Showing posts with label lesbian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lesbian. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Hungry Again: A Review of Sult, a Short Horror Film

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


Sult (2018), a Norwegian short erotic horror film runs about seven minutes and thirty-six minutes (not counting the credits that roll as the end of the action). In English, the movie's title is Hunger. A brunette hairstylist, Vera (Sarah-Stephanie Skjoldevik) has an appetite for an aloof blonde, Suzanne (Marianne Lindbeck), but Vera's love, if not her passion, is unrequited. However, Suzanne does seem attracted to brunettes: the woman with whom she cheats on Vera is also a dark-haired beauty.


The film starts in the present. It's Friday, and Vera joins Suzanne in a booth in a bar. Suzanne wears the necklace that Vera gives her (in a flashback scene not yet shown). Suzanne does not look overjoyed to see Vera; in fact, Suzanne appears barely able to tolerate the brunette. Vera drinks a glass of wine on the rim of which is a split cherry. Then, Vera strokes Suzanne's cheek, throat, and chin, as Suzanne appears to put up with Vera's attentions, rather than to enjoy them. However, when Vera kisses Suzanne, the women exchange a series of additional kisses, during which Suzanne, becoming aroused, slips the tip of her tongue into Vera's mouth. Reaching behind her own back, Vera removes a pair of scissors from her waistband. Biting Suzanne's tongue, Vera snips the tip of it off with her scissors, and Suzanne falls back, against the seat in the booth, a bloody mess, in pain, disbelief, and horror.


During a flashback, Vera is at home. It's Tuesday, and she prepares for her date with Suzanne. Later, they play billiards, and Suzanne wins. Afterward, Vera gives Suzanne a necklace—the same one the blonde wears in the bar in the film's opening scene. However, Vera seems indifferent about the gift—she even rolls her eyes as Vera fastens it about her neck—and, indeed, Suzanne seems to care nothing for Vera's love for her. The next day, Vera visits Suzanne's modest apartment, where the brunette sees Suzanne kissing and caressing another woman, who is also a brunette. On Thursday, while styling a client's hair, Vera cuts her finger, which seems to suggest the revenge she takes upon Suzanne.

Back in the present, watching Suzanne bleed and shudder, Vera, now shows the same indifference toward Suzanne's pain and horror as Suzanne had earlier shown concerning Vera's gift. After retrieving the necklace she'd given Suzanne, Vera takes the tip of Suzanne's tongue from Suzanne's bloody hand, inserts the severed piece of the appendage into her own mouth, chews, and swallows, before abandoning Suzanne, who continues to bleed and shudder in the booth.


Sult is a revenge film, but there is a bit more to the interpersonal dynamics between Vera and Suzanne than simply courtship. When she meets Suzanne in the bar, Vera wears a black leather outfit that suggests a penchant on her part for BDSM. In a stereotype dating from pulp fiction lesbian erotica, Vera's hair color and dress characterize her as a dominant, or top, while Suzanne's contrasting blonde locks identify her as a submissive, or bottom. Throughout the film Vera displays her dominance over Suzanne. She makes Suzanne wait for her to arrive at the bar. Vera always initiates the action between them. Vera gazes upon Suzanne as though the blonde is a prized possession, rather than a person. Vera bestows a gift upon Suzanne, which identifies the blonde as the recipient of Vera's generosity.

Suzanne maintains a relationship with Vera, but it is a superficial one. She tolerates Vera, but she does not love her. She waits for her. She endures Vera's kisses and caresses, but she never initiates the intimacy between them, and she does not appear to treasure the gift of the necklace. She accepts it the same was that she tolerates Vera, with aloofness, with coolness, with indifference. She even expresses her disdain by rolling her eyes as Vera fastens the clasp of the necklace about her lover's neck. There is the suggestion, in Vera's large, luxurious apartment, in her clothing, in her gift, and in her bearing, of a woman who has money, but she is a controlled, as well as a controlling, mistress: she wears tight, restrictive clothing—the leather outfit and the corset into which she laces herself quite tightly as she prepares for her date with Suzanne.

It is because of Vera's money, rather than for Vera herself, perhaps, that Suzanne unenthusiastically tolerates Vera and her romantic inclinations. It is clear, though, that Suzanne does not love Vera, despite the occasional passion that Vera's lovemaking ignites in Suzanne.


Certainly, Vera is not Suzanne's only paramour. Suzanne embraces, kisses, and caresses the woman in her own apartment, and, although Vera later watches Suzanne grope and be groped by another woman—a brunette, like Vera herself—and pleasures herself, it is clear that Vera does not like sharing Suzanne with someone else.


Suzanne's intimate interaction with the other woman also suggests that Suzanne is not exclusively submissive, for, in these interactions, Suzanne not only takes the lead, but she treats her lover in a manner similar to the one in which Vera treats Suzanne herself: Suzanne, in these interactions, is the dominant person. With Vera, she reverses this role, albeit reluctantly. Suzanne, like Vera, appears to be a naturally dominant person. If such is the case, she may well resent submitting to Vera, which could explain Suzanne's reluctance and indifference to her playing the role of the submissive participant in her relationship with Vera.


It is when Vera accidentally cuts herself while styling another woman's hair—and a blonde woman, like Suzanne, at that—that Vera conceives her plan to cut off the tip of Suzanne's tongue. She will punish Suzanne's infidelity. She will hurt Suzanne, as Vera has just hurt herself. Indeed, the same pair of scissors with which she accidentally cut her own finger become the instrument with which she severs Suzanne's tongue.


The tongue is an instrument of taste. It is an instrument of communication, helping to form words. The lips resemble the labia, and, in lesbian lovemaking, the lips are often a primary instrument in providing pleasure for one's lover—in Suzanne's case, Vera. However, Suzanne has betrayed Vera with her lips and her tongue, kissing other women, women with whom Suzanne takes the lead, acting as the initiator, conducting herself in an aggressive, dominant manner.

By cutting off the tip of Suzanne's tongue, Vera mutilates her, degrading Suzanne's beauty while eliminating or severely reducing Suzanne's ability to provide erotic pleasure to other lovers. In a sense, by this act, Vera claims Suzanne as her own. However, she does so only to abandon her, to leave her moaning in horror and pain, shuddering and bloody. Henceforth, if she survives, Suzanne will be less beautiful and less able to attract and please other women.

The “hunger” that Vera feels for Suzanne is sexual, but it is also psychological. Vera wants Suzanne both physically and emotionally. Vera wants to dominate Suzanne, body and soul, When Suzanne refuses to give Vera what she wants most—her autonomy, her freedom, her will, her very existence—Vera takes it. Courtship becomes assault, physical, sexual, and emotional.

