Penetrating Possessor: Female violence, physicality, and body horror
By Becky Darke
We are in, close, on the back of a woman’s head. She delicately runs her fingertips along her scalp, her cornrows providing convenient tracks of skin: she’s looking for the spot to insert a probe. The probe goes in, the blood pools out.
Jumping forward, the woman commits a brutal attack, plunging a steak knife deep into a man’s neck. Again, we see it close. There’s then a relentless frenzy as she stabs the blade into the man’s gut over and over. Her bright white trainers slip on the fast-spreading puddle of his blood. She places her hand palm-down in it and rubs it between her fingers, fascinated. It contrasts starkly with the pearly white of her manicure.
This pre-title sequence of Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor (2020) sees Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), as Holly Bergman (Gabrielle Graham), penetrating her own body and then choosing to violently penetrate another. The film treads a delicate balance between feminine and masculine, something Cronenberg deploys to leave the viewer unsure about where the violence stems from.
The history of women and violence in horror movies is both simple and complicated. Simple in that women are so often the running, screaming victims of male killers who commonly favour a phallic weapon, yet more complicated when we examine women as the perpetrators of penetrative violence.
Female violence and body horror
Female body horror so often deals with the horror of women’s bodies. For example, women reckon with the patriarchy’s fear of female genitalia in Teeth (2007), puberty and sexual development in Carrie (1976) and Ginger Snaps (2000), sexuality and desire in Possession (1981) and Jennifer’s Body (2009), and Cronenberg Snr shows particular interest in the horrors of pregnancy in both The Brood (1979) and The Fly (1987).
Aviva Briefel, writing for Film Quarterly in March 2005, “Monster Pains: Masochism, Menstruation, and Identification in the Horror Film”, reminds us that menstruation is the start of female monstrosity, "by gendering the monster's pain, the horror genre prevents the audience from losing control of its own.” But Possessor doesn’t appear to present menstruation as a point of disgust. I can’t see women interacting with blood and not think about periods, and there’s something about the way Vos/Holly interacts with her victim’s blood that’s evocative of menstruating. Later, Michael (Rossif Sutherland) tells a crude dinner party story about a professor’s chest hair becoming detached and scuttling around, slurping at the thighs of menstruating students; vulgar yes, but the target is the sad, ageing man, not the healthy young woman.
Even more than violating others, I would argue that the greater taboo is exacting that violation upon ourselves. Briefel argues that female monsters do not engage in masochistic acts out of pleasure but when coerced or attempting to terminate their own monstrosity. In Possessor, even the logistics of Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Vos’ work involves bodily invasion: to carry out her violence, Vos must have an implant, and tubes up her nose, and is complicit in her own penetration.
Female physicality versus emotion
The women of Possessor - or at least those involved in the business of assassination - seem acutely aware of and actively engaged with their senses.
Girder is an explicitly physical presence - always touching her hair, accentuating her movements in her neck and hands. In turn, Vos defines the status of her connection with new host Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott) by saying she’s “One to one with the host right now, I can feel him.” Sight is also prominent in Vos’ adoption of Tate’s body: his eyes are her windows out into his world, and the light burns them when she uses them for the first time - like the head-probes, both reminiscent of The Matrix (1999). In this way, Vos isn’t only “possessing” her hosts, she is embodying their lived experiences.
This physicality grounds our female characters, who are constantly immersed in the threat of displaced identities. As Vos transfers, we see her literally melt away like wax and rematerialise as Tate. The women’s awareness of their own bodies - like a kind of uber-mindfulness - is a defence against what Julia Kristeva describes as The Abject in “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection” (1980): our violent reaction to a threatened breakdown in meaning is caused by the loss of distinction between subject and object, or between self and other.
There is rage in Vos’ killings, and the film revolves around the idea that she is losing control, losing her mind. This recalls Ashley Hubbard’s notion that when women show violence it’s seen as insanity. Writing for We Are Horror in October 2020, “Female Slashers: They Exist But Is It Enough?”, she suggests that women are portrayed as more emotional but are expected to ignore, hide, or overcome their anger, until they snap. Vos doesn’t snap but she does verge on it multiple times. Cronenberg acknowledges the emotion of his female killer - it’s important that she remembers the guilt of catching and mounting a butterfly, while the process of synching with her hosts involves some kind of emotional stimulation.
Despite the presence of these more traditionally feminine characteristics, female body horror in Possessor is framed less as a consequence of women’s own bodies; the focus being more on female violence actively inflicted against others.
The masculinity of violence
It’s clear that the assassinations are planned as shootings, and Vos’ choice to stab the man in the opening scene points to her instability. Later, when she’s clearly not enjoying sex with Michael, she fantasises about thrusting the blade into her earlier victim’s throat, only then becoming more active and aggressive in bed.
The narrative given for the attack on John Parse (Sean Bean) is that Tate feels emasculated - something that is certainly signposted in Ava’s (Tuppence Middleton) choking him during sexual intercourse - but it’s Vos who takes control of their lovemaking, presenting us with the provocative image of her naked body augmented by Tate’s erect penis. She had earlier investigated the contents of his boxers, inverting the common body-swap comedy trope of a man finding himself in a woman’s body and discovering the thrill of sporting his own tits.
Vos dials up the masculinity to pick a fight at Parse’s party, displaying male aggressive behaviours and obscene speech typical of the threatened man, “I’ll leave when Ava’s done with my cock in her mouth”, calling her a “fucking bitch” and declaring himself “a fucking giant”. Of course, this is Vos’ version, but it’s all too believable for everyone witnessing the show.
Vos’ adoption of male characteristics is key to her success, but it’s her intimacy with her own violence that’s most interesting. It is definitively Vos who lands the violence upon Parse, and she again opts for the phallic, up-close weapon rather than her gun, beating and torturing him with a fire poker. But again she turns the penetrative violence upon herself, using a huge shard of glass to damage her brain implant.
Violence perpetrated by women can present as ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’ or neither: masochism and physicality, penetration and rage can easily be factors of one as of another. With Possessor, Brandon Cronenberg provides a rich, identity-blending world within which he explores the complexities of gendered violence. And whether it’s about menstruation or penetration, one thing we can be sure of is that there will always be plenty of blood.
Becky Darke is a London-based podcaster and film reviewer. She produces and co-hosts the ‘90s pop-culture podcasts Don’t Point That Horror At Me and Return to Eerie, Indiana. She’s also a regular contributor to The Evolution of Horror and The Final Girls. You can find Becky’s written reviews on the FilmBusters and Zobo With A Shotgun websites.
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