The Monster Gaze

Joe Bob Briggs, in his book Profoundly Disturbing, talks about the impact of the movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon in a way that makes a lot of sense. Briggs notes that although a number of movies prior to 1954 feature monsters pursuing women (indeed, it was a staple since King Kong), Creature goes a step beyond. In Creature, the camera encourages us as viewers to identify with the creature as it watches Julia Adams swimming. In particular, Briggs points out that the experience is profound for the preteen boys who made up the majority of the audience. Socially awkward, just learning to be entranced by the female body, the boys could not help but identify with the inept and hopeless desire of the creature. We are neither the boyfriend nor the greedy romantic interloper: we are the monster.

Briggs is definitely correct in this analysis, and I would go a step farther. It is a commonplace in feminist theory that the male gaze fixes and objectifies its feminine object, but it is equally true that the gaze casts the masculine viewer into a particular role, over which he has little, if any, more control than the woman being seen. Just as hormones shape the curves of a woman's body, hormones shape a man's mind to respond to those curves. And the very same synaptic responses that lead to reflexive rapture at a woman's body create a revulsion to the man's own body. The feminine is beautiful, the masculine monstrous.