 
In certain societies, consuming part of a vanquished enemy's body—usually, the heart—indicates that the consumer has ingested the foe's courage, literally taking it into himself, so that the enemy's attribute becomes an attribute of the vanquishing hero himself. By eating the tip of Suzanne's tongue, Vera symbolically takes into herself Suzanne's own beauty and passion; Suzanne's characteristics become Vera's own. It is the final act of dominance, of control, of possession.

The question is, Does the cannibalistic act satisfy Vera's hunger? Can such a hunger ever be satisfied? Will Vera, at some time in the future, become hungry again?

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Women Writers: Greater than the Sum of Their Parts

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneer Horror & Speculative Fiction, Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson contend that women writers' horror fiction was (and is) often of a "transgressive" nature, a reaction against women's "marginalization," as a form of "noncompliance" with the rules that a patriarchal society imposes upon women (9-10).
  
While it may be fallacious and simplistic to paint the lady writers of early horror fiction with so broad a brush, it may be true, in some cases, at least, that the impulse to write this particular type of horror fiction is, at times, at least, inspired by the motivation to rebel, if only in print.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Certainly, women writers were early practitioners of domestic horror, and, as the authors of Murder, She Wrote observe, "women in the nineteenth century were expected to be good homemakers, both as wives and mothers" (53). Stories of ghosts provided a means of catharsis for Elizabeth Gaskell, allowing her to explore and criticize such themes as spousal abuse and patriarchal oppression.
Charlotte Dacre 
Vernon Lee


Sarah Waters


Jewelle Gomez
Kroger and Anderson's own glosses on the backgrounds of the women they feature in their review of women writers of horror fiction actually reveal a variety of inspirations for their writing, including an interest in erotica (Charlotte Dacre), a love of travel (Amelia Edwards), the repudiation of racism (Pauline E. Hopkins), lesbian leanings (Vernon Lee, Sarah Waters, and Jewelle Gomez), psychological instability (Edith Wharton), spiritualism (Margery Lawrence), the desire to live more imaginative lives, even if only in through the lives of the protagonists they themselves created (Everil Worrell), and a "personal struggle with . . . religious faith" (Anne Rice). 
Lisa Kroeger
Melanie R. Anderson
The authors of Monster, She Wrote, in writing about women writers of horror fiction, tend to characterize the authors the way that writers of fiction sometimes characterize the minor figures they create. As a result, Kroger and Anderson tend to reduce the authors to a single personality trait and their motivation to one or, at most, a few, impulses.
What works in genre fiction doesn't work in biography. A person is much more than a personality trait, and it is her whole life that motivates him or her, not just one or a few passionate interests. By reducing women writers to flat, mostly static characters, Kroger and Anderson do their literary "pioneers" (and their readers) a disservice.
However, the authors are ambitious, and their book provides a lot of other information besides the authors' biographical sketches of the women writers whom Kroger and Anderson profile. Though not without its flaws, Monster, She Wrote has enough good material to recommend itself highly to fans of the genre.


Sunday, June 10, 2018

Subtext: The Key to Greater Storytelling Sophistication

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In the past, when same-sex love dared not name its name, filmmakers whose movies, horror or otherwise, featured gays or gay themes had to rely on coded messages to convey their messages. While such a tactic is not necessary now that mainstream society has embraced, or is beginning to embrace, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender men and women, the approach can be adapted to other uses, offering a subtler, more indirect way of communicating that could help make horror films more nuanced in their presentation of themes in general.

The group of editors who co-wrote an Advocate article, “17 Horror Films Only LGBT People Understand,” identify several of the ways by which gay filmmakers “coded” their homosexual content.


In The Black Cat (1934), Christopher Harrity observes, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) “keeps dead women in glass cases.” Extreme misogyny, he notes, was a shorthand way, back in the day, to suggest a character's homosexuality.


In The Haunting (1963), Trudy King identifies the “Mary Quant outfits” that Theo wears and points out how she rejects a male character's “advances” while she “coyly” flirts with another female character, Eleanor. A brief mention, in a Metro article, “The V&A is holding a Mary Quant retrospective to celebrate the iconic designer’s work,” suggests their significance in the movie's disguised same-sex context: “defiant 60s hemlines were a symbol of young women shrugging off the more traditional and repressive gendered expectations of previous generations, and embracing a new world where they had more impetus to take control of their bodies and their futures.” Theo (note the ambiguity of the nickname, which could stand for either Theodore or Theodora) wears clothing that signify her unconventional lifestyle. Precisely how, or in what manner, she is unconventional is indicated by her style of dress, her rejections of the male character's advances, her sexually ambiguous nickname, and her surreptitious flirtations with another member of her own sex. Although the evidence is circumstantial, it is also fairly substantial. 


Tracy E. Gilchrist sees the clothing that Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) wears—a “formfitting sage skirt suit and glamorous fur that would make Cate Blanchett’s [awakening lesbian] Carol Aird swoon”—and her “impeccable hairdo that The Birds just can't help dive into”—symbolic of her latent saphhic desires. She is a straitlaced lady, but her beauty and sex appeal don't seem to escape the notice of “sumptuously husky-voiced” Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) who opts for male attire (pants) over feminine clothing. Gilchrist detects a “sizzling . . . tension” between the two women, who appear to represent the butch-femme pairing typical of the sleazy pulp novels of the day. (The movie was released in 1963). But there's more, as infomercial announcers like to say:
Beyond the calculable lesbian energy set off when Melanie and Annie interact, and Melanie’s fabulous wardrobe, there’s an argument to be made for those lovebirds (they’re called lovebirds, after all) as an allegory for forbidden love shaking things up. Bodega Bay was perfectly fine and set in its ways before Melanie, with her progressive ideas and those winged outsiders, turned up and created a feathered maelstrom.

For Gilchrist, it's warrant Officer Ripley's personal characteristics (“laconic sensibility, competence, strength,” not to mention her “cheekbones”) that establishes the Alien (1973) character as a butch lesbian. A lesbian context for the female Marine (who's a middle-management fighting woman, halfway between the ranks of commissioned officer and that of enlisted personnel) is created by the presence of the alien eggs and by the “feminist iconography of tunnels and dark spaces evoking vaginas, ovaries, and wombs, and . . . recurring primal scenes of birth and rebirth.”


According to writer David Chaskin, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (1985) contains a gay subtext because he promoted the movie's “gay themes.” These elements—“leather bars, male shower scenes, and a 'final boy' who is more interested in hanging out with his cute guy friend than making out with the beautiful gal pal”—were directed, Chaskin admitted (after initially denying the “gay themes” were present in the movie at all), at “teenage boys' rampant AIDS-era homophobia.” 


Subverting gender roles” can also mark a movie as bearing a gay theme, as The Descent (2005) does, claims Neal Broverman, in the film's depiction of women without men as “strong women,” rather than “helpless girls” who must face monsters on their own in the remote cave they're exploring.


