Melisa Köroğlu, M.A.

PhD Project

The Hungry Girl

Female Appetite and (In-)Satiability in the Contemporary North American Horror Film

In my PhD project I explore the depiction of the hungry monstrous feminine in contemporary North American horror films. Hunger serves as a metaphorical instrument of physical deprivation, desire, and survival in literature and film. Gendering this sensation, and thus focusing on female hunger, results in diegetic representation of societal norms, anxieties, and critiques. Hence, female hunger in contemporary American films offers a foundation to explore the American socio-cultural internalized relationship to the female body, diet culture, and female agency. Despite the prevalence of female hunger as a recurring theme in cinema, little scholarship has addressed the intersection of hunger studies and gender politics in horror films. This oversight becomes especially significant when considering how contemporary American horror films often frame female consumption as disgusting, and even monstrous. Thus, my research addresses a significant gap in horror film scholarship by examining how the repression of female hunger transforms this emotion into a site of abjection, acting as a catalyst for monstrous metamorphosis. Employing an interdisciplinary framework consisting of feminist film theory, food and body studies, gender studies, horror film studies, and cultural studies, I examine the diegetic representations of female hunger while focusing on the consuming mouth as an instrument of female agency. My aim is to answer the question; how is the portrayal of monstrous feminine in contemporary cinema linked to socio-cultural, patriarchal ideologies of female bodies and beauty standards?
My thesis is that North American horror films deprive female protagonists of their humanity when they satiate their hunger, reflecting internalized patriarchal stigmas of female autonomy and desire. By analyzing these portrayals, my research contributes to the discourse on the monstrous feminine and introduces the concept of the hungry girl. As Horror films reflect societal fears I aim to answer the question: Why is a satiated woman considered terrifying, that consequently she is turned monstrous?

Supervisors: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Judith Rauscher, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Kristina Köhler