In What Ways Have Third And Fourth Wave Feminism Reshaped Narratives Surrounding The Monstrous Feminine?

Rooted in early manifestations in Greek mythology, the non-victimised female body in filmic Horror has historically been constructed as a site of dangerous difference (Battersby, 2013). In her landmark publication ‘The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis’, Barbara Creed (1993) posited that Horror across the twentieth century associated the reproductive and maternal capabilities of the women with a liminal monstrosity, identifying seven archetypal ‘faces’ of the monstrous-feminine (Gear, 2001): the archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother, and femme castratrice. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s (1982) theory of abjection, that which “disturbs identity, system, order” to endanger the Self/Other boundary, Creed further argued through a psychoanalytic feminist approach that these female figures represented the ambiguous space of repressed anxieties and desires towards women held by an androcentric audience (Chaudhuri, 2006).

Since Creed’s publication however, there have been significant developments across the feminist movement in Western societies. The rise of Third Wave Feminism, characterised by the reclamation of representation via ‘lipstick feminism’ (Birks, 2020) saw the adoption of words including ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ to recover sexual allure. Rooted in the late 2000s, Fourth Wave Feminism emphasises a goal of ending woman-based violence, notably including transgender and queer concerns. Hashtags such as #MeToo, coined originally by Tarana Burke in 2007 to promote the idea of “empowerment through empathy”, reflect the coming together of online platforms with emotive liberation (Corcoran, 2022). While these sociocultural developments have become reflected across the screen, from kick-ass ‘girlie’ protagonists (Wee, 2005) to growing recognition of female writers and directors, greater attention should be paid to whether the monstrous-feminine has been reconceptualised in an age where the experiences and anxieties of women are finally taking centre stage (Birks, 2020).

Across three films, I will expand on Creed’s (1993) psychoanalytic approach to assess how Third and Fourth Wave Feminism reframes the monstrous female figure as speaking to the concerns and agendas of women (Mulvey, 1975), yet maintains a twenty-first century connection to notions of abjection (Kristeva, 1982). Section A will analyse the American Horror-Comedy Jennifer’s Body (Kusama, 2009) through a feminist teratological framework (MacCormack, 2004), exploring how sex-positive constructions of the femme castratrice within the ‘rape-revenge’ subgenre move past exploiting female trauma (Vachhani, 2014). Section B will address We Need to Talk About Kevin’s (Ramsay, 2011) subversion of the monstrous mother from castrator to castrated as a response to Third Wave pressures of motherhood and Fourth Wave concerns of consent (Slobodin, 2019). Finally, Section C will unpack the archaic mother in Ari Aster’s (2019) Midsommar, highlighting how Third and Fourth Wave Feminism have renegotiated this relationship between the protagonist and the monstrous-feminine towards an empathetic dependence that results in the embrace of a simultaneously cathartic and terrifying abjectness (Schultz, 2020).

Section A: Jennifer’s Body (Kusama, 2009) and the Femme Castratrice.

Written and directed by Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama, Jennifer’s Body (Kusama, 2009) is an American ‘Rape-Revenge’ that details the bloody demands of Jennifer (Megan Fox), a teenage girl sacrificially transformed into a demon with a vengeful appetite for ‘boys’, as narrated by her best friend Needy (Amanda Siegfried). Jennifer’s Body employed the all-destructive femme castratrice who ‘arouses a fear of castration and death while simultaneously playing on a masochistic desire for death, pleasure and oblivion [in men]’ (Creed 2001; in Chaudhuri, 2006). Initially a box-office bomb, the film has now amassed a cult-following being re-read in a Fourth Wave Feminist context. In this Section, I will unpack how Jennifer’s Body reformulates constructions of the femme castratrice as depicted in classics such as I Spit On Your Grave (Zarchi, 1978) through sex-positive ‘lipstick feminism’ (Birks, 2020), recognising how the contemporary Fourth Wave movements and a feminist teratological approach has reinforced an agentic reading of the film (MacCormack, 2004). I will go on to discuss the continued influence of Kristevean abjection within Jennifer as projecting the terrifying liminality between Mind and Body, before analysing the role of Needy as introducing a new femme castratrice (Chusna and Mahmudah, 2018).