In Teeth (2007), the protagonist, Dawn O'Keefe (Jess Weixler) fights “male aggressors” with a weapon unique to her sex—her vagina, which, unlike those of ordinary women, is armed; she possesses an actual vagina dentata. The movie “is a tale about empowering women,” Daniel Reynolds contends. 

Writers can learn from moviemakers who wanted to imply certain themes before it was socially acceptable even to mention such topics in a public forum. Their solution was to use subtext to suggest, rather than to communicate about forbidden lifestyles directly. As a result, they used indirect communication to get their points across to an audience who was in the know or who could relate well enough to the implications of the subtext to figure out its overt significance. This approach doesn't have to be limited to the expression of same-sex themes. The use of subtext can enrich any movie by suggesting, rather than stating openly, by intimating rather than declaring, by connoting rather than denoting.

By exemplifying the behaviors characteristic (or believed to be characteristic) of a group of people—in other words, stereotyping—writers can imply that an individual character is a member of the group whose characteristics he or she expresses. Sometimes, to drive home the point, writers may exaggerate such characteristics or behaviors.

A person who masquerades as a member of a race, nationality, or ethnicity other than his or her own could be shown as speaking and acting as members of the group he or she is imitating generally speak or behave. In short, such a character could impersonate a member of the group. A particular manner of dress, which is associated with a specific group, can help to create the illusion that the character belongs to the race, nationality, or ethnicity he or she is impersonating. Of course, it is likely that an actual member of the group could recognize the character as fraudulent, possibly with violent or even deadly consequences—we're talking horror here, after all.

Just as a character's sex and gender can be disguised by a sexually ambiguous or androgynous nickname, a nickname can suggest that a character belongs to a group of criminals, especially if “Guido,” “Scarface, or “Cool Daddy” uses criminal cant, or “gangster talk”; “The Colonel,” “Jarhead,” or “Sarge” uses military jargon (complete with plenty of acronyms); or “Doc,” “Sage,” or “The Professor” employs the argot of a particular profession, such as medicine, philosophy, or higher education. 

Symbolism can create the impression that something stands for something else. Symbolism often works on the basis of metaphor, the comparison of two unlike objects—and, in fiction, the second object is apt to be the story's setting. In a sense, a metaphor is an equation of sorts, suggesting that one thing (A) = something else (B). If Alien used a “feminist iconography of tunnels and dark spaces evoking vaginas, ovaries, and wombs, and . . . recurring primal scenes of birth and rebirth” to create a lesbian subtext, another subtext can be created by using an “iconography” (visual images and symbols) appropriate to it. To develop such an iconography, use a metaphor. Alien's iconography might have been based on the metaphor Spaceship's Interior (A) = Woman's Body (B). What if a writer wanted to suggest that a Lake (A) is a Mouth (B).


What iconography—which images and symbols—could be used to accomplish this end? Perhaps a wave (tongue) caused by an underwater disturbance rumbling (like a stomach) near a cave (open jaws) could curl over a boat, lifting it upward and backward, into an eddy down which the occupants (food) would swirl (as if being swallowed). Then, a big bubble might form on the surface of the lake, get bigger and bigger, and then pop (as though the lake had belched). A line of cone-shaped buoys could represent teeth. Before and after, people on the shore could be seen eating picnics and people aboard boats on the lake could be seen drinking—one or two might even pour a beverage into the lake, and the water could carry it toward the cave-jaws. When victims die violent deaths on the lake, as surely they would in a horror story, their blood could follow the same pathway as the poured-out beverages.) 

Deception can also suggest that things are other than they appear. Members of organized crime are famous for using legitimate businesses, such as restaurants or warehouses, as “fronts” for their criminal activities. Mafia members have held meetings in restaurants, where, in a basement room, they've committed murders, even cutting up the body so its parts could be parceled out and dumped throughout the city. A mortuary did double duty, conducting legitimate burials during which a double-decker coffin allowed the disposal of both the dearly departed in the upper berth, so to speak, and a murder victim in the lower berth. The restaurant employed a chef, servers, and assistants, and it served meals to the public, just as the mortuary provided actual services to the community. Were a novel written or a film produced with such a plot, saving the truth about what is really happening until the end of the story would make the horror all the more shocking when it is finally revealed. 

Sex-role and gender reversals can occur in horror fiction whether there is an LGBT dimension to the story or not. 

Since horror is a type of fantasy fiction, anything can happen. A woman's vagina can grow teeth. Alternatively, inanimate objects may come to life or, through personification, nature can be embodied by a giantess with the power to create an earthquake simply by shaking her body, grow plants and trees out of her torso, and become solid rock, loose sand, or running water.

By using the same techniques that filmmakers employed in less tolerant times to convey LGBT themes in mainstream movies, today's writers can imply meanings that transcend the literal text, enriching their stories while making them more sophisticated than they'd be without such an approach.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

“The Apparitional Lesbian” as a Key to Interpreting “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


Marcie Ross performs her disappearing act.

According to Lucie Armitt’s “Ghosts and (Narrative) Ghosting,” Terry Castle regards “the image of the apparition as a key leitmotif for closet lesbianism in literary history.” “When it comes to lesbians,” Castle writes in The Apparitional Lesbian, “many people have trouble seeing what’s in front of them” (Contemporary Women’s Fiction and the Fantastic, 106). This insight offers a key to unlocking a deeper meaning to “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” an episode of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series that has hitherto come to light.
 
Usually, this episode is regarded as offering, in the form of a cautionary tale, a lesson, so to speak, concerning the dangers that can result from the bullyingin the case of this episode, mostly through ignoring or insultingof someone who, for whatever reason (or no reason) doesn’t fit the mold of other people’s narrow-minded perceptions as to how one should dress, speak, and act. The victim, Marcie Ross, becomes literally invisible after she is repeatedly ignored or overlooked by her high school classmates and teachers and is rebuffed by the cliques she seeks to join. No reason is given for her rejection other than that she doesn’t measure up to the ideas of those with whom she tries to communicate or whom she seeks to befriend.
 
Castle’s insight, however, offers a subtext for understanding why Marcie may have been rejected that goes beyond the issue of personal popularity (or the lack thereof), or at least addresses this issue from a different, perhaps more significant, perspective: Marcie is rejected by others because she is homosexual, or lesbian. Once this possibility is entertained, it finds support among other element’s of the episodes plot, including characters’ actions and other behaviors.
 
Cordelia Chase, who is arguably the sexiest and most beautiful of Sunnydale High School’s students, and who is competing for the coveted title of May Queen, attracts Marcie’s ire, which Marcie directs not at Cordelia herself, but at Cordelia’s boyfriend, Mitch, whom Marcie attacks with a baseball bat as Mitch is dressing in the boys’ locker rooman obviously male bastionpossibly because Marcie, enamored of Cordelia, is jealous of Mitch, who has succeeded where Marcie herself has failed, having won Cornelia’s affections.
 
