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“I Am a Monster, Just Like She Said”: Monstrous Lesbians in Contemporary Gothic Film

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“I Am a Monster, Just Like She Said”: Monstrous Lesbians in Contemporary Gothic Film “I AM A MONSTER, JUST LIKE SHE SAID”: MONSTROUS LESBIANS IN CONTEMPORARY GOTHIC FILM by Michelle Denise Wise A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Ph.D. in English Middle Tennessee State University August 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. David Lavery, Chair Dr. Linda Badley Dr. William Brantley First, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my wife Callie M. Wise who stayed up way past our bedtime to watch and re-watch the films mentioned in this study, discuss ideas with me, and who offered her endless support. With each new draft, she challenged me to think and re-think my positions. Without her continued support, this dissertation probably would have never been finished. Next, I dedicate it to our daughter Gabrielle, whose entry into this world came before I started writing the dissertation. However, she was and always will be my guiding light. Finally, I would like to dedicate this project to my parents, Charles and Helen Wise. Even though they don’t understand the world of academia, they continued to offer their support. My mother was unable to see the finished product but I know she would be proud. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my director, Dr. David Lavery, for his continued support of this project. If I had not taken his Introduction to Film Studies class several semesters ago, this project would not have been possible. It was in his class that I realized that I had been a film lover all my life and it was time I came out of the “film closet.” I would like to thank my other readers, Dr. Linda Badley Dr. Will Brantley for being on my committee and offering their support and helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank Dr. Elyce Helford for her guidance and support during this process. I would like to thank the English Department and the Graduate Studies Office who awarded me a fellowship that allowed me to write the bulk of this document. With their support, I was able lessen my teaching load and that allowed me to focus on completing this project. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Languages, Literature, and Philosophy department at Tennessee State University. Their support has been invaluable during this process. iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the continued existence of the Monstrous Lesbian figure in contemporary Gothic film. From film’s beginning, it has delighted and entertained the masses. However, as film evolved into a serious art form, directors utilized its appeal to the masses and began to use it as a commentary on social issues such as government control and taboo sexuality. As America’s fascination with film increased, so did the various representations of characters. In early films, lesbianism was hinted at through glimpses between characters or dialogue; however, those glimpses were short lived. In the 1990s and early 2000s, several Gothic-themed films were released that presented lesbians as monstrous and dangerous to the culture. Similar to early Gothic writers who utilized this genre as a way to hold up a mirror to the culture and to force its members to witness and to address its collective repressed fears, film directors accomplished the same effect through their films. Examining these films through a Gothic lens enables us to unravel the layers of the film and reveal the culture’s fascination with lesbianism and monstrosity, as well as establish the fact that the culture is still fascinated with taboo sexuality and has a tendency to intertwine it with monstrosity. The films that I chose to closely analyze for this study are: Heavenly Creatures, Sister My Sister, May, Monster, and Black Swan. Through a close analysis of these films, I trace the development of the Monstrous Lesbian and examine its importance and relevance to the culture’s perception about lesbianism. These films were released during a time of social upheaval when lesbians were more visible and establishing their voice within the culture. However, this visibility did not guarantee social acceptance and these films depicted lesbians as psychotic, monstrous, and socially disruptive. For this study, I termed this character the Monstrous Lesbian. When Christine Papin (Sister My Sister) utters “I am a monster…just like she said,” she acknowledges not only her own monstrosity but also how others, namely her mother and filmgoers, view her. As these films reveal, the Monstrous Lesbian disrupts the social order of the American culture and calls attention to the existence of culturally acceptable homophobia. Although it appears that there is an increase of social acceptance of lesbianism within the culture, the release of these films seems to suggest otherwise; therefore, this study is important because it forces us to acknowledge the fact that lesbianism is still considered culturally taboo and that lesbians are monsters who create cultural chaos. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER ONE: MONSTROUS LESBIANS AND FILMIC REPRESENTATIONS… 1 CHAPTER TWO: THE MONSTROUS LESBIAN AT HOME: ENTRAPMENT AND DOMESTIC SPACE……………………………………………………… 42 CHAPTER THREE: MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS, AND CONTEMPORARY GOTHIC LESBIAN FILM…………………………………………………… 85 CHAPTER FOUR: MONSTROUS LESBIANS: HORRIFYING BODIES AND UNNATURAL BEHAVIOR....…………………………………………………… 127 CHAPTER FIVE: THE FUTURE OF LESBIAN VISIBILITY IN CONSUMABLE MEDIA……………………………………………………………………………… 162 WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………. 177 FILMOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………. 187 xi 1 CHAPTER ONE MONSTROUS LESBIANS AND FILMIC REPRESENTATIONS Patricia White’s text Uninvited Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability takes its name from the film The Uninvited (dir. Lewis Allen, 1944), and her intention is clear, which is to prove that lesbians, as both characters and spectators, have been uninvited from participating in film. Nonetheless, lesbian images have been a part of cinema from its earliest days and lesbians have been able to identify with those characters. White writes that “cinema is public fantasy that engages spectators’ particular, private scripts of desire and identification. Equally at stake in spectatorship are the way organized images and sounds psychically imprint us and the way they mediate social identities and histories”(xv). Despite seeming progress from coded traces to unrepentant monsters to well-adjusted individuals, a pervasive thread continues to haunt contemporary film, and that thread is the appearance of the Monstrous Lesbian. This study centers on the ongoing debate “concerning the relationship between gender, sexuality and violence” that often appears in lesbian-themed films (Boyle 104). In other words, the continued connection between lesbianism and violent behavior is still evident in contemporary film. To best examine this connection, an in-depth study of the Gothic genre will be helpful. The context in which many lesbian monsters are cinematically “born” is the Gothic. The Gothic, beginning in literature and extending into film studies, is a genre invested in depicting and revealing cultural anxieties and fears. Through its motifs and tropes, it questions and challenges the status quo. In particular, as it concerns lesbian 2 representation, the Gothic enables a study of the ways in which gender and sexuality are formed and culturally defined, restricting and controlling behavior and perspective, resulting in limited options for women. Those individuals who challenge the binary constructions of gender and sexual norms are social pariahs, a status that not only marginalizes them, but also targets them as a threat to the established social order. Lesbians fall into this category. This study examines a small group of contemporary films, including Heavenly Creatures (dir. Peter Jackson, 1994), Sister My Sister (dir. Nancy Meckler, 1994), Monster (dir. Patti Jenkins, 2004), May (dir. Lucky McKee, 2002), and Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2010) through such Gothic tropes as domestic entrapment (both physical and mental), the mother/daughter relationship, and physical appearance of the lesbian character, to demonstrate that the continued pathologization of cinematic lesbians still exists. Moreover, while the Gothic is often celebrated for its tendency to offer simultaneously terrifying and transgressive images, thus commenting on cultural anxieties in potentially progressive fashion, this study reveals that lesbians are still portrayed in film as a source of anxiety for the heteronormative culture. Furthermore, these films indicate that the cultural anxiety that surrounds lesbianism clearly contributes to the monstrous behavior that these lesbian characters exhibit. While it can be argued that these films present the monstrous behavior that the lesbian characters exhibit as a direct result of their lesbianism, they also invite us to consider the idea that the Monstrous Lesbian is a cultural creation. In other words, it is a dangerous cycle when negative portrayals increase cultural anxieties and in turn exacerbate monstrous behavior by maligning lesbianism as dangerous and thereby 3 feeding the negative view of lesbians to society. For the purpose of this study, I am particularly interested in the idea that the Monstrous Lesbian is culturally created and only exhibits monstrous behavior after she becomes aware of her marginalized status within the culture. To begin to explore contemporary manifestations of the Monstrous Lesbian in cinema, I begin with an understanding of the social function of film. Underpinning this study is the perspective that film is an art form that reveals cultural
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