Teeth: Taking a Bite out of Religious Patriarchy
Director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth, released in 2007, is an independent comedy-horror film about female oppression, bodily difference, and sexual agency. In Teeth, protagonist Dawn O’Keefe (played by Jess Weixler) is sexually assaulted and discovers she has a genital mutation — a toothed vagina. This leads Dawn, a sexually naïve spokesperson for a religious abstinence-until-marriage program, to embrace her body and sexuality as a source of empowerment and strength. The shame Dawn initially feels about her body, a result of the right-wing religious patriarchal ideology that attaches women’s worth to their chastity, morphs into sexual agency. Dawn’s “vagina dentata” engage only when her sexual freedom is violated. In this way, they act as a source of direct resistance against sexual violence, but they are also an allegorical subversion of misogyny, rape culture and religious patriarchal power structures that restrain women’s sexual freedom. Teeth can be situated within the greater landscape of independent films with a cult following. The film is an example of religious representation in popular culture. Lichtenstein represents Dawn’s vaginal teeth as an “adaptation” to an oppressive culture, which serves to critique conservative religious ideology about female “purity” that is utilized to restrict women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy. To demonstrate how the narrative of Teeth both reflects and problematizes modern patriarchal religious ideology endorsing female oppression, this post will examine the production and consumption of the film within its cultural context, situate the film within its genre(s), and analyze a relevant scene in the film.
Theorists Bruce Forbes and Chris Klassen both address how popular culture narratives like Teeth are political and “meaning making” — that is, they both reflect and shape our understandings of the social, political and cultural climate we live in (5; 20–21). The production and consumption of popular culture involves a power negotiation between those who encode meaning and those who decode meaning (Klassen 21; Parker 155–156). Thus, representations of religion in popular narratives like Teeth are grounded in specific contexts, and have the power to promote or subvert hegemonic power relations and ideology.
Produced on a modest $2 million (U.S.) budget, Teeth drew widespread attention when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 (Sciretta; “Teeth (2007)”). Jess Weixler won a Special Dramatic Jury Prize for Acting, and Roadside Attractions distribution company soon picked up the film for nation-wide theatrical release (Sciretta). Teeth received average audience reviews and performed poorly at the box office (“Teeth (2007)”). Despite barely making a profit, its niche fan-base and self-referential campy style fits right in with classically revered black-comedy/horror gems such as Heathers. Furthermore, Teeth has been hailed by critics as one of the most transgressive modern feminist horror films because of its unique and subversive approach to genre tropes and female oppression (“Teeth (2007)”).
An analysis of Teeth as a rape-revenge horror narrative illuminates underlying religious and socio-political ideologies that function to oppress women and demonstrates how the film challenges them. Feminist theorists argue that rape-revenge challenges traditional horror cinema’s hegemonic portrayal of women as monsters and agents of fear because of their “otherness” (Kelly 86; Miller 324–325). Rape-revenge narratives direct the audience to identify not with the male victim, but with the avenging woman whose violation demands retribution (Kelly 87, 89; Miller 325). While many rape-revenge plots involve sensationalized portrayals of sexual violence with no purpose beyond titillation, the narrative of Teeth promotes a greater political purpose beyond individual acts of violent retribution that have no discernable social message. By utilizing a self-referential “camp” style, the point of Teeth’s rape-revenge narrative is not to explicitly endorse violence against men, but to implicitly challenge conservative religious patriarchal norms (Kelly 93). It is the male “victim” of female violence who is framed as the real monster in rape-revenge stories (Kelly 89; Miller 324–325). In Teeth, the antagonists are the males who exploit Dawn’s body (and other women’s): abusive doctors, rapists and religious abstinence advocates (Kelly 89).
