5 March 22
Slightly out on a limb this week, or to be true to the genre, limb hanging off, slightly attached.
A declaration: hands down (or gnawed off) the best book I've read recently is “True Story, a novel” by Kate Reed Petty. By best book do we mean 'best work of literature'; a pretty nebulous definition to be honest, 'most exciting'; a page turner, 'captures the zeitgeist'; something to say, or that plain old 'I just really liked it'?
A cliche: I have to go with all of the above. If someone said to me 'Here, read this, this is the best explanation of feminist theory on victim blaming, toxic masculinity, and the male gaze I've read for a while', I would have said 'Why, thank you', and then placed it carefully in the rubbish bin next to the tofu and 100% dark chocolate.
Nell Zinc's 'The Wallcreeper'1 uses some of the freshest language I've read for a while, although it's seven years old now, sentences zing off the page. Catherine Lacey's 'The Answers'2 stylised exploration of love in the lens of reality stars and social media, religion and alternative therapies captures the now for me far better than any recently work proffered as the great American novel. But neither of these throws that page turner element into the mix. True Story changes shape in your hands, recognition twisting into new shapes as genres and perspectives slide. A magic trick and a juggling act. While Lacey may be a Marmite read, True Story succeeds on many levels, accessible, it never comes across as earnest or righteous, plus, it's creepy as fuck (as all the best horror is).
Horror is a genre far more popular with women that perhaps realised. It's always surprised me that it's seen as a bastion of the male mind. Especially body horror. Yet, like science fiction, women writers are rare. One could throw in some metaphor about women being allowed in the club in the same way Lucy is allowed to be part of Dracula's story. Oh, I just did. But being a dilettante — confession; until about ten years a go, when my daughter told me the real meaning of the word, I had spent my life going around thinking dilettante meant a finely dressed gentleman — I have only a superficial knowledge of feminist theory and the history of horror fiction.
What I do know mainly comes from two sources, that daughter again, who as part of her degree did a media course on Giallo and slasher films, and watching Giallo and slasher films. Can't say 'Suspira' taught me much, it hasn't dated anywhere near as well as Goblin's soundtrack, which to this day is the blueprint for chainsaws that go bump in the night. “Mandy” updated it well with Jóhann Jóhannsson's lone droning metal chord, the film a wonderful homage to 70s Heavy Metal comics3 and Giallo. Also while free-occasion names are being thrown around — “Berberian Sound Studio” by Peter Strickland, a hymn to Giallo.
That daughter again wrote an essay on why Alien’s Ripley is really a final girl. What? Sorry? A final girl?4 The phrase is slowly coming into the mainstream, it originates from Carol J. Clover's “Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film”5 and denotes the last female protagonist who survives and often kills their assailant. Usually they are the character who throughout the film has declined casual sex and/or drugs. Really seems a little unfair given the Islamic cult Order of (H)Assassins6 were famous for being ruthless killers stoned out of their gourds. Actually this probably isn't true and is open to debate. They probably weren't that keen on casual sex either. Just stabbing politicians.
Horror has long been understood as a vehicle ripe for commentary on social anxieties. The 50s with its wave of giant monsters spawned on the cold war's potential nuclear war, and the enemy within with bodysnatchers the doppelgängers of communists.
The 80s saw body horror emerge with the enemy within literally being the enemy within. AIDS. Again always from a male gaze7. When we say body horror what we really mean is Cronenberg. The spoiler played so well by Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers being really the slasher film given an update. The Brood with its fear of pregnancy and the bond between mother and child ousting the father. It's pretty easy to join the dots between fear of women and horror from Hitchcock through to Cronenberg's Spider, all peddling the Madonna and the whore motif. The final girl is of course a male fantasy figure, the one fit to marry.
The Witch by Robert Eggers pedals the fear of pubescent girls 'corrupting' men, the same logic that implies covering up women to stop men assaulting them. And fear of evil Satanic black goats. Having a daughter and having met a goat I know which I'm taking my chances with. Although to be fair both can be reasoned with using warm croissants. I speak from experience.
