Creed uses the expression "monstrous feminine" because it accentuates the significance of gender in relation to the construction of monstrosity.

Coming of Age: The Monstrous-Feminine as Virginal Dentata: Ginger Snaps: (2000), Teeth (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009). Creed argues that the development of technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has allowed people to experiment with reality and time, and disassociate one's self from their own reality, as well as challenge ideas of "fixed personal identity". With close reference to a number of classic horror films including the Alien trilogy, The Exorcist and Psycho, Creed analyses the seven `faces' of the monstrous-feminine: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother and castrator. Barbara Creed FAHA (born 30 September 1943) is a professor of cinema studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Moving from mothers to maidens, this session delves into the terrifying bodily transformation of adolescence through two contrasting figures: the mermaid and the werewolf. Creed asserts that there are a variety of different appearances of the monstrous feminine which all reflect female sexuality: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, possessed monster, witch, and castrating mother. You can watch the video straight from our page once you’ve paid or log in to your Vimeo account, where you can find all the videos that you have rented. According to Kristeva, abjection is the failure to distinguish what constitutes as "self", and what is "other".

very interesting to see a different perspective on well known films; it encourages more in depth critical readings of popular texts, and certainly stimulates discussion. In an age at which anthropogenic and patriarchal harms threaten the very survival of the planet, embracing the nonhuman becomes a remedial, even liberating gesture. She performs close textual analysis of key horror films including Carrie, The Exorcist, Psycho and Alien.Moreover, oftentimes possessed women are on the verge of menstruation and their blood is meant to symbolize or suggest a fear of castration. Whereas Freud believed that the Father was the one viewed by the child as the castrator, Barbara Creed has shown it is actually the mother. In the first edition, Creed draws on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to challenge the popular view that women in horror are almost always victims, and argues that patriarchal ideology constructs women as monstrous in relation to her sexuality and reproductive body to justify her subjugation.

Creed's work using the psychoanalysis framework validates its usefulness in the feminist film theory field. Point by point, Barbara Creed has shown that the faces of the Monstrous Feminine as seen in the horror film, are based in the actual psychology of the developing child in the early experiences of childhood and infancy. Women in horror films have been consistently represented and portrayed as weak, submissive, and highly sexualized. On the other hand, women depicted as villains are portrayed as innately evil, and their monstrosity is connected to their reproductive bodily functions. In Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny, [5] Barbara Creed reflects on the representation of men in the horror genre, with a specific focus on how they are portrayed in comparison to women.

Barbara Creed's ‘ Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality’ [15] explores the impact of media and technology on subjects such as the self, identity, sexuality and representation in the public sphere.

The ‘primal uncanny’, as Creed looks at, was firstly discussed in Freud's work as just the ‘uncanny’ that linked to ideas of psychoanalysis and castration. The term vagina dentata was coined by Sigmund Freud and follows the myth that female genitalia are monster-like, having teeth. The bottom line is, Creed has traced these archetypes of the Monstrous Feminine to childhood experience.This updated edition includes a new section examining contemporary feminist horror films in relation to nonhuman theory.