The “femme castratrice” — the woman who castrates her male attacker — redeploys her sexuality to rob the man of the source of his sexual violence, as an allegory to challenge patriarchal institutions that restrain female agency (Kelly 89). Dawn’s use of sexual violence in the film ironically challenges the conditions of inequality that are the foundational basis for violence against women — namely misogyny, rape culture and conservative religious gender-ideology (Kelly 92; Miller 325). The film locates the “problem” not in Dawn’s “monstrous” body, but in patriarchal culture and institutions that oppress women and restrict their freedoms — specifically their sexual and reproductive freedoms (Kelly 94). Structural conditions that naturalize rape culture and sexual violence against women are the problem that need to be eradicated in this context — not female sexuality. Situating Teeth within its genre as a rape-revenge film allows us to examine the social basis for the tropes of female bodies as monstrous, and put them in conversation with the film. In this way, we can demonstrate how Teeth critiques women’s sexual oppression by allowing Dawn to reclaim her sexuality from men who would exploit her and reduce her to a sexual object.
Teeth was produced during republican George W. Bush’s presidency, in the greater context of cultural misogyny and the United States’ “war on women” (Kelly 91–92; Towlson 197). A conservative Christian, Bush sought to restrict women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy by enforcing abstinence-only education, as well as endorsing religious rhetoric of modesty and sexual shame for girls (Kelly 91–92; Towlson 198–199). The rise of post-9/11 federally endorsed, traditional “Christian-American values,” conceptualized as a form of “New Puritanism” in America, involved a widespread attack on women’s rights and a bid to replace scientific reproductive education with erroneous moral religious principles (Towlson 198–199).
Lichtenstein reacts to this moral and political landscape when creating Teeth. In interviews, Lichtenstein states that the narrative arose as he became aware of the censorship of female reproductive anatomy at high schools in Lynchburg, Virginia (Towlson 199). While diagrams of male genitalia were deemed acceptable to the school board, teaching female anatomy was perceived as immoral and harmful to women’s “natural modesty” (Towlson 199). Lichtenstein linked this double standard of censorship to a masculine fear of female sexuality, which he saw clearly manifested in the myth of “vagina dentata” (Towlson 198–199). The common cultural myth of a woman with vaginal teeth acts as a metaphor to quell male insecurity: the male “hero” conquers the female “monster” and her destructive sexual powers (Miller 325; Towlson 199). As a counter-discourse, Teeth flips this narrative on its head, with Dawn and her sexuality as the conqueror of her male oppressors (Miller 325; Towlson 199).
The double standard of educational censorship linked to right-wing religious principles plays an important role in the narrative of Teeth. The negative effect of abstinence-only rhetoric is clear as Dawn’s commitment to chastity and lack of sexual knowledge alienates her from her body and her sexuality. After she is assaulted, Dawn feels isolated and loses the sense of self she had built through religious adherence and abstinence. The narrative demonstrates how seemingly benevolent patriarchal religious rhetoric about female “purity” is not just harmful to women in general, but can be extremely damaging to survivors of sexual assault and rape whose “worth” (virginity) is stolen from them. It is only by embracing her bodily difference and sexual agency that Dawn is able to challenge her oppressors and fully embrace herself as a woman.
“It isn’t until the dephallusation of Brad, her stepbrother, that she exercises her power consciously.” — (Narine 141)
Dawn’s transition from sexually repressed to sexually empowered is illustrated through a close reading of a scene in which she castrates her misogynistic stepbrother, Brad. Upon discovering that her mother has died and Brad ignored her mother’s pleas for help, Dawn dresses up with the intention of seducing and mutilating him. They get in bed together and his dog barks in warning, but it is too late. Just as Brad remembers an incident during childhood in which his finger was partially severed from touching Dawn inappropriately, her teeth engage and his penis is bitten off. One of the goriest scenes in the film, it is important to the implicit feminist narrative because, prior to this, Dawn’s teeth had only engaged involuntarily when she was violated or betrayed (Narine 141). In this scene, Dawn fulfills the arc in her sexual liberation: she physically exercises her sexual control by castrating Brad, whose character wanted to violate her body since childhood. Dawn uses her femininity to defeat the antagonist who epitomized male violence and dominance. Her physical retribution is also a symbolic retribution for the oppression and sexual violation she has faced from men in society and patriarchal institutions. Dawn challenges the religious ideology disseminated in schools and the greater community that taught her she was sinful for being a woman and made her fear her own body.