Under the influence of Third Wave Feminist agendas, Jennifer’s Body aimed to reconstruct the figure of the femme castratrice as in charge of her own sexuality and representation (Santamaría Ibor et al., 2020), reflecting the sexually liberating politics of lipstick feminism. Comparing to the critically acclaimed I Spit On Your Grave (Zarchi, 1978) which Jennifer’s Body explicitly pays homage to, from the core rape-revenge storyline to the point of copying the name from Jennifer Hills to Jennifer Check, the two diverge over how female sexuality is presented throughout. While Jennifer Hills is haunted by her sexual assault, becoming transformed into a murderous woman set to get revenge on her rapists, Jennifer Check embraces her feminine allure throughout, not simply as a result of her metaphoric rape. This is highlighted early on in the film through the way she describes her breasts as “smart bombs” (00:11:52), stating to Needy that boys are “morsels” whereas girls “have all the power” (00:11:47) We are thus introduced from the start to a teenage girl who is confident in her sexuality and uses it to obtain the things that she wants.

However, it is undeniable that like Jennifer Hills, Jennifer Check employs her sexuality as a weapon in response to trauma. Analysing this through a contemporary lens of ‘becoming monster’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), termed by MacCormack (2004) as a ‘feminist teratology’, issues surrounding this monstrous embracement include how Jennifer is accepting the terms of her body as given to her by phallogocentric culture, alongside glamourising the conditions of subjugation in society (MacCormack, 2004). In a Deleuzio-Guattarian (1987) sense, Jennifer is affirming a condition for women that was not chosen by women, pushing her away from her-Self and towards becoming Other.

Yet this perspective ignores the material lived reality of women in posing a becoming monster as a transitory practice where she loses part of herself; in the context of Jennifer’s Body, Jennifer Check was always a sexual being, and she does not shy away from this aspect of herself. This is emphasised in the iconic scenes where Jennifer and Needy are seen kissing immediately after Jennifer kills another boy (00:59:29), and again when she turns on Needy after killing her boyfriend, stating “I go both ways” (01:25:33); these scenes work to destabilise the male gender as the primary focus of Jennifer, instead introducing a bisexuality that renders men unimportant and unnecessary to achieve sexual gratification (Chaudhuri, 2006). As such, a feminist teratological framework reveals further the narratives of the sex-positive lipstick feminist that saturate Jennifer’s Body, to reconstruct the femme castratrice as sexual in her own right rather than recycling the cause-and-effect storyline of Rape-Revenge films that ignore women’s own desires (Arévalo Trigo, 2021).

The masculine centrality that classic conceptualisations of the monstrous feminine panders to is further deconstructed through the use of coded language and imagery in the film, that draws on the contemporary fears of women instead of men (Birks, 2020). This is achieved through the limited exposure of the violence Jennifer endured, where the short, matter-of-fact description of her murder by the band she idolised that constitutes a metaphoric rape refuses to exploit female trauma for the gratification of an male audience. Moreover, the placement of this scene not in its proper chronological order, instead narrated to Needy towards the end of the film as a flashback mediated by a bored Jennifer (Santamaría Ibor et al., 2020) can be held in contrast to the early scenes of repeated gang rape in I Spit On Your Grave; not only is the stark confrontation with female-based violence avoided, but the rape itself is devalued as not that which solely defines Jennifer.

Nonetheless, Cody and Kusama do not omit Jennifer’s rape as unimportant; the band’s growing popularity and thus presence throughout the film symbolises how rape is often carried with victims in their everyday lives, something they are expected to adjust to. Jennifer’s bored reactions to the aftermath of the blaze at the beginning of the film, musing “sucks to be them, I guess” (00:27:00) and the subsequent gruesome murders of her classmates can again be interpreted as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder as well as a strategy of dissociation often embodied by survivors of violence to cope through their ordeal (Birks, 2020). It is through re-reading the film within a Fourth Wave Feminist framework however that truly exposes the ways that Jennifer’s Body reclaimed the role of the monstrous feminine; the current climate of a global #MeToo activism that draws attention to the real-life impacts of women-based violence is embodied by Jennifer, who comes to represent the fears of a female audience, namely the removal of consent and the objectification and abuse that women across the world are faced with daily (Mack and McCann, 2018). As such, the monstrous feminine becomes reconstructed as speaking to female anxieties rather than pandering to a male audience, shifting the role of the femme castratrice towards attending to a female gaze.

