Session 3: The Feminine and the Sacred

1st Global Conference

Friday 1st May 2009 – Sunday 3rd May 2009
Budapest, Hungary

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it” – Voldemort’s words uttered by Quirrell in the first volume of the Harry Potter series were the starting point for an investigation of evil and power in these fantastic novels. Both evil and power are characterized by intentionality and there seems to be a connection between the two, as evil requires power in order to be enacted, while power when exercised as a means may lead to injustice and evil. The intricacies of power and evil are interconnected and cannot exist one without the other.

Machiavelli theorized power as a means, since in his view, the value of the end was unimportant in comparison with the efficiency of the means employed in attaining it. A vital characteristic of power is that of ego-enhancement as theorized by Dennis Wrong – which proceeds from “the ability to control other people’s lives and even to induce fear in them”, thus it is the sense of self-importance which results from the status created and the praise and esteem conferred by others. This is what is understood by power over, the concept of power I am most interested in for my purposes since it is closer to the category of evil present in these fantastic novels.

The corruption of power which creates evil characters can be applied to Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge, the two foremost villainesses of the Harry Potter novels. The two villainesses cross the line between good and evil, morality does not seem to be an issue of concern for them and they seem to apply the philosophy present in the above mentioned quote in their evil-doing, without any regard for victims, while using any means available to achieve their ends. If most people have a set of inner restraints and inhibitions preventing them from acting on every impulse, these restraints seem to be abolished in the case of our villainesses, leading to a flawed mechanism. Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge’s proclivity to succumb to evil, either under the form of rule-breaking or due to temptation, proves indomitable; hence evil seems to be intrinsic to their very nature. They portray a behavior which indicates no remorse, no regard for other’s feelings or well-being and self-serving tendencies in their conduct.

Since the world in which the two characters move is a realm immersed in magic, the fact that the two of them are witches is not relevant. However, the fact that the Harry Potter world includes both evil wizards and wicked witches is worth examining.

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On 19 February 2008, in the aftermath of the kidnapping in Portugal of the British three year old Madeleine McCann, the disappearance of nine-year old Shannon Matthews in Britain had broken in the news. With headlines from all of the national daily newspapers deploring the kidnapping as a breakdown of a decent Britain, public discourse also conveyed the story as the horror that every mother fears.

However, in November 2008 the mother of Shannon Matthews was found guilty of her daughter’s kidnap and false imprisonment. Thus, there had occurred a distinct turnaround in the way that Karen Matthews was perceived in public discourse. Karen Matthews had effectively been transformed, from the epithet of tragic mother-victim that with some difficulty had previously accompanied her image, into the representation of evil monster-villain. This paper focuses on the BBC1 documentary aired as a ‘Panorama Special’ entitled, ‘Shannon: The Mother of All Lies’. This paper argues that an integral part of the turnaround in the public discourse of Karen Matthews were the struggles to ignore her grotesquery and also the contradictions involved in defining evil as ‘clarifying’ rather than ‘figurative’. Furthermore, this may have been challenged in public discourse had it not been for the taken for granted notions in wider society of working class women as, benefit dependent, happily bearing children to different fathers and being unintelligent which rose quickly to the surface of portrayals in the wake of a comparison to the mother of Madeleine McCann.

This means that there are certain constructions that are still available and indeed acceptable. These are the interpretive repertoires that maintain femininity as grotesque and always already transgressive. This paper therefore examines and highlights the transgressions within the construction of evil when related to the feminine. Karen Matthews as the central figure in the public discourse of a heartbroken mother-come-cold hearted witch will be seen to exhibit the moral panic surrounding women when they are the main protagonists of news stories. The concept of evil thus provides a framework from which to explain female presence, their elevation and their downfall in public discourse.

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From Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to Brian De Palma’s Carrie, the monstrous motherhood has been a very popular subject in cinema and issued severally in many different ways. David Cronenberg’s Spider which focuses on the delusional childhood memories of a psychotic character attracts our attention with its innovative demonstration of monstrous motherhood and deserves to be analyzed under the framework of this subject. In my paper, I will examine the representation of the monstrous mother figure in David Cronenberg’s Spider by analyzing the misleading psyche of the main character called Cleg.

First of all, I will question the psychotic condition of Cleg by explaining his obsession with his mother, his castration phobia and his deprivation of the Symbolic order. As I explain these subjects I will refer to Cleg’s relation with his belongings which he carries in his underpants throughout the whole film. These discussions will lead us to argue the emphasis of vagina dentata and fetish in the narrative and with references to Barbara Creed’s works, I will present Cleg as a castrating figure who chooses to castrate rather than being castrated.

As a consequence of these analyses, I will reveal the misleading nature of Cleg’s childhood memories which reflect the son’s story rather than the mother’s story and accordingly, I will concentrate on the representation of the motherhood in the film.  This focus will lead us to question two different mother figures in the narrative which are a devoted, holy, asexual (birth)mother and a monstrous, law-less, sexually provocative (supposedly)step-mother. Following these, with reference to the ending of the film and Cleg’s delusional psyche, I will state that Cleg splits his mother into two different characters, one as a devoted, victimized mother and the other one as a murderous, law-less step mother.

Then, I will focus on the motives of this splitting by mentioning specific scenes from the film and emphasize Cleg’s oedipal obsession with his mother, his distorted reality and his denial of his mother’s sexual involvement with his father. I will explain that although Cleg desires his mother as a sexual object, his father tries to eliminate this desire and with the awareness of this attempt Cleg distorts his reality by turning his father into a murderer and reshapes his mother’s image by dividing her into two. Following that, I will explain the monstrous qualifications of the law-less mother figure and give specific examples to indicate her phallic character by focusing on particular scenes from the film.

After that, I will question Cleg’s expectations from her (step)mother’s monstrosity and I will explain that with the help of the monstrosity of the mother figure, Cleg believes that he can overcome every obstacle, even the prohibition of incest. Later, I will focus on the consequences of Cleg’s expectations from the monstrous mother figure and explain how he drifts apart from the Symbolic order bit by bit. And finally, I will conclude by stating how monstrosity of the mother figure leads Cleg into the darkness of the Lacanian Real.