Across the face of several lockers, Marcie scrawls the word “LOOK!” Some regard this text as a message to those who have ignored her, as if she were commanding the attention that others have denied her, and, certainly, this interpretation makes sense. However, in the context of the understanding of the episode’s significance that is implied by positing Marcie’s rejection by others specifically because of her lesbianism, the message might be focused more upon her rejection of men, and Mitch, as Cordelia’s beau, in particular, as if, in having attacked her male rival for Cordelia’s affections, Marcie is issuing a warning to other presumptuous would-be suitors of the May Queen candidate. The message could also be more general: look at the results of homophobia when the target of such bigotry strikes back.
 
Her attack upon Mitch is not only a blow to the power of the patriarchy, but it is also a strike against heterosexuality. In both cases, Marcie, a female who prefers other females to males, delivers a blow to a majority of her peers of whom she, alienated from them because of her own sexual orientation, if not her gender per se, can never be a part. Her homosexual assault on a male in the boys’ locker room must be contrasted with heterosexual Xander Harris’s statement (most likely said in jest) as to how he would use the power of invisibility, were he to have the ability: “I’d protect the girls’ locker room.” Where Xander would protect girls in an all-female environment, Marcie attacks a boy in a male bastion.
 
In a flashback, Marcie is ignored (that is, rejected) by both Cordelia and Harmony Kendall, Cordelia’s best friend, when Marcie approaches the other girls while they are discussing whether Cordelia is interested in dating Mitch, now that he has broken up with a girl named Wendy. Marcie launches an attack upon Harmony, pushing her down the stairs at school, just as, earlier, Marcie had attacked Mitch with the baseball bat. Was Marcie’s attack an act of revenge upon the girl, Harmony, who had apprised Cordelia of Mitch’s availability when Marcie herself may have hoped to become Cordelia’s girlfriend?
 
Perhaps intentionally (although seemingly inadvertently), Marcie makes her presence known to Buffy (the latest object of her infatuation?) by playing a flute. In ancient Greece, women were sometimes represented as playing the flute in settings reserved for the gathering of men, such as banquets. In one such scene, by a Bygos painter, dated 480 B. C., which is now housed in the British Museum, a youth at a banquet pushes aside a flute-playing girl so that he will have a better view of the targeta nude young manat whom he aims a missile. His pushing aside the woman who plays the phallic instrument seems to suggest that he rejects her offer of sexual favors in favor of the naked youth. Marcie, as a phallic woman of sorts, offers similar sexual favors to her female schoolmates, but she is rejected by them as well. The flute (her masculinity, as it were) both lures, but also causes her rejection by, others of her own sex. In this sense, she is the rejected flute girl in the ancient Greek banquet scene, transported to modern America and transformed into an aggressive, dominant suitor of present-day young women. The link between flute-playing girls in ancient Greece and Marcie, a present-day flute-playing girl in Sunnydale, California, may seem a stretch, but the episode itself makes a connection in Xander’s speculation that Marcie owes her power of invisibility to cloaks that confer invisibility upon their wearersthe gods of ancient Greece.
 
In the next scene, as Buffy, having followed the sound of the flute, discovers Marcie’s hideout, Marcie herself attacks a teacher, Mrs. Miller, attempting to suffocate her with a plastic bag. Marcie’s motive? Mrs. Miller is not just any teacher; she is Cordelia’s English teacher, who has shown Cordeila a good amount of attention in class and who has agreed to meet with Cordelia after class on the day that Marcie arrives, just before Cordelia’s appointment, to suffocate her. Perhaps Marcie is jealous of the attention that Mrs. Miller has shown the object of Marcie’s own romantic interest or perhaps Marcie sees the teacher as a potential rival for Cordelia’s affections. In either case, it seems that Marcie’s attack upon the teacher is motivated by Marcie’s unrequited lesbian love for the May Queen candidate. Adding insult to injury, it is Cordelia who saves Mrs. Miller, arriving in time to remove the bag from her head before the teacher suffocatesand in time to see Marcie’s latest message, written on the chalkboard of what might have been the scene of the school’s second murder: “LISTEN.” The basis of Cordelia’s relationship, that of student and teacher, with Mrs. Miller is primarily verbal communication, in which the two take turns listening to one another; it seems clear that Marcie is making it known that she wants to be the one to whom Cordelia speaks and the one to whom Cordelia, in turn, listens. Speaking and listening, for Marcie, seems to represent more than mere communication. Conversation, from which she is always excluded, represents relationships.
 
The fact that Cordelia is competing for the title of May Queen is also significant, for Cordelia’s entry in the contest seems to have been the inciting moment, as it were, that sparks Marcie’s attacks. Marcie had not resorted to violence before now, although, as the episode’s flashbacks make clear, she has been ignored, rejected, and insulted on several occasions well before the May Day contest. The competition, however, draws attention to Cordelia, casting her in the light of a beautiful woman, rather than merely a popular peer. Cordelia’s popularity is joined with an emphasis upon her beauty and sex appeal by her participation in the contest, which, it seems likely, she will win, as does Cordelia’s recent dating of the athletic and manly Mitch. Indeed, another person who attracts Marcie’s attention, Buffy Summers herself, was the winner of a similar competition at the high school Buffy had previously attended. Although it is true that Buffy is also Cordelia’s protector, Buffy is also an attractive young woman who allies herself with Cordelia, rather than with Marcie.
 
Willow Rosenberg, who, ironically, becomes or (depending upon one’s point of view concerning the matter) discovers her own homosexuality later in the series, finds that, like everyone else to whom Marcie had presented her high school yearbook, she has signed it “Have a great summer,” a throw-awayindeed, dismissivepseudo-sentiment that, Xander informs the audience, is “the kiss of death.” As it turns out, the line is almost the seal of their own deaths, for Marcie lures Willow, Xander, and Buffy’s mentor, the school’s librarian, Rupert Giles, into the boiler room, where she locks them, after opening a gas valve so that their place of confinement will fill with deadly fumes. Their ignoring (that is, rejection) of Marcie becomes her “kiss of death” to them.
 