The depth of this subtext was however overcast by the decision of the Jennifer’s Body marketing team to capitalise on Megan Fox’s status as a Hollywood sex symbol for a young male audience. Advertised as a film that pandered to androcentric fantasies (Santamaría Ibor et al., 2020) whilst in reality being made by women for women, the contract between the film and audience was broken as viewers sat down expecting the familiar patterns of Rape-Revenge and instead were challenged to deconstruct their own patriarchal perspectives (Birks, 2020). Popular audiences and critics alike did not understand the subtlety of subversion within the film, exemplified by headlines such as Rotten Tomato’s Critical Consensus article entitled ‘CRITICS CONSENSUS: JENNIFER’S BODY IS HOT, BUT THE MOVIE ISN’T’ (Ryan, 2009). Existing now within a reconstructing society however, Jennifer’s Body highlights a feminist-driven shift within the subgenre. Certainties such as that sexual assault merits a lethal response, that the rape victim bears responsibility for obtaining justice through revenge, become eroded by Cody and Kusama who aimed to introduce female agency into a trauma-led narrative without being ambivalent to and furthering male-on-female violence (Birks, 2020).

Despite Third and Fourth Wave Feminist discourses heavily influencing constructions of the monstrous feminine as depicted within Jennifer’s Body, the continued deployment of Kristevean abjection through Jennifer highlights how this femme castratrice channels Creed’s (1993) original understanding of female monstrosity. Drawing on Kristeva’s (1982) discussion of the Semiotic realm as the uncivilised and feminised world of the Other, that stands in contrasts to the rational and masculinised Symbolic Self, Creed’s position that the monstrous female figure is she who “crosses or threatens to cross the ‘border’… between human and non-human; natural and supernatural; normal and abnormal gender behaviour and sexual desire; the clean, proper, well-formed, and the dirty or deformed body” (Creed 2001: 11) is reflected in Jennifer throughout. The audience bears witness to her inhuman ability to constrict her eyes, dislocate her jaw, and burn herself (00:38:20); her friendship with Needy progresses into a more sexual affair, crossing a bisexual taboo; and the constant association with bodily wastes, from the scene in Needy’s kitchen where she spews black bile over the floor, to the gruesome murders of her victims where she practically bathes in their blood, relegates Jennifer as an abject figure.

Jennifer is not the only monstrous feminine within the film, however; Needy, who stands up to Jennifer and becomes being bitten in their fight to the death (01:31:01), ends up harnessing the demonic powers that possessed her best friend. At the end of the film, we see Needy mobilising her sudden abilities to break out of the prison she is incarcerated in and unleash them on the band who sacrificed Jennifer and ultimately caused the death of her boyfriend Chip, revealed in the closing credits through a crime-scene narrative (01:37:37). Drawing on Grosz’s (1994) philosophy of Corporeal Femininity, a position that rejects the mind/body dualism and refuses to categorise any one identity as wholly corporeal (Corcoran, 2022), Needy is presented as achieving a reclamation of monstrosity by transcending her body, challenging the body/mind dualism to enact a calculated series of revenges via her newfound powers. As such, Needy becomes recast as the film’s femme castratrice, summoned to re-establish moral order in a way does make her victim to her own corporeality.

