(Un)making of the Witch Archetype: Suspiria Then and Now (A Marxist-Feminist Study of Witchcraft in Horror Films)

Abstract

Visual culture has shaped the popular imagination and public consensus more powerfully than any other medium over the last few decades. Horror is one such powerful genre that renders spectacular our latent prejudices. The figure of the 'witch' in its oft-repeated conventions has sustained in popular culture through the many characteristic meanings associated with it. The exploration of this gendered identity reveals the matrix of power within which the gender binary functions. Horror evoked is that of the collapse of the numerous binaries, of civil and vulgar, masc and femme, and so on. The two Suspiria movies, set forty years apart, when placed against each other, present this trope in its extensive cultural developments over time. Due to the two drastically different endings, one could sense the absolute contempt for the witches driving the first movie, while a willful disambiguation surrounds the second one. Here, horror does not evoke contempt because there is a simultaneous sense of likeness with the 'coven of witches' and their self-sustaining, wholly female community that revitalizes gender roles. The dilemma this evokes makes visible the borders that mitigate the gendered identity and provides an imaginary possibility for porous borders that allow the women to step over the social threshold. This view presents a counter narrative to the historical process of female vilification that turned their affective powers into evil psychic tendencies. By reclamation of the age-old tropes that sustained this castigation, the movie recapitulates this metaphor of a witch, defying the status quo with its perverted powers, functioning outside the guilt and shame-oriented working of the world. In this paper I will closely analyze how the portrayal of the female psyche in the psychological horror genre has changed over time by comparing the 1977 Italian giallo Suspiria with its 2018 radical rendition.