Warning: Teeth may be a feminist film at heart, but it, like this article, contains some graphic content which may be upsetting to certain readers.Teeth is a gory comedy film about Vagina Dentata, or the ancient folkloric story about teeth in the vagina, and uses this myth in different ways - to celebrate femininity and condemn toxic male attitudes, objectification, and rape. In fact, there are very few films which attack chauvinism and have such a dim view of masculinity as Teeth.
The Myths and Freudian Theories of Teeth
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Vangina Dentata is surprisingly found in many diverse cultures no matter the century or geography, from the Americas to Western Asia, from Maori to the Ainu. According to the legend, the female has teeth in her vagina, a myth which put male fears into the symbolic order. As Vice writes:
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In contested Freudian theory, the female demonstrates a lack - that is, something missing when seen by men, because a woman does not have a penis. This scares men, who unconsciously think about and fear castration when they see a nude woman who lacks a penis. This is something to be feared, because men believe castration will result from sexual intercourse.
Men’s fears of castration compounded by an inherited cultural belief of sexual entitlement function as foundational pillars of masculinity, and patriarchies respond by attempting to control women’s “dangerous” sexualities and bodies. Respective wars on women around the world are deeply rooted in the persistent myth of the toothed vagina and what it represents.
For Freud, during the act of sexual intercourse, the vagina swallows up the penis, hiding it from view and making the man look castrated (and after intercourse, the man is literally drained and deflated). Or, as Camille Paglia writes in her book Sexual Personae, “The toothed vagina is no sexist hallucination: every penis is made less in every vagina, just as mankind, male and female, is devoured by mother nature.” This is what’s called a primal fear.
Jess Weixler and What Teeth’s About
Rather than representing a misogynist fear of women, in Teeth the Vagina Dentata represents female power and empowerment. The film may seem like a gross-out comedy horror to some, but it’s actually a clever text; the director, Mitchell Lichtenstein, was the son of famed pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, and his films carry a similarly subtle assimilation and subversion of ’low culture.’ The director’s queer identity gives him a unique perspective for this.
The main character in Teeth is Dawn (played by Jess Weixler, who won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for the performance), a virgin who is proud of it. She is a prominent member of a group that preaches total abstinence, even against masturbation, until marriage. Dawn speaks at various rallies and wears a bright red ring which represents her chastity. Her whole world starts to change when a fellow virgin rapes her. The vaginal teeth, however, bite back. He screams in pain, blood gushing from the womb as he dies. Only his severed member can be found at first.
The event is particularly significant as it opens Dawn up to her sexual feelings, which she has been doing her best to repress throughout the film. In one scene, she goes to the movie theater with her friends, and they look at what is playing. Dawn notes that even PG-13 films can be sexually suggestive and insists that they watch a silly G-rated children’s movie. In bed at night, she touches herself but avoids certain areas. She is completely repressed until she meets a boy she has a crush on, and they go swimming. He swears to be chaste as well, but something comes over him when they’re swimming, and he loses control; soon he is assaulting her, and when her teeth chomps down, hey become each other’s victim.
The Comic Body Horror of Teeth
Disaster results when she goes to see a gynecologist for the first time. After an extremely inappropriate examination from this egotistical idiot, the teeth clamp down and bite off four of his fingers in a scene that combines comedy and horror. He screams, unable at first to extricate his hand from her body.
Dawn goes out on a date, and her date drugs her. Not only does he drug her, but also he has made a bet with a friend that he can have sex with abstinent Dawn. They end up having sex when the friend calls. As they continue to make love, he brags about his conquest on the phone to his friend, asking Dawn to say something into the phone to prove that he is not lying. She knows she has been used, and it is all the worse because he knows she celebrates abstinence, and drugs her to get her to open up. Under the influence, the teeth being drugged, she has sex with him and there is no castration. After sex however, he wants to make love again, and he gets his phone call, and this time her vaginal teeth bite off his penis. She leaves as he screams in pain and begs for help from his mother.
Meanwhile, at home, she has to deal with her overly sexed stepbrother, Brad, blasting loud thrash metal in his room, walls lined with smut, as he sleeps with different women. He has a malicious crush on his stepsister and thinks she is holding out for his sake, which merely proves how self-centered he is. He is worse than self-centered though - he is nothing but a vicious misogynist, with only negative things to say about the various women in his life, and a habit of treating his sexual partners in a demeaning and insulting way, such as by shoving a dog treat into one girl’s mouth.
Because he messes with Dawn, he becomes another victim, ending up castrated and screaming in pain. He is actually her first victim, for the movie begins when they are little kids in a swimming pool, and she bites his finger in a kiddie pool, presumably after it was forced into her. As he gets older, he becomes more toxic and more misogynistic, calling his mother names and refusing to help his sick stepmother, choosing instead to have sex rather than call for an ambulance. It’s a caricatured parody, a misanthropic and vehemently angry look at crappy men.
Teeth Empowers Women in a Toxic Society
The teeth give Dawn control of herself, her libidinal energy, and her sexuality, and they represent a threat to any man who wants (or demands) to have sexual intercourse with her. They also represent her newly sexualized self and her sexual desires. She has the power to devour men she sleeps with, and this gives her a level of control over her newly awakened sexuality. It is not a curse for her, as she thinks at first, but a symbol of liberation and female power.
Another symbol in the movie is the set of what appear to be nuclear power plant reactors in the background, clearly representing toxic masculinity. Polluted smoke comes out of them, and we can see them in most of the exterior shots outside Dawn’s house. Could the toxic nuclear plants be responsible for Dawn’s Vagina Dentata? Could they have radiated her mother during pregnancy, causing a rare birth defect? This question is not answered, but the repeated shots of the factories make it clear that they were put there by the director for some purpose.
It is interesting that no studio was interested in the script, which was funded by private investors. After all, Hollywood is run by men, who were less than happy to fund a script where the main male characters end up castrated. But it is significant that the filmmakers couldn’t even get funding from more liberal European investors and studios. As a title ov a Vice article says, “Teeth is the Feminist Horror Classic That Men Tried to Sabotage.”
A local Texas film scout, asked to help find places to shoot at, even refused to continue working when he found out about what the film is about- and he called everyone else involved with the film, telling them not to get involved with Teeth, which he described as being pornographic. The violence against the male sex (contrary to most horror movies, which find scream queens and women being murdered) seems a likely reason that the film did not receive any funding from male-dominated studios and investors.
The Ending and Future of Teeth
The film ends on a somewhat disturbing note. An elderly man picks her up and gives her a ride. He is polite the whole way, but when they reach her destination, he locks the car doors. He then starts playing a game with her where he temporarily unlocks the doors just to lock them again before she can get out. He also sticks his tongue out and flicks it around in a nasty way, but then Dawn gets a devilish look on her face, and it is pretty clear what is going to happen next - sex followed by castration and death. This is implied, and the film ends when she realizes the power of her body and what she can do, and she gives a macabre smile to the old man as the film ends.
It would be interesting to see a sequel to Teeth, a sequel where the newly empowered Dawn becomes a serial killer, using her sexuality and lethal vagina to attract men who she ends up killing. The trajectory of the film makes it clear that, aware of her female power, she is going to use it to exact revenge on men who take advantage of women sexually.
Because the film is about female empowerment and castration, male viewers may see this as a horror film whereas female viewers might find it more comical than scary, with every sleazy rapist getting what he deserves. Either way, Teeth deserves a closer look and a critical appraisal as a feminist horror cult classic.