Throughout my analysis of Jennifer’s Body, I have argued that in current climate of female representation, attention to women-based violence, and sex-positive feminism, the film finally reflects the ideologies of contemporary culture through challenging many of the essentialist features of the femme castratrice that failed to provide a space and perspective for women (Santamaría Ibor et al., 2020). In contrast to previous rape-revenge films, Jennifer is in charge of her own representation, avoiding affirming patriarchal conditions for women by staying true to her sexual nature. Moreover, her monstrosity speaks to the societal concerns of women such as gender-based violence, reshaping the role of the monstrous feminine as pandering to androcentric audiences. While the continued employment of Kristevean (1982) notions of abjectness highlights the ways Jennifer stays true to Creed’s (1993) original formulations, the rise of Needy as a femme castratrice that negotiates her corporeality reveals the influence of Grosz’s (1994) Corporeal Femininity in constructing a monstrous feminine. 

Section B: We Need to Talk About Kevin (Ramsay, 2011) and the Monstrous Mother.

A psychologically-testing film based off the book with the same name (Shriver, 2003), We Need to Talk About Kevin (Ramsay, 2011) is an unconventional Horror-Thriller that explores the past and present of Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), mother to Kevin (Rock Duer, Jasper Newall, Ezra Miller), as she comes to terms with her son’s psychopathic massacre of his fellow high-school students, his father Franklin (John C. Reilly), and sister Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich). Drawing on the figure of the monstrous mother, a mainstay of the Horror genre that was seminally introduced in Alfred Hitchcock’s (1960) Psycho, We Need To Talk About Kevin reformulates the image of an oppressive motherhood, instead situating Eva within neoliberal discourses of the ’New Momism’ ideology (Douglas and Michaels, 2004). In this section, I will unpack how Third Wave Feminist demands of the successful woman as both career-driven and caring are critiqued through Eva’s struggle with maternal ambivalence, reconstructing monstrosity through the female perspective (Slobodin, 2019). I will explore how Fourth Wave narratives of empathy encourage audience identification with Eva as she becomes symbolically castrated by her son (Gambaudo, 2011). Finally, I will reflect through a psychoanalytic framework on how tensions between the Semiotic and Symbolic realms as theorised by Kristeva (1982) remain pervasive within the film through Eva and Kevin’s hostilities.

A significant way in which Third Wave narratives have impacted the figure of the monstrous feminine within We Need To Talk About Kevin is through creating an environment where the bad mother is she who fails to fit into society’s expectations of ‘feminist winning’ (Thornham, 2015). The rise of the ‘new momism’ ideology, whereby the idealized image of domestic femininity that dominated 1950s America makes a modern-day return, can be witnessed through the reconstructing of intensive mothering as the liberated woman’s enlightened choice, integral to a self-fashioning female subject who wishes to be associated with “capacity, success, attainment, entitlement, social mobility and participation” (McRobbie, 2009: 58). This contemporary framing contrasts against past constructions of the monstrous motherhood within Horror that hinged on a controlling figure who represents the fear of being reabsorbed into the Semiotic maternal body (Creed, 1993; Kristeva, 1982), such as explored in Psycho where Norman Bates channels his overbearing and cruel Mother. The audience instead acts witness to Eva as deviant through her battle to emotionally bond with her son, the way she misses her old independent life, her unhappy transition to the suburbs where she feels both physically and psychologically trapped and not dutifully maternal. Scenes including Eva walking a new-born Kevin past a pneumatic drill to drown out his screams (00:22:22) and losing her temper with him as a toddler that results in his arm getting broken (00:45:08) reinforce Eva’s failings within the ‘good mother’ ideology (Hays, 1996).

However, We Need To Talk About Kevin goes beyond simply exploring this contrasting image of a monstrous mother as a way to unnerve a phallogocentric society that relegates the maternal figure to the abject. Rather, through an empathetic reading that is grounded in Fourth Wave Feminist narratives of ‘empowerment through empathy’ (Rodino-Colocino, 2018), the film is revealed as intended for a female spectatorship, where exploring the anxieties of being a maternal failure provide a critical commentary on a patriarchal society that adulates the neoliberal mother (Hays, 1996). This is achieved through viewing Eva’s struggle through her own mediated flashbacks, understanding how through her attempts to connect with her son and please to her husband, Eva sacrificed much of her previous life that she loved. We are exposed to scenes of her travelling in Europe (02:02:24), spending nights dancing with Franklin (00:14:14), as well as repeatedly making allowances for her son’s spiteful and calculated behaviour, such as keeping his graffitiing over her carefully designed office walls instead of trying to wipe away the hurtful act (00:41:32).

