I Spit on Your Grave

When reading and discussing ideas of penetration, castration, the phallus, and other Freudian concepts in relation to horror films, and really in any other genre of film, it all starts to sound a little strange and far-fetched. Freud did not actually have any concrete evidence for his ideas and was really attempting by whatever means he could to break into the academic community after his failed proposals of seduction theory and cocaine as a life-saving drug. As Amy and Anny pointed out, these ideas are not so much to be thought of as literal phallic images, but more as a metaphor of power dynamics. Freud may not have given us scientifically accurate findings of the human mind, but he did successfully construct intricate narratives to help explain internal thoughts and fears.

In the case of I Spit on Your Grave (or Day of the Woman as it was originally called), there is an unusual balance of Freudian ideas in both a metaphorical and literal sense. In the beginning of the film, the main character, Jennifer, moves from Manhattan into a countryside home to work on her first novel. As she moves in, she meets each of the four men who would become her eventual attackers. She tells one of them how she is an “evil city girl” as he asks her about where she is from. Even though she may have been joking, being from the city is one of the two things that poises Jennifer as a threat to the men. People from a big city usually carry the stigma in film of thinking they are better than civilians who live in the country. Since Jennifer is a woman from the city, she holds an unacceptable ranking above each of the men she meets throughout the beginning. The other thing that makes her a threat is the fact that she is seemingly successful enough to move out to a new home on her own. The fact that she is the sole head of her new household is one reason that Creed points out that it is “clear that woman is actually being punished because, by her very nature, she represents the threat of castration” (Creed, 474).

(I had the PDF for The Monstrous Feminine, so the page number may be different than the book)

Someone once told me that rape was more about power than it was the actual sex. In the beginning, Jennifer is established to hold more power than most female roles give, and seemingly more than each of the men have. They fear this (castrating) power, which leads them to assault her. In doing so, however, it seems to only confirm and reinforce their Freudian anxieties around Jennifer. In retaliation, she uses her castrating presence to stalk and kill each one of them. This then presents a different take on the influence of the phallus. Instead of it acting as their source of power, the phallus of first two men she kills becomes their weakness. She seduces both Matt and Johnny in order to lure them into a relaxed state. Seemingly unable to resist her sexual advances, even though Johnny is then established to have a family of his own, Jennifer uses their sexual urges against them, as it allows her to put them in in compromising position before taking their lives. She even kills Johnny by castrating him, going full circle with their initial anxieties. Jennifer used the phallic power of her attackers as their emotional fault so she could exact revenge and penetrate them back.

I Spit on Your Grave was not the most enjoyable watch, but I can see why it is written about so often. Jennifer is really the embodiment of Freudian anxieties seen in men, which serve as a possible narrative for underlying fears seen throughout horror and films from other genres. This film uses those anxieties as revenge against the men who quite horribly attacked Jennifer in the beginning of the film. It was just a shame that the audience had to endure Jennifer’s suffering much longer than the characters who actually deserved it.