ABSTRACT
Horror has long been regarded as the least ‘respectable’ of film genres; it is, nevertheless, one of the most popular, making addictive viewing for its fans. Although psychoanalysis does not provide the only account of the horror film, with its concept of the unconscious it helps to unravel the genre’s appeals to audiences’ repressed fears and desires. This chapter focuses on Barbara Creed’s psychoanalytic study of the horror film in her book The Monstrous-Feminine, first published in 1993. Here, Creed focuses on the horror film’s figuration of woman-asmonster, drawing on Kristeva’s notion of the abject, defined as that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order’ and ‘does not respect borders, positions, rules’ (Kristeva 1982: 4). The abject both fascinates and horrifies: it thrives on ambiguity and the transgression of taboos and boundaries. A defining theme throughout Creed’s work, the notion of abject also appears in her later book Media Matrix (2003), where she extends it to the taste for the taboo and the sensational in television news, chat shows, reality television, the Internet, and women’s romances. Creed’s work as a whole attests to the continuing validity of psychoanalytic concepts for understanding not only horror films but also a broader popular culture.
