Abjection in Modernity

Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection produces many implications that cause us to think about how we position ourselves between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Kristeva posits that women are abjected as they represent a “suffocating return to the archaic maternal body”, or more specifically, the return to immanence (death). In modernity, the use of the abjected maternal or feminine body is utilised in popular culture to elicit horror from audiences. This, sometimes inadvertently, subverts the patriarchy’s grip on society and brings to light the oppression of women.

Music

Lady Gaga

During the course of her Born This Way album cycle, Lady Gaga harnessed the abject in order to bring the repressed maternal to the forefront of her performances. In her Born This Way Ball world tour, Gaga commenced the concert by being birthed out of a large inflatable vagina. This was met by considerable audience disgust, as it threatened the breakdown of our reality, and our distinction between subject and object. In her infamous Born This Way video, Gaga created a new religious scripture in which the mother is the almighty god. In this video, Gaga discusses the birth of a new race under ‘Mother Monster’, as the “wombs numbered and the mitosis of the future began”, she exclaims that this moment of birth is not temporal, but eternal. Upon its release, this video was scalded for relying on shock tactics. This reaction is perhaps unsurprising due to the way Gaga used the abjected site of the maternal in order to challenge our evolutionary instinct to reject death. Gaga consistently uses the abject to shock audiences and bring attention to the oppression of women in modernity. In 2014, Gaga performed at SXSW (South by Southwest) and included in this performance her song titled Swine, a song about sexual assault against women. For this performance Gaga brought performance artist Millie Brown to the stage, whom of which began to vomit green paint over Gaga’s body while she played the drums.  Using the abject materials of oral disgust and waste , Gaga attempted to emphasise the way in which women are objectified and abused by men. It is a cunning juxtaposition as Gaga sings about her experience with sexual assault and vomit is hurled onto her body. A similar sentiment lies in her infamous ‘meat dress’. Using the abject material of blood and flesh that draped over her body, Gaga left people speechless and in a state of utter disgust. It was only later that Gaga revealed she had worn the dress as a statement against the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy which silenced gay soldiers in the United States military. On the Ellen Show, Gaga exclaimed “if we don't stand up for what we believe in, if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones.”  This makes clear the potential of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to create social change.

Björk

Icelandic artist Björk is well known for her outlandish style and eccentric performances. Her latest album, Utopia is accompanied by a plethora of abject imagery that run parallel with the feminist lyricism of the album. The album cover depicts a creature-like Björk with a bird fetus nestled in her neck, and a vagina growing from her forehead. This effectively uses the abject in order to bring the maternal to the public sphere, forcing us to come to terms with our origin, and consequently, our imminent death. In her music video for The Gate, Björk constructs a utopia of her own, rife with the symbolism of female genitalia which is played alongside birdsongs and a flute arrangement. This is another instance in which Björk has celebrated the maternal, and thus emphasised the silencing of such through our reaction to the “matriarchal tapestry” she weaves.

Ariana Grande

It is only in recent times that American pop artist Ariana Grande has reinforced the notion of abjection within her own works. While she hinted towards a more female oriented approach on songs and videos such as Dangerous Woman, it is one of her latest releases, off her 2018 album Sweetener, that has proven to manifest as Kristeva proposes. God is a woman has quickly become a cornerstone of powerful female sexuality both in and outside of the private sphere, with rewritings of both history and mythology from a female (and symbiotically feminist) perspective. The overarching message is one of women’s sexual empowerment, and while that is heavily reflected in the lyricism, the accompanying music video leaves audiences with additional images and symbols of the divine feminine. Symbolism and commentary in the form of a variety of depictions of the vagina are evident through various poses and hand gestures especially. The rewriting of spirituality with the phrase “God is a woman” repeated throughout, and the final image of Grande as God in a reimagining of The Creation of Adam reaffirms this call for female uprising, and challenges our society’s preconceived notions of what is and is not kept private; is a direct confrontation of the patriarchy and what women should “keep” of themselves solely for the pleasure or wants of the men that own them. However, the retaliation from religious sects especially reinstates the notion of abjection, as people of dogmatic faith claim Grande committed blasphemy in her lyrics and images. Grande’s use of this supremely maternal narrative, the notion that God is a woman because of their (or his or her, depending on perspective) divinity, sexual liberation and power of creation drives the message of abjection in modernity home.

Film

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Defined as a film in the ‘splatter’ subgenre of horror films, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 harnesses the abject in a peculiar way. Horror is often defined as a misogynistic or heteronormative genre, but as Jack Halberstam makes clear, these ‘splatter’ films often use the abject to present queerness, or the unrecognisable human body. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, bodies are brutalised by the chainsaw, and what we are left with is the excess flesh that survives the chainsaw, forming a queer and gender indifferent identity.  According to Jack Halberstam, in this film we are subjected to the abject in the form of blood, flesh, etc., which change the bodily terrain of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. A ‘splattered’ or bloody body is queer, as it subverts the connotations of masculinity and femininity through an unrecognisable sea of tarnished flesh.

Teeth

In the film Teeth (2007), the theories of Julia Kristeva’s on abjection and Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine can be explored.

Teeth is a horror comedy film and Coming-of-age story written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein and stars Jess Weixler as Dawn, an outspoken activist of an abstinence-only group at her high school, while trying to suppress her own budding sexual desires.

The story follows Dawns’ journey of sexual discovery, however, takes a dark turn after Dawn and her new boyfriend Toby take a swim together at a local swimming hole. Toby forces himself onto Dawn, and when she tries to resist he assaults her and knocks her unconscious and proceeds to rape her. Toby is swiftly punished for sexually debasing Dawn with the masculine weapon of rape, as Dawn’s body savagely fights back, and severs Toby’s penis with her vagina.

Through the violent act of rape and subsequent removal of Toby’s penis, Dawn discovers she is the living embodiment of the myth of the Vagina Dentata or “the toothed vagina” – the vagina that castrates. With this act, Dawn is immediately rendered unnatural to the viewer and abject.  

Freud wrote that “Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of the female genitals,”. Creed expands on this thought and states that “Castration anxiety is a central concern of the horror film - particularly the slasher sub-genre. Woman's body is slashed and mutilated, not only to signify her own castrated state, but also the possibility of castration for the male.”. Creed describes how the sight of the female genitals is monstrous-feminine as the role of ‘the archaic mother’, as the absence of a penis is proof that castration can occur. As Dawn is the physical manifestation of Castration anxiety for males with her vagina dentata, she is made monstrous-feminine.

Through the film Dawn learns she has evolved to have this power and learns to control it through other sexual encounters. During her initial research of her vagina dentata, she discovers that to be ‘cured’ a male hero is to conquer vagina dentata through sexual intercourse, and thus restoring the woman to her ‘proper place’ in the ‘natural’ (patriarchal) order of the world.

What makes this film different from the usual misogynistic and patriarchal themes and tropes found in a majority of the horror genre, is that it transforms the view of monstrous-feminine to that of a heroine. The director, Mitchell Lichtenstein, explicitly wanted to change the narrative of the myth of vagina dentata to be not about women, but men, and the fear men have of women and desire for control over them. Mitchel Lichtenstein is quoted in interviews that he didn’t want to perpetuate gynophobia and wanted to turn the myth ‘on its head’.  The vagina dentata myth always has the masculine hero conquering the woman, the monstrous-feminine, and destroying the teeth to free her. In his film, Lichtenstein wanted Dawn to be the heroine, with a power so she could never be conquered. Lichtenstein made a concerted effort to both not show Dawn’s toothed vulva or to have the action of the teeth snapping shut to be very audible. This was to ensure that Dawn and her ‘teeth’ were not the monster, the monstrous-feminine, but were an evolved adaption to protect her from violent sexual predators.

Essentially, Dawn evolved her vaginal dentata into a biological Anti-rape device, developed to deter and prevent rape by causing pain and disfigurement to sexual violence perpetrators.

Reviews of the film have been mixed with praise from feminists for empowerment and from psychoanalysts for its exploration of the subject matter, while the anti-women Men's rights movement predictably claim the film is grossly misandrist. Given the history of the horror genre and its misogynistic and patriarchal themes, it is refreshing to see a film challenge these outdated ideas.

Television

American Horror Story

Throughout its eight seasons, American Horror Story has continuously shocked viewers with its intense themes. The anthology series is no stranger to depicting its female characters as antagonists, with some of these including brutal criminals, murderers, a nun subjected to demonic possession, cult members and witches. Having such grim and vicious depictions of women has often been one of the focal points for the show, drawing viewers in with the complexities of the powerful, violent feminine. The construction and use of these characters is disconcerting: horror has quite a narrow scope in relation to the presence of predatory women, and this is evident in the impact female heavy seasons of American Horror Story (such as Asylum, Coven, Cult and more recently Apocalypse) have on ratings, viewers and themes. While female antagonists are commonplace, female victims are (unsurprisingly) also a factor. It is interesting then to explore the almost exclusively female horrors of the first three seasons (Murder House, Asylum and Coven) , with tropes such as closeted queerness, fetishisation, rape, birth and abortions (failed, forced and traumatic), suicide, mental illness, institutionalisation, race and the Salem Witch Trials all confirming and playing out many women’s worst nightmares. Such explicit depictions of this, then, bring Kristeva’s theory into full effect; the notion of abjection being carried out with the blood, gore, violence, nudity, bodies, maternity and spaces American Horror Story creates. It is mostly in later seasons where female empowerment and justice is served, however, there is always a prevalent and sinister underlying tension when a woman is violated at any point throughout the various ideas explored in the show’s entirety. As a final draw to Kristeva’s theories, the relevance of distorted, disabled, or otherwise abnormal bodies in the show’s fourth season, Freakshow, is another theme to bring abjection to the forefront. Having differing bodies or abilities outside of the realm of possibility (including a bearded woman, a strong man, several dwarves, a three breasted woman and conjoined twins to name a few) for the season’s 1950s time setting is projected as unsettling and grotesque to not only regular society within the show but also the intended audience.    

Orange is the New Black

Another depiction of abjection in modernity is within television series Orange is the New Black. The fictional television show, which centralises around the women within a low security prison, uses its scope of women as criminals to fight alongside movements within society (such as LGBT+ and Black Lives Matter). Using the idea of incarcerated females directly correlates with the abject, as it challenges the ideas of the violent and/or deviant feminine, and the links to maternity are pellucid (both literally and symbolically when considering the pregnant female inmates in the show). By highlighting racial divides between the cell blocks and mainstreaming and normalising lesbian identity and sex, the show also calls for women to celebrate and enjoy themselves. Evidenced from the initial audience shock at the themes, vulgarity and sexual prowess of the program, this notion of abjection is extremely relevant when assessing the disruption of what a woman should be in our society, using the distasteful material as fuel to reroute criminality and women in that situation.

The Boulet Brothers' Dragula

Following in the footsteps of the immensely popular Rupaul’s Drag Race, The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula adapt their own drag reality show that is filled to the brim with abject imagery and references to the monstrous feminine. Horror, and consequently forms of abjection, are often considered to unveil the deepest fears within the culture it is situated.  The fears that the Boulet Brothers attempt to challenge in Dragula are fears of gender indifference, fears of the homosexual body and the fear of the breakdown of heteronormativity in which our culture operates.  The premise of the reality show is to find the ‘Next Drag Supermonster’ that upholds three main traits; filth, horror, and glamour. There is indeed no holding back when it comes to filth and horror. In the season finale, Vander Von Odd stuck her fingers down her throat in order to vomit on a pile of excrement, and then proceeded to ingest it.  It is with this shocking display of the abject elements of excrement and vomit that Vander succeeded in subverting the heteronormative ideas of femininity. It is almost a one-two punch effect with the “fertile territory of horror” being implemented to “serve as a testimony to how much we fear female power” , fusing with the abject elements such as oral disgust that break apart out reality and force us to face our biological immanence.

References

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