Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film
By Barbara Creed
Creed suggests
that in horror films monstrous male bodies often take on female
characteristics. Freud lists three types of masochism: erotogenic, moral, and
feminine, in which the “feminine position” is adopted. This, in addition to the
femininity of male monsters, may reveal a repressed desire of man to become
woman. She also mentions Kristeva’s theories of abjection, citing the corpse
and the ultimate abjection. The abject body is one aligned with the natural,
such as the way the maternal body changes and expels. Creed suggests this is
also Freud’s masochistic, feminine body. The desire for man to give birth
appears in several horror films, within which man can only give birth to a
monster.
Creed provides a useful overview of
masochism, both within horror films and in relation to those viewing them. The
concept of the abject is important as well, in that what is abject becomes
monstrous. Therefore, for fathers to become monstrous they must also somehow
become an abjection. In particular I would be interested in extending the idea
of the maternal body as abject by comparing it to the paternal. This perhaps
sets the paternal body as normative; in which case the monstrous paternal may
no longer be normatively masculine
