Using particular monsters as illustrations, explore and evaluate one of J. J. Cohen’s Theses.
2017
Cohen’s Thesis III builds on Thesis II, wherein the monster always escapes, to explain that evasion occurs because the monster “refuses easy categorisation” (Cohen, 1996: 6). Monsters manifest as “disturbing hybrids” that fail to be included in our hierarchical “systematic structuration”, and remain suspended between the distinctions of a Cartesian binary logic that permeates Western thought (ibid.). As such, monsters reject all objectivity founded upon scientific rationality to “disrupt neat categories of taxonomy” and form a contested cultural space (Asma, 2009: 125). This hybridity can serve to fuse together the dichotic binaries which deny the monster, allowing a dialogue that demands not only that we question the preconceived social and natural order, but that we find a solution to such “ontological puzzles” (Walker Bynum, 2001; Weinstock, 2014: 1). The monster demonstrates the permeability of these dichotomies by transgressing them, yet its artifice depends on the separation it disproves (Musharbash, 2014). The form of the monster reflects and deflects a specific cultural paradigm such that, for example, when challenging the Western boundary between human and animal, the monster’s material form will parade such a hybridity by physically bearing aspects of man and animal. Hybridity in this way only fuses categories and thus retains the cohesion of their borders, whilst more subtle forms of hybridity completely abolish them. This essay will take a feminist reading of hybrid monsters in order to reveal the fragility of Western cartesian dichotomies.
The most archetypal monster to display physical hybridity is the werewolf. The werewolf combines physical aspects of man and wolf that work together to penetrate the binary between humans and other animals by presenting the suppression of “the animal part within us all” (Steel, 2011: 12; Cohen, 2012). The Western paradigm situates humans as superior to animals to the extent that humanity is defined on the negation of animality. The wolf within this hybrid therefore reflects an abjection from humanity, yet because it is “never completely externalised … [it] betray[s] the fragility of the distinctions by which the human subject is fixed and maintained” (Shildrick, 1999: 55-56). The werewolf therefore critiques the Western conception of human as antithetical to animal, echoing Kristeva’s notion of abjection so that the werewolf’s body horror “disturb[s] [the human’s] identity, system and order” (Kristeva, 1982: 4).
Creed extends this notion of the abject to show how it “is placed on the side of the feminine” (Creed, 1993: 37). This contradicts popular portrayals of werewolves as men that succeed the masculine significance of The Wolf Man (Keeter, 1941). Ginger Snaps (Fawcett, 2000), however, embodies Thesis III and the feminine abject by depicting a female werewolf so as to disregard and permeate conventional, masculine depictions of werewolves. Teenage outcast Ginger Fitzgerald is bitten by a werewolf and thus begins the transformation into one with the onset of indisputable physical signs of beastly animality. This trans-biological transformation symbolically equates her biological pubescent transformation into a woman to the extent that the werewolf symptoms are eclipsed in the distressing adolescent trajectory. Ginger abhors both transformations which epitomise Kristeva’s (1982) abject by destabilising her identity. For example, when Ginger begins to grow chest and leg hair as a result of both changes, she reads it as a symptom of her puberty until it begins to equate the more masculine werewolf conventionality. Ginger’s steady metamorphosis into a werewolf is once again located within a masculine archetype whereby she becomes stronger and a tail begins to grow akin to the male phallus. The female werewolf ruptures both the natural sex distinction and the cultural gendered order that persists in the Western paradigm (Clark, 2008). Ginger’s physicality progresses into the liminal space between human/animal, woman/man and male/female, such that her transformation undermines all signs of human identity (Tapley, 2016). As with a conventional werewolf, however, Ginger’s original feminine body remains definitive, emphasising her liminality. When Ginger seduces the male character Sam, she removes her clothing to expose an exaggerated chest, more analogous to a man than a wolf, but her feminine breasts remain omnipresent.
It is not just Ginger’s physical body that transgresses these distinctions, as her behaviour also begins to adjust in line with her physical masculinity, whereby her strength is matched with aggression, rage and a heightened sexual desire. Femininity, and thus also the feminine abject, is constructed in opposition to masculinity, just as human is to animal, so that it comes to exist “in opposition to the paternal symbolic” (Creed, 1993: 37; Kristeva, 1982). Werewolves are often depicted as amplifying the Cartesian mind/body distinction, but by antithetically privileging body over mind as they pursue their animalistic desires. This translates onto that of reason/emotion, and unlike other werewolves, Ginger’s linear transition permits her to occupy the liminal space between human and animal, so that she wavers between mind and body, reason and emotion. Ginger derives pleasure from her monstrosity, attending to her bodily cravings for blood and sex, yet she remains aware, and often guilty, of her actions (Miller, 2005: 281). Furthermore, her irrationality is explained in correspondence to her physical nature, be it through symptoms of Premenstrual Syndrome or the werewolf. Ginger is perceived by her family and peers as the “unruly woman” (Rowe, 2011); a “masculine-female-grotesque” repudiating the normative heterosexual imperative (Clark, 2008: 19). In this way, Ginger’s transformation highlights the repressive construction of gender and female sexuality hierarchically constructed antithetical to the male (Tapley, 2016). Ginger’s ambisexual and ambigendered werewolf thus materialises the feminist inquest into the “systematic structuration” of gender normativity as she refuses to be assigned to a hierarchical binary classification (Cohen, 1996: 7; Haraway, 1992; Clark, 2008).
Werewolves are limited as fictional monsters, yet they remain a “powerful feminine archetype”, significant to Thesis III, for they stress the authentic dispute between Western binaries (Shildrick, 1999). Ginger and her loyal sister, Brigitte, are self-proclaimed outcasts who already see themselves as Other to their classmates through their deviation of the heteronormative, as depicted through their style and an obsession with death. Ginger further defines herself by her delayed menarche so that when she finally gets her period she proclaims that she would kill herself to be different but then “your own body screws you” (Fawcett, 2000). This exclamation highlights the start of the breakdown of the Cartesian dichotomy that champions mind over body. Ginger’s menstruation further reflects the “monstrous-feminine” whereby Creed explicitly attributes the abject to menstrual pollution (1993: 10), a conception shared by Ginger and Brigitte who regard menstruation as a “curse”. This view is reinforced by the school nurse who explains menstruation as failed reproduction, and describes the blood as “discharge” in the form of “a brownish or blackish sludge” (Fawcett, 2000).
Menstruation is described in negative terms which renders it abnormal. The period, just as the ontological puzzle of hybridity, is pathologized so that a solution is required in order to regain normality. The natural female body, therefore, demands maintenance and modification to prevent disruption and achieve normalised corporeality (Butler, 1993). Menstrual monstrosity is depicted as the undesired condition of life, thrust upon the adolescent girl making her defective and inferior (Shildrick, 1999; de Beauvoir, 1952). The vagina is thus rendered a bleeding wound, symbolising the woman as a castrated version of the male norm (Stamp Lindsey, 1993). The standardised singular body is an impossible ideal for a woman, who instead exhibits the assimilated monstrosity (Shildrick, 1999). Just as Ginger’s elders provide her with sanitary solutions for her menstruation, Brigitte, encouraged by the male Sam, searches for a cure to revert Ginger’s werewolf transformation, highlighting the incessant need to substantiate the binaries. The fight between the cultural and biological perception of menstruation places it within Thesis III whereby it “refuses easy categorisation” (Cohen, 1996: 6). Again, however, what makes the menstruating woman so monstrous is her normative familiarity to the male in human form and nature, but her obscure and mysterious possession of anatomical difference (Musharbash, 2014).
This depiction of the monstrous-feminine as a response to sexuality and puberty also occurs in Carrie (De Palma, 1976). Carrie highlights the social contingency of menstruation and gender by staging a contest between a sexually repressive religious taboo and the fetishization of the woman. Carrie’s mother, Mrs. White, sees menstruation as a form of supernatural pollution resulting from Carrie’s supposed sins in the face of God, contradicting the biological onset of puberty. Although we are inclined to reject this judgment, Carrie’s menarche is accompanied by her supernatural endowment of telekinesis. Carrie becomes suspended between the natural and supernatural, science and religion, and purity and pollution (Miller, 2005). Furthermore, her telekinesis acts to sever the mind from the body. The film foils Mrs. White with Miss Collins, the gym teacher, as the two advocate for either side of the aversion/desire binary. Mrs. White’s aversion is dismissed in favour of the Miss Collin’s feminine masquerade that emphasises Carrie’s newfound femininity by concealing her menstruation and transform her into a fetish object of male desire. Both objectives are extremely repressive for the woman, and Carrie struggles to correspond to either/or, so that her masquerade at the school prom becomes a “hopeless charade”, failing to cover her monstrosity (Stamp Lindsey, 1991: 39).
The female werewolf acts to demonstrate the permeability of the antithetical categories of human/animal, male/female, feminine/masculine, mind/body and aversion/desire. In both Ginger Snaps and Carrie, the adolescent girl rejects the “limited subject positions available” to her (Miller, 2005: 281), emphasising Haraway’s acknowledgment that “Biology is discourse, not the living world itself” (1992: 298). When Cohen asks “Do monsters really exist?” (Cohen, 1996: 20), the menstruating woman provides a legitimate corporeal response. By becoming neither Self nor Other, the woman becomes “deeply disturbing” to the patriarchal Self that is watching (Shildrick, 1999: 3). Given that these boundaries are so culturally dependent, the existence of the monster instead serves to question ‘Does the Self really exist?’.
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Filmography
Carrie (1976), 98 min. Brian De Palma
Ginger Snaps (2001), 108 min. John Fawcett
The Wolf Man (1941), 70 min. Worth Keeter