[Editorial] Raw: Abandoning Social Ideologies Through Embracing Female Eroticism

Abjection innately entices the viewer to visually indulge in forbidden fruits. Lurid tastes tease a natural allure. Despite the moral rejection of cannibalism amongst society, horror allows for such a graphic obscenity to be raw, ferocious, and ultimately seductive.

As blunt as a statement as that is, we do not feel attracted to the vicious reality of flesh consumption. Instead, the visual erotism explored between female cannibals in the horror genre is crafted in such a way that we cannot help but feel the cinematic effect to the darkest of sins. Raw explicitly draws a harrowing circle; our female frontiers are so ineptly bound by their lust for flesh that they can no longer internalize their carnality and become delicately savage. We see them gnaw their way through their victim’s tissue, but due to character moulding the viewer cannot help but sympathize with their needs and warm to their eminent feral femininity. 

Cannibalism has continuously made a persistent effort to disturb within the horror genre. Mondo-themed exploitation films of the early 1980s including Cannibal Ferox (1981) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980) consulted issues surrounding xenophobia and the villainization of westernized societies. Although these traditional cannibals are still present within modern cinema, newfound character development has made its entrance within the last twenty years, with the female eroticised meat-eater being the result. The overt correlation between sexual ignition and cannibalism is one that has been transformed onto the screen before, via Trouble Every Day (2001) and In My Skin (2002). However, Raw differs and invites more thought-provoking conversation due to reconstructing the monstrous feminine and redefining what is meant by the female gaze. 

Raw (2016) is a French coming of age, body horror created by Julia Ducournau, and as with any hyped film, during its premiere at festivals rumours circulated involving audience members fainting and becoming psychically ill. That is not to say that Raw is vile, instead, it subjects the viewer to confrontational abject material that relies on our inner barriers to conjure a reaction. Throughout the film, we follow Justine (Garance Marillier), a young and innocent student at a rather brutal veterinary college who is on a completely primal journey of self-discovery. The study of animals is a long-running tradition in Justine’s family as we learn that her parents attended the same college, alongside her sister who is currently in the year above. A close family bond is established early on, with Ducournau thrusting the family’s strict vegetarianism into the limelight in the opening scene. Raw emphasizes that meat-eating is forbidden, as once the women in the family get the taste for meat, an unstoppable cannibalistic instinct is unleashed. It is this looming forewarning that intrinsically marries Justine’s cravings to primalistic intimacy. 

The transgression in Raw relies upon Justine’s breaking of socially understood borders between sex and the taboo. A white-knuckled terror is unleashed when women in horror become the monster; they naturally dominate and terrify due to the congenital fear of female bodies. Women bleed, sweat, and create waste; such fluids innately horrify but interest us at the same time. The female body is therefore naturally abject, and when we combine this with monstrous ingredients the conclusion is a spiritual annihilation far beyond our understanding. Thus, disavowing the norm and adapting a complex correlation between the transcending collaboration of sex and violence. But do we see Justine as violent? Do we see her as a threat? No. Alternatively, her character enthralls. 

Justine’s adaptation is teased from the very beginning. She dons a sheepskin-lined jacket upon entering college, blatantly embodying the phrase “lamb to the slaughter”, emulating her undiscovered fate. She enters college virginal and unblemished and gradually becomes a beast. Her new form begins its escalation when the older students force the freshmen into authoritarian hazing rituals, involving sleep deprivation and intense drug-fuelled raves. It is within these scenes where we see her urges unravel. It is established that these rituals are a long-standing tradition amongst new students and if they do not converge in this almost animalistic hedonism-centric behaviour then they will be socially ostracized. A key scene that triggers her metamorphosis occurs during a class photo. A drop of blood lands on Justine’s pristine lab coat and the droplet is met with a look of disgust, yet after gallons of blood rains on the entire class in a Carrie-esque manner, Justine pushes back her blood-soaked hair to reveal a sinister smirk, exhibiting her excitement at such visceral sights. This scene metaphorically reads as a blood baptism, introducing her to a dangerous new lease of life. However, the hazing has only just begun and directly after the bloodbath, her true identity is tested as every student is ordered to eat a piece of raw rabbit kidney. Although she protests due to her vegetarian diet, Justine hesitantly swallows the kidney. Unfortunately for her, this small bite is enough to initiate her cannibalistic impulses. 

