Vulnerability of the Female Corpse

Kelly Gredner

We are no stranger to the violence inflicted upon human bodies when watching horror films. As the story progresses, bodies pile up, bloodied and marred, with the audience watching with trepidation while munching on salty popcorn. We watch people die at the hands of otherworldly creatures such as ghosts, demons, and aliens, entertained by the horrific fantasy of it all. But when it is at the hands of human killers, it gets under our skin because it is relatable, tangible, and all too often, real.

Often it is the woman’s body that is the site of violation and desecration. We watch as women are stalked, chased, tortured, assaulted, and then murdered. It’s a common trope in horror to witness a woman’s body under a constant threat before the final act, but what isn’t regularly addressed is what happens to her body after death, the ultimate site of vulnerability which is that of the female corpse.

Female bodies are often the object of the “male gaze,” a theory introduced by Laura Mulvey’s seminal piece “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey posited that women were something to be looked at and that men/the audience were the ones doing the looking. Not only does this apply to living women but to the dead ones as well. We have been ogling the bodies of dead women since newspapers first shared the graphic drawings of the sex workers mutilated by Jack the Ripper in Victorian England, and, later, when Twin Peaks (1990) introduced us to the mystery surrounding the decomposing body of Laura Palmer. This morbid fascination with the corpses of women is known as the “Beautiful Dead Girl” theory, where people show more interest in women’s stories when they are dead than when they are alive (Donahue).

But yet to some people the female corpse is revered because it exemplifies the patriarchal standard of passive femininity: submissive and silent. Their bodies are a book, left open to explore through intimate glances and touching, unbothered by conversation. Death provides the observer with a narrative of purity and innocence, a virginal vulnerability which can arouse within them the need to destroy.

The (necro)sexual politics of corpses is explored through various arthouse and exploitation films, portraying both the angst of male necrophiliacs and the susceptibility of the female corpse. The films I will be discussing are The Corpse of Anna Fritz (2015), Deadgirl (2008), and Aftermath (1994). In these films, the corpses are mostly of white women, their stories vague, and they appear to have died of natural causes. However, in death their bodies are sexually assaulted, mutilated and degraded by male assailants.

Part 1: Bare Witness

The corpses in question are that of Marta (Aftermath), Anna (The Corpse of Anna Fritz) and the aptly named Dead Girl (Deadgirl). Marta and Anna are both found in a morgue, whereas Dead Girl is discovered in the basement of an abandoned hospital, both areas that are conveniently isolated from the public. While the cause of death may vary, what they do have in common is that they lay naked on cold steel tables exposed to the world. In death, these women are considered beautiful, as they lay motionless and silent in unguarded positions, leaving them free to be fondled, mutilated and defiled all without consent.

Marta died tragically, leaving behind a grieving family. Yet she is dehumanized as we watch The Coroner reduce her to mere physical parts: mouth, breasts and vagina. Anna’s breasts are immediately leered at and groped while Javi and his friends nonchalantly discuss whether her vagina is lubricated. Both Marta and Anna start out as untouched, flawless corpses until they are battered and bruised by their assailants. While Dead Girl is initially fairly clean/untouched, her body deteriorates as the film progresses, as she is assaulted over and over again by JT and the boys who found her. These corpses are found prone, compliant, and to these men (The Coroner, Javi, JT) who loom above them, the act of domination is intoxicating. Although dead, the women look alive, which is what keeps them familiar—untouched yet touchable—thus insinuating that a woman’s body is always available to men whether she is conscious or not. Marta, Anna and Dead Girl are not people, but mere sex objects, open to violent violation and fetishization by a masculine gaze. All agency is removed in death.

In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Julia Kristeva states that “the ultimate in abjection is the corpse”—and that a corpse, “the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. It is no longer I who expel. ‘I’ is expelled” (3-4). In death, the inherent value of the person is lost; all personality, hopes, dreams, and desires dissipate into the ether. The power of who we once were is removed, leaving behind a barren husk. Unlike men, women continuously experience abjection as it is linked back to the reproductive system. Some of us menstruate, discharge fetuses from our wombs, which come with the amniotic sac/fluids/placenta, and lactate from our breasts. We also expel a variety of fluids just by being human, whether it be sweat, blood, pus, urine, feces, snot and vomit.

When we die, we continue to produce waste as we deteriorate, releasing gases and sloughing our skin as we become a victim of our own bacteria. Yet, even though death is the pollution of the body, it is also the end of life. While this can evoke fear and revulsion, to some it draws in a fascination or curiosity which can weave into desire. Kristeva applies her concept of abjection to exploitation horror films, which by nature are transgressive, arguing that abjection is often explored as that which “disturbs identity, system, order,” that which “does not respect borders, positions, rules” (4). Exploitation horror crosses many boundaries and explores the depths of abjection through taboos like necrophilia, and area of transgression that often centers around the vulnerability of the female corpse.

Part 2: Desecration

Marta, Anna, and Dead Girl are sexualized by a necrophilic fantasy bound to the forbidden with deeper nudgings of dominance and sadism. They are used, abused, penetrated, and ejaculated into. According to Joseph J. Berest in the “Report on a Case of Sadism,” the desire to have sex with a corpse originates from a “sexual pleasure [derived] from inflicting physical or mental pain on others (namely the living relatives of the deceased).” But in these films, it’s deformed, going beyond the sadistic and into pure, unadulterated misogyny as these men are complete strangers to the women they violate. Our female corpses are objects. They can’t give consent nor defend themselves from these violent molestations by strange men. The violence in these sexual acts reveals layers of anger and fear (Solomon) informed by deep insecurities that are taken out on these dead women.

In Aftermath, we learn that The Coroner is seeking revenge for the death of his beloved canine companion, who was killed in the same car crash that killed Marta. In her death, he obtains revenge by brutalizing her body with two phalluses (a knife and his own), all while filming it on camera (the ultimate perversion of consent). In Deadgirl, JT believes that the basement is a place where the boys don’t have to play the “nice guy” anymore. There isn’t a need to perform as a decent man because Dead Girl can’t say “no.” In life, Anna was a celebrity—a woman on a pedestal who never gave her body/time to the “plebs” of society. In death, however, anyone can have her: she can be fixated upon, fondled, and penetrated. In the morgue, “they never say no”—meaning the men will never be turned away for their sexual advances. Even when the “corpse” attempts speech, it’s dismissed, disallowed, and ignored (Fitzpatrick).

The fixation on these dead women becomes an obsession, a compulsion, and an exploitation of their unconscious states (Jones 2011). For Dead Girl, she is somewhat animate, albeit growling/biting/staring. Dead Girl is a zombie, a reanimated corpse restrained only by ropes and chains. There is movement and signs of discontent, but she is merely an (undead) object of lust. As dead women, Marta, Anna, and Dead Girl are viewed as “safe,” with the concept of rejection obliterated and perhaps even an exhilarating rush of feeling alive in the violation of the dead (Dujovne).

Marta and Anna’s bodies are called by their living names, and the zombie woman is given the pet name of Dead Girl. They are gendered even in death to maintain their subjectivity, which is important to note when they are being assaulted. “Deadgirl’s plot makes it clear that Deadgirl’s gender cannot be ignored. Not only is her sex prioritized in the title of the film, it is the label that defines her” (Jones 2012). She is raped because she is female. Any man can finally have sex with Anna Fritz, someone they believed was unattainable. Marta’s body is violently raped because of male rage and because of the rapist’s feeling that it’s his right to enact vengeance. To be clear, necrophilia isn’t an issue for them as it is being used to display power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. It’s not disturbing if they give the corpse an identity, a name, and a gender—to establish a power dynamic where they are in charge and the women remain silent.

In “The Poetics of Female Death: The Fetishization and Reclaiming of the Female Corpse in Modern and Contemporary Art,” Costanza Bergo says that the female corpse is, in “her passive accessibility a magnet rather than a repellent, her abject qualities strangely aphrodisiac, in a dialectic of attraction-repulsion that is unique to the female corpse. The dead woman’s passivity—and the inherent passivity of death—seems to increase her eroticism….” She adds that female corpses “…are frequently erotically beautiful, not in spite of but rather because they are dead.” Women’s dead bodies can’t speak, so they can’t voice their grievances, argue or cry. They can’t reject and deject, so they sure are tempting. By sexualizing these corpses, the question of consent and assault gets begged. The bodies of Marta, Anna and Dead Girl are turned back into subjects, but a corpse can never report a rape and thus their perpetrators can go unpunished. But whereas Marta can never seek revenge for the intrusion onto her body, Anna and Dead Girl sure can and do.

Part 3: Consequences

In an act of catharsis, Anna and Dead Girl manifest their rage against the men who desecrated their bodies. We learn that Anna Fritz isn’t actually dead but wakes up while being raped and attempts to escape. She is then chased by her abusers so they can silence her once again. The reputations of the men will be ruined if the story gets out, and they won’t allow that to happen. It’s better to be known as a murderer than a necrophiliac rapist. Yet Anna is able to get the justice she would not have been granted if she had remained in the morgue—dead or alive. In Deadgirl, a few of the high school bullies show up and, after being pressured to fornicate with Dead Girl, one of them gets their penis bitten. Indeed, after she frees herself from the chains, Dead Girl inflicts onto the boys the same torment they inflicted on her, as she bites and tears her way out of confinement and into freedom.

