Women in Horror: Part Eight

Hello & welcome to our next installment of our feature for Women in Horror Month!

Today we have author Sèphera Girón  sharing her thoughts on one of her inspirational women, Mary Shelley, one of our great Femme Founders.

Mary Shelley and Me

 Mary Shelley will be discussed a lot during Women in Horror month on blogs around the world. Of that, I have no doubt. Many of us consider her one of the Queen Bees of the genre. There is no doubt she is responsible for some of the most recognizable icons and slang in modern culture.

Her legacy of the novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus spawned hundreds if not thousands of homages of her monster, her scientist, and her examination of the human psyche.

Mary Shelley had a tragic life as most know. Her mother died ten days after she was born, she lost siblings, cousins, babies both born and unborn, and her husband, Percy Blythe Shelley. She herself died of brain cancer at fifty-three, one year older than I am now.

I’ve to realize how themes from Frankenstein have run through my life and leaked into my own work.

While many of my peers revisit vampires, zombies, werewolves, and more, I realize I continue to revisit themes inspired by Frankenstein as well in both my entertainment tastes and in a few of my stories.

I was trying to remember the first imprint of the Karloff monster in my mind as I suspect that would have been my first exposure to Frankenstein. As a kid, I watched the Abbott and Costello Sunday  Morning Movie, Three Stooges, Shirley Temple Show, 4:30 Movie, Sir Graves Ghastly Saturday Afternoon Special on varying and sporadic occasions as I often had lessons or rehearsals to attend. However, I was well familiar with several versions of the monster story by the time I was ten.

On Saturday afternoons, my brother and I sometimes attempted to watch Sir Graves Ghastly on TV. This was on a tricky US station that we had discovered by accident one day. You had to raise the rabbit ears high and sometimes hang tin foil. If the wind wasn’t right, you didn’t get to see the movie. But if the wind hung in there, you could sometimes see the whole movie. Sir Ghastly was always veiled in a blizzard of black and white popcorn and you could catch his crazy laugh in between pulses of static. Of course, sometimes the channel came in great, but that was rare.

I was watching a movie that for years all I knew was that it involved an astronaut who blew up and his arm with a hand attached landed on the beach. Then the arm-hand crawled around, dragged by its fingers, and attacked people. There was a scene where the arm-hand leaped from the closet-shelf to strangle someone. Then the wind changed and the channel went out, never to return.

That arm-hand thing running loose scared the hell out of me. Even though I knew it was pretend, I was always checking closets when I opened them. I was haunted by the thought that I never knew how the story ended.

A few months later, I watched Frankenstein: The True Story. The commercials made it look terrifying to my eleven-year-old mind. The scene with the arm-hand nearly made me pee my pants. I was so freaked out, I could barely look at that arm crawling around. My worst nightmare came true, I had to see another body part running around. I don’ t know why it bothered me so much.

I fell in love with the movie and bought the script and Mary Shelley’s book and got my hands on anything about the actors. That interpretation of the story has always stuck with me.

In 1974, Young Frankenstein came out. My brother and I went to see it on a Saturday matinee. I remember because we laughed so hard and loved it so much that we lined up and paid another fifty cents each to see it again. A couple of years ago, I took one of my sons to see Young Frankenstein on Broadway. It was a fun version of the movie.

I discovered Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was a teenager although in London, Ontario, screenings were rare and hard to find out about in time to attend. I usually dressed up as Frank N. Furter. It was so fun to hold our lighters, chuck toast, scream the lines, and of course, dress up.

My opinion is still out on Human Centipede, which I saw at a sold out screening in Toronto with a fun crowd. I have Human Centipede 2 all queued up on Netflix but am still not sure I want it in my head. We can thank Mary Shelley for that too!

Since American Horror Story: Coven was set in New Orleans this season and I had just returned from the Bram Stoker Weekend and World Horror Convention hosted there, I thought I’d give the series a whirl. It gave me a bit of a thrill to see a teenage Frankenstein monster assembled through witchcraft.

Of course, there are many other books, movies, TV shows, and so on that have the genesis of Mary Shelley’s story in it somewhere that also has apparently penetrated my subconscious.

All adaptations of her story explore different themes from each other. There are many fascinating and complex concepts in Frankenstein beyond a mad scientist sewing together corpses. Everyone absorbs something different from the original story. There are comedies and even a musical!

The first published piece I wrote riffing on themes inspired by Frankenstein was called “Cyber-Prometheus” in Unnatural Selections edited by Gord Rollo. There’s a Frankenstein motif in my erotic horror novel, Aries: Swinging into Spring.

As I write this, my novella Captured Souls has just been published by Samhain. This book centers on a mad scientist intent on manipulating her experiments for her own gain. In my novella, Flesh Failure, which will be published in the summer, a Frankenstein-inspired theme is explored once more.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while she was a teenager. She went on to write other books but none were ever as popular as that one.

Interestingly, she first published it anonymously since it was so horrific, especially for the times. Although talk of corpse reanimation wasn’t particularly new, women certainly would not contemplate such abominations against God, or so implied popular thinking.

