The Skin I Live In: Hunger, Power, and the Monstrous Feminine
| dc.contributor.author | Harris, Sarah D. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-01-11T14:29:37Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-01-11T14:29:37Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2016 | |
| dc.description.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. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11209/10698 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Monsters and the Monstrous. Inter-Disciplinary Press. ISBN: 978-1-84888-405-2. | en_US |
| dc.title | The Skin I Live In: Hunger, Power, and the Monstrous Feminine | en_US |
| dc.type | Book chapter | en_US |
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