2. Readings
Linda Badley: The Body Fantastic
• “Body Culture”
• Repression and repetition
empower monsters
culturally (12)
• “Metaphors make such
themes bearable” (10)
Barbara Creed: Woman as
Vampire: The Hunger
• Female vampire and her
representation of sex, violence
and death
• Undermines the “normal”
sexual and family/gender
hierarchy (61)
• Developed taboos (69)
– Food
– Sex and incest
– Female body
– Metamorphosis of the body
– Death
3. Michel Foucault
• “Bio Power”
– Conditioning
• Discourse establishes
norms
• Develops “cultural
hierarchy”
• Divisions solidify norms
and taboos
• Not constant
4. How it relates to Badley
• How our definition of a
monster or what is
monstrous changes
• As our definition of the
monster/monstrosity
changes, so do our
images of the ideal self
(body)
• Helps us understand
abjection and how it
applies to the
Feminine(M)Other
Abject
SubjectObject
5. How it relates to Badley
• Abjection: “The state of being cast off”
• Creates boundaries
– “ Dissolution of the boundaries of death and life” and
the concept of the “eternal soul” (24)
• Allows for an outlet/coping
mechanism/education about death
• Creates symbols from images (texts)
– Allows us to develop our sense of “self” (20)
• Freud did what society did. He established
boundaries, put a label on it.
6. Creed
• Woman’s relationship to
blood
• Taboos
– Blood as food
– Female sexual aggression
– Aging (bodily change) and
death
• Idea of vagina dentata
• Reinforces abjection of
the Mother
Youth/life
Female vampire
Old/death
7. Creed
• Woman as: lesbian vampire, victim, creature
• Gender and metamorphosis of body
• Abjection and the maternal (59)
• In a world represented (and constructed) by
men, the woman (through the vampire) is
fashioned as an object (71-72)
8. The Hunger and Creed’s List of Taboos
• Blood as
food/sustinence
• Representative of
women (puberty,
defloration
menstruation,
fecundation and birth)
• Blood as “mother’s
milk” or the vampire’s
“semen”
9. The Hunger and Creed’s List of Taboos
• Female asserts sexual
dominance – moves away
from traditional gender roles
• “Feminizes” men
• Physical act of sucking blood –
biting neck (penetration of the
uterus)
• Miriam’s diminishing fertility
• Love is transgressed – little
distinction of Homo or hetero
(Creed 7)
• Act of “incest”
• Inference of repressed sexual
desire
10. The Hunger and Creed’s List of Taboos
• Female body used to
violates norms
regarding sex (gender)
and mother
– No separation between
the two (disorder)
– Lesbian (female) desire
is deadly
• Miriam’s lack of fertility
– John and past lovers age
11. The Hunger and Creed’s List of Taboos
• Metamorphosis/death
– John’s rapid aging
– Sarah turning
– Miriam’s decay/death
• John, Sarah and Miriam
never fully complete the
transition to death
leaving them as abject
• Existence as a terminal
disease/fear of death
• Body – biologically coded,
but culturally defined
(Badley 27-28)
12. Aspects of Mother
• “Mother” to John and
Sarah – gives “birth” to
them
• “Parent” to Alice
• Feeds her “children”
– Blood as Mother’s Milk
– Provides youth
• Smothers her children
– Keeps them in the attic
13. Aspects of Mother
• Returning to the womb
– Blood going down drain at beginning of film
– Basement, specifically furnace, is like hell
– Vampire as the fetus – coffins in the attic
– “Birthing” vampires
14. Questions
• Badley mentions Foucault in saying that when we
generate this “cultural hierarchy that we actually
“create” or diagnose norms and taboos. Are their other
things hierarchy “creates?” Or is it more “I think,
therefore I am?”
• From watching other monster/horror films (both old
and new) how has this idea of the abject and the
concept of “self” shifted? How is it seen today?
• Creed mentions many ways in which The Hunger
subverts the traditional vampire paradigm and
develops a new type of vampire. Discuss… Are there
other vampire movies that accomplish this as well?
