The Skin I Live In: Hunger, Power, and the Monstrous Feminine
Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Monsters and the Monstrous. Inter-Disciplinary Press. ISBN: 978-1-84888-405-2.
Abstract
In his first film to premiere outside of his native Spain, international superstar
director Pedro Almodóvar tackles the horror genre for the first time. The Skin I
Live In (La piel que habito) maintains a certain consistency with the director’s
earlier films, especially in the theme of gender identity and melodrama. In this
film, however, there be monsters. One dwells and schemes in some classic
monstrous spaces: a dark cave and a private laboratory/fortress, where he builds
Vera, a cyborg-like character whose seams remind us of Frankenstein’s monster, or
of the Louise Bourgeois sculptures that fascinate her. The mad and wealthy doctor
who designs Vera also keeps vigilant watch over her, tinkering with and gazing
upon his masterpiece. This vigilance introduces a visual play on power through
images of hunger and desire. Meanwhile, when another, less socially powerful, but
more physically adept monster penetrates the fortress the two main characters have
shared, the power dynamic shifts drastically. Looking at Vera, the intruder gushes,
‘It smells good. I’m hungry,’ and licks the screen of the security camera. This talk
draws on notions of the monstrous feminine by Laura Mulvey, Barbara Creed, and
Donna Haraway, to consider all three characters’ monstrosity through the hungers
that drive them and their slippery power dynamic.
Key Words: Film, horror, Spain, gender, hungry gaze, power, cyborg, scientist,
animals, vagina dentata, revenge, Almodóvar, Creed, Haraway, Bourgeois,
Mulvey, bioethics.
Description
item.page.type
Book chapter