Having won the May Day competition, Cordelia dresses for the award ceremony, and Marcie knocks her out. However, Buffy, who serves as Cordelia’s bodyguard, discovers her unconscious charge. Before Buffy can act, Marcie jabs Buffy with a needle and injects her with a sedative. The girls awaken, strapped into chairs, the word “LEARN” on a curtain before them. Marcie, who has supplied herself with an array of surgical instruments, informs her captive audience that Cordelia herself will become the object lesson, after Marcie uses her instruments to carve up the beauty queen’s face. However, after Marcie cuts Cordelia with a scalpel, drawing blood, Buffy kicks the surgical tray from the attacker’s hands, frees herself, and does battle with the invisible girl. Buffy, who, the series makes abundantly clear through her multiple romantic liaisons with powerful males of unquestionable masculinity and virility, such as Angel, Spike, and Riley Finn, is heterosexual, takes on the lesbian threat in single, hand-to-hand combat, ironically using her sense of hearing to locate her invisible opponent, whom she defeats by revealing her presence in shoving her into a curtain that falls over and drapes Marcie, allowing Buffy to knock her out.
 
The method by which Buffy wins the fight with Marcielisteningsymbolizes, for Marcie, both interpersonal relationships and attention, and becomes the vehicle, as it were, for Marcie’s possible redemption, for, following her defeat and capture, she is led away by government agents to a clandestine school for spies, where, as a new student among other invisible classmates, her first lesson, as her textbook’s title implies, is Assassination and Infiltration, specialties in which she has already demonstrated some expertise. The episode’s conclusion suggests that there is a place in society for Marcie and others of her kindthe “apparitional lesbians” of whom Castle writesbut it is not a place in which she can be visible (that is, be accepted as herself). To be accepted, even tacitly, she must remain in the closet, hidden and invisible, an apparition. In seeking an explanation for Marcie’s condition, Giles speculates that her invisibility has been caused, in fact, by her being ignored and rejected by her peers. According to a principle of physics, he says, the perceptions of the group can alter or mold reality itself, as has been the case, he thinks, with Marcie: her peers’ perceptions of her as virtually non-existent have caused her to become invisible to others. The conclusion of the episode reinforces Giles’ observation, concluding with Marcie’s marginal acceptance as a closeted, or “apparitional,” lesbian.
 
The series’s later transformation of Willow into a lesbian (or its revelation of her homosexuality) and that of the minor characters Larry Blaisdell and Scott Hope, as well as Willow’s protracted lesbian affairs with Tara Maclay and Kennedy, further indicate that Marcie Ross’ motive may have been to avenge her rejection by her peers because of her lesbianism, since such story lines demonstrate Joss Whedon’s interest in same-sex themes. At the same time, Marcie’s treatment invites the same sort of criticism as the treatment that the series’s writers gave to Willow’s homosexuality and its expressions. Homosexuals do not fare well in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and some contend that there is a reason for it: the writers’ own homophobia. Tara is killed, Willow grieves, Scott spreads rumors that Buffy is gay, and, when Larry is killed during a fight with his hometown’s demonic mayor, Willow dismisses him by telling Amy Madison (who, in the form of a rat, has been out of action for several years, in protective custody inside a cage in Willow’s bedroom), that Larry won’t be taking her to the prom, as she’d hoped, because “Larry’s gay, Larry’s dead, and high school’s kind of over.”

The mixed messages that Buffy the Vampire Slayer delivers concerning gays mirror the ambiguity that surrounds them in contemporary society. The series, despite its boldness in delving into thorny social and political issues (albeit often in the disguised forms of demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and witches), is as much a mirror of its times, in many ways, as it is a corrective lens, and this ambiguity is as apparent in its depiction of gays and lesbians as it is in its portrayal of other minorities and their causes. Sometimes, when television crusades instead of entertains, it becomes more propagandistic, whatever its momentary view might be, than educational. As long as viewers are aware of this and don’t take their television shows too seriously, an episode like “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” may be, for some, tolerable fare, even with its “apparitional lesbian.” Others may opt to change the channel—or opt out of watching the series for good.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

"Christabel": The Prototypical Lesbian Vampire, Part II

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


As we saw in a previous post, the first part of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem Christabel ends with the protagonist imperiled by the strange, abducted woman, Geraldine, whom Christabel met while at prayer in the woods near her father’s castle and invited to share her bedroom--and then her bed--for the night, after being seduced by her houseguest’s beauty and spellbound by her magic breasts.

In Part II of the poem, as the castle’s bell rings to announce the dawn, Geraldine awakens and dresses before awakening Christabel. Although she seems a bit confused, it seems to Christabel that she has “sinned” somehow. Her confusion may be the result of her sleep, but it also seems, as does her forgetfulness of how, exactly, she has “sinned,” that she is also perplexed as a result of the spell that Geraldine has cast upon her. Christabel is still under the influence of her houseguest’s enchantment. The women visit Sir Leoline’s bedchamber, wherein the baron has himself just awakened. Geraldine has assumed the form and appearance of the daughter of a neighboring nobleman, a former friend and present foe of Sir Leoline named Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine. When Sir Leoline hears how Geraldine was abducted, he determines to avenge Geraldine’s honor by sponsoring a tournament at which he may “dislodge” the “reptile souls” of her abductors “from the bodies and forms of men” which they have adopted. As her father embraces Geraldine, Christabel has a momentary, highly disturbing vision of Geraldine’s true form and nature:
And fondly in his arms he took
Fair Geraldine, who met the embrace,
Prolonging it with joyous look.
Which when she viewed, a vision fell
Upon the soul of Christabel,
The vision of fear, the touch and pain!
She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again--
(Ah, woe is me! Was it for thee,
Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?)
Again she saw that bosom old,
Again she felt that bosom cold. . . .
However, Christabel comes at once back under Geraldine’s spell, and Sir Leoline sends his bard, Bracy, to fetch Lord Roland, to retrieve his daughter (i. e., Geraldine, who impersonates the girl), promising to meet him upon his way. He regrets that he and Roland are no longer friends, repenting “of the day/When” he “spake words of fierce disdain/To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine.” Bracy begs Sir Leoline not to do so, however, advising him of a dream he’s had in which Christabel, in the form of a dove, is being squeezed to death by a green snake at the base of a tree in the forest near the baron’s castle. Again, the poem’s narrator calls upon Jesus and Mary to protect and defend Christabel, implying that the young woman is in spiritual danger. However, Sir Leoline, having fallen under Geraldine’s spell, as has his daughter, says that he and Sir Roland will crush any such serpent, at which point the narrator describes Geraldine as a lamia, or serpent-woman:
A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy;
And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head,
Each shrunk up to a serpent’s eye,
And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread,
At Christabel she looked askance!--
One moment--and the sight was fled!
In case the reader, being, perhaps, a little slow, has missed the previous implications, Coleridge makes it clear that Geraldine is the very serpent (or serpent-woman) of which Bracy dreamed. It is she who threatens the imperiled Christabel.

