The Breast Bites Back: How the Projected ‘Bad’ Object of the Female Vampire Achieves Autonomy in L. Wiseman’s Underworld Evolution
In: Illuminating the Dark Side: Evil, Women and the FeminineSearch for other papers by Simon Bacon in
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This paper looks at how Selene in Underworld Evolution (2006) can be configured as the manifestation of the ‘Kleinian’ projected bad object and ways in which it might be able to gain autonomy in the external world. Klein cites the withheld breast as the original ‘bad’ object and our subsequent un-containable hatred forces us to project outside the Self. I suggest the quintessential manifestation of this is the female vampire as exampled by Selene. However her individual autonomy is denied by the patriarchal vampire clan that created her. Through the abject acts of killing her surrogate and vampiric fathers and then drinking the blood of the first immortal she controls her own signification. This second abject act is twofold; firstly, as shown in the film, blood is the carrier of memory and by drinking it Selene incorporates it into herself thus possessing it and making it her own. Secondly it reverses the primal act of feeding; the breast that gave life through milk now takes it back through blood. Consequently Selene takes control of her own signification and thus becomes a new Eve or rather a new Lilith.