From Girlhood to Cannibalism - Feminine Abjection and the Monstrous Coming of Age

Abstract

In recent years, horror films such as Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, Canada, 2000), "Jennifer's Body" (Karyn Kusama, USA, 2009), "Raw" (Julia Ducournau, France, 2016), and "Bones and All" (Luca Guadagnino, USA, 2022) have gained a cultish following amongst young women and queer audiences' as these pieces of media center around the feminine adolescent perspective in their journey of self-exploration, transition into womanhood, and survival as they live within the fringes of society or states of social and physical otherness. Through the utilization of the female body as a source of abjection, these films adopt the monstrous feminine archetype, coined by Barabra Creed, to combine the traversing of bodily and social boundaries to express anxieties surrounding female sexual agency and gender expression while allowing the audience to engage with these practices. Through the representations of bodily excesses and their destruction within the channels of feminine biological cycles, spheres of judgment, and transgressions of morality, place social and cultural parameters onto the feminine adolescent body to examine structures that negotiate ones' identity. Within all four films lies this dynamic between the acceptable facets of femininity or consumption and their uncontained counterpart to inspect the "Otherworldly" intimacy that arises from queer female friendships, sisterhood, and partnerships to present various social and physical constraints that inhibit sexual and gender expression.