Now here, in 2014, women authors still face the roadblock from some readers that their tales will be somehow more naive than their male counterparts.  Women writers are corralled to the bodice-ripper arena while males explore science fiction and horror in reader’s minds. The reality is that there are dozens of working women in horror but it’s difficult for them to break out into the mainstream. Of course, not every woman will write a trail-blazing novel just as every man won’t. But there needs to be a way to raise public perception that not all work calling itself horror is torture porn and women can write scary stuff too. As a woman who is publishing in the horror field, I’m not sure what more I can do on my end. I challenge other women to submit twice as much this year and see if women can be on the map so that the public will be more familiar with seeing lady names on scary stuff.

I recently participated on the Horror Writers Association Roundtable on Sexism in Horror. Women are still writing under male names and initials because their books sell better under male-implied personas. I’m not sure if there are any statistics nor if it’s even possible to gather statistics about whether a horror book would sell the same under a woman’s name as a man’s name. In my own opinion, the more women write as women and are proud of it, the more their work will be accepted.  This doesn’t mean that poor work should garner undeserved recognition, it just means that the reader will approach the story hoping for an entertaining horror book (whatever that means to him or her) and not pre-judge the quality based on the gender-implied name.

Mary Shelley’s name was eventually put on her book and though she wrote many more books and stories, nothing ever succeeded in gripping the public’s attention more fully than Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley’s legacy has transcended generations, ever alive through the spark of imagination that she has generated in her readers. Art is to be enjoyed and appreciated, and the best art gives birth to new renderings of eternal themes.

All hail, Queen Bee Mary!

Excerpt from “Captured Souls”

/Journal/

The formulas appear to work. The results of the latest trial run have
been computed and all appears to be in order. But I’m not quite ready to
conduct my real experiments just yet.

There are many other types of preparations that need attention.

In the meantime, I dream. I dream of the three muses of beauty,
intelligence and stamina who keep me inspired. I dream of the day when I
can gaze upon my lovers daily and draw strength from their vibrancy and
motivation. I dream of embracing youth and ambition while it is still
fresh, before life sours it.

I found intelligence.

I found stamina.

I know it won’t be long before I find beauty. Beauty is all around me,
which is what makes this last choice so difficult. I need a beauty who
leaves me breathless. A unique vision who won’t bore me.

/Specimen 3/

If there is a goddess on earth, I found her, too, at the sex club. Tall,
slender, her flesh a coppery brown, perfectly shaped from her shoulders
to her round, firm ass. She was walking around in nothing but stilettos
and a giant butterfly painted in latex across her breasts. Her perfect
nipples were round hard buttons that barely moved when she walked—no,
strutted—around the club. Her heels were so high that when I was
introduced to her I couldn’t help but lick the nipple that was inches
from my mouth. It was just as well because I was tongue-tied for once.

I met the older man she was with and we politely shook hands. He cast me
a cold stare. I knew that a threesome would be out with them. He was
looking for a young, tight unicorn. I was too old for his barometer.

The beauty and I were ships that passed in the night, but I’ll never
forget her glowing green eyes and angelic face.

I watched her glide around the room, kissing men and women alike as her
lecherous date looked on. She smiled at me often. At last, she kissed a
girl and the old man liked it. They disappeared to a private room and I
never saw her again.

The bartender told me she’s a model from California and gave me a name.
I Googled her immediately when I got home that night.

Her online portfolio is magnificent. She will be a stunning addition to
my experiment.

/Journal/

I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. I’ve picked my three lusts—the
beauty, the artist and the jock.

The preparations are ready. The final touches were finished this morning
and the house has been prepared. The laboratory is ready. All the
software has been updated and devices checked and rechecked.

A thrill surges through me as I contemplate my newest experiment. In
celebration, I watched my copy of /Human Centipede/ again and drank far
too much red wine. I decided to make it a double-feature,
science-fiction movie night and put on /Rocky Horror Picture Show/ and
jumped around to the “Time Warp”. So now I will go rest. There are very
busy days ahead.

 

Sèphera was born in New Orleans, grew up in London, Ontario, attended
York University, lived in Mississauga for seventeen years, and returned
to Toronto in 2010. She is happily single and the mom to two adult sons.

Sèphera is the recipient of the Mississauga Arts Award, “Marty,” in the
Established Literary Category. Other recognition includes “The Silver
Hammer Award” from the Horror Writers Association and “Assistant Stage
Manager” Producers award from the Encore Series in Mississauga.She has
been the Ontario Chapter Head for the Horror Writers Association for
over fifteen years. She is a member of a writers’ group dubbed “The
Bellfire Club” which includes Nancy Baker, Gemma Files, Helen Marshall,
Sandra Kasturi, Halli Villegas, and Michael Rowe.

Not only does Sèphera love to write but she also loves to act. She
played “Ruby” in SLIME CITY MASSACRE, directed by Gregory Lamberson, and
a zombie in “Zombie Love,” a music video by I HATE TODD. In 2014, she’ll
play a creepy gypsy in KILLER RACK directed by Lamberson.

She contributed as a dramaturge to Kimberly Robert’s cabaret show “The
Get Happy Hour with Judy” which will premiere 2014 in Toronto, Montreal,
and Chicago.

Captured Souls is Sèphera’s first published work from Samhain Horror
Publishing.

Come on back tomorrow for an enthralling article by Michael Randolph…see you here- same time, same place!