We also see her life after Kevin’s massacre, how she lives in guilt, hiding from her community, but still bringing herself to visit her son the prison that she relocated herself to be nearer to. The empathetic focus of Fourth Wave Feminist narratives thus reformulates the monstrous feminine in We Need To Talk About Kevin towards, exposing the patriarchal discourses that construct her as a failure, and more significantly challenging the stability of the monstrous feminine through tapping into the worries of a female audience who may see parts of their own realities within Eva (Thornham, 2015).

Moreover, a psychoanalytic reading further reveals how Fourth Wave empathetic discourses that position Eva as a complex individual within a pressurising patriarchal society (Slobodin, 2019) obscure the binary relationship between the castrating phallic Mother and castrated, feminised victim to reshape narratives of the monstrous feminine (Creed, 1993). Looking back on the formulation of the monstrous mother in Psycho, where Norman Bates becomes symbolically castrated by his cruel and abusive mother Norma, who despite being dead holds the phallic, the symbol of power, within their relationship (Creed, 1993), this castrating monster stands in opposition to Eva and Kevin. Seeing the story unfold through Eva’s perspective, Kevin is revealed as the castrator, antagonising his mother, and denying her the phallic privileges she used to enjoy before having him. We see throughout the film Eva desperately trying to cling on to this ‘phallus’, from how she restarts her travel writing career to regain her joy and independence, to accepting her own growing animosity toward Kevin as she loses any trust in him. Yet through the act of committing a massacre both at his school and home, Kevin truly castrates his mother, exercising his full power over her by changing the trajectory of her life permanently (Holway, 2021). This castrating figure is thus subverted through empathetic influences that find compassion with Eva.

Continuing with a psychoanalytic analysis however, it is important to address the subtextual references to the Semiotic and Symbolic realms within the film that reflect Kristeva’s (1980) argument that the female, especially the mother’s body, is aligned with the abject (Chaudhuri, 2006). We see Eva engaging the messiness of the body (Thornham, 2015), from her elation participating in Buñol’s La Tomatina festival (00:02:46), to how she picks eggshells out from her food (00:25:40), and the strenuous scrubbing of red paint from the front of her house (00:23:52). These scenes position Eva crossing the boundaries between dis/order, the un/clean (Kristeva, 1982), highlighting the Semiotic abjectness of the female form as discussed by Creed (1993).

Nevertheless, in a reversal of conventional gender assumptions, we see Kevin representing the anarchic excesses of the body, from the food and faeces which he smears as a child, the paint he throws around Eva’s office, and later to discomfiting displays of masturbation and pornographic sites in front of his mother (01:14:50). Furthermore, at the beginning when we see independent Eva revelling in the chaos of La Tomatina, it is her own choice; as the film continues and flashbacks show her relationship with Kevin becoming more strained, it is Kevin forcing his abject behaviour onto her which she resists through keeping a clean appearance and a tidy house; and then in scenes after the massacre has been committed, we see that Eva has submitted herself into an abject state where she plays with her food (00:25:40) and lives exhaustedly in a dirty house. She has become dragged into the Semiotic realm not through her own willingness, but through Kevin’s actions. This trajectory of Eva-becoming-abject through her son’s influence speaks to Third and Fourth Wave Feminist issues of consent such as the #MeToo movement that explore how people, especially women, can come to lose their sense of self through violations on their mind (Strauss and Szymanski, 2020). Therefore, although notions of the abject monstrous feminine as argued by Creed (1993) remain central within We Need To Talk About Kevin, feminist discourses have reshaped the gendered stability of this convention, exploring the abject as a forced state.

