Sebastian's FIST 418 Blog

Ending on the film I Spit on Your Grave in a way seems only fitting, as so many of the horror tropes and symbols we've discussed so far are exemplified in the film. The main woman, Jenny, seems to take elements from the typical "final girl" archetype, as well as from the less fortunate slasher film character types. Near the start of the film, she doesn't seem to resemble a final girl character much at all. She is very feminine, and lacks any "other-ing" or masculine features that so many final girls have. It is this femininity, combined with her confidence and promiscuity, which offends the masculinity of the men of the film. It is no coincidence that the man least coded masculine is the most reluctant to participate in the rape. After the rape, Jenny takes initiative, and her actions become more aligned with that of a typical "final girl". She kills the men one by one in gory fashion, and has her revenge. In killing the men however, she becomes ...

The film Hereditary  provides a good medium with which to test and observe Barbara Creed's many ideas on the monstrous feminine. The movie also lends itself to interpretations based on Carol Clover's ideas of the "occult", perhaps more so than last week's film, Creature from the Black Lagoon". The film is a clear example of the "monstrous mother" trope in horror cinema. One of the central arguments Creed utilizes is that of the "abject", the definition for which she largely borrows from Julia Kristeva's work. This abject is "the place where meaning collapses," but most importantly, it represents a boundary between the self and the "other". The corpse is the ultimate in abjection, Creed asserts. It is at once a person, and not a person at all. There are several examples in Hereditary where horror is derived from this sort of abjection. Firstly, the grandmother's open casket near the beginning of the film caus...