La Sabina: Lo femenino-monstruoso en el cine de José Luis Borau

Abstract

This article presents a feminist reading of José Luis Borau’s La Sabina (1979) by exploring how the female body is perceived as a monstrous object that endangers male subjectivity. According to Barbara Creed, ‘the monstrous-feminine’ is associated to female sexuality and it takes the form of the archaic mother, the monstrous womb, the witch, or the woman possessed by the devil. In Borau’s film La Sabina, the monstrous-feminine appears as a female dragon who possesses and then devours those men who enter her cave. Contrary to Freud’s theory of the castration complex, the female body is feared as castrator, rather than as castrated. These male fantasies built around the female body as a phobic and abject object are dangerous because they can lead to the denigration of women and eventually to actual acts of gender violence.