The abject and the monstrous join forces within Dead Girl: once reduced to a pleasure source, she is now a rampaging killing machine. Her example shows that, when we merge death and femininity in a culture that despises both in an attempt to suppress what is repellent in women, it only heightens the fear of both monstrous femininity and death (Bronfen). Though afraid of what Dead Girl could potentially do, the boys straddle life and death for their sexual release—only to end up becoming what they feared: dead. Men’s centuries-long desire, disgust and fear of female sexuality as seen in Dead Girl is something to dominate and destroy. They tried to make Dead Girl (and death) powerless, but they failed.

These revenge fantasies give the viewer a sense of justice, a form of release after witnessing the acts of depravity against these women’s “lifeless” bodies—bodies that continued to experience patriarchal abuse even after death. While Anna survives, she carries with her life-altering trauma, knowing that, even in death, her body is not safe from the prying eyes and degrading touch of men. And sadly, Marta will forever remain dead, further victimized by hatred despite having lost her life by chance.

The True Horror

The unfortunate reality of Aftermath, The Corpse of Anna Fritz, and Deadgirl is that these films aren’t about the women at all; they’re about the men. The men are the centerpiece of the horror, and the vulnerability of the female corpse is the landscape. Each of the men in these films represent to the audience the true horror that is toxic masculinity, socially destructive misogyny, and violent domination performed by arrogant, aggressive boys/men. Very few of the male characters in these films refused to participate in the necrophilia, showing to us that the ones that do are clearly not in the minority, having become victims themselves of the pressures of patriarchal social norms (Jones). They haven’t risen to the challenge of unlearning the harmful effects of toxic masculinity, for they are emblematic of it.

Using the rhetoric of rape culture, the abusers convince themselves that their acts are not criminal—or that they are at least forgivable or justifiable. The men in these films know that the women/bodies have suffered, but they justify their actions (and harsh lack of empathy) because they were unable to consent. A defense noted regularly in rape rhetoric (Jones 2012). But Marta, Anna and Dead Girl aren’t drunk, drugged, or mute women – they’re dead.  A corpse will never be able to report the rape, and the perpetrator can go unpunished. Dead Girl is dehumanized and forced into sexual servitude; a photo is taken of Anna’s dead naked body so that she becomes even more of a spectacle; and The Coroner uses sexual violence to obliterate Marta’s body for the sake of frivolous revenge.

The narratives of all of these films revolve primarily around the lives, feelings, and perceptions of the men, even if the title suggests otherwise. It is about the relationships of these men with themselves and with each other—and ultimately about how they view women and their bodies. The Coroner (Aftermath), the teenage boys (Deadgirl), and the three men (The Corpse of Anna Fritz) represent the fears women have: even if dead or unconscious, in the presence of men, our bodies are not safe. These are men of all ages, all failing to see women as human and, in death, further objectifying her. These are violent films depicting dehumanizing acts against women whose only crime was to exist.

To be dead is to be female, and even in death we can’t escape the confines of patriarchal femininity. We exist; therefore, we must suffer. Women spend their lives in a state of hypervigilance to protect not only our bodily autonomy in life, but also in death. Our penetrable body is left vulnerable, and the potential to be violated and objectified remains even after we have left our mortal coil.

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Works Cited

Berest, Joseph J. “Report on a Case of Sadism.” The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 6, no. 3, 1970, pp. 210–19.

Bergo, C. “The Poetics of Female Death: the fetishization and reclaiming of the female corpse in Modern and Contemporary Art.” Academia.edu. April 10, 2014.

Bronfen, E. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester University Press, 2017.

Donahue, Anne T. “How ‘Twin Peaks’ Gave the Beautiful Dead Girl Pop-Culture Currency.” Esquire, 15 May 2017, www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a55039/twin-peaks-beautiful-dead-girl-laura-palmer/.

Dujovne, B. E. “Disavowal and the Culture of Deadening: Revisiting Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.” Psychoanalytic Psychology, vol. 21, no. 4, 2004, pp. 633–637. https://doi.org/10.1037/0736-9735.21.4.633

Fitzpatrick, Andrea D. “Reconsidering the Dead in Andres Serrano’s ‘The Morgue’: Identity, Agency, Subjectivity.” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review, vol. 33, no. 1/2, 2008, pp. 28–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42630764.

Jones, Steve. “Porn of the Dead: Necrophilia, Feminism, and Gendering the Undead.” In Zombies Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead, edited by Christopher M. Moreman and Cory James Rushton. McFarland, 2011, pp. 40-60.

Jones, Steve. “Gender Monstrosity: Deadgirl and the Sexual Politics of Zombie-Rape.  Feminist Media Studies vol. 13, no. 4, 2012, pp. 525-39.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press, 1982.

Solomon, Robert C. “Sexual Paradigms.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 71, no. 11, 1974, pp. 336–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/2024875.