Camp Horror and the Gendered Politics of Screen Violence: Subverting the Monstrous-Feminine inTeeth(2007)
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: This essay argues that Mitchell Lichtenstein’s film Teeth (2007) is an exemplary appropriation of the femme castratrice, a sadistic and castrating female figure that subverts the patriarchal mythologies undergirding the gendered logics of both screen violence and cultural misogyny. The film chronicles Dawn’s post–sexual assault transformation from a passive defender of women’s purity to an avenging heroine with castrating genitals. First, I illustrate how Teeth intervenes in the gendered politics of spectatorship by cultivating identification with a violent heroine who refuses to abide by the stable binary between masculine violence/feminized victimhood. This subversive iteration of rape-revenge cinema is assisted by the filmmaker’s introduction of camp, a playful and self-conscious cinematic style that renders transparent the fantasies guiding the cinematic construction of violence and the male gaze. Second, I argue that this revision of the rape-revenge genre equips audiences with important symbolic resources for feminist critiques of cultural misogyny. Teeth’s avenging heroine updates the sexual politics of second-wave feminism to resist recent political efforts to regulate women’s bodies.
Source: Women s Studies in Communication
Author: Casey Ryan Kelly
Institution: Butler University
Language: English
Topic: Gender, Feminism, and Media
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2275000698