The Benevolent/Violent Mother: A Study of Gender Based Violence in Select Anglophone Horror Films

Violence is an exercise of power by the powerful on the meek. Across the globe the mother-figure is revered for her role as a benevolent caregiver, however this age-old fundamental pattern is challenged when she becomes the perpetrator of violence. This paper seeks to examine the other side of motherhood that is often depicted in anglophone horror movies, where certain experiences of the mother transfer as violence exacted on her children. The discourse surrounding violence and its propagation, fueled by the defamiliarized rendition of deep-seated trauma shall be dissected to expose the coexistence of both benevolence and violence-mongering in the mother figure in these films. An eclectic approach shall be undertaken in terms of theoretical framework, of posthumanism and gender studies. While men are often attributed with propensities of violent behaviour, these films have tried to problematize the essential idea of entanglement of violence, gender and agency. They question the realist narrative of indispensable engagement with the perpetuity of social fabrications that construct gender norms. The liminal positionality of these mothers that exercise power on the human subjects in various "rhizomatic" (Delueze and Guattari) ways, to assert their identity and subjectivity, thereby interrogate the necessity of human, woman and mothers as categories, which is precisely the manifesto of critical posthuman theoretical framework.

Keywords: Motherhood, Violence, Horror films, Posthumanism, Gender