Looping back around to daughter's treatise on Ripley, H.R. Giger devised the Alien to be born from a hostile vagina, then gestate and escape through pregnancy and finally impregnates using, and I quote, “male throat rape”.8 My mum got to hang out in Giger's house. Every room is painted entirely black. No surprises there then. I always thought it was a shame he never opened up a celebrity steak restaurant. It's all very male fear based, woman as threat or fluff. Ripley does go some way to breaking the trope but only by becoming male-like, although this is later partially corrected in further Alien franchises with her maternal instinct saving the day.
La Jefa has a copy of "The Final Girl Support Group” by Grady Hendrix9 on her Kobo, not yet read. I may ‘borrow’ it while she's not looking. It's either that or risk starting another Oulipo 'thriller'. Like the protagonist in a slasher film, when will I learn my lesson? ‘Let's split up’, ‘Look in the basement’, ‘Portal to hell? Open it!’, ‘Oulipian thriller? Read it!’. Grady also wrote “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires”10 and earns a feminist badge (sewn on not pinned) by saying in his introduction:
When I was a kid I didn't take my mom seriously. She was a housewife who was in a book club, and she and her friends were always running errands, and driving car pool, and forcing us to follow rules that didn't make sense. They just seemed like a bunch of lightweights. Today I realize how many things they were dealing with that l was totally unaware of. They took the hits so we could skate by obliviously, because that's the deal: as a parent, you endure pain so your children don't have to.
...Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human-they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they're never full. With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.
We haven't said goodbye to Suspira yet. Back from the dead! The remake could be seen as feminist in that it's one of the very few horror films that passes the Bechdel test11 — at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Helps if you have a centuries old Sister Suspira lurking in the basement. Or attic. Spoiler, probably going to be portals to hell as well.
Although now very 70s (in both the good and bad ways) it's influence is such that Suspira magazine12 takes its name fr... yes. Obviously. The magazine dissects sinister subjects through a feminine lens.
Only appropriate that here we give a moment to shout out to Witchcraft Magazine13. Being cancelled is one thing, being cursed is quite another.
The first #metoo horror film is perhaps “Promising Young Woman”. Which like “True story, a novel” and unlike Ripley in Alien doesn't simply invert the ‘heroine’ into a ‘male behaviour hero’. Both are far cleverer than that, and directed or written by women. In fact it seems almost all the books I've read recently which have anything new of interest to say (as opposed to being simply being entertaining or exciting) have been written by women. If you were to ask me what was the best book I read before First Novel was, using the same ‘all of it’ criteria as previously mentioned, I would answer “Frankissstein”14 by Jeanette Winterson, which marches across the ice pack of gender fluidity without being a victim or a freak.
Horror films are only now beginning to digest the Weinstein and ‘I haven't met you before but have a few million quid, just in case’ culture, its current spook is AI, also prevalent in Frankissstein. I read “Sex Robots & Vegan Meat” by Jenny Kleeman15 at the same time as Winterson's reexamination of Mary Shelly's place as a woman writer in a competitive male circle (I'm not going to call Shelley and Byron macho). Sex Robots & Vegan Meat is non fiction looking at the emerging robotic, and soon artificial intelligence, sex dolls. There's vegan meat too but for our purposes it's the sex dolls we're interested in. If you want to make a vegan meat slash sex doll joke you're welcome to, but note comment about being cancelled / cursed.
They are a perfect companion read. In fact at least once I had to remind myself that a character in one wasn't from the other book so entwined are the fiction and fact. It occurs to me that the revival of Frankenstein is a perfect metaphor for our fear of AI, as Godzilla was for the nuclear cold war, zombies for global consumerism, and vampires for the arrival of AIDs. We chose a monster for our times. Or, before anyone objects, in the case of Frankenstein, we chose a creature for our times.
A lot of research went into Frankissstein, enough for Jeanette Winterson to write “12 Bytes. How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love”16. Also recommended. When I say recommended I should point out that like Frankissstein and Suspira I have updated being a dilettante — I no longer have to keep superficially abreast (as opposed to double breasted. Pause a moment on getting that word play in there, riffing on both satirical and gender matters. Thank you), instead I buy Anne a copy of whatever book it is I want to be knowledgeable about, and then simply ask her for a fact on whatever it is I currently need to win my argument on. Note, this technique is of limited use when arguing with Anne herself.
