Just in time for Halloween season, I decided to watch the classic 1lm The Exorcist, an iconic horror movie that has held up in the 50 years since its original release. The movie was intense, building the disturbing tension over the course of the 1rst ⅔ of the movie until the final concluding sequence. When I finished watching, I felt overwhelmed trying to process the movie and how the characters were developed. The character at the center of the film, Regan MacNeil, is a reserved 12-year-old girl, embodying youth and innocence. As her possession darkens, increasingly disturbing events take place, including acts of self-mutilation caused by the demon possessing Regan. After the movie, I read several reviews and articles analysing the movie and how it has held up for modern audiences. I was surprised to read that many people find the movie’s elects and dialogue humorous, even goofy, at times, when I found it viscerally disturbing. This ties into a trend I’ve picked up on in movies: the female body acting as the foundation of horror, a place where acts of mutilation and assault are unquestioned as a plot device to scare audiences. Yet, the implications of this are lost on many viewers, who instead interpret these aspects as another jumpscare or are fascinated by the body horror. This prompted me to do some research into the history of horror-themed media using themes of femininity, sexuality, menstruation, and pregnancy as plot devices. The female body has acted as a powerful tool for eliciting disturbed reactions from audiences in horror movies for the past 50 years – but what does this reveal about femininity, bodily autonomy, and the discomfort of exposure to female bodies?
Women have been portrayed as helpless victims, unable to defend themselves against violent acts in pieces of media for years, casting them as innocent, naive, and in need of male protection – until they aren’t. Films, books, and plays have utilised the female body as a tool to invoke feelings of discomfort and even disgust for hundreds of years. Many movies in the 1970’s carry strong undertones (though oftentimes not very subtly) of these themes as a point of horror. In these movies, themes of sexual assault, pregnancy, and menstruation are incorporated into the key plots. A very famous example of this is the 1979 film Alien, displaying notorious imagery of pregnancy and assault as a phallic-shaped monster infects its victims before they are killed by its offspring bursting through their chest. The imagery here is borderline heavy handed. Despite the female protagonist, Ripley, not being infected, the act of a male character being forced to carry a parasite at the behest of a powerful mother figure, the Xenomorph, and the possibility for it to happen to anyone on the ship unexpectedly conjures discomfort for many. The Xenomorph’s form and method of murder has been analysed since its inception; visual elements of both female and male genitalia were important in the characters design, and sexuality was a key aspect of the plot. This imagery plays into the fear and discomfort we associate with childbirth – something bloody and brutal, yet forced upon many unwillingly. It is an uncomfortable, yet powerful, image.
In the last few years since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States, there has been an increasing number of movies following these themes of parasitic infections, the loss of bodily autonomy, and the use of the female body to stir discomfort. A film that comes to mind for me is the 2022 film Barbarian, filmed before the overturning, but while reproductive rights were one of the most prominent political topics. The ‘monster’ takes the form of a deformed, naked woman, kept in the basement of a Detroit house for years. She is referred to as ‘The Mother’, forcibly breastfeeds a male character, and desires to care for the protagonists as if they were her children. Here again, the imagery does not hold back. Her naked body helps drive the discomfort, her longing for motherhood, and the trauma she has endured that made her this way is unsettling. Her femininity does not comply with the traits we would typically think of – and yet her gender is vital to the story. These themes are discomforting, and to see them take such a violent and twisted form is horrifying. She is a woman robbed of her autonomy, the product of a cycle of sexual abuse, and yet she desires to embody traditional feminine roles. It is painful to watch, both because of the disturbing visuals, but also because of the compassion you can’t help but feel for her. It’s difficult to see her constrained to the basement, unable to take control of her situation. There is a lot that can be explored here, and I highly recommend watching it for yourself.
When considering horror films and the themes they choose to incorporate, delving into the deeper motivations of the writers and directors rather than taking the jumpscares at face value creates an understanding of where politics stands in media consumption. It is said horror often represents current political zeitgeist, and some of the most poignant examples of this have to do with femininity and reproductive rights. The alien in Alien isn’t there to simply be a scary, gross monster – it is a representation of fears of assault and loss of autonomy, and the brutality of forced pregnancies. The Mother in Barbarian is a woman who has been irreparably corrupted by dominant masculine forces, and yet she is viewed as a monster by many viewers. While this may be obvious to some viewers, many take these movies at face value. Some reviewers of Barbarian found the nakedness of The Mother to be a cheap way of discomforting the audience, and even as humorous. The forced breastfeeding of the primary male protagonist is uncomfortable, though the act is inherently tied to motherhood. The true horror of these movies, however, is not in the morbid or discomforting imagery, but rather the way the female body is treated. Approaching these films with a feminist view uncovers the empathy the characters invoke, but also the underlying reasons the female body makes us feel this way. It is not often the body is shown as a site of brutal power rather than a helpless victim, forcing us to confront the horri1c side of femininity.
I started this article talking about The Exorcist and the emotional impact I felt after viewing it. A key part of the plot I feel has been forgotten to some is the placement of Regan’s body and autonomy at the centre of the narrative. The most disturbing elements of the 1lm are not the devil possessing her or the warping of her facial features – it is the theft of her adolescent autonomy, the forced mutilation of her body that is akin to sexual assault, and the overt sexuality that emerges with her possession. Her adolescent, changing body is analysed as a ‘monster’ by the audience both within the movie and those viewing from the outside. A fundamental aspect of the plot is a pubescent female body being on full display, forced to perform disturbing acts and words that she cannot control. This is not merely a movie driven by grotesque imagery – it is the use of the female body as the site of horror that drives it to disturb. The presence of these themes can be seen in many pieces of horror media since the genre’s inception – I have just barely touched upon it in this piece. A feminist approach to the genre of horror changes how we fundamentally understand many stories, and may make sense of what invokes our deepest discomforts.