MAI Feminism & Visual Culture: Focus Issue Thirteen: Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History

Misiak, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7153-944X, Peirse, Alison ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1032-9013 and Sadri, Houman ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7736-2494 (2024) MAI Feminism & Visual Culture: Focus Issue Thirteen: Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History. [Journal]

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Abstract / Summary

Launching this dossier of ‘Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History’ feels ground-breaking. It is a collection of articles from authors situated all around the world. They cover non-canonical film titles, offering visibility to some genre films that have never reached the centres of Western criticism or academia.

If Zygmunt Bauman believed that ‘[g]lobalisation divides, as much as it unites,’ this focus issue testifies that despite all our resistance to a globalisation primarily associated with neoliberalism, this unity can be both possible and precious. Perhaps, within our feminist community—and particularly with this issue—we can genuinely demonstrate how to forge connections above divisions and cherish engagement with what Appadurai calls ‘the grassroots’ global knowledge—something that has been systematically marginalised by Western scholarship.

Whether you are a horror fan or not, we invite you today to embark on a journey to watch and read unconventional, decolonising analyses of films that speak to the fears of women today. Many of the movies selected by our authors for their close readings are pretty recent and timely, especially as regards their storylines and character development pathways. With this globalised world once again stricken by wars, violence, oppression and still-existing gender inequalities, the horrors we face are no less real now than they have ever been, and this is why women still make and watch this genre.

If Julia Kristeva’s philosophical thoughts on ‘the power of horror’ and ‘the abject’ never lost their meaning, this project makes them resonate with us again, no matter where we are. Therefore, we are grateful for working with Alison on this issue and for being able to edit with her such a myriad of unconventional academic talents. Servicing the project participants, she designed and facilitated a true transnational feminist collaboration.

As our standard practice, at the end of this volume, we’ve added some miscellaneous pieces which we find most topical. There, you’ll find a short story, critical articles, book reviews, a report from a Black feminist event and one unique animated film, Why Women Don’t Jump (2023), which was exceptionally well received at the La Femme International Film Festival (Los Angeles) in the autumn last year. Having collaborated with a podcaster Helen Ledwick and a group of student animators, its producer, Rosa Mulraney, draws our attention to a different fear, or a horror, most women dread at one point in their lives—the aftermath of childbirth. Instead of drowning in misery, the film and the article are a praise for some of our sisters for their courage to speak up against medical and cultural negligence.

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