In my to-be-read pile is “Frankenstein in Baghdad” by Ahmed Saadawi17, a dark comedy using the assembled body as a metaphor for the madness of war. There has been a recent spate of books examining AI replicants, or gynoids18 — the slightly creepy term adopted by female sex doll enthusiasts — including Ian McEwan's “Machines like us”19 which use consciousness-aware robots as a device for examining human moral codes. What particularly interests me about “Frankissstein” is Winterson's marrying of the clinical threat from AI systems to the flesh bound paradigm of the man-made creature. Unlike vampires it appears mankind is actually trying to bring about the creation of one of its monster myths.
Like the recent feminist reversals of Maleficent, I wonder how long it is until we see a story of the female sex doll as protagonist, not a means of destruction.
What this little diversion doesn't get across is “Frankissstein” is very funny. It is.
A tip of the hat while we're here to Louisa Hall for “Speak: A Novel”20 which also riffs on feminism and AI dolls, but does consider the robot as an equal character. And lastly “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World“ by Elif Shafak21 which perhaps, and a very tenuous perhaps at that, is a Frankistein in reverse as life leaves a body in parts.
While perhaps not feminist, the original spark for this week's creature column coming to life was watching “Titane” shortly after finishing True Story. A body horror finally written and directed by a woman, a ‘finally, girl’. Female gaze body horror. Like “Neon Demon” both are neon-soaked, techno-fuelled, pole-dancing erotic nightmares, but the vision and choice of antihero for each is very telling. Julia Ducournau did not make Titane to give men something sexy to look at. A female body horror for females. I can testify to this as la Jefa bailed watching it after twenty minutes, and she loves horror films.
To clarify, True Story is not horror but uses the tropes of the genre to question where truth lies and who gets to frame the story of abuse. It's a page turner. My read of the last year.
Titane is also recommended, but only if you know what you're getting into. No money back refunds on this one.
“True Story, a novel” by Kate Reed Petty
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/604707/true-story-by-kate-reed-petty/
Buy here
“Titane” by Julia Ducournau
Further watching
“Suspiria” by Dario Argento
“Suspiria” by Luca Guadagnino
“Suspiria OST” by Goblin
“Mandy” by Panos Cosmatos
“Berberian Sound Studio” by Peter Strickland
“Promising Young Woman” by Emerald Fennell
“The Witch” by Robert Eggers
“Neon Demon” by Nicolas Winding Refn
Dance scenes
References
The Wallcreeper by Nell Zinc
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/707139/the-wallcreeper-by-nell-zink/
Buy here
The Answers, A Novel by Catherine Lacey
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250183088/the-answers
Buy here
Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691166292/men-women-and-chain-saws
Buy here
Tough Gynes: Violent Women in Film as Honorary Men by Stan Goff
https://books.google.es/books?id=nuaPDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=false
Buy here
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/658406/the-final-girl-support-group-by-grady-hendrix/
Buy here
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608677/the-southern-book-clubs-guide-to-slaying-vampires-by-grady-hendrix/
Buy here
Frankissstein, A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117013/frankissstein/9781784709952.html
Buy here
Sex Robots and Vegan Meat, Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death by Jenny Kleeman
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Sex-Robots-and-Vegan-Meat/Jenny-Kleeman/9781643135724
Buy here
12 Bytes, How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love by Jeanette Winterson
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1119595/12-bytes/9781787332461.html
Buy here
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/16/frankenstein-in-baghdad-by-ahmed-saadawi-review
Buy here
Machines like me by Ewan McEwan
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/machines-like-me-9781529111255
Buy here
Speak by Louisa Hall
https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/speak/
Buy here
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak
https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/10-minutes-38-seconds-in-this-strange-world-9780241979464
Buy here
Legally I have to tell you I might get five pence or something from Bookshop dot org should you purchase something, but really I just want to stick it to Amazon and keep independent bookshops alive. Yeah, rebel me, bringing the man down from the inside etc etc.