” they are treated as lesser thans. Not exactly horror, but think about the X-Men. We’ve got people that can’t help what has happened to them and are fighting for the right to coexist with the general public. Play that card on rape victims, and their endless fight for better laws and after treatment, and it becomes clearer that we treat rape victims less like humans and more like mutants. These are people to feel sorry for and to try and “fix.” These are people who are inspiring simply for existing, or terrifying for being proud of it.

A still of Bob Costas at the Sochi Olympics...I mean Najarra Townsend in Contracted — A still of Bob Costas at the Sochi Olympics…I mean Najarra Townsend in *Contracted*

(IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM DO NOT READ AHEAD) What happens when we have a film that deals with both body horror and rape culture? Eric England’s Contracted shows a film about quite possibly the most terrifying disease a person can contract from sexual contact. We only assume at the end of the film she became a zombie, but what if it was something more? What if that wasn’t even her final form? At the moment of her transformation, she’s finally taking control of her life in all aspects–from her mom, her lover, her friend, but because she’s now a deteriorating mess, we’re meant to see that change as a bad thing. Much like rooting for the last man on earth in I Am Legend even though he’s the parasite to the new world, who are we to say that Samantha in Contracted isn’t now exactly who she’s meant to be? Sounds a bit like that Justin Bieber, “everything happens for a reason” quote in regards to rape, doesn’t it?

The Act of Killing was Oscar snubbed, but I promise there are reasons to live, Bio-Cop! — *The Act of Killing* was Oscar snubbed, but I promise there are reasons to live, *Bio-Cop*!

Rape culture is a complex thing to understand, and it will always be interpreted differently by other people. However, I firmly believe that whether infected by an other worldly creature, contracting a disease, becoming the product of an accident, or simply being born with it, body horror is an exaggerated reflection of rape culture in Western civilizations. While we may not have to worry about being implanted with pod people, we do have to worry about becoming a victim of rape. The only difference is that unlike a Pod Person or an Alien chestburster, we can’t teach these creatures to “not chestburst”; but we do have the ability to teach people not to rape.

BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically–that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

This guest post by Ariel Smith appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby employes aesthetic strategies and themes from horror cinema in order to push back against stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and critique contemporary neo-colonial systems. Barnaby has been known to recall conventions from both body horror and dystopian science fiction in order to present dark, disturbing narratives in which Mi’gmaq characters navigate through gruesome representations of abjection and assimilation. In his first feature film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), we see Barnaby drawing from another sub-genre of horror cinema, that of the rape revenge film.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set against the backdrop of Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

For those who don’t know, from 1884 to 1948, it was compulsory for Indigenous children under 16 years of age living in what is now known as Canada to attend colonial government-funded, church-run day and boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed from their families by Indian agents, and families were threatened with fines or prison if they failed to send their children. Children as young as 5 could be kept away from their parents for months or years at a time, were prohibited from speaking their language, and were issued severe corporal punishment for any expression of non-Christian cultural, social or spiritual practice. The Indian Residential School System’s express and specific, methodical intention was to “Kill the Indian in the child” and resulted in cultural genocide that Indigenous nations are only now beginning to heal from. Many children experienced heinous sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as being subjected to publicly documented sterilization efforts and starvation experiments. The last residential school closed in Canada in 1996 and this colonial system has resulted in multiple, consecutive generations with both stolen childhoods and parenthoods. Even Indigenous children who did not attend residential school are affected by inter-generational trauma, as their parents and/or grandparents most likely attended.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls takes place on a Mi’gma reserve in the late 1970s. The lead protagonist, 15-year-old Alia, makes her living dealing pot. One of her most pressing expenses is paying off the corrupt and psychotic Indian agent, Popper, in order for herself, and other kids from her community to not be taken away to the residential school, where they will undoubtedly be physically and sexually abused. Alia winds up being double crossed and taken against her will to the school, but she soon breaks out and on Halloween night, together with a posse of other kids from the rez, enacts violent, bloody, revenge against the school’s abusive staff.

The sub-genre of rape revenge is often categorized under an umbrella of exploitation cinema, famous for its use of shock value and extreme scenarios. However, Indigenous filmmakers’ contributions to the rape revenge canon do not require exaggeration. We do not need to think up imagined incidents of vicious macabre torture. The Marquis Du Sade has nothing on Canada’s residential schools. The horror, the terror–it’s all around us, it is the foundation that the colonial states are built upon. We walk in it every day, and prove our resilience through continued survival.

Another example of rape revenge themes within Indigenous cinema can be found in Niitsítapi/Sami filmmaker Elle-Maija Tailfeathers’ short film, A Red Girl’s Reasoning.

Tailfeathers presents us with a narrative in which an Indigenous woman, who is raped, is failed by the justice system and becomes a vigilantle, seeking and delivering violent revenge against her own and other women’s rapists.

As with Barnaby’s work, it is impossible for A Red Girl’s Reasoning to be read outside of a larger overarching social context, which in this case it is the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous woman and girls. There are over 800 cases of missing and murdered woman and girls in Canada which have been documented so far. Amnesty International Canada states that “According to Statistics Canada the national homicide rate for Indigenous women is at least seven times higher than for non-Indigenous women…There are also a greatly disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls among long-term missing persons cases. In Saskatchewan, Indigenous women make up only 6 per cent of the population of the province, but 60 per cent of its missing women are Indigenous.”

Media coverage and police support is often far less for missing or murdered Indigenous women than in the case of a white woman. Sexualized violence has been used as a tool of colonial conquest since contact and the epidemic of stolen sisters is a reflection of how Indigenous woman continue to be devalued and dehumanized by white settler society.

