Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games and Transmedia

Robert Shail, Samantha Holland, Steven Gerrard

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787691094
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Genderforschung

Contemporary popular media has been marked by its startling ability to morph into a wide variety of formats, fed by the ongoing revolution in digital technology. Despite these significant changes, the horror genre has retained its attraction for audiences, and the representation of gender has been crucial to that appeal. Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comic, Games and Transmedia examines the impact of media convergence on the horror genre, focusing on comic books and graphic novels, video games, audio broadcasts, and transmedia adaptations, as well as considering the increasingly proactive role of audiences in making media themselves. A wide range of scholars consider the effect of this new hybridity on established debates regarding the role of gender in the horror genre, offering vital new interpretations of identity and representation. This book is an illuminating, exciting read for academics and students interested in the effect of changing media, and an evolving cultural landscape, on the established debates surrounding gender in the horror genre. The responses of the authors reflect both the possible limitations and the groundbreaking possibilities of this new era in horror.

PART I
COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS

Chapter 1

Blood and Fire: Monstrous Women in Carrie and ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’

Matt Curtis Linton

Introduction

A common trope in both horror films and superhero comics is that of the monstrous woman. The form of their perceived monstrosity runs the gamut from the physical to the psychological to the psychic, but in both of these media the genre in which they exist often has a significant impact on the way their monstrosity is resolved. In horror films, this often takes the form of either a permanent return to normalcy or a necessary destruction of the monster. Working from Robin Wood’s definition of the horror genre in ‘An Introduction to the American Horror Film’, in which he states that horror is that in which ‘normality is threatened by the Monster’ (Wood, 2018, p. 83) and there is a resolution requiring a return to normality, this is not surprising. Superhero comics, however, are most often published as open-ended, ongoing and serialised narratives. While there may be resolutions of particular storylines within the ongoing series, the series itself continues. Complicating this even further is the shared universe so common in mainstream superhero comic books. If the resolution of the condition of the Monster requires a return to normality, how do we define normality in a narrative which exists primarily in the middle of the story? Additionally, what is monstrosity in a reality in which men and women can transform into electricity, morph their bodies in any number of different ways, or can crawl on walls and lift cars over their heads? To some extent this normality is defined along a moral spectrum from good to evil, as well as being contingent on the positioning of the arbiter – Spider-Man may be embroiled in a storyline in which he is being hunted down for being a menace, but the audience is aware that his actions are morally good. Similarly, the distinction between the X-Men and many of their enemies isn’t their status as mutants – which positions them as monstrous to the general public within the Marvel universe – but is instead their actions in defence of humanity. In many ways, monstrosity itself, in this context, is based more on immoral behaviour than on elements of abjection or disfigurement, as is more often the case in the horror genre.

What I will consider directly is how the female monster, in both films and superhero comics, can be read through the lens of Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine (Creed, 1996, p. 35), how the form of the resolution of monstrosity often presents as punishment for transgressing gender expectations, and the way the ongoing, and often cyclical, nature of superhero comics revisits this trauma upon its female monsters. I will primarily focus on two characters, one from the horror film genre and the other from the genre of superhero comics. The first of these is Carrie White, from Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. The second is Jean Grey, from Marvel Comics Uncanny X-Men series, paying particular attention to the events of ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, which ran from Uncanny X-Men #129 through 137. Though both young women are treated as monstrous prior to the full development of their abilities, it is this empowerment which becomes viewed as necessitating an ostensibly more final punishment because of the way it upends the patriarchal power dynamic in which they exist. This engages with issues of female sexual awakening, heteronormative sexual pairing, and female empowerment, linking these real-world rites of passage with their own increased Othering. I will also look at Ms. Marvel, the ongoing series centred on Kamala Khan, which uses monstrosity – physical, gendered and racialised – as a way to redefine norms and ultimately act as an empowerment narrative.

