The Repressed Returns in the Real: A Girl with Psychoanalytic Theory

Abstract

This chapter analyses the film through the prism of psychoanalytic film theory, through Freud’s notion of the ‘return of the repressed,’ with a Lacanian twist. It theorizes that the film stages the return of the repressed Real of feminine sexuality, where the figure of the black chador-clad female vampire, stands for the (Lacanian) Real of feminine sexuality, which in Islamic and Sh’ite legal theory (fiqh) is imagined to possess an inherent surplus enjoyment (jouissance) that can destabilize the social-symbolic order. In this sense, female sexuality unimpeded functions as a source of terror to the ideology of the Islamic Republic. The film therefore stages the return of the repressed desire embodied in the female vampire who haunts the male inhabitants of Bad City, representative of the dark underbelly of Tehran or Iran. The film theorizes a feminist emancipatory core at the heart of the film where the vampire Girl stands for the call to all women to revolt against the patriarchal symbolic order. The theoretical contributions of this chapter are the crossing of wires between psychoanalytic horror film theory and second wave psychoanalytic film theory, through a Lacanian intervention apropos the standard Freudian theory of ‘the return of the repressed.’