When Geraldine’s spell begins to lose its force upon Christabel, she, recalling the true appearance and nature of the lamia, bids her father to send Geradline away at once. However, the baron, still under Geraldine’s sway, is ashamed at his daughter’s inhospitable attitude and sends Bracy upon his way, ad Christabel quickly comes again under Geraldine’s enchantment.
Here, the poem (another of Coleridge’s “fragments”) ends, although, as we saw in the previous post concerning this work, the poet is alleged to have intended to finish it according to this storyline, identified by Coleridge’s biographer, James Gilman:
Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple; but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered--the edifice itself being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in the meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Now ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great disgust for her once favored knight.

This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with the hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her. . . [betrothal]. Thus defeated, the supernatural being Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a reconciliation and explanation between father and daughter.
Since Coleridge never ended the poem, it’s not possible to say how he would have developed its overall theme, but, of course, the idea that the Christabel’s true love is a knight whose arrival in the proverbial nick of time brings the lesbian lamia’s plans to wed Christabel to naught is fraught with difficulties, to say the least, and seems to support the patriarchal and heterosexual status quo, as horror typically does, both identifying the matriarchal and homosexual threats that Geraldine represents with the monstrous Other which is to be vanquished so that normal order may prevail and all may, once more, be right with the world. In this regard, as in equating lesbians to female vampires, Coleridge’s poem also sets the tone for many movies that take up this motif.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

"Christabel": The Prototypical Lesbian Vampire


She’s sweet and chaste and pure and innocent and sexy and girl-next-door and religious and probably blonde, and she’s named Christabel. She’s the victim.

Her dark half and lover is mysterious and sexually experienced and seductive and exotic and blasphemous and probably brunette, and she’s named Geraldine. She’s the prototypical lesbian vampire.

Reveler upon opium when he was not writing poetry or literary criticism (or dodging bill collectors), poor, but brilliant, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, among other eerie poems, such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and “Kubla Khan,” a narrative ditty about a lesbian vampire named Christabel. It has gotten relatively short shrift among publishers and is not as well known among the general public as other of the poet’s works. If one has encountered the poem at all, it was most likely during a class concerning poetry or English literature. It is a disturbing poem, and, since it involves a good deal of horror, terror, revulsion, and abnormality, it is a good subject for study by horror writers, professional and aspiring.

While praying beside an oak tree in the wee hours of the morning, Christabel encounters a strange stranger named Geraldine, who says men have abducted her from her home. Enchanted by Geraldine’s seductive beauty, Christabel, perhaps knowing a good thing when she sees it (she may even regard Geraldine as a response to her prayer), takes the stranger home with her, whereupon Christabel’s father, Sir Leoline, a baron, becoming infatuated with Geraldine, orders a celebratory parade to declare her rescue. Here, the poem (another of Cole ridge’s “fragments”) ends, although the poet is alleged to have intended to finish it according to this storyline, identified by Coleridge’s biographer, James Gilman:

Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple; but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered--the edifice itself being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in the meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Now ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great disgust for her once favored knight.

This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with the hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her. . . [betrothal]. Thus defeated, the supernatural being Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a reconciliation and explanation between father and daughter.

The verse is almost adolescent, or, as critics prefer to say, when addressing the work of a member of the literary canon, childlike:

‘Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu--whit!-- Tu--whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.

Coleridge not-so-subtly plants some clues that Geraldine may be as monstrous as she is beautiful, for she refuses to thank the Virgin Mary for her rescue:

So free from danger, free from fear,
They crossed the court : right glad they were.
And Christabel devoutly cried
To the Lady by her side,
Praise we the Virgin all divine
Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!
Alas, alas! said Geraldine, I cannot speak for weariness.

Uh oh!

The fire likes her, too; it leaps in her presence, to show the reader, again, that there’s something odd about Geraldine:

They passed the hall, that echoes still,
Pass as lightly as you will!
The brands were flat, the brands were dying,
Amid their own white ashes lying;
But when the lady passed, there came
A tongue of light, a fit of flame;
And Christabel saw the lady's eye,
And nothing else saw she thereby. . . .

Smitten by her seductress, mesmerizing houseguest, Christabel assures Geraldine that Christabel’s father sleeps: “O softly tread, said Christabel,/ My father seldom sleepeth well.” Is Christabel’s caution a concern for her father’s rest or an invitation of sexual dalliance with Geraldine? Their destination, and they stealthy way in which they approach it, suggests that Christabel may not be as innocent and virtuous as she appears to be, for she leads her houseguest, with the utmost caution, to her bedroom, where she offers her a glass of wine that Christabel’s now-deceased mother (and, presently, her “guardian spirit”) made from wildflowers:

Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare,
And jealous of the listening air
They steal their way from stair to stair,
Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,
And now they pass the Baron's room,
As still as death, with stifled breath!
And now have reached her chamber door;
And now doth Geraldine press down
The rushes of the chamber floor. . . .

. . . O weary lady, Geraldine,
I pray you, drink this cordial wine!
It is a wine of virtuous powers;
My mother made it of wildflowers.

The next moment, her name having been mentioned, the spirit of Christabel’s mother appears, but only Geraldine can see the phantom, and she orders the ghost to leave.

O mother dear! that thou wert here!
I would, said Geraldine, she were!

But soon with altered voice, said she--
`Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!
I have power to bid thee flee.'
Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?
Why stares she with unsettled eye?
Can she the bodiless dead espy?
And why with hollow voice cries she,
`Off, woman, off! this hour is mine--
Though thou her guardian spirit be,
Off, woman. off! 'tis given to me.'

Invoking her authority to be alone with Christabel, Geraldine enforces her right, not wanting to be bothered by her enchanted hostess’ mother’s spirit hanging about like a spectral chaperone. Once the ghost has departed, Geraldine wastes no time in further seducing Christabel. She instructs Christabel to “unrobe” herself and to get into bed. Christabel does as she’s directed, obviously still under Geraldine’s spell. Unable to sleep, she studies Geraldine’s beautiful face and form, and the young hostess’ voyeurism is rewarded by a glimpse of Geraldine’s breast, which elicits a cry from the poem’s narrator for divine protection for Christabel:

But now unrobe yourself; for I
Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie.'

Quoth Christabel, So let it be!
And as the lady bade, did she.
Her gentle limbs did she undress
And lay down in her loveliness.

But through her brain of weal and woe
So many thoughts moved to and fro,
That vain it were her lids to close;
So half-way from the bed she rose,
And on her elbow did recline
To look at the lady Geraldine.

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom, and half her side--
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

Her charms having worked their magic, Geraldine, after a moment’s confused hesitation (probably included to make the meter work), gets into bed with Christabel, wherein they stretch out alongside one another, lay in one another’s arms, and, presumably, experience greater intimacies than those that a mere embrace may provide:

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;
Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
Deep from within she seems half-way
To lift some weight with sick assay,
And eyes the maid and seeks delay;
Then suddenly as one defied
Collects herself in scorn and pride,
And lay down by the Maiden's side!--
And in her arms the maid she took. . . .!

