Abstract
This essay explores the scream as a symbol of female anger and resistance, focusing on its subversive potential within contemporary feminist horror. Drawing from feminist theorists who have conceptualised female rage as a powerful political act (Lorde 1987; Ahmed 2010; Keefe 2019; Cherry 2021; Wallaert 2023; Gasdaglis 2025), I examine Medusa (2021), a Brazilian horror film directed by Anita Rocha da Silveira, as a rich site of feminist intervention. In Medusa, the scream is not a symptom of fear or submission, but a defiant expression of accumulated repression, erupting as an embodied protest against patriarchal control.
da Silveira explicitly draws on the myth of Medusa and the visual legacy of Caravaggio’s Medusa to frame the female scream as a moment of transformation - both for the characters and for the cultural narratives surrounding femininity, rage, and monstrosity. The film’s central figure does not scream in terror, as horror tropes might suggest, but rather screams back. This subversive use of the scream aligns with recent scholarship (Gulam 2019; Creed 2022) that recognises contemporary horror as a transgressive genre in which women emerge not as passive victims but as resilient figures who resist and survive.
Although this trend is global, Medusa serves as a particularly potent example of a new wave of Brazilian horror. As Barrenha (2021) identifies, this “golden age” is marked by a strong presence of female filmmakers who are using horror to confront the country’s deeply entrenched gender violence. In a nation where a woman is murdered every two hours and a rape occurs every eleven minutes, female filmmakers such as da Silveira are engaging in acts of cultural defiance. Their work mirrors the radical potential of their characters: challenging dominant narratives, reclaiming female rage, and reshaping the politics of representation.
Through a close analysis of Medusa, I argue that the film does more than depict feminist resistance - it enacts it. The scream becomes not only a plot device but a mode of authorship. In this sense, Medusa exemplifies how feminist horror - and particularly the work of women filmmakers in Brazil - channels myth, anger, and aesthetics into a powerful critique of patriarchal violence and a call for collective revolt.
da Silveira explicitly draws on the myth of Medusa and the visual legacy of Caravaggio’s Medusa to frame the female scream as a moment of transformation - both for the characters and for the cultural narratives surrounding femininity, rage, and monstrosity. The film’s central figure does not scream in terror, as horror tropes might suggest, but rather screams back. This subversive use of the scream aligns with recent scholarship (Gulam 2019; Creed 2022) that recognises contemporary horror as a transgressive genre in which women emerge not as passive victims but as resilient figures who resist and survive.
Although this trend is global, Medusa serves as a particularly potent example of a new wave of Brazilian horror. As Barrenha (2021) identifies, this “golden age” is marked by a strong presence of female filmmakers who are using horror to confront the country’s deeply entrenched gender violence. In a nation where a woman is murdered every two hours and a rape occurs every eleven minutes, female filmmakers such as da Silveira are engaging in acts of cultural defiance. Their work mirrors the radical potential of their characters: challenging dominant narratives, reclaiming female rage, and reshaping the politics of representation.
Through a close analysis of Medusa, I argue that the film does more than depict feminist resistance - it enacts it. The scream becomes not only a plot device but a mode of authorship. In this sense, Medusa exemplifies how feminist horror - and particularly the work of women filmmakers in Brazil - channels myth, anger, and aesthetics into a powerful critique of patriarchal violence and a call for collective revolt.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture |
| Publication status | In preparation - 2026 |