Phallic Panic
Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny
The horror film has always been populated by male monsters, many of which do carry out monstrous acts of violation, rape and castration. The horror film is also filled with male monsters who grow fur, change shape, bleed and give birth. What is it that defines male monstrosity? How does the male monster differ from the female monster?
Opinion
"Barbara Creed's work is an elegant distillation of ideas from psychoanalytic, gender, art, literary and cultural theory as they pertain to a deeper understanding of how cinema works, particularly the genre of horror."
"this book will become a very useful text for cinema studies students"
(Anne Hutton, Australian Bookseller & Publisher, September 2005)
"Creed's readings of these outrageous texts are lucid and well-written but beneath her orderly theoretical procedures you can feel the intoxication with the terrible beauty of horror cinema"
(Owen Richardson, The Age, 22/10/05)
About this Title
'Phallic Panic is not only an impressive and elegant work of scholarship; it breathes new life into debates around the horror film, illuminating the genre's eerie and unsettling power. Like her groundbreaking The Monstrous-Feminine, Creed's new book is destined to become a standard text in the field.'
Pam Cook, Professor of European Film and Media, University of Southampton
'Barbara Creed asks the question "what does man want?" and takes us on an exhilarating trip through the Freudian uncanny and horror cinema to provide the answers. This is a lucid and compelling account of male monstrosity which exhumes the uncanny and makes it come to life all over again as something "primal", perverse and chillingly subversive.'
Ken Gelder, author of Reading The Vampire and The Horror Reader
Vampires, werewolves, cannibals and slashers-why do audiences find monsters in movies so terrifying? In Phallic Panic, Barbara Creed ranges widely across film, literature and myth, throwing new light on this haunted territory.
Looking at classic horror films such as Frankenstein, The Shining and Jack the Ripper, Creed provocatively questions the anxieties, fears and the subversive thrills behind some of the most celebrated monsters.
This follow-up to her influential book The Monstrous-Feminine is an important and enjoyable read for scholars and students of film, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and the visual arts.
Barbara Creed lectures in Cinema Studies at The University of Melbourne.
Praise for The Monstrous-Feminine:
'A substantial contribution to knowledge of the horror film. The first study to concentrate specifically on the representation of the monstrous-feminine.'
E. Ann Kaplan, SUNY, Stony Brook
'Witty, succinct, a pleasure to read.'
Sneja Gunew, Victoria University, British Columbia
'A fascinating study, much more insightful and original than most in this field.'
Graham McCann, The Modern Review
About the Author
Barbara Creed is a graduate of Monash and La Trobe Universities. Her doctoral thesis was on the cinema of horror, feminism and psychoanalysis, and was published as The Monstrous-Feminine (1993) by Routledge. Her areas of research include contemporary film, surrealism, feminist and psychoanalytic theory - areas in which she has widely published.
She has recently published Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality and Pandora's Box: Essays in Film Theory. She is currently writing a new book entitled The Darwinian Screen: the evolution of film theory.
She has also co-edited the anthologies Body Trade: captivity, cannibalism and colonialism in the Pacific (Pluto Press & Routledge, 2001, with Jeanette Hoorn), The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (Routledge, 1992) and Don't Shoot Darling: Women's Independent Filmmaking in Australia (1987, with Annette Blonski and Freda Freiberg).
Barbara is also an active figure in the film community as a reviewer, speaker and writer.
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