Teeth problematizes the sexist cultural context in America by framing Dawn’s vaginal teeth as an evolutionary “adaptation” to the structures of inequality underlying women’s lives (Kelly 90–91). This is done symbolically, through references to evolution and animal adaptations to oppressive environments, alongside the hyperbolic promotion of patriarchal science and religious ideology that endorse misogyny and rape culture. An analysis of this allegory through the long-standing ideological cultural framework that associates women with carnality and men with rationality demonstrates how Teeth sends the message that male dominance is not the “natural order” and will be punished (Narine 135). By framing Dawn’s vaginal teeth as “nature’s response to phallic dominance” empowering her to fight her male oppressors, Teeth challenges societies’ patriarchal structures of oppression and subverts ideologies of the inferiority of femininity (Narine 135, 141).
In Teeth, we see Dawn transform from a passive, vulnerable girl to an active, sexually-empowered agent of social justice. Dawn goes from being complicit in a system that disadvantages her and all women, to an insurgent who sees the reality of her subordination. The power her “adaptation” gives her enables the narrative to challenge male domination and sexist religious ideologies. Analysis of the film in relation to dominant religious ideologies and cultural narratives allows for a subversive interpretation of Teeth. By analyzing popular genres and tropes of storytelling, the underlying social and structural processes that work to empower certain individuals and dominate others become visible. The political message of Teeth reflects the greater social context of religious patriarchal oppression in the U.S., and the film challenges women’s subjugation by empowering Dawn with an “adaptation” to enable her to overcome her oppressors. Through a camp rape-revenge narrative, Lichtenstein creates a film that is decidedly political in its use of sexual agency to resist structural conditions of oppression. Teeth is a satirical social critique of an ultimately all too real problem, which is particularly relevant in light of the current American political landscape and the election of sexist, right-wing conservative Republican President Donald Trump. Narratives like Teeth are especially radical in their ability to challenge oppressive norms and represent marginalized characters as empowered agents of transformative justice. Teeth sends a powerful message by illustrating gender inequality and creating counter-discourse sparking debate about women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
Bibliography
“Teeth (2007).” Rotten Tomatoes, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/teeth/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2016.
Teeth. Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, performances by Jess Weixler and Hale Appleman, Roadside Attractions, 2007.
Forbes, Bruce David. “Introduction: Finding Religion in Unexpected Places.” Religion and Popular Culture in America, Edited by B. D. Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 1–20.
Kelly, Casey. “Camp horror and the gendered politics of screen violence: Subverting the monstrous-feminine in teeth (2007).” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol 39, no. 1, 2016, pp. 86–106.
Klassen, Chris. “Religion and Popular Culture.” Religion and Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Appproach, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 7–28.
Parker, Holt N. “Toward A Definition Of Popular Culture.” History and Theory, vol. 50, 2011, pp. 147–70.
Miller, Sarah A. “Monstrous Sexuality: Variations on the Vagina Dentata.” The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, Edited by Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle, Routledge, 2012, pp. 311–328.
Narine, Anil. “Biting back: America, Nature, and Feminism in Teeth.” Eco-Trauma Cinema, Routledge, 2014, pp. 134–145.
Sciretta, Peter. “Sundance Horror Movie Teeth Finally Unleashed.” Slashfilm.com, http://www.slashfilm.com/sundance-horror-hit-teeth-finally-unleashed/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2016.
Towlson, Jon. “Anti-New Puritanism: Teeth (2007) and American Mary (2012).” Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present, McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers, 2014, pp. 197–210.
