Abstract:
This thesis explores the representations of female affect in five films where a central female protagonist castrates or mutilates a male character or characters. The castrating woman, in theory and on film, is commonly analysed from a psychoanalytical perspective, as part of the Oedipal complex. This ascribes the concept of 'lack'' or the absence of a phallus as being the source of women's desire. Having decided that this model does not accurately describe or analyse the castrating woman on film, I have applied several theories set out by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their books Anti- Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, which look at desire as a productive force ungoverned by lack. I have analysed the films I Spit on Your Grave and Audition, which deal with female protagonists enacting revenge on male characters. Primarily addressing the affect of female rage, I have explored the role of pain and sadomasochism in the mutilating desires of the female castrators. Teeth and Sisters, two films about women with monstrous morphologies represent the opposite poles of the becoming-monstrous spectrum. While Teeth can be considered a tale of triumph for its heroine's eventual embracement of her monstrous body, Sisters is a tragedy because the monstrous female entity tries and fails at becoming-human. In the Realm of the Senses, a 1976 film about a couple whose obsessive love leads to alienation and ostracism from society, strangulation, and emasculation. The Body without Organs is shown to be achieved by the two main characters, allowing them to experience uninterrupted, unproductive desire. The representation of castration onscreen shows the affective capabilities of the female protagonists. They do not castrate out of any sense of lack, but castrate for the sake of castration. Emasculation and mutilation is incorporated into their own desiring assemblage as a means of sexual gratification. With castration comes the ability for these women to express multiple and entirely new kinds of affects.
