Phallic Panic

by Barbara Creed

' Phallic Panic is not only an impressive and elegant work of scholarship; it breathes new life into debates around the horror film, illuminating the genre's eerie and unsettling power. Like her groundbreaking The Monstrous-Feminine , Creed's new book is destined to become a standard text in the field.'
Pam Cook, Professor of European Film and Media, University of Southampton

'Barbara Creed asks the question "what does man want?" and takes us on an exhilarating trip through the Freudian uncanny and horror cinema to provide the answers. This is a lucid and compelling account of male monstrosity which exhumes the uncanny and makes it come to life all over again as something "primal", perverse and chillingly subversive.'
Ken Gelder, author of Reading The Vampire and The Horror Reader

Vampires, werewolves, cannibals and slashers-why do audiences find monsters in movies so terrifying? In Phallic Panic , Barbara Creed ranges widely across film, literature and myth, throwing new light on this haunted territory.
Looking at classic horror films such as Frankenstein, The Shining and Jack the Ripper, Creed provocatively questions the anxieties, fears and the subversive thrills behind some of the most celebrated monsters.
This follow-up to her influential book The Monstrous-Feminine is an important and enjoyable read for scholars and students of film, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and the visual arts.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Psychology, Monsters, Philosophy, Feminism, Horror

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Barbara Creed is Professor of Cinema Studies and Head of the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She is author of the acclaimed The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality, Phallic Panic: Film, Horror & the Primal Uncanny and Darwin's Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema. She is also a well-known film critic and media commentator, and her writings on cinema have been translated into many languages for a range of international journals and anthologies.

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very intriguing and interesting read that delves into the world behind the most famous and well known male monster of the horror genre and dissects what it is that really makes them scary. Creed has researched each section thoroughly and backs up each of her points and arguments with examples and evidence to justify her conclusions. Ultimately she proves that these male monsters are considered just that because of their close associations with the three elements of the uncanny that terrify men the most, Death, Nature and Woman (which on a personal note I find utterly brilliant). Creed shows how deep seated these fears are, where they stemmed from and how they're portrayed both in folklore and in film. The only fault I can find with this book is in the section on Jack the Ripper where Creed relies too heavily on the conclusions of one specific author, whose conclusions are not the most widely accepted, and this undermines Creed's arguments a little. This may seem a bit pedantic but with such a well known mystery, especially one that is so emotive, either the most prevalent theory should be used or more than one to offer a more balanced perspective. Again that could just be me. Overall a great read and one that as a woman makes me feel strangely smug...

[Travis Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is some real useful stuff in here if you can wade through the aggressive commitment to psychoanalysis as a singular way to think about horror here. This is even when acknowledging the the title of the book includes both the words "phallic" and "uncanny."

[Le Gault · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would only recommend reading this if you are really on board a phallocentric understanding of feminism through Freud's psychoanalysis

[Col]

read for school