ABSTRACT
Wife, mother, daughter, virgin, whore, career woman, femme fatale – these are the most popular stereotypes of woman that have been addressed by feminist theorists in their writings on popular cinema. Recurring images and motifs associated with woman as castrator include knives, axes, ice picks, spiked instruments, teeth, yawning chasms, jagged rocks, the deadly vagina dentata. The femme castratrice controls the sadistic gaze: the male victim is her object. In her use of the masochistic aesthetic, Gaylyn Studlar has presented an important critique of the dominant Freudian–Lacanian model of spectator-ship. Whereas the classic horror film tends to affirm the controlling gaze at the moment of narrative closure (the monster is defeated/life is affirmed) the contemporary horror film frequently asserts the primacy of the masochistic look in its moment of closure (the monster lives/death reigns). When Perseus slew the Medusa he did not – as commonly thought – put an end to her reign or destroy her terrifying powers.
