I’m looking at the sticky notes on which I have little ideas written about this movie. Never in my life have I written notes on a movie. I am a social justice educator, not a film critic. That said, Teeth gave me so much to think about that I found myself taking notes anyway. After the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movie that had got me thinking had received decent reviews from critics.
So what are teeth? Well, Teeth is the story of the heroine, Dawn, who has Vagina Denetata. In other words, teeth in her vagina. I’m not going to go into the whole movie here, suffice it to say it’s a horror movie, and let your imagination run wild. The real reason I wanted to write about him was the label of him as “Feminist Horror”. Having written an article on sexism in film, I was curious as to what feminist terror was. After seeing Teeth I had a good idea. Feminist terror is empowering.
That said, it’s not your mom’s feminism. There are really, historically speaking, three waves of feminism. The first wave was Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who fought for women’s right to vote and so on. The second wave is that of Gloria Steinem and Gloria Alreds, who made great strides in women’s equality, although some would say at the cost of their own femininity. Third wave, or as some call it post-feminism, are women who adhere to the ideal of equal rights, but don’t necessarily want to give up their femininity to get there. The teeth fall solidly in the third wave. The main character, Dawn, is cheerful and cute. She is part of a temperance movement among some of her fellow students. She is seen as a role model by those who adhere to her ideology.
On the surface, this movie is just a cheesy horror movie, but below the surface is something much more provocative. Dawn in her own way is the classic “Final Girl”, while still being the one everyone fears at the same time; heroine or villain depending on your point of view. If you’re a guy, no matter how open you are, this movie will make you cringe at one point or another. Despite our outward appearances, we men still have ingrained messages about the role of men in society. That doesn’t mean we embrace them, but they are there nonetheless.
For me, the best part of the film was Dawn’s internal struggle with her own identity. She asks out loud, “What’s wrong with me?” She has the ingrained messages about how women are supposed to behave. Even as a woman who is trying to save her virginity until her wedding night and not give in to pressure from men, she had the internalized ideal of being submissive. How can she be submissive to her husband if she castrates him? The thought of her makes her the ultimate monster. Dawn reads about the mythology of the Vagina Denetata in which the hero is the one who breaks the teeth in the vaginas of monstrous women. By breaking his teeth to allow penetration, the hero reclaims his masculinity and power over women who dared to have power over him. I also read about mythology, and without exception all women with teeth were bad. The all-important penetration of a woman as a rite of masculinity is stripped away when the women in question can take what defines a man’s masculinity. In a patriarchal society, this would have been the ultimate sin.
The men in the film who meet Dawn really understand what’s in store for them. The empowering piece is when Dawn gets over her initial disgust at her condition when she realizes that she can control it. Having had consensual sex with a teenage boy in the film, she is overjoyed when he doesn’t die. She believes in the hero myth that this young man is the hero who helps overcome his unfortunate condition. That is until during her next encounter she finds out that she was part of a bet while she was in bed with the guy. When she finds out that he was just trying to score and didn’t care about her at all, well… she cuts. She reminds me of the story of Lorena Bobbitt, who after enduring years of abuse from her husband, castrates him. America was outraged, how dare she? That was her manhood for God’s sake. Never mind that in that same year thousands of women were raped and sexually abused everywhere. We focused our anger on the one woman who went to extremes to fight back. I’m not condoning castration, I just find it peculiar that we were all so surprised that a woman finally had enough and took matters into her own hands, so to speak. John Wayne Bobbit became a D-list celebrity and even made money making his own adult movie. Lorena was vilified and presented as everything that was wrong with women in society.
At the end of the movie, Dawn is fed up and leaves town. The ending of the movie is perfect because it sums up all the women’s frustration towards men who just don’t get it. I’m not giving it away, just go rent the movie. If you have Netflix, it’s available in your watch section instantly. While as a man I definitely squirmed a bit during this one, I also, as a man who is trying to be a better feminist, enjoyed a horror movie that led to the point of view of him with a sledgehammer. Sassy and cheesy in parts, Teeth isn’t going to win any major awards. However, if it starts the kind of conversation that I think it will, then the movie has already done its job.