Menstrual horror – puberty revenge movies.

„Sleep around and you’ll get what you deserve”. With this quote, in a subsection of his book, the American philosopher Noël Carroll interprets a warning well known for the slasher audience. Each cinema period, together with a generation of film-lovers, showed not only the fear factor, but also the hidden truths about their anxieties. With the biggest peak of interest around the horror genre being in the 70’s and 80’s, where the famous series originated: „Nightmare on Elm Street”, „Halloween”, „Friday the 13th” and „The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”. In those movies the antagonist was usually a mad man with an axe, chain saw or any other sharp tool, and the victims were young sexually active female teenagers. Only the virgins were able to survive a blood bath by some kind of a miracle. In my presentation I want to show how the subject of sexuality in particular times influenced the puberty matters. With the example of classical images from the 70’s and 80’s as well as modern ones like „Teeth” or „It follows” I want to focus on the heroines of those movies and present how the biological changes and mutations affect their reception by peers, society and self-acceptance of their „uniqueness” so individual for everyone during puberty.

Mateusz Wiśniewski – born in 1990, student of Cultural Studies at Gdańsk University and ex-student of Film Studies at Jagiellonian University. Fan of the independent American film, including the most groovy – he wrote his bachelor’s thesis on mumblecore. Collects vinyl’s, organizes vinyl events, co-runs the Black Market shop in Warsaw.

Lecture only in Polish.