(University Honors College, Middle Tennessee State University, 2015-11-24)
Matheney, Emily
Richard Bates’ 2012 film Excision presents the life of alienated and troubled
adolescent Pauline in three narrative layers seen in her reality, her prayers, and her
dreams. With these representations as well as in her interactions with men and women,
Pauline manipulates elements of the abject to control the behaviors, attitudes, and
reactions of those around her. When analyzed through the perspective of Barbara
Creed’s theory of the monstrous-feminine, wherein men and women in horror films
shock and horrify for different reasons, Pauline proves to be a new sort of figure wherein
elements of her monstrosity and horror are inextricable from one another.