Despite not being a typical inclusion in Horror, I have unpacked in this section how feminist critique in We Need To Talk About Kevin reformulates the monstrous mother, constructing this figure through the eyes of a female audience who contend with the pressures of motherhood as dictated by a neoliberal, patriarchal society (Thornham, 2015). Depictions of Eva as disengaged and victimised by her son contrast to maternal constructions such as Norma Bates in Psycho, reinforcing the mother here as vulnerable and castrated rather than castrating; this highlights the influence of Fourth Wave agendas in reframing the monstrous mother as a figure to be empathised with (Holway, 2011). Although the film continues to draw on Kristevean (1982) abjection as a way to push Eva into the feminised, Semiotic realm, Kevin is also implicated in such abjectness, dragging his mother into this primal realm with him. As such, We Need To Talk About Kevin critiques and employs Third and Fourth Wave narratives respectively to explore the perspective of the monstrous mother herself, vindicating Eva within a society that is out to vilify her.

Section C: Midsommar (Aster, 2019) and the Archaic Mother.

The final film I wish to discuss in relation to contemporary depictions of monstrous feminine is the recently released folk horror film Midsommar (2019), written and directed by Ari Aster. Centring on the protagonist, Dani (Florence Pugh), as she copes with the loss of her family amidst a deteriorating relationship with Christian (Jack Reynor), the film follows the couple and a group of their friends to rural Sweden where they plan to attend the midsummer festival of the pagan Hårga. Midsommar both enacts and subverts the depiction of women in Horror through the image of the Archaic Mother, identified and described by Creed (1993) as the “primeval mother of everything – a parthenogenetic mother, creating all by herself, without the need for a father.” In this section, I will analyse how agendas of consent and feminine reclamation in a #MeToo era (Schultz, 2020) shapes how the Hårga rewards those who transcend the boundary between the Symbolic and Semiotic realms (Rachmaputri, 2021). However, I will go on to employ a Kristevean psychoanalytic analysis to argue that Midsommar terrifies because Dani’s co-dependence with the cult reminds us of the threat of being co-dependent with the uncivilised mother (Kristeva, 1982; Creed, 1993), and so the Hårga’s role as the monstrous feminine remains grounded upon the all-encompassing Semiotic nature of the Archaic Mother.

The image of the monstrous feminine as the uncontained Archaic Mother that threatens from within the primal Semiotic realm (Kristeva, 1982; Creed, 1993) is reshaped in Midsommar through the Hårga’s celebration of collective femininity, raw emotions, and nature, rewarding instead of punishing those who embrace the abject qualities of the cult (Rachmaputri, 2021). Dani, the film’s protagonist, is the only ‘outsider’ of the commune to survive the midsummer festival, as unlike her friends, she opens herself up to the Hårga’s closeness to nature, shared emotions, and letting go of the rational, patriarchal world that she knows. This is highlighted in scenes that depict her involving herself in group activities such as preparing meals, dancing around the Maypole under psychedelic influence, conversing through the Hårga’s language Affekt (01:43:59), and poignantly grieving along with Hårga members as she finds out Christian has betrayed her (02:06:00).

Through claiming the Semiotic, Dani refuses the demands of a phallocentric society, much like the agendas of contemporary feminist movements that aim to challenge the subjugation of the (female) body (MacCormack, 2004): Dani achieves a catharsis through this rejection of Symbolic societal pressures. In contrast, her friends act out of their individual interests and amusement, such as Josh who tries to take a picture of sacred manuscripts (01:33:58), Mark who defiles the Hårga’s celebration of the Earth through urinating in public (01.20.06), and Christian who chases his own lust (02:04:50). These three are all ultimately punished by the Hårga for the disregard towards nature, emotion, and each other, that shows their inability to transcend from the Symbolic to the Semiotic realm.

While this representation of the Archaic Mother is similar to the depictions in films such as Alien (Scott, 1979) and The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973), where the alien and the pagan Islanders respectively embody these characteristics of a ‘point of origin and of end’ (Creed, 1993) by being an omnipotent presence, the difference here lies in how Dani survives. She embraces the Semiotic, rather than fights against it, as seen with the ultimate demise of characters such as Kane in Alien, and Sergeant Neil Howie in The Wicker Man. Feminist discourses therefore play a subtle yet significant role in Midsommar’s formulation of the Archaic Mother; the figure is recreated as a way to support the protagonist and others who embrace the Semiotic and reject patriarchal society. As such, the monstrous feminine as conveyed through the Hårga is reshaped within Fourth Wave feminist narratives as a figure to support those trying to reclaim their bodies and relationships with the natural world providing a new narrative ending of femininity within the Horror genre.