Brian de Palma’s Carrie

Rhona Berenstein writes that the female body in the film ‘is a medium of expression not only for her own fears and aspirations but for male anxieties, desires, and terrors as well’ (1996, p. 123). We see evidence of this in an early scene in De Palma’s Carrie, in which Carrie experiences menstruation for the first time while showering in the locker room after gym class. The daughter of a deeply religious mother, Carrie has never been taught about this and, as a result, is traumatised at the sight of the blood streaming down between her legs. Because of her lack of knowledge, her own body becomes a site of abjection. Much has been written about this moment in relation to the idea of the abject. Barbara Creed (1996), in ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine’ links the finale, in which Carrie is traumatised and has her full monstrous fury unleashed when pig’s blood is dumped on her at the prom, to the earlier scene of pleasure/trauma. This mirrors the sense of happiness Carrie displays at her initial social acceptance after being crowned prom queen in the last act of the film. Similarly, Shelley Stamp Lindsey argues that Carrie is ‘a masculine fantasy in which the feminine is constituted as horrific’ (Lindsey, 1996, p. 281), and describes the specific moment of her first menstruation as ‘a violent departure from the self-sufficient autoeroticism of prepubescence she experiences in the shower, as female sexuality announces itself with a particular violence’ (Lindsey, 1996, p. 282), and the other girls in the locker room responding by ‘pelting her with tampons and sanitary pads, taunting “Plug it up, plug it up”’ (Lindsey, 1996, p. 282). In the scene immediately following this one, the male response is shown in the visible discomfort of the Principal as Carrie’s gym teacher, Rita Desjardian, describes the incident to him. De Palma makes this discomfort and disgust more visible when he cuts to a shot in which Buckley’s white shorts, which are stained from Carrie’s menstrual fluid, are in the foreground, occupying the right-half of the screen, while on the left in the background the Principal first notices the blood and visibly recoils. It is in these two moments, one of the female response to the abject and one of the male, that Carrie first manifests her telekinetic abilities, intertwining the monstrousness of her psychic powers and her transition to womanhood.

As this process of sexual awakening continues, through Carrie’s crush on Tommy Ross, her search for knowledge beyond that which her mother has given her, and her attendance at the prom with Tommy as her date (along with the overt symbolism of her election as Prom Queen – being a pinnacle of femininity and female power), so, too, do her powers grow. It is here that we’re shown the progression from sexual awakening to sexual desire and bonding (her earlier exploration of her body in the shower is followed shortly after by her crush on Tommy) to empowerment. This empowerment stems from the social currency she briefly obtains through attending the prom with Tommy and becoming Prom Queen, and through the visible rise in confidence at that moment. Through much of the film, Carrie is Othered as a response, though this response is not to her abilities (which the other characters are unaware of) but through her development as a woman. The linking of that development to the growth of Carrie’s powers builds to the climax which, really, is where Carrie becomes fully monstrous and the film most explicitly enters the horror genre.

The explosion of murderous violence by Carrie in response to the humiliation at the prom is all-encompassing. Her monstrousness lies in the indiscriminate nature of her vengeance, killing not only those innocent of the pig blood attack (the two directly responsible, Chris and Billy, escape the gymnasium and Carrie’s fury, initially) but also Rita Desjardin, the character presented as most sympathetic to Carrie. It is this transgression, and similar to the transgression of moral norms that form the basis for Jean Grey’s monstrosity in ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, more than any other, for which Carrie is punished and must seek absolution. Berenstein (1996) explores the link between the female scream and the performance of normative femininity in Attack of the Leading Ladies. This normative femininity is expressed as submission to fear and a cry for (presumably) male help in being saved. There is an earlier performance just prior to Carrie’s killing of her classmates at the prom. De Palma initially shows us the horrified response of Carrie’s classmates when she is struck and covered with the pigs’ blood, giving the audience an objective view of the event and their reaction. The camera then slowly zooms in on Carrie’s horrified face, then cuts to a kaleidoscopic view of the students pointing and laughing at Carrie, capturing her subjective and imagined view of how they are reacting. Her absolution takes the form of Carrie’s reunion with her mother at the end of the film. Still covered in pig’s blood, Carrie has walked home from the school and makes her way upstairs. There, she draws a bath, undresses, and washes the blood from her body. Throughout all of this, she maintains a flat affect, expressing no emotion whatsoever. As the blood is finally washed from her face, she begins sobbing, feeling and expressing the full emotional weight of what has occurred. She has returned, briefly, to expressing normative femininity, and shortly after seeks comfort and forgiveness from her mother. What results is a final showdown between the two, as Carrie is punished narratively for her monstrousness, and by her mother for her expressions of womanhood. The confrontation leaves both Carrie and her mother dead, consumed in a fire and the resulting collapse of the house on the top of them, returning things to a state of normality.

