LadyChatterly&Elaine- Monsterous feminine

Hello, welcome to my talk. I'm Latterly

lover and love witch. I'm your host Flores.

And we will be connecting these two things in the terms of monstrous, feminine, sex,

love and power.

Before we begin,

I do want to note that there are some glitches where in the editing board

it comes out correctly. But in the presenting film,

something glitches words don't appear and I will just clear that up as we go along.

So this actually has a glitch

um often rooted in sexuality or other traits. It's typical in women.

That word is supposed to be there.

But moving on, I'll just point out the glitches as we go along.

So what does it mean to be a monstrous, feminine? Well,

in, from this class, what I gathered was,

it's supposed to be this idea of what makes this character

monstrous is the fact that they're a feminine character.

It's the fact that they are women.

So we're gonna go into it with cream in a bit.

But

this idea of a role versa with man, which will just bring it up is very prominent where

a man is a monster. There's no man monster. You don't say male monster, but you say

woman monster, you say feminine monster

and

it sort of just

indicates that like

being womanly makes you another level of monster

or it's different traits that make you monstrous.

It's the fact that you have a womb, it's the fact that you

display traits of women that are not typical.

It's the fact that when women have authority, they're deemed more monstrous.

These are all ideas that creed breeds in and

we'll go into depth with the category she has

archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire possessed monster

which castrating mother.

These are the categories she describes to be the monstrous feminine.

And I'm gonna go more to death with this idea of horror or virgin.

The fact that a woman has control over her sexuality makes her monstrous.

If a woman has sex with multiple people,

then that's evil in itself because she has such control

over something that a man should have control of.

And then we're looking at virginity,

if a woman is able to be staying a virgin for a very long time,

that is evil in itself because a man couldn't break her

because she has that willpower that she's not supposed to maintain.

So these are things that we'll talk about with these texts

and then going on into Cohen's monster theory.

I really enjoy this simply because my brain

likes giving things labels whenever I can.

And so today,

we'll be considering these two films with the monster's body is a cultural body

and fear of the monsters really kind of desire.

I'll go more into depth when we go into that.

But first

we're looking at the first text which is ladies,

I'm actually not going to the first text, I'm going to. Sex is power.

So I just wanted to bring up two little notes. Sex can be used to manipulate.

It emphasizes the sexuality and the sexualizing of the womanly body

or the male body. But in this case, we're looking at the woman body

and sex can be used as a prize.

It's sacred, but it's really used as positive reinforcement sometimes.

And we'll get into that when we talk about the love specifically.

But starting off now with Lady Chatterley's lover.

I, I love this film. I love the Netflix's description sums it up.

But essentially woman marries a man.

Man is a rich man. He's gonna go off to war. They get married really fast.

Everyone's a little surprised and the first thing they do is have sex. Great.

No premarital sex in this household.

Her sister is actually like, why don't, why did you marry him?

Can't you just fuck him? Can't you just have sex with him?

That's the whole debate here.

But

it sort of goes deeper into that.

She does this because she's like, why would I do this? I wanna be married to him.

She ends up having an affair because her husband kind of told her to have an affair.

He comes back from the war paralyzed. He can't get it up.

He can't, he can't have sex with this woman anymore. Her knees are not met,

but

that doesn't matter. She still loves him. She's not gonna do anything

all great until he says we need an heir for this land. We need an heir.

Go find someone,

have sex with them, have a child

and

she thinks this is insane.

We're gonna move on to the main, the main scenes because this is very important.

She thinks this is insane. She tries having sex with him.

They realize he can't get it up.

And this upcoming scene that I'm about to

talk about where she looks in the mirror naked

and just

has mas, she just, she just masturbates.

She fucks herself right then and there looking at herself in the mirror and the scene

is so important because it's when she realizes

that she can't keep doing this with him.

It's when she realizes she needs more than what's happening in the relationship.

And this kind of control that she feels she has

um not over herself but control that's put onto her

is

it feels like it's breaking her down.

And so when she gets to have the affair,

she feels free when she realizes she falls in love and she runs naked in the field,

she proves her love.

It's all showing freedom.

And

these are very powerful in terms of how she's

monstrous or not because she's just finally free.

But everyone else at this point

is considering the fact that she's having an affair,

she's having sex with another man

and that's just evil in itself.

And now we are going on to the love witch. I really enjoy this film.

I was not expecting to love this film as much as I did.

But you know what, I don't love the peacock description. Read that

while I'm talking,

I don't like it.

And the main reason I don't like it is because it insinuates that she's insane

that she's suffering from insanity.

When in reality,

she just wants love,

the fact that she's going out trying to find a man.

And yes, does she kill men along the way maybe? But she just wanted love, you know.

So

Elaine comes back to San Francisco after her

first husband divorced and he is um passed away

and

she sees these men. She

wants them to fall in love with her. She does love potion.

She's a witch, she does magic,

but

it all kind of gets weird when

they, I, they, they're dying when

they're killing themselves out of too much love for her.

And

it feels sort of taboo watching this movie this entire time.

I was watching this movie. I felt like I wasn't supposed to be watching it.

I felt like a fever dream.

So,

where does this take us in terms of her? Being monstrous.

Well,

there's these main scene I really wanna discuss first is the

strip dance she does for Wayne the professor to seduce him.

This kind of feels more,

I guess you could say like she is taking control over her sexuality.

It feels the sense of when I talked about sexist power,

it feels like she knows she has the upper hand,

she knows that she has this authority over men

and

yet

she doesn't know, she thinks that this is all to please somebody. And she's,

she thinks that

it's sort of a tradeoff. If you

can get my drift, she doesn't know she has this power over him.

And I think that's just really powerful because you

think that she's just trying to find love.

She thinks she's just trying to find love, but

she doesn't know that what's happening

in terms of the love potion, the hallucinogen, everything.

It's sort of just giving her the upper hand as she keeps going.

And the day that I met him was the day that I died and was reborn

as a witch.

Yes, this phrase could be literal that she became a witch after he died.

But this phrase can also just mean

when she was like, she was able to let go of herself,

she was able to not be the person she was in that marriage.

She was able to become somebody that she wanted to take control of.

She mentions in the film about how being a witch is getting control,

getting what you want.

And

I feel like that's very much her goal, her persona after she gets, after she

is out of her marriage,

we never know what she's like in her marriage.

So I guess it's not really a fair comparison but in terms of what makes her monstrous.

This is definitely what I would see.

Um, Trish is wearing Elaine's wardrobe.

I think this is also really prominent simply because she,

as she's wearing her wardrobe,

as she's putting on the makeup as she's putting on the clothes,

she can feel a lot more control of her sexuality.

And

it gives you the idea of is this persona,

a sexual being, is this persona's sexuality

the main driving force towards what she does

or is the personas emotional, is this personas

mind and this persona's heart controlling what she does?

And are they intertwined?

Are they both, as she says, too big of love for anyone to handle?

And last, but not least we have the infamous tampon situation.

And this I thought was really important just because, you know,

the idea of like men can't touch this magic because men

have never seen a used tampon. Men don't want to interact with menstrual blood.

It sort of feels like she's giving women giving witches something above man.

And

that's monstrous in the film.

That was a very taboo in the film.

Yes,

I had a lot to talk about in terms of those two.

But now going on to more stuff, they're period pieces.

We have the love witch which is very sixties style and lady Chatterley's lover,

which is the 19 twenties.

This means

what?

Well,

in my opinion and how it really did the

impact for me was because they are period pieces.

I feel like the message of femininity being

powerful and the femininity being something above man

was so much harder, like hit harder.

I don't wanna say that cheating and I don't wanna say that

like women having power is more, more normalized now.

But I definitely think that compared to those times, it definitely is.

And

knowing that someone's having an affair

and knowing that someone's sleeping around,

knowing that someone is doing things

that aren't traditional

was very, very taboo.

Very, very not talked about a big like if you do this, you are a terrible person

in that time period.

So what does this mean for monster 70 creatures? Why does it make it more prominent?

Because

what they're doing is much more

impactful, much more taboo, much more

everything than if it were to happen in modern times.

If someone were to do what Lady Chatterley did? Yeah, they would be

you, you had an affair on your husband. That's bad.

But it wouldn't be shunning, it wouldn't be driving away.

It wouldn't be any sort of matter like that.

So

where does that bring us

final remarks?

How do they intertwine with the mantras, feminine sexuality.

Both Lady Chatterley and the love witch,

he hold their sexuality at different standards.

The love witch knows that she can use her sexuality. She can seduce men.

She knows that to do. That's what you need to do. Whether it's to find love

or to have control over a man that she craves

and

that control she has makes her monstrous. But in the same sense, the lady shatter,

she doesn't have that control. She

wants to be with the man because she wants to have sex with him.

But she knows she has to do it his way until she realizes

I want to have this and he can't provide it. I need to do it myself.

I need to find somebody to do it for me. And if the person I find

does it, well, I want to be with them. I want to like

put myself in there.

And that when she realizes that when she has that freedom,

it gives her the power to just let herself be free, let herself be who she needs to be.

And

in those two aspects, it sort of

gives them authority that they should not have had.

In

the phrase of man,

power

ties back to the sexuality.

They both start off at different levels of power and they both end up in the,

I would say similar aspect where they have the upper hand

and they have taking control and God in what they want.

And last but not least respect,

Lady

Ty was not given respect up until the point that she

realized who she wanted to be and where she wanted to be.

And it was the point where she finally broke free and went to

the person she truly loved that she was shown any type of respect.

And the same with the love, which once she started taking control of these men,

is once the men started respecting her,

whether or not everyone else such as Trish respected her in return.

And are these comparisons applicable to modern day women in society?

I would say yes, because no matter how hard we work and no matter how much we try

women having control and wanting to be virgin till a certain point or wanting to

have a lot of sex, we still get very judged to this day and still be made a monster of so

in the hope that these women

sort of

model an idea of freedom and control.

It sort of inspires that in modern generations.

But that in return makes the people of modern generation

monstrous.

And that was more of an opinion than a required part of the assignment.

But I want to talk about it.

Here's my work excited.

And if you haven't watched Lady Shatters Lover, I do recommend it.

I do want to warn a lot of nudity but nothing new to this class.

And last but not least thank you so much for having this course. It was very fun and

I

really, really, I, I don't know if I'll be able to take Shakespeare,

but I will go see the plays that you were talking about.

But thank you. And this is a very fun project and I'm gonna stop talking,

check out Lady Chat Lisa

and this is the design I made

Lady Chatter Lisa blue one. Actually,

I have one minute,

the colors I chose are actually very

prominent because Lady Chatterley starts off very like

submissive, which I think the blue shows off, but then it's also dark blue.

So she gives off the power

and then we have

um, Elaine who's in the red, she's

given the sexual sort of eyes and

I feel like red is sort of the color of control and sex. Hi, handsome. Sorry, my cat.

But

thank you for

enjoying this. Thank you for listening and

LadyChatterly&Elaine- Monsterous feminine

Chapters

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated