Pretty/Scary

One image haunts the history of Italian horror cinema more than any other – the face of Barbara Steele in La Maschera del Demonio. Barbara Steele's image, particularly as the reanimated Asa, replete with holes in her face from the hammering of a spiked mask into the witch, is, in the words of Phil Hardy “more than any other, the emblem and fetish of the genre”.Hardy's devotional statement resonates with three major problems that persistently haunt women in film. The first is the way in which bodies in cinema, and specifically women's faces, have been subsumed by their capacity to signify, not 'real' women per se, but a palpable incarnation of male fantasy, specifically male fetishism. The second problem is the need for any form of delirious cinematic pleasure – cinesexuality – to be transcribed into an established sexual neurosis at all. The third problem is that, as a woman who herself is, among many, enthralled by Steele's face, I do not visually relate to the signifier Barbara Steele per se, so much as to the particular quality and intensity with which her image, like many other images, whether of bodies, landscapes or even sound-images, affects me as viewer. Barbara Steele is less important than, for example a) the things that seem to continually happen around her (gothic landscapes, baroque tales of sexual depravity and death) or b) the ways in which she is filmed, such as Bava's chiaroscuro and misty close-ups, Freda's framing of the terrorised face (L'Orribile Segreto dei Dr Hichcock/The Terrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock, 1962) and Corman's sharp angles and lurid colour (The Pit and the Pendulum, 1961). I do not wish to retain the signifier woman in order to vindicate the genre because these films include Barbara Steele as at least a strong heroine in a stereotypically male genre. If I were to follow this line I would suggest that Lucio Fulci's films, especially …E tu Vivrai nel Terrore. L'Aldila, (The Beyond, 1981) Paura nel Citta dei Morti Vivanti (The City of the Living Dead, 1980) and Quella Villa Acantro al Cimetrio (The House by the Cemetery, 1981) were 'feminist' horror films because women are not sexualised victims and the protagonist of all three films is Irish actress Catriona MacColl (aka Katrina MacColl). Even Argento's feminine/feminist Suspiria (1977, written by a woman, Daria Nicolodi) would do. But gender exchange is not enough to rethink the philosophies of gender and sexuality in film. This essay will address the feminist implications of these three issues and attempt to sketch, through Jean Françoise Lyotard's Libidinal Economy, different ways of thinking Steele's appeal, our relationship with her image and cinematic pleasure.

Note: This essay excerpt is courtesy Fiona Villella, editor of Senses of Cinema Online Film Magazine