2nd Global Conference
Joint Session: Erotic Monstrous (with
Monsters Conference)
Chair: Richard Tilbury
Of Monsters, Masturbators, and Markets: Autoerotic
Desire, Sexual Exchange, and the Cinematic Serial Killer
Greg Tuck
Department of Arts and Media,
Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College,
High Wycombe
Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
Of all the sexual behaviours to gain
cinematic visibility since the end of
the Hays Code and the subsequent ‘liberalisations’ of the
1960s and beyond,
masturbation seems to have taken the longest to establish itself. However,
rather than this increased visibility simply indexing a relaxation
of
attitudes towards the practice, many representations continue to adopt
and
promote a negative attitude to masturbation, one informed as much by
the
anti-masturbation hysteria of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
than by
more contemporary attitudes to the practice. In particular, in
films such
as Silence of the Lambs, Quills, The Eye of the Beholder and the remake
of
Psycho, representations of masturbation are employed to demonstrate
the
perverse sexuality of the serial killer, a lone individual who is caught
in
a spiral of ever increasing insanity, social separation, sadism and
masturbation.
Crucially, masturbation is not simply a ‘solitary vice’ in
these
representations, but an activity that still requires an other, an abused
and
often murdered other, who is reduced to a mere masturbatory prop or
pornographic object by these monstrous masturbators. For these
texts, to
masturbate is neither simply an abuse nor a pleasuring of the self,
but
always a perversion of an intersubjective sexual act. What seems
particularly monstrous is the total consumption and objectification
of the
victim by the serial killer is merely an activity that facilitates
a
consumption of the self. A reading of the behaviour of Carl Stargher
(Vincent D’Nofrio) the serial killer of The Cell (Tarsem Singh,
USA, 2000)
who masturbates while body suspended over the corpse of his victims,
will be
presented, which maps the alienated and monstrous autoeroticism of
the
serial killer. It will suggest however, that rather than ‘exceptional’,
these masturbating serial killers are merely an ‘extreme’ metaphorisation
of
a more general anxiety regarding the autonomy of the lone individual
of both
modernity and the market economy. In particular they reflect
concerns
regarding the potentially ‘monstrous’ interrelationship
between sexual and
economic conceptions of the individual. In these representations
masturbation stands as a concrete materialisation or demonstration
of the
moment when freedom conceived as a property of truly monadic individuals,
becomes isolation and the logic of individual (sexual) consumption
outside a
system of (erotic) exchange cannot but invert into worthlessness.
George Bataille’s Story of the Eye: The Monstrous as Sacred
Text
Dianne Bunch
Department of English,
Alcorn State University,
Alcorn State, Unites States of America
My paper will argue that George
Bataille’s pornographic novel Story
of the Eye reveals how the absolute monstrous, taboo-breaking,
grotesque works to point us toward an understanding of the sacred.
Bataille’s uses stock pornographic characters, Simone and
the narrator, to depict a world of complete licentiousness. The
narrator enables Simone to seduce other characters until their
final act is the seduction and murder of an angelic young priest.
Banned
at its time of publication and devalued by feminists in the United
States , Bataille’s Story of the Eye has remained
an unassimilable text of horror still capable of frightening and disgusting
the reader in the 21 st century. I will argue that the text has great
value when one understands Bataille’s theories of the sacred
and the necessity for understanding the monstrous to glimpse the truth
of the sacred.
The Monstrous and Gender: Attack of the Female
Monster-Hero
Julie Miess
Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
My paper will deal with new versions
of the werewolf (formerly known as a legendary male coded shape-changer)
and the serial killer (formerly known as a legendary male coded ”human
monster”). I will
talk about texts that seem to bring in a new female monster generation.
The choice of texts includes the Canadian werewolf-film Ginger
Snaps (2000) and the serial killer-thriller Die Hirnkönigin (‘the
brain queen’, 1999) by the German writer Thea Dorn.
Why are
these two new female monsters so exceptional? How can they help to
deconstruct conventional divisions of gender? Does a monster even
have a gender?
My starting point is that the text of Gothic horror
is a condensed version of something larger than fiction – the
monstrous cultural imaginary. At the same time, each contemporary horror
text bears the blueprint of the 18 th century English Gothic novel.
Thus, the monstrous imaginary is still saturated with traditional constructions
of ”male” and ”female”.
The archetypal roles of monster/culprit and victim – (male) ”gothic
villain” and ”damsel in distress” – for example,
are still valid in contemporary slasher film: the male white ”serial
killer” and the ”scream queen”.
Even the female monsters
we know do above all appear to be ”male
fantasies”. Monstrous beings such as the ”femme fatale” are
thus seen as embodiments of a frightening ”female Other”.
Similarly, a transgender figure like Silence of the Lambs’ serial
killer Buffalo Bill above all appears to display the horrors of suppressed
male homosexuality. To sum up: monsters generally seem to be representations
of a male coded perspective.
The female werewolf can be seen as a new
kind of monster in that it undermines the classic femme fatale-scheme.
Its furry appearance makes it difficult to see it as an object of desire.
The female serial killer challenges the idea of the dark, yet fascinating
male gothic villain. The new monster generation may represent a shift
from ”female
victim-hero” (Carol Clover in Men, Women, and Chainsaws [1992])
to ”female monster-hero” – and offer a shift of perspectives
as well as new possibilities of identification.