Barbara Creed was born on 30 September 1943 and is a professor of cinema studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.
34 Facts About Barbara Creed
1.
2.
Barbara Creed is the author of six books on gender, feminist film theory, and the horror genre.
3.
Barbara Creed is a well-known Australian commentator on film and media.
4.
Barbara Creed is a graduate of Monash and La Trobe University, completing her doctrinal thesis and research on the cinema of horror.
5.
Barbara Creed pursued the use of feminist theory and psychoanalysis in her examination of horror films.
6.
Barbara Creed currently works within the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne where she is a professor of Cinema Studies.
7.
Barbara Creed's work relies on a number of theorists including Sigmund Freud, and Julia Kristeva.
8.
Barbara Creed wrote an essay on Kristeva and film in 1985 for the British Film Journal.
9.
Barbara Creed argues that within horror films, the male gaze is oftentimes the central focus.
10.
Barbara Creed further acknowledges the influence of Julia Kristeva, by examining the notion of abjection.
11.
Barbara Creed argues that abjection theory is profoundly engrained within the horror genre.
12.
Barbara Creed explains this by focuses on how horror emphasizes boundaries of humanity and beyond.
13.
Primarily, Barbara Creed's works focus on the horror genre, and the impact of patriarchal ideologies upon the genre.
14.
Barbara Creed focuses on Freudian psychoanalysis and Julia Kristeva's work on semiotics.
15.
Barbara Creed's work using the psychoanalysis framework validates its usefulness in the feminist film theory field.
16.
Barbara Creed uses the expression "monstrous feminine" because it accentuates the significance of gender in relation to the construction of monstrosity.
17.
Barbara Creed first considers women as Vampires in such films as Dracula and The Hunger, wherein she discusses the image of the 'archaic mother' with the female vampire being 'mother' and her lover or victim as 'child' whom she promises eternal life to.
18.
Barbara Creed interrogates at the portrayal of desire and lesbianism in the horror film the Hunger, arguing that when the two female vampires kiss there is an eruption of blood in the women's mouths, which represents how lesbian relations are deadly and consequential.
19.
Barbara Creed identifies that early historical definitions of 'witch' were associated with healers and users of magic, but during the fourteenth century in the period of witch trials and witch hunts, witchcraft was believed to be a sin and in service to the devil.
20.
Barbara Creed argues that the use of blood and gore are meant to depict women as demonized or monstrous.
21.
Medusa is a mythological creature whose stare can turn people to stone, particularly men, and who has a head covered in snakes, which Barbara Creed argues is a deadly symbol of the vagina dentata.
22.
Barbara Creed discusses how this creates a fear that women are allegedly actively trying to castrate men.
23.
Barbara Creed argues that a woman's deep connection to natural events such as reproduction and birth is considered 'quintessentially grotesque'.
24.
Barbara Creed reflects back to the Renaissance where the uterus is depicted in connotation with evil and the devil.
25.
Freud applies this theory to Medusa, as Barbara Creed explains that Freud's compares the female genitalia to Medusa as men fear castration from the sight of her.
26.
Barbara Creed includes a definition of "Matrix" in the book's introduction, which she describes as a, "womb; place in which thing is developed", which closely relates to her discussion of the monstrous feminine.
27.
Barbara Creed argues that the development of technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has allowed people to experiment with reality and time, and disassociate one's self from their own reality, as well as challenge ideas of "fixed personal identity".
28.
Barbara Creed defines this "crisis TV", wherein news reporters focus on disasters to provoke anxiety and immediacy, and bring the abject into reality.
29.
In Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny, Barbara Creed reflects on the representation of men in the horror genre, with a specific focus on how they are portrayed in comparison to women.
30.
Barbara Creed uses films that were influenced by Darwin in the nineteenth century to analyze film techniques related to Darwin's works.
31.
In 2006 Barbara Creed was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
32.
Barbara Creed is on a variety of worldwide editorial panels.
33.
At the University of Melbourne in 2013, Barbara Creed established the Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network.
34.
Barbara Creed has published a multitude of material on gender and horror, including: The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism.