Erin Harrington has a chapter in the new anthology Women Make Horror.
The volume is the first book-length study of women filmmakers in horror film, the first all-women edited book on horror film, and the first book to call out the male-bias in written histories of horror, illuminating precisely how, and where, these histories are lacking.
Erin’s chapter, “Slicing Up the Boys’ Club: The Female-led Horror Anthology Film“, contextualises the female-directed film XX (2017) within the long and male-dominated history of horror anthology and omnibus films.
She argues that the films’ transgressive collective focus on maternal ambivalence and female subjectivity challenges deeply embedded patterns of objectification and misogyny in the form.
She also outlines how the collection’s well-intentioned project is undermined by its patronising, essentialist promotional materials, which reveals persistent problems with gender and representation within the genre at an industrial level.