After her symbolic rebirth, Justine begins to be tempted by meat, but cheap eats at the cafeteria and service station does not satisfy her. Instead of contentment, she develops a grotesquely vicious rash which covers her entire body and imitates her inner desires coming to the surface. Her own skin rejects her conformity and whispers to her to abandon the repression in order to feast upon what she really wants. She is literally being punished for obeying social correctness. Justine’s first welcoming of cannibalism comes from one of the most sensually affective scenes of the film. Her sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf), insists that Justine needs to shed her sexually docile image and get a bikini wax, in the hopes of eliciting male attention. Preparing for the wax, Justine lies on her back with her legs widely spread in front of the camera. From the medium-long shot we see Alexia’s pet dog, Quicky, position himself face on in front of her. Here, it is as if Ducournau is suggesting that Justine’s animalistic sexuality is about to be let off the lead to dangerously roam free. 

The viewer is denied permission to look away at an intensely painful image of Justine’s pubic hair being resilient to removal, which leads to an argument between the two sisters. During the altercation Justine nudges Alexia who accidentally cuts her finger off with a pair of razor-sharp scissors. With Alexia unconscious, Justine fights the urge to taste the severed finger, but she soon succumbs to her lust. 

Justine begins to tenderly lick the finger as orchestral strings emotively swell, and it’s not long before she begins nibbling on the raw tissue and tendons of her own sister’s flesh. As revolting as this scene sounds, Ducournau films the scene with a tenderness that figuratively embodies foreplay, somewhat surpassing as a romantic sex scene. Justine in a sense is having her first romantic encounter in a radical transcendence that intertwines violent shock with sex. From this point forward cannibalism is directly linked to her sexual evolution. The boundary has been crossed between touch and feasting, creating an all-encompassing sensation of eroticism. Only furthering the taboo is the familial aspect of this scene. Transgression represents surrendering to the forbidden, and Justine achieves this through distinctly breaking the established hierarchy and manifesting her desires to internally bulge with vulgarity. Therefore, her lustful reaction to the tase of her own sister’s flesh illustrates underlying tones of incest. 

This abjection of transgressive material is a focus for the rest of the film. With Justine shedding her childish image to transform into a carnal monster. Her embracement surfaces in a scene that solely focuses on Justine without any forces interrupting her power. We see her wear Alexia’s dress whilst standing alone in her bedroom gazing into the mirror, listening to "Plus putes que toutes les putes" by Orties. Significantly the explicit song includes lyrics that translate to in English “Fuck 69, give me 666” and “we don’t do porn, but we like strap-ons”. Whilst listening to this she seductively smiles at herself and dances in a salacious manner, kissing the mirror and smearing her lipstick. Justine is expressing her ferocious lust for the body, as well as mocking the archetypal ‘makeover’ scene; she is eroticised by her own being and fetishes, not by any potential partners. At first, she repressed her desires, but now she is owning them and experimenting with what gives her pleasure regardless of whether it is abnormal or not. The lack of care for how desirable or attractive she comes across to men redefines the male gaze, or more correctly entirely subverts the idea of patriarchy. 

To accompany this scene is a unique rejection of the symbolic order as she devours her own sexuality, with her own dominating inspiring feelings of arousal. The manner of this materializes a sense of self-voyeurism due to the commitment between self-awareness and the taboo. The suggestive gaze of the audience acting as the mirror peering into her amorously dancing imitates a passive argument Justine makes earlier on in the film. Whilst debating in the cafeteria about bestiality Justine comments that “monkeys are self-aware. They see themselves, in a mirror, right?”. She herself is now the animal, being self-aware that her feral actions convolute a deep brooding stimulation, kindling like a burning fire inside of her. 

The continued triggering of her inner identity is fully unshackled when we see her fully engage in intercourse for the first time. However, instead of a candle-lit affair accompanied by a soothing song, we are met with Justine taking control and breaching sexual morals as for her this encounter is not a mutual exchange for each partner’s pleasure, but instead another experiment into cannibalism. Justine chooses her gay roommate, Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella), as her bedfellow, who has a brief knowledge of her ‘habits’. However, his lack of full understanding leads him to believe that her desires are solely fetish based, not a gaping hunger for humans. During their encounter, Justine’s internal drives soon crash in as she attempts to bite Adrien despite him protesting against this. However, it becomes apparent that she lacks the time to debate and starts biting her own arm, causing her to climax.

From this moment on her destruction drive becomes amplified, with her need for pleasure ruling over self-preservation. Justine’s own personal link between eroticism and pleasing the social matrix of boundaries supersedes logic. It is this penetration of one’s own body to delve into ecstasies that breaks down any hesitancy we might have in regards to whether there is a connection between her perversion and flesh consumption. Throughout Raw, the trimmings of rudimental desire are apparent, with a keen focus on the body, sexualisation, and the visceral. Justine’s incessant splintering of the symbolic order allows for Raw to embrace a woman coming of age, not just through her sexual evolution, but also in regards to the understanding of what she craves, yearns, and aches for...flesh. 

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