At last, the mesmerizing Geraldine explains the magic of her enchanted “bosom” to her victim:

And with low voice and doleful look
These words did say :
`In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell,
Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

So ends the first part of the poem, in which the princess Christabel, having befriended a strange, abducted woman, Geraldine, whom she’d met while she’d been praying in the woods near her father’s castle, shelters her for the night, only to be seduced by her houseguest’s beauty and to be spellbound by her magic breasts.

Despite the adolescent versification and the clumsy plot, the poem does have a certain seductive and mesmerizing effect upon the reader, drawing him or her into the magic of Geraldine’s enchanted “bosom” and suggesting that the poor, chaste Christabel, despite the narrator’s continued pleas for her protection, is, both sexually and otherwise, her houseguest’s victim:

It was a lovely sight to see
The lady Christabel, when she
Was praying at the old oak tree.
Amid the jaggéd shadows
Of mossy leafless boughs,
Kneeling in the moonlight,
To make her gentle vows.

Her slender palms together prest,
Heaving sometimes on her breast;
Her face resigned to bliss or bale--
Her face, oh call it fair not pale,
And both blue eyes more bright than clear.
Each about to have a tear.:

With open eyes (ah, woe is me!)
Asleep, and dreaming fearfully,
Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis,
Dreaming that alone, which is--
O sorrow and shame! Can this be she,
The lady, who knelt at the old oak tree?
And lo! the worker of these harms,
That holds the maiden in her arms,
Seems to slumber still and mild,
As a mother with her child.

A star hath set, a star hath risen,
O Geraldine! since arms of thine
Have been the lovely lady's prison.
O Geraldine! one hour was thine--
Thou'st had thy will! By tairn and rill,
The night-birds all that hour were still.
But now they are jubilant anew,
From cliff and tower, tu--whoo! tu--whoo!
Tu--whoo! tu--whoo! from wood and fell!

And see! the lady Christabel
Gathers herself from out her trance;
Her limbs relax, her countenance
Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids
Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds--
Large tears that leave the lashes bright!
And oft the while she seems to smile
As infants at a sudden light!

Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep,
Like a youthful hermitess,
Beauteous in a wilderness,
Who, praying always, prays in sleep.
And, if she move unquietly,
Perchance, 'tis but the blood so free
Comes back and tingles in her feet.
No doubt, she hath a vision sweet.
What if her guardian spirit 'twere,
What if she knew her mother near?
But this she knows, in joys and woes,
That saints will aid if men will call :
For the blue sky bends over all!.

No wonder lesbian and feminist critics regard this fragmented poem as one of the great ones of world lit.

The lesbian vampire has since become a staple of erotic horror, appearing in many legitimate, if “R”-rated, films, including:

Eternal (2004): Detective Raymond Pope’s search for his missing wife leads him to the estate of a wealthy woman, Elizabeth Kane, who may be the latest incarnation of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the vampire who bathed in virgins’ blood.

Lost for a Vampire (1971): A writer researching a book visits an all-girls’ boarding school inhabited by lesbian vampire students.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971): In Turkey, American lawyer Linda Westinghouse’s dreams about being harassed and seduced by a dark-haired lesbian vampire beauty come true.

Les Frissons des Vampires (1970): Honeymooning couples are victimized by a castle of lesbian vampires.

Vampyres (1974): A lesbian couple lures innocent passersby to their deaths, one of the seductresses finally falling prey to a woman she seduces.

The Velvet Vampire (1971): A vampire woman comes out of the desert to seduce a hippie couple.

The Vampire Lovers (1970): The first of a trilogy of films about lesbian vampires, this one recreates, more or less faithfully, Sheridan LeFanu’s novel, Camilla. The lesbian is rival against a man for the affections of a woman whom both desire. He wins.

Blood and Roses (1960): A dead vampire’s spirit lives again by possessing Camilla, who narrates the tale.

Daughters of Darkness (1971): A honeymooning couple encounters Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who seduces the bride.

The Hunger (1983): Miriam Blaylock seduces scientist Sarah Roberts.

One into which it was harder for some critics to sink their teeth into is Lesbian Vampire Killers (to be released in 2009), a comedy in which men seek to rescue their women from a gang of lesbian vampires who have victimized a small Welsh town.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman
Concerning The Descent (2205), it behooves one to ask who is descending and into what, precisely, the characters are descending. The “who” is a team of nubile young women, and the “what” is an underground cavern. Symbolically, a cavern represents the womb, and an underground world suggests the interiority of the person, an interiority that is not normally seen or surveyed—the unconscious mind. The idea of descending, of “going down,” also has, perhaps, a vaguely sexual—and, in the context of an all-female cast, a homosexual, or lesbian—connotation.

Women are going down together, inside a giant womb symbol, just as they are undertaking an exploration of their unconscious minds. Women often regard one another as rivals rather than as friends—or so it is said, at any rate. The Descent builds upon this idea of same-sex rivalry. Although they do encounter strange, fetus-like creatures, they discover, as their relatively superficial friendships falter, that they actually have more to fear from one another than from the monsters as they become as much their own enemies as the adversaries of the beasts that stalk them.

The cast of characters ranges across the spectrum of social roles available to contemporary women, and the women’s varied nationalities and ethnicities suggest that this movie is about all women everywhere, rather than just the five who actually make up the expedition’s party. Juno is the intrepid adventuress; Sarah, a Brit, is the wife and mother; the British Beth, her friend, is her confidante; and the European sisters, Rebecca and Sam (note the masculine name), are, respectively, the timid female and the competent professional woman. The only man in any of the women’s lives, Sarah’s husband, Paul, a role-reversed Mr. Mom who tends to their daughter, Jessica, is out of the picture, as is the child: father and daughter were killed in a car accident following a rafting adventure in which Sarah and her girlfriends participated. Juno, the movie suggests, may be bisexual, for, just before their spelunking expedition begins, she and her team are joined by the reckless and obviously butch Holly, Juno’s friend. Wife-and-mother Sarah and her best friend, Beth, harbor resentment toward Juno, who abandoned them the previous year. Her abandonment of her friends haunts Juno’s dreams, and it is obvious that she feels guilty about her actions.

These dreams also set up the shifting themes of the character’s waking (conscious) and sleeping (unconscious) lives, heralding their descent into their unconscious, where they will confront their deepest, most secret fears, as embodied by the strange fetus-creatures who will hunt them.
The contours of the cave they explore resemble the shape of the womb. Wide at the entrance (vagina), it narrows toward the middle (cervix), and then opens again, into another wider space (uterus, or womb). As the women negotiate their way through the womb-cave, Sarah, the wife and mother, gets stuck and, suffering from claustrophobia, panics. As subtext, her becoming trapped seems to represent pregnancy, which causes a woman to get “stuck,” physically and, to some extent, both emotionally and socially, if not vocationally, as well, for nine months in a process that, for many, epitomizes femininity. Beth, her best friend, plays the role of the midwife, delivering Sarah, but the birth process represented by Beth’s freeing Sarah from the cave’s narrowed passageway goes awry: the womb-cave collapses, burying the women inside a womb-become-a-tomb. Their gender, especially as it is involved in pregnancy, has not only trapped them, but it has also, in fact, buried them alive.

