The Unsexiness of “American Mary”
This October, Citizen Jane is premiering a host of new content in a new series, This One's For the Ghouls: Women, the "Other" and Horror. Focusing exclusively on the horror genre, this month will contain spine-tingling essays and reviews discussing our Stephens students' favorite horror films. We'll dig deep (six feet deep, in fact) into the roles and portrayals of women in horror, as well as the abject -- the "other" -- and how those elements interact in some of the most well-known (and/or gruesomest) films in the canon. Check back here soon for more!
American Mary is a horror/thriller film written and directed by twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska and released in 2012. The film follows Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle), a medical student studying to become a surgeon but drastically changes her career path following a traumatic incident. On the surface, American Mary looks like another horror flick filled with blood and boobs, but diving deeper reveals the bone-chilling fear of all women -- men. Specifically, being a woman in a man’s world. The film explores the theme of objectification and how each female character is affected differently. It also commentates on sexual violence while attempting to avoid exploiting or degrading any of its female characters and successfully separating itself from the horrid rape-revenge genre of film.
Mary Mason is a promising medical student in need of money and lots of it. Like many student-aged women, Mary answers an ad about working at a strip club. Immediately, Mary shows her disdain toward the idea of being a sex worker and eye rolls her way through her interview with the club owner, Billy (Antonio Cupo). The tone shifts drastically when Billy inquires about Mary’s help to perform emergency surgery on a man bleeding in the basement of the club. Mary agrees and ends up leaving the club $5,000 richer and traumatized.
Surgery is a recurring theme throughout the film. Its use in the film highlights the difference between men and women in this universe. There are five surgeries shown in the film, three with women being operated on -- Ruby Realgirl (Paula Lindberg), a pair of twins (Sylvia and Jen Soska), and Mary herself-- and two with men -- the man in the basement (Paul Anthony) and Mary’s professor, Dr. Grant (David Lovgren). With women, the surgery is shown through artistic shots and scored to melodic tunes, often an instrumental performance of Ave Maria. The
female patients of Mary come to her for help with expressing themselves and being comfortable in their own skin, no matter how odd the request is. The men’s surgeries, however, are violent. Mary’s second patient, Ruby, is introduced to her through Beatress (Tristan Risk), a dancer at the club who holds an uncanny resemblance to Betty Boop. Ruby explains that her doll-inspired look doesn’t stem from wanting to be a sexual object desired by men, but rather the opposite. Ruby says, “No one looks at dolls in a sexual manner…a doll can be naked and never feel shy or sexualized or degraded,” before explaining that she wants Mary to remove her nipples and seal up her genital area as much as possible.
The surgery takes place and the audience is shown the action in close-ups of Ruby’s nipple, Mary’s eyes, and shots of Mary’s body blocking the genital portion of the surgery. There’s nothing arousing about seeing Ruby’s nipple, especially since it’s being removed, but the choice of displaying it plain as day as a part of human anatomy adds to the film’s commentary on objectification. Neither Mary nor Ruby view this experience as a sexual one, but rather an artistic, fulfilling, and especially to Mary, a stomach-churning one. A woman’s body is a human body, and there shouldn’t be anything inherently sexual about it.
The tone and attitude Mary has towards Ruby and Beatress are important to note. She’s judgemental, showing in her facial features and tone of voice that she doesn’t understand either woman’s desire to get such drastic cosmetic surgeries. In Ruby’s case, she doesn’t understand why a woman would care so much about not being sexualized. In Beatress’s case, she doesn’t understand the appeal of wanting to be sexualized, since Beatress works at a strip club and does so happily. This could be due to the fact that Mary wants her value as a person to come from her intellect and not her body. Mary cares about smarts and surrounds herself with people who share
the same mindset. She can’t be sexualized because she doesn’t care to be. She isn’t a victim of objectification and she navigates fine in a man’s world.
This changes, however, after Mary is invited to a get-together with other surgeons at her professor, Dr. Grant’s home. There, she is leered at by the men at the party, drugged, and eventually, raped. Prior to the assault, there are signs showing that something is wrong and the film builds up tension as the viewer fears what comes next. From the suspicious behavior of one of the doctors in attendance, to the sight of a woman being hauled off-screen by a small group of men and later laid on a counter, visibly in a drugged state.
Mary’s rape scene is filmed in a similar way to the surgery scenes. There is no explicit view of the violence, rather close ups of Mary’s and Dr. Grant’s faces. The score swells as the assault goes on before ending abruptly. The directors’s choice to show any of the assault on screen is interesting. In some ways, the scene says to the audience, “no woman is safe, no matter how charming, smart, or passive you are.” Every woman is a victim of objectification, including Mary. This scene is also a commentary on women entering male-dominated fields and spaces. To some men, women are still just objects to be looked at and taken.
