Shrieking, Biting, and Licking
The Monstrous-Feminine and Abject Female Monsters in Video Games
Abstract
This article examines examples of the monstrous-feminine in the form of abject female monsters in a selection of critically acclaimed and commercially successful video games. Various female monsters from CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher series (2007-2015), and Santa Monica Studio’s God of War series (2005-2013) are considered as examples of the abject monstrous-feminine which fall into a long tradition in horror media of making the female body and body movements into something horrific and repulsive. These female monsters use shrieking, biting, licking, and spreading disease as weapons against the male protagonist, who must slay them to restore symbolic order and progress in the games.
References
Caputi, J. (2004). Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture. University of Wisconsin Press.
CD Projekt Red. (2007). The Witcher. Atari. Microsoft Windows.
CD Projekt Red. (2011). The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. CD Projekt. Microsoft Windows.
CD Projekt Red. (2015). The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt. Microsoft Windows.
Creed, B. (1986). “Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection.” Screen 27(1), 44-70.
Creed, B. (1993). The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
Doerksen, T. A. (2002). Deadly kisses: Vampirism, colonialism, and the gendering of horror. In J. C. Holte (Ed.), The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night (pp. 137–44). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Domínguez-Rué, E. (2010). Sins of the flesh: anorexia, eroticism and the female vampire in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Journal of Gender Studies 19(3), 297-308.
Karlyn, K. R. (2011). Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen. Austin: University of Texas.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mulvey, L. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3), 6-18.
Neale, S. (1980). Genre. London: BFI.
Santa Monica Studio. (2005). God of War. Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation 2.
Santa Monica Studio. (2007). God of War II. Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation 2.
Santa Monica Studio & Ready at Dawn. (2008). God of War: Chains of Olympus. Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation Portable.
Santa Monica Studio. (2010). God of War III. Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation 3.
Santa Monica Studio. (2013). God of War: Ascension. Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation 3.
Senf, C. A. (1999). Daughters of Lilith: Women vampires in popular literature. In L. G. Heldreth & M. Pharr (Eds.), The Blood is the Life: Vampires in Literature (pp. 199-216). Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Stevenson, J. A. (1998). A vampire in the mirror: The sexuality of Dracula. PMLA 103(2), 139-149.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright for papers and articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the University of Glasgow. It is a condition of publication that authors license their paper or article under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.