Jean Grey and ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’

The monstrousness of Carrie White and Jean Grey share a similarity beyond their psychic abilities. As Andrew Tudor describes in ‘Unruly Bodies, Unquiet Minds’, the monstrous female is ‘frequently rendered conventionally beautiful, and what is deemed monstrous about them is caught in the contrast between beauty and behavior’ (1995, p. 31). In the context of the Marvel universe, Jean Grey is already deemed monstrous through her existence as a mutant – born with an extra gene that gives her and others unnatural powers and abilities. Visually, however, she is drawn as the idealised and often sexualised female superheroine (which increases in her transition from Marvel Girl to Phoenix to Dark Phoenix). This transition takes place over dozens of issues of the Uncanny X-Men comic book series, and the later repetitions of this transformation and punishment can be charted through several years of subplots and plots. In brief, Jean Grey is born with a mutant gene, which becomes active during puberty. This allows her to move objects with her mind. As part of a team of mutants known as the X-Men, she is trained in the use of her powers and uses them to defend others. She takes on the persona of Marvel Girl, and throughout most of the first decade of the book’s existence she is primarily used as an object of male desire – pursued at various times by her teammates Scott Summers, Warren Worthington III and her mentor, Professor Charles Xavier.

The storyline ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, beginning in 1976 and continuing through 1980, can be divided into two parts. In the first Jean Grey sacrifices herself to save the X-Men and is rescued at the last minute by the Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity. This results in a drastic escalation of her powers and the taking on of a new identity, the Phoenix. In the second part, Jean Grey is pursued by another male figure, Jason Wyngarde, a member of the villainous Hellfire Club, who psychically invades Jean Grey’s mind and draws out her evil impulses as part of his ‘seduction’. Wyngarde first encounters Jean Grey (as Phoenix) in Uncanny X-Men #122. He has been sent after her by the Hellfire Club and uses his own psychic abilities to change his appearance. Right from the start, the character’s intent is, essentially, a form of sexual assault. His thought balloon in the third panel of page eight reads: ‘Ah, yes! She’s attracted to me – and why not, when, in so many ways I’m the man of her dreams’, as the shadow of his figure cast on the wall behind hints at his true appearance. Later, in the official start of ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, Wyngarde’s musings reveal his view of what he’s doing to Jean as a twisted form of empowerment. He thinks:

I’m merely giving her a taste of some of her innermost – forbidden – needs and desires. Within her angel’s soul – as in all our souls – lurks a devil, a yang counterpart to the surface yin. All I’m doing is freeing that negative part of her ‘self’ from its moral cage. (Claremont et al., 1979)

This escalation in the development of Jean Grey is described by Carolyn Cocca (2016) in Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation as ‘grounded in stereotypical femininity and intimately tied to her sexual awakening, through her revealing villain-influenced dress and through her finally consummating her relationship with Scott Summers’. Her transformation occurs as the result of months of psychic attack by Wyngarde, who causes Jean to question her own reality and identity (leading her to believe that she is being transported into the mind of an ancestor and living out her romance with an ancestor of Wyngarde’s). Jean breaks free of Wyngarde’s control, but it is this freedom that coincides with her turn into monstrosity. During a battle between the Hellfire Club and the X-Men, Jean finds Wyngarde hiding in a dark room. A shadow completely hides her face and a caption reads:

She stands motionless, a shadow among shadows, feeling dark fire consume her soul. Her face is supernally [sic] calm. Her face lies. Jean Grey is terrified – more afraid than she’s ever been – because she knows what is happening to her. And she cannot stop it. (Claremont et al., 1979)

In an exchange which seems to mirror the gendered power struggle between the two, Jean says: ‘Instead of enslaving me forever you shocked me awake. You set me free. Too late’, to which Wyngarde responds ‘No! I compensated for that reaction – my power should have […]’ As Jean stands covered in shadow and with the background rendered as a growing storm behind her, she replies: ‘Your power is nothing!’

It is in the next issue that Jean Grey fully exists as Dark Phoenix. The character’s depiction as Dark Phoenix only differs in the colour of her costume (changing from green as Phoenix to red as Dark Phoenix) and the expression on her face. There is an increase in the amount of shadows, as well as her eyes often being shown as white with barely visible pupils. The expression itself ranges somewhat from anger to a sort of demented, power-hungry glee. Unlike other monstrous transformations in comics – particularly with male characters – this is less a bodily transformation and more one of personality and behaviour. She is, for the most part, still drawn within the range of conventional sexual attractiveness for female superheroes and villains in mainstream comics. After leaving the Earth (and, interestingly, we see the new scale of her power through the reaction of several male superheroes; Mr Fantastic, the Thing, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and the Silver Surfer – all of react with fear and state the degree to which this power threatens all of existence). The ultimate performance of her monstrosity is the destruction of the Sun in a neighbouring star system, destroying a planet full of billions of sentient beings. Her monstrous act is ultimately punished through a decision to once again sacrifice herself to save the lives of the remaining X-Men. This condemnation and sacrifice occur in Uncanny X-Men #136. Unlike Carrie White, however, whose punishment is final, Jean Grey’s will be repeated several years later.

The punishment of Jean Grey was demanded by Marvel’s then Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter. The initial plan by writers Chris Claremont and John Byrne was one in which Jean undergoes a ‘psychic lobotomy’ to ‘excise those parts of her brain which relate to her mutant abilities’ (Cocca, 2016, p. 127). That the two options presented – death or depowering – are both seen as necessary, despite the assertion by Claremont and Byrne that Jean was ‘possessed and therefore not at fault’, (Cocca, 2016, p. 127), says much about the cultural treatment of feminine identities and power. If the story had ended with Jean’s sacrifice, there would be little difference between the execution and outcomes (in reference to the treatment of women) within the superhero and horror genres.

This repetition is due to the serialised and ongoing format of mainstream superhero comics, in which character-specific storylines are repeated again and again. Repetition in these types of serialised media often cycle as ways to create events. Jason Mittell writes, in ‘Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television’, in speaking of serial narratives, that ‘[t]he operational aesthetic is heightened in spectacular moments within narratively complex programs, specific sequences or episodes that we might consider akin to special effects’; explaining that ‘[t]hese spectacles are often held in opposition to narration, harking back to the cinema of attractions that predated narrative film and deemphasizing classical narrative form in the contemporary blockbuster cinema’ (2006, p. 35). With respect to Jean Grey, this kind of repetition plays out over repeated allusions to, and direct re-enactments of, the arc of empowerment, the perceived threat of monstrous action, and punishment. The heightening, in these cases, is the escalation within Jean Grey’s often repeated narrative arc. More explicitly, however, repeated Dark Phoenix arc seeks to replicate the effect of the first, which is often regarded as a proto-version of the modern, event-style storytelling that dominates the contemporary superhero comics market.

‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, Redux

Prior to Jean Grey’s first resurrection in Fantastic Four #286 in 1986, the essential pieces of the Dark Phoenix storyline were repeated through the character of Madeline Pryor. Pryor was introduced as a new love interest for Scott Summers. Interestingly, the character portrays aspects of what Noel Carroll calls fission, in which ‘a character […] is multiplied into one or more new facets, each standing for another aspect of the self’ (1990, p. 46). Pryor is physically identical to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• PART I: COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
• PART II: VIDEO GAMES
• PART III: TRANSMEDIA AND ADAPTATION
• PART IV: AUDIENCES, FANDOM AND RECEPTION
• PART V: AUDIO AND PODCASTS
• Conclusion
• Index