My obsession with horror films has often conflicted with my feminist sensibilities. No matter how much I love the latest serial killer flick, I am always troubled by the damsel in distress waiting for the hero to rescue her. I go to the theater hoping this time the ditzy scream queen will be more than a pretty blond with a high pitched shriek and a heaving bosom.
Then I saw the movie Teeth. Finally, there is a horror movie for the feminist who loves a good scare. This black comedy horror film is about Dawn O’Keefe, a beautiful young virgin with a secret lurking down below. She has vagina dentata, or a toothed vagina. The myth of vagina dentata has fascinated cultures for centuries, playing upon man’s fear of castration and women’s ability to create life. In Teeth, Dawn is besieged by men looking to take her virginity as a prize – from the sex-starved boyfriend to her sick-minded step-brother. From each of them she is saved not by a hero but herself.
Teeth exposes the fear of empowered female sexuality, terrifying with the idea that a woman’s most intimate parts could be a source of strength rather than weakness.
Most of Hollywood’s scream fests focus on the damsel in distress running from the knife-wielding killer. Jamie Lee Curtis hides in the closet from Mike Myers. Marilyn Burns dodges Leatherface’s chainsaw. Jennifer Love Hewitt runs from a fisherman with a hook. And we cheer when each woman escapes to live another day.
But in recent years, scream queens have become more than pretty women in peril. Now they’re kicking ass and taking names. Personally, my favorite example is the Grindhouse Double Feature. Robert Rodriquez’s Planet Terror features two heroines ready to take on an army of mutated soldiers. With a machine gun leg, Rose McGowan mows down her would-be attackers while Marley Shelton takes on the world and a jerk of a husband with needles in a garter belt holster. Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof featured gear-head girls taking down a serial killer who had confused his car with his cock.
What makes Teeth a unique example of the empowered scream queen is that she gains her strength from the very essence of her womanhood and sexuality. Forget metaphor and innuendo; Dawn’s power is as literal as you can get.
Dawn does not embrace her sexuality in the beginning. She actually is a member of the abstinence movement and goes around to schools speaking about her virginity. We realize she is proud of her decision to wait until marriage, but she is also afraid of her own sexuality. In one scene, she is fantasizing about her wedding day in bed and reaches down to touch herself but quickly pulls her hand away. Dawn is not just preserving her sexuality, she is hiding from it.
But when a chaste outing turns into date rape, her attacker is left a little less masculine. Dawn thinks her condition is a curse but slowly she starts to realize it may be her salvation. All around her are men ready to hurt her and only when she embraces power between her legs is she able to take control of her life.
As the men around Dawn try to take to advantage of her – from a doctor with a wandering hand, to a classmate with an agenda – she realizes the sexuality she’s been hiding from is the key to her salvation. Vagina dentata may be a horror story to men, but watching Teeth, I realized what was really scary about the film was not her condition but all the men out to get her. Dawn is not safe anywhere – not at school or at home. The film taps into men’s deep rooted fear of castration, but it also shows every woman’s terror of rape.
Teeth gives an incredible message to women that we can fight back against our greatest fears, whether it’s the knife-wielding killer or the man hiding in the alley on our way home. Dawn’s power is something we all have – instead of treating our sexuality as a weakness or a dirty secret to hide from we embrace it as the source of our strength and empowerment.
I can only hope that Teeth will lead to more horror films with empowered women who fight back instead of running from what scares us.
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Kristin Maun
Kristin Maun is the Windy Citizen Blog Editor and a senior at
Comments
Hard Candy is another good one. Intensely creepy, but good.
Saw this at the Music Box with fellow Citizen-ite Jeremy Gantz a few months back....and was terrified, impressed and disappointed at various points.
For all its schlocky, over-the-top antics, I thought the pacing and structure of the first half of the movie was very well done. I appreciated that the filmmakers didn't resolve the actual result of the first encounter (in a cave no less, how great is that?) until some time after the encounter itself, casting a looming dread over the scenes that followed. I really liked that.
I also thought the lead actress was spectacular. She was given a ridiculous part and found some humanity in it.
I thought the second half of the movie was a complete bust. The whole plot with her family....blech. I don't know what else they could have done, but the logic she employs for getting back at her brother...yeah right. The movie starts as a film trying to treat a ridiculous premise with some degree of seriousness, then takes on the ridiculousness of its own premise by the end. Glad I saw it. Will see something with the lead actress again if given a chance, just wish they'd kept up the same tone.
Kristin, you mention it briefly, but what did you think of Deathproof and its treatment of women? How do you square it against a film like Teeth? I thought the brutality of the first part of Deathproof subverted any sort of "you go girl" message in the seconf half. while a ridiculous movie, at least the women in planet terror weren't chewed up and brutalized in graphic fashion like in death proof.
I liked this film. I've read somewhere that it was based on a Japanese film. I have yet to see the original version though. We need more horror films like this.
Teeth's performance was outstanding in this movie and I also hope to see Teeth in more horror films with a better performance.
Bravo. I went out and bought Teeth before I had even seen it as no video store near me were carrying it yet. It was bizzare, but I was instantly taken and had to watch it again. And again the next day. My favorite part is the ending, when Dawn embraces what she has to fight back. However, I never before looked at the rape aspect addressed in the movie. I have to admit, the cave scene still makes me shy away from the screen. And in the aspect, Teeth is not only a horror film to make men think twice, but for women as well. Thank you for your insight.
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