Juno announces that she has duped her friends. In pretending that they would be exploring an already-charted cavern while taking them to an unexplored cave instead, she has betrayed her fellow women. Femininity, represented by the charted cavern, was once familiar and non-threatening, but, now, as represented by an unknown cave, it has become an alien, unknown, and possibly hazardous region. Juno has risked their lives along with her own to realize her ambition to have a cave named for her as a sort of shortcut to a symbolic or surrogate motherhood.

Juno seeks a new way by which women can generate and produce, if not reproduce, except that the way is not new. It is the age-old technological-masculine substitute for women’s natural ability to reproduce life through the feminine-exclusive means of pregnancy and childbirth, as men seek to create material artifacts through technological-masculine means in imitation of, and compensation for, women’s natural-feminine ability to have children. Juno seems to want to usurp these technological-masculine means by asserting her will over the other women and over the womb-cave to which she has brought them for this purpose. In the process, she has endangered the lives of both herself and the other members of the party, ostensibly her friends but really her rivals. None of them sees the other danger—the drooling mouth, a sort of vagina dentata—that appears, briefly, in the foreground of the scene. Playing the role of the midwife a second time, Beth points a way out of the womb-cave: art, in the form of a mural painted by Native Americans (Roseau’s “noble savages”), shows the trapped women a way out of their predicament, depicting a second exit from the womb-cave.

As they continue their descent, Holly, thinking she sees sunlight, rushes along the cavern, heedless of Juno’s command to slow down, and falls, breaking a leg. Lesbianism, with a patina of machismo, as an alternative means of satisfying one’s sexual desires, is crippled, and it hinders women in their explorations of themselves as individuals and of their femininity as women. As the sisterhood tends to their injured comrade, the traditional wife-and mother, Sarah, wanders off, on her own, encountering one of the womb-cave’s misshapen, aborted-fetus-like monsters, which seem to represent her (and her companions’) forsaking of traditional and biological maternal roles. The creatures are an army, it seems, of outraged fetuses or, perhaps, could-have-been fetuses, who were aborted by virtue of the women’s decision to renounce their baby-making capability in favor of pursuing the more traditionally masculine role of explorer. Things quickly go from bad to worse.
The lesbian has been crippled, but now she is killed by one of the creatures, and her ostensible lover, Juno, the leader of the women’s group, struggles with the murderous monster for the remains of the slain woman. The monster, as an aborted fetus, perhaps, represents the traditional role of women or, at least, its outcome, but it is a role that has been thwarted by the women’s will—their choice—to engage in spelunking.

By using a tool—a pickax, representing an artifact of the technological-masculine order—Juno scars the fetus-monster’s face, but it drags Holly’s body off as a second monster attacks Juno. The women’s leader manages to kill her attacker, with the man-made pickax, but she also mortally wounds the timid member of their sisterhood, the wife-and-mother’s best friend, Beth. In denying one’s femininity, an alpha woman like Juno, it appears, can have a negative, even a fatal, effect on the lives of lesser (read, more traditional) women. Feminism, especially in its extreme form, may not be good for all ladies. As Beth begs Juno to help her, Juno, as if confirming the prophetic nature of her earlier nightmares, abandons Beth to her fate. Sarah dreams of her daughter, but, this time, Jessica has the face of one of the aborted-fetus-monsters, the imagery establishing the thematic connection between children (or would-be children) and their abandonment (or abortion).

As if crippling and then killing the renegade woman-lesbian were not enough for the outraged, vengeful fetus-monsters, the creatures fall upon Holly’s corpse, consuming it, as Sarah, rescued by Juno, flees. The women discover that the creatures are blind and rely upon their heightened sense of hearing to hunt their prey.

The masculine-named Sam is embracing her sister, the distraught, timid girly girl, Rebecca; however Sam, emasculated with fear at the sight of a monster, is unable to protect or to defend her sister, and it is up to heroic Juno, armed with the man-made pickax, once again, to save a damsel in distress.

In her retreat from the feeding pit in which the monsters are devouring the remains of the lesbian, Sarah encounters Beth, telling her friend how Juno had abandoned her, and Sarah fulfills Beth’s request that she kill her to put her out of her misery. The wife-mother has killed her midwife, but, it appears, not soon enough, for a child-like monster attacks Sarah, forcing her to kill (abort) the fetus-creature. Nature, through its exercise of the biological imperative, reasserts its will, as another fetus-monster —the slain creature’s mother (or the mother role itself, which has been thwarted by Sarah’s murder of the child)—attacks Sarah.

In fending off the female monster’s attack, Sarah falls into a pool of (menstrual?) blood, where the female monster (maternal instinct) pins her. Using a sharp bone fragment (symbolic, it seems, of the death instinct, which, in Freudian psychology, is opposed to eros, the life instinct), Sarah kills the monster, but its mate, the male of the species, then attacks her. She manages to kill it with the bone fragment as well.

Sam and Rebecca are next to be dispatched by the monsters, before the creatures force Juno to jump into a pit of water. After killing a creature lurking in the water, Juno climbs the side of pit, but loses her grip and slides back into the crater. Sarah, appearing above, grabs her, hauling her out of the depression. It’s obvious from her expression that she scorns Juno for having abandoned Beth to her fate. However, her contempt is forgotten for the moment when they are again attacked by the fetus-creatures. They kill their attackers, and, when Juno is distracted by additional creatures, Sarah stabs Juno in the leg, abandoning her to her fate, as Juno had earlier abandoned Beth.

As the monsters descend upon Juno, Sarah flees, escapes through an exit in the cave, and drives off—or so she thinks. As Juno’s bloodied corpse appears beside her in the car’s passenger seat, she realizes that she is merely daydreaming; her escape was just an illusion, and the exit she thought she’d seen was nothing. She’s fled into a dead-end arm (a Fallopian tube) of the cavern. She thinks of her daughter, who offers her birthday cake. The monsters—fetus-like creatures representing, perhaps, her abandonment of her role as a mother—are heard, descending upon her, as the film ends.

The Descent may be regarded as a repudiation of extreme feminism’s demand that women, to become authentic individuals, abandon the roles of mother and wife, forsaking family and even the childbearing role that nature and biology, no less than society, have assigned to them. This is the lesson that the women learn, too late, from their exploration of their unconscious minds that is represented by the cave, which also doubles as the ultimate symbol of femininity, the womb itself.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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