The vengeance scenarios portrayed in both Rhymes for Young Ghouls and A Red Girl’s Reasoning resonate deeply with Indigenous audiences as they tap into our collective pain and anger. These films serve to disrupt the dominant visual culture, which excludes Indigenous perspectives and representation and has all but erased Indigenous peoples from the imagination of settler consciousness. Indigenous filmmakers provide visual allegory for what feminist and author bell hooks has called the “killing rage,” which is described by Amazon.com as “The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism… and the finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change”

Approaching and calling attention to the full depth of monstrosity that is colonial transgression is what makes Indigenous cinema, in general, such a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence. Indigenous cinema is bigger than the individual movies we make. Regardless of content or form, Native filmmakers have not yet been afforded the luxury to create work that is not automatically placed under a socio-political lens. As Indigenous peoples living in postcolonial/neo-colonial times, our presence–our very existence–is in itself a political statement, and our artistic expression is in itself a beautiful declaration of sovereignty, and self-determination.

Ariel also works in Indigenous media arts advocacy and administration and is currently the director of National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC).

‘Inside’: French Pregnant Body Horror At Its Finest

Guest post written by Deirdre Crimmins for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Content note: Discussion of violence directed at women and violent images ahead. Spoiler alert.

Horror films have a unique way of showcasing exactly what we fear, but they often do so in a subtle way. While is it goes without saying that ax-wielding maniacs are to be feared, these films often slyly expose the issues that our society is too shy to deal with head on. In the 2007 French horror film Inside (directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury), fertility, reproduction, and infant loss are dealt with in a refreshingly direct and uncompromisingly bloody outcome, with no room for subtlety.

The film takes place during the course of Sarah’s last night alone before having her child’s delivery induced the next morning. Sarah (Alysson Paradis) lost her husband in a terrible car accident just a few weeks earlier. The crash is shown multiple times through the film, which illustrates the haunting presence of the loss in every moment of her day-to-day life. We see the crash from the perspective of her child in utero as well, which also frames this unborn child as a character in the film.

With the circumstances of Sarah’s pregnancy she is denied the typical rituals of birthing. She has no partner to help her pick out the child’s name. The birth date is decided by her doctor in a cold and clinical office, removing the excitement and surprise of delivery. Rather than spending the night before the birth readying the nursery and enjoying their last night together as a childless couple, Sarah is all alone.

That is, Sarah is alone until she is stalked by a mysterious stranger who appears at her door. The stranger is a woman (played by Béatrice Dalle) dressed all in black who tries everything she can to get Sarah to open the door. After an initial creepy stand-off, the woman forces her way in to the home, and the horror begins. This nameless woman wants Sarah’s child, and she is not waiting around for the birth.

The next hour of the film is a bloody cat and mouse chase between Sarah and this woman. The film is smart, and incredibly gory. Neither of these women hold back on violent acts to get, or keep, what they want.

Sarah

To begin to examine a horror film, there are several questions that can aid in the dissection of its purpose. When looking at Inside it can be helpful to pose this question: Where is the horror? By looking at the source of horror in the film, we can better understand what we are to fear.

Clearly the first level of horror in Inside is in the intruder. Her bloodlust for Sarah’s unborn child drives her violence. Initially, it is this desire for the child that is problematic. We find out later in the film that not only was this woman pregnant recently, but that she lost her child in the same car accident that killed Sarah’s husband. This unveiling in the plot is what shows the complicated relationship that Inside has with infant loss.

With this we see that another dimension of the horror in the film lies in the intruder’s loss of her pregnancy. She was nearly full term, and we see the car accident from inside her womb. The well-developed, though unborn, child is distressed by the jolt the crash delivered, and reacts as the amniotic fluid clouds up with blood. One can only imagine the pain suffered by the loss of a pregnancy at this stage, however the emotional havoc she sustains cannot justify her attack on Sarah, can it? Sarah was driving the car, after all. Is it too much of a stretch to demand from Sarah what Sarah took from her? It obviously is too much to ask, however the logical leap is not a far one to make.

Outside of the blame for the lost child lies a classic example of body horror. Films that contain plenty of gore are often, though not exclusively, “body horror” films. Here it is the body itself that is the source of the horror. The pain, blood, dismemberment, and other organic fluids in the film are definite sources of horror in Inside. The fact that the intruder is treating Sarah like merely a vessel that holds a child, and treats Sarah’s body with so little respect that this is clear, is horrific. Sarah is chased, tortured, and ultimately given a non-consensual cesarean, all to the horror of the audience. This treatment of Sarah and the fact that her body, and in particular her pregnant body, is the source of much of the horror in the film, that makes this a body horror film.

Despite the horror of two women battling one another for an unborn child, the film is quite feminist. Both of these women are smart (deranged and depressed respectively, but both make choices to further their own agendas in constructive ways). Sarah does have men who show up to attempt to rescue her, but with each effort these rescuers are outsmarted and brutally killed by the woman in black. Also, neither Sarah nor the intruder are ever shown as weak due to their womanhood. Both are shown as strong, self-sufficient people who just so happen to disagree over who should get to keep Sarah’s child.

Woman in Black

Though Inside deals with the horrors of the body, and the emotional response to losing a child, it does not treat pregnancy with romanticism or nostalgia. Sarah and the intruder are treated as believable characters that are each reacting to the extreme situations that they have found themselves in. It is this even-handed treatment of pregnant women as still functioning members of society, and not dainty figurines that have no autonomy, which makes the film a horror that you can empathize with. By putting well rounded, relatable characters in (hopefully) unrelatable situations you can just sit back and watch the blood flow.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.