1. The castration of Colonel Williams: Gender, horror, and a nation of hysterics
- Author
-
Caitlin Janzen
- Subjects
Cultural Studies ,Health (social science) ,Psychoanalysis ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Metaphor ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,050801 communication & media studies ,Gender studies ,050108 psychoanalysis ,Phallic stage ,Psyche ,0508 media and communications ,Absolute (philosophy) ,Transgender ,Cultural studies ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,The Symbolic ,Narrative ,Sociology ,Applied Psychology ,media_common - Abstract
In 2013, Russell Williams, a colonel in the Canadian military, pled guilty to eighty-eight violent charges, including two charges of sexual assault and two charges of first-degree murder. Drawing on narratives of (trans)gender anxiety popularized by horror films, the media built an explanatory framework which fixated upon Williams’ fetishistic cross-dressing. This article interrogates the site where fantasies of absolute sexed difference coincide with fantasies about military phallicism in the national psyche. Drawing on Lacan’s paternal metaphor, I argue that gender operates as a symptom, assuaging the anxiety that arises when a nation is confronted with the fallibility of sex binaries and phallic authority. The symbolic castration of Colonel Williams provides a case study of how the quest for a phallic master has cultivated a nation of hysterics.
- Published
- 2017
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