Disturbing Flesh. Analysis of the Female Body in the Film the Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) and the Performance Interior Scroll (Carolee Schneemann, 1975)

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to compare the way in which the female body rebels against phallocentric roles in two artistic works: the film The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) and the performance Interior Scroll (Carolee Schneemann, 1975). Such works have as context the Feminist Revolution of the 1970s. Through a semiotic and aesthetic analysis, focused on the image, the word-body relationship is analyzed. Concepts associated with the Unheimlich, the sinister, ominous, terrifying and disturbing, are associated with the woman's body that, in order to fight against a phallocentric order, uses the exhibition of her highest bodily emblem, the vagina.