In 1986, Linda Williams penned the landmark essay “When the Woman Looks,” a critique of how the female gaze in horror films reflects the woman’s cultural status of subordination and her association with monstrosity. My research addresses what comes after that moment of identification: the female scream.
Popular thinking is that women scream in horror films because it is an inherently misogynistic media genre; that women are screaming because they are being terrorized. But this reading fails to account for any complexity of female emotion and experience. While women do scream because they are afraid, they also scream in anger, grief, or simply to be heard. My dissertation positions the female scream within the American horror film canon as a performative act of resistance that highlights the bond between survivor and monster.
Despite significant scholarship that engages with gender performance in horror films, there is currently no in-depth exploration of how the female scream operates as an oppositional act of defiance against cultural norms that seek to silence and render women invisible. These screams, whether reflections of fear, anger, desire, or grief, center the emotional reactions of women and force engagement with institutional frameworks that perpetuate notions of ideal womanhood. My research addresses this blind spot by positioning the scream not as an uncontrollable physiological response but as a defiant act that forces audience engagement with cultural norms that dismiss women's trauma.
Season one consists of five episodes centered on horror films from the United States. Each episode covers a particular type of scream and considers what that scream suggests about the political and social context in which it was created. This season covers Hagsploitation, Sexual Harassment, Maternal Grief, Coded Queerness, and Trump Era Anger. Funding for season 1 was generously provided by the Humanities Center at Lehigh University.
Due to COVID, season two was delayed but plans are currently underway to debut a new slate of podcast episodes in early 2022. In addition, an extensive archive of screams not covered in the podcast episodes is also in development.
This is not a podcast about women being victimized. This is a podcast about women surviving and I hope you’ll scream with me.
