The Ontology of Open Mouths

Abstract The mouth agape is among humankind's most prevalent motifs, its imagery appearing across cultures, continents, and centuries, the significations of which hold all grand preoccupations human experience: terror, hunger, awe. Accepting Mikhail Bakhtin's estimation that “the important features for grotesque,” this article examines disparities between different renderings these ontological black holes their disparate implications in horror g/Gothic texts. While Scream visualizes terror's sonic expression, introduces it alongside what I call Swallowing: occasion where object fear (the monster) takes form a devouring other. A challenge to essentialist interpretations Julia Kristeva's concept abjection, analysis Swallowing lends support Jack Halberstam's monsters as narrative cultural technologies. This will therefore employ Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's method “reading cultures by they engender.” If we explore appears both Black Black-led films, might be revealed about ways b/Blackness has been rendered monstrous within ideological lexicon white imagination? How does renderings? And further, power identify embracing monstrosity condition being?