Unlike other films that contain sexual violence, American Mary uses rape as only a part of Mary’s story. Mary, of course traumatized, remains a person for the rest of the film, something uncommon in the rape revenge genre. She isn’t hellbent on only getting revenge on Dr. Grant. Instead, Mary chooses to use her talent for a strange type of good, deciding to join the body modification community. Her assault doesn’t define her but stands as a turning point in her life. The point of the sexual violence in the film is to add to the themes of objectification and women’s existence in a man’s world. It isn’t the entire plot of the film and Mary’s character isn’t only a rape victim.
The revenge Mary does eventually carry out is satisfying because it’s what every victim of similar crimes can only dream about doing, but also because it helps Mary move forward. Dr. Grant is her third patient, having been kidnapped and held hostage in Mary’s apartment. There, she performs 14 hours of surgery on him, practicing different popular body modifications on him, such as tongue splitting, voluntary amputation, and genital modifaction. As she preps him for surgery, the symbolism of her injecting him with a long needle of numbing drugs is impossible to miss. In Laura Mulvey’s famous essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she discusses the idea of scopophilia and it’s relation to how an audience views films, and how men view women. A woman’s lack of penis equates to castration, thus leading men to see women as weaker and beneath them. When Mary injects Dr. Grant with the needle, she is taking back the power he once had one scalpel slice at a time. She is using her metaphorical penis to get revenge.
This scene isn’t the only time Mulvey’s essay has relevance. In relation to the film and its themes, Mulvey’s theories coincide. Mulvey writes, “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” Essentially, women have and always will be valued by their appearance and what their appearance tries to convey. Mulvey also explains that women are able to evoke feelings of castration anxiety in men, and in order to combat those feelings, men must find ways to take away that power from them. Those ways include devaluing the woman, or in other words take away her humanity and objectify her. In regards to the film, the men trying to devalue the female characters are Dr. Grant, Billy, any and all patrons of the strip club, the surgeons at the party, and Ruby’s husband.
Billy’s objectification of Mary is different. Throughout the film, Billy is shown to have developed feelings towards Mary -- an infatuation. This is mainly due to Mary’s strength and
ability to carry out such unconventional surgeries and torture methods. Billy is happy to assist Mary any way he can, soon finding himself daydreaming of her stripping for him. These happy visions take a twist, as he soon finds himself imagining Mary killing him and becomes scared of her, to the point where Mary picks up on it. In an interview, the Soska sisters explained this was intentional and that Billy’s playing “the girlfriend role” and Jen Soska says, “You always see a woman pining after a guy.” Applying Mulvey’s theories to his character, Billy has knowingly or unknowingly made himself fear and wish to distance himself from Mary in order to keep his manhood intact, both literally and figuratively. Even when a man has feelings for a woman and wants to develop a relationship with her, there’s still a part of him that views her as an object and something to take from -- what is she going to do for me?
The scene that perfectly demonstrates the film’s theme of objectification is when Ruby reveals to her husband the aftermath of her surgery with Mary. He becomes visibly enraged while Ruby looks at him with fear and confusion in her eyes. The man she thought loved and cherished her is no different than the other men in the film. He feels ownership over Ruby and her body. It’s implied that he’s been okay with her previous surgeries, but now that she’s taken away the most valuable thing she has to offer -- her sexual organs -- he is furious with her ideoligies.
Ruby’s husband goes on to find and torture Beatress, forcing her to give up Mary’s information. Beatress calls Mary and lets her know, apologizing for doing so. Mary is then attacked by him and fatally wounded, but not before she is able to injure him as well. Mary’s last patient and the final surgery of film is herself, the camera staring down over her body as she attempts to suture her wound, but it’s too late. The film ends with Mary dead on the floor of her make-shift operating room, her tools in her hands and Ave Maria ringing throughout.
American Mary is a gory, chilling horror film that is unlike any other. It’s depiction of the female experience is raw and the film isn’t afraid to discuss nuanced ideas about gender and sexism. The effects are amazingly done, with the Soska sister’s choosing to only use practical effects. The love and respect for the body modification community shines through, and it’s amplified by the fact that the sisters sought out real members of the community to be in the film.
Mary Mason is an interesting character. She’s not the most lovable character, but she’s not supposed to be. She’s smart, strong, and unafraid to let others know what she really thinks. American Mary is a film for women who feel unseen by the male-oriented film industry. For women who are angry, sick of dealing with the patriarchy’s opressive hand, and crave a creative outlet for their sorrows -- Mary Mason is just what the doctor ordered. She’s not just a victim, but a survivor of both her assault and the misogynistic standards forced upon her. She’s one of the scariest things a woman can be -- fearless and empowered.
Sources
American Mary. Directed by Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, XLrator Media, 2012. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, Oxford University Press, 1975. RedCarpetNewsTV, director. YouTube, YouTube, 15 Jan. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUHeRI_Blvw&ab_channel=RedCarpetNewsTV.