Here is the link to my alternative theory project //www.thinglink.com/card/915837437450649601

My paper applies Kristeva’s theory of Abject to the horror films of female cannibals, and discusses 1)cannibals as the imaginary abject of the civilized westerners, 2)one bestial sister as the abject of the humane sister, 3) the horror films as the abject of the audiences. I argue that the abject, epelled but insisting on existing, challenges the boundary between savage and civility, the evil and the benign, and other and self.

In the alternative theory project, I use the Thinglink to annotate images and videos to illustrate the second part of my paper, the abject and sisterhood. I am excited to try new applications and make an interesting mind map for people to explore, like an interactive game, a nonlinear way of thinking. If I had more time and resources ( images and videos of Raw are extremely rare ), I would have made several parallels that are as complicated as illustrated below.

Storyboard for “Abject and Sisterhood in The Lure and Raw”

Viewsers can start from any of the four keyframes in the middle line, such as Sweet sisters of The Lure, Fighting Sisters of Raw. The sisters in the keyframes are attached to a short video that best show their personality, cannibalistic or humane. Each scene in The Lure is connected to a similar scene in Raw. People can watch Alexia hunting for human flesh before seeing Golden luring a man to eat his heart raw on the river bank, in order to get a sense of bestial cannibals. As viewsers explore the whole picture, they will probably have an idea that the sisters are so close to each other, that they can be allegorically read as two possibilities of one individual. If we adopt the perspective of the humane sister, then the other bestial sister is the abject of her. She has to tame her abject, the bestial split of self,  by accepting the latter’s challenge and rebuild the notion of a human.

The convenience of Thinglink also enables me to highlight film details related to the Abject theory, which I cannot incorporate logically in my paper. I point out the mucous, smelly fishtail of the mermaid in The Lure, which speaks to the dire situation of immigrants in Poland. As the director observed when she was young, many immigrants are exploited, left to the streets and expelled by the local community. By sticking an icon to the fishtail, I can explain such annotation in a haptic way.

*Tip for the icon: I used photoshop to capture and adjust the images to make my own icons in Thinglink. If you put your mouse over Raw, it will change to a pair of eyes of Justine. Hope you enjoy my work 🙂

Working hours: six hours.

Vivian