There exists a more entrenched type of fear in the interstices and intricate enmeshing within the corporeality of David Cronenberg’s cinema. The representation of queer gender in M. Butterfly challenges normative ideologies that perpetuate the binaries of male/female (sex), masculine/feminine (gender) and is exemplary of what Robin Wood in “The Return of the Repressed” terms “monstrous” (26). Furthermore, in Eastern Promises the representation of queer sexuality also illustrates the monstrous. Queer gender(s) and sexuality, as forms of the monster, represent the repressed, the marginalized and/or the fears of abnormality/queerness.
The queerness within M. Butterfly and Eastern Promises exists as a partial pathology vis-a-vis a new form of doppelganger that is strategically employed by both texts to juxtapose the normal against the abnormal and, therefore, what Julia Kristeva theorizes is the “abject.” Each film’s queer character has a doppelganger of normalcy, a character that best embodies the Caucasian, heterosexual, masculine male. In Eastern Promