Barbara Creed

• Developed her theory through Mulvey’s male gaze analysis.
•  She is a Marxist feminist film critic like Mulvey. However in comparison to Mulvey, she conducted observations, leading her to later on base her studies on the genre of horror/ slasher movies.
•   She built her theory on the basis of Freud’s psychological (mental and emotional state of a person) theory.
•  Her theory stated that within the media, women are often portrayed as monstrous as seen across the genre of horror. 
• The Monstrous-Feminine examines the role of women in horror films. Here she argues that woman are viewed/ presented to be monstrous or portrayed as victims. In The Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed challenges patriarchy society, arguing women are only used due to their female reproductive body and mothering qualities/instinct. 
• Creed reference to various classic horror films including the ‘Alien trilogy’, ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Carrie’ and Psycho to demonstrate the extent of which women are viewed cruelly within society. 
• This led her to analyse/ create the seven faces of the monstrous-feminine, which consists of archaic mother (fantasy mother of the first few months of an infant’s life), monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother and castrator. 
• Her argument implies that men fear woman as castrators (impotent- thus questioning their masculinity). Furthermore she questions Freudian theories of sexual difference and fetishism. The pre-oedipal space:is the world in which the child is connected to their mother on a much deeper level. When the child leaves this particular stage, they then enter into the real world where it can sometimes be traumatic. As this is when they begin to recognise that their mother does not have the same genitals as to what they have. This is where the idea of castration is introduced, as they (men) feel threatened through subconsciously by their mothers. Here they fear they will be stripped of their masculinity, resulting in the mothers symbolising castration and women being seen to be evil.

Barbara Creed

Personally I do not agree with such view on 'Monstrous feminine' due to the fact that although women are often over sexualised within horror movies, such take on theory is far too fetched. Instead I take a different approach as to why women are presented in such way, which simply comes down to the directors/producers being able to benefit financially by portraying such representation. Furthermore due to many males fulfilling/ being directors it’s obvious that women are not represented accurately hence why it’s shown through male gaze. One could argue that with more females taking on the role of being a protagonist characters, such as in ‘Alien’, directors have began to subvert the conventional female character. Instead women are shown to be independent, as well as being heroes, as seen in ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Alien’ and ‘Scream trilogy’ where there is a finale girl who ultimately saves society just before it’s on the glimpse of collapse.