However, drawing back on Kristeva’s theory of abjection alongside Creed’s psychoanalytic analysis of maternal figures in Horror (Creed, 1993), it is important to emphasise how Dani’s joining the Hårga remains a terrifying ending to the film through reminding the audience of being drawn back into the Semiotic realm of the mother (Rachmaputri, 2021). Dani’s increasing and ultimate co-dependence with the cult reminds viewers of the threat of being co-dependent with the primal and instinctive mother, unable to recognise the Self and have a separate and complete identity (Kristeva, 1982). This is highlighted in the final scenes where we see Dani overcome by nature, smiling in a horrific way at the burning building where Christian lies (02:22:22). The role of Kristevean abjection as analysed through a psychoanalytic lens thus reveals a persistence in narratives of the monstrous feminine as initially formulated by Creed (1993) that is encapsulated by the Hårga’s subsuming character.

Employing a Semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis on the depiction of archaic motherhood through the Hårga, I have argued that Midsommar reframes this figure as an empathetic escape for womanhood in the twenty-first century, whereby the tensions and troubles of patriarchal rationalistic society become swept away through the commune’s embracement of the abject (Rachmaputri, 2021). The archaic mother becomes a way to critique individualistic and selfish agendas in a way that highlights the influence of current socio-political feminist thinking. However, Creed’s (1993) analysis of maternal figures usefully reveals how the crucial construction of the archaic mother towards an inescapable co-dependence remains present through Dani’s relationship and final uncanny catharsis with the Hårga. Midsommar therefore recycles this key trait to ensure the monstrous figure still terrifies, albeit in an uncertain way.

Conclusion.

Historically pandering towards an androcentric audience, the Horror genre across film has long been implicated in the marginalisation of women, categorising her as Other through her own primal, Semiotic monstrosity that contrasts against the values of a rationalistic, patriarchal society. However, in my exploration of three contemporary films that employ the faces of the Femme Castratrice, Monstrous Mother and Archaic Mother respectively, I have argued that Third and Fourth Wave Feminist discourses have significantly reshaped in multiple ways Creed’s (1993) original construction of the monstrous feminine as a figure as playing to the phallogocentric fears and desires of an androcentric audience.

Analysing Jennifer and Needy in Jennifer’s Body (Kusuma, 2009), I analysed how Third Wave ‘lipstick feminism’ alongside Fourth Wave empathetic movements against female assault have pushed for a Femme Castratrice who stays true to her sexuality whilst acknowledging the damage of abuse in a non-exploitative way (Birks, 2020). Unpacking Eva in We Need To Talk About Kevin (Ramsay, 2011), I highlighted how Fourth Wave critiques of Third Wave ‘new momism’ agendas reshaped the Monstrous Mother as a figure that plays on the fears of a female audience (Hays, 1996), providing a sharp contrast to previous formulations of this monster through an empathetic approach. Addressing the Hårga’s role of the Archaic Mother in Midsommar (Aster, 2019), I maintained that Fourth Wave understandings of an empathetic womanhood uncover this communal figure as an uncanny yet cathartic escape from the pressures of a patriarchal, rationalistic world that Dani has been let down by, revealing this figure as embracing rather than dangerously omnipotent (Rachmaputri, 2021). Nevertheless, the influence of Creed’s (1993) psychoanalytic formulations of the monstrous feminine of occupying the space of Semiotic liminality, as explored initially by Kristeva (1982), has remained salient throughout each of these films in how the abject remained attached to the characters analysed (Rachmaputri, 2021). As such, while recent feminist movements have reconstructed how female figures have been mobilised in Horror, the interplay between the Semiotic and Symbolic through notions of the abject remains a key feature embedded in contemporary faces of the monstrous feminine.  

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