ACCA Podcast · ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

In conversation with Barbara Creed and Lisa French

March 4, 2024·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Creed links Carrie, Regan in The Exorcist, and The Brood to menstruation, childbirth, and monstrosity.

ACCA begins with ceremony. Elise Goldfinch welcomes the audience, acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people and neighbouring nations, and locates the gathering at ACCA. The reason for the room is a book launch: Barbara Creed's Return of the Monstrous Feminine, set beside fresh returns to her earlier work on film, feminism, and psychoanalysis. The talk keeps some of that public program texture. There are thanks, introductions, and the sense of people gathering around art and argument. Creed works through examples rather than smoothing the subject out. With Teeth, she takes a myth of female danger and treats it as a feminist cinema problem, absurd on the surface and sharp underneath. The discomfort is part of the point. She does not reduce the film to shock; she uses its central image to show how long male fear of women has been doing the rounds. Reception becomes its own evidence. Creed remembers the Melbourne Film Festival queue stretching from the Capitol toward Parliament House, then the noise and tension in the room during key scenes. The film mattered because people reacted, shrieked, and later asked for warnings. Students' responses add another layer, catching assumptions people may not know they brought in. The ending returns to thanks and to the exhibition around the event. Creed describes it as touching a global nerve around what lies beneath, with works coming at the theme from different angles. The episode does not tie everything off. It sits with feminist film history, audience memory, and the blunt bodily force of images.

As heard by us

Feminist film theory becomes a live conversation about horror, bodies, and the ideas around them.

ACCA's launch for Barbara Creed's Return of the Monstrous Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema feels like a public talk first and a lesson second.

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Why you'd press play

For listeners who want feminist film theory in a live ACCA room, not a studio gloss.

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