Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
None
While concealing bloody daggers and claws, Lady Macbeth and Ponti know how to perform femininity, and they know how to weaponize it.
None
Women are already treated like they have a shadow self, a corrupting force that needs to be tamed. It’s little wonder that these haunted female characters, transformed by actual dark magic, might be compelling. After all, this is a counter-fantasy in which the darkness is, in fact, empowering. It is liberating. And there is a tension even in the act of taming: why are we so afraid of something controlled, unless we know that control is only a trigger away from snapping? What do we recognize in these characters, then, if not the act of looking over the edge of a cliff, just to see how far you could fall if you tried?
None
In some ways, the femme fatale trope borders on reverting to misogynistic norms—that women are only afforded power if they look sexy doing it; that women’s strength relies on sensuality and sleek, silent weapons; often, it only maintains the prescription that stereotypically masculine power can only go to women who have rejected femininity, maligning women who make either choice. But done right, and in other ways, it is still an aspiration—that femininity and power are not mutually exclusive, and that one can be retained while still having the other. Or perhaps, if femininity is constricting, then that even from the confines of patriarchal femininity, there is space to draw blood.
None
the black widow cannot be the endpoint of representing female anger. The key to the appeal of the monstrous feminine is ultimately the radical monstrosity—the allowance to be grotesque and ugly, messy and not in a sexy disheveled way. As Ana Božičević writes in “Casual Elegy for Luka Skračić”: “I want to be the kind of monster you/don’t want to fuck—”
None
Men have looked at me with many emotions: kindness, desire, annoyance… But one emotion I have never been looked at with is fear.” I read that essay one night while brainstorming for this one, and this quote struck the perfect thematic vein—of marginality, disenfranchisement and the allure of being terrifying. We ultimately just want to be treated equally, but right now, being intimidating is almost more achievable than equality. It’s not about whether one actually wants to be domineering; it’s about whether other people think you can be, and it’s about power, and it’s about respect. You’re not afraid of something you underestimate. Almost inherent in the state of being feared, for a fleeting moment, is a level playing field. And therein lies our deepest desires
None
In original myths, feminine transgression takes the form of selfishness, of vicious campaigns with no sacrificial or noble motivation.
None
In these stories our pontianaks may not be perfectly pleasant, but to varying extents, they care to care, right from the beginning, and that is part of their innate power
None
often, these original myths end in death: death by guilt (the return of feminine empathy) or death by transformation (a nail in the neck to restore the pontianak into a beautiful wife). Be guilty or be prey. Agency or a happy ending. To remain powerful is to remain lonely, freed from the system but simultaneously alienated from community. So if monstrosity can be a way to find empowerment within marginality, then these new narratives are subversive in refusing the margins