The Women Who Killed Too Many: Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) and Female Virality

Echeverría Domingo, Julia

En : Women Who Kill: Gender and Sexuality in Film and Series of the Post-Feminist Era
2020
Bloomsbury Academic London
ISBN: 978-1-3501-1559-0
Pp: 209-225

Resumen: As opposed to their male counterparts, female murderers in the cinema tend to be portrayed and classified attending to the psychological drive and intentionality of their crimes. We tend to speak of the female psycho-killer dominated by her irrational emotions, of the revenge-murderer who has been victim of a previous crime such as rape, and of the evil, oversexualized femme fatale and the “super-bitch killer beauties” whose main aim is to tempt men. The academic literature devoted to this figure typically focuses on the film genres where these murderous women most frequently appear—namely, horror, melodrama, and film noir—and on the specific historical times where each type proliferates. Regardless of the film genre and typology of the murderer, one constant is the binary dynamics under which these female killers operate, systematically oscillating between nurturer and castrator, victim and perpetrator, and inspiring both repulsion and erotic desire. This dualism is present in feminist film criticism as well. One of the sustained quandaries in critical discussions is whether women killers may be read as projections of patriarchal anxieties—what Barbara Creed calls the “monstrous phantasy of woman as castrator”—or, on the contrary, as agents that contest patriarchy, subverting the traditional “feminine” roles ascribed to women as passive victims....

Nota: Postprint

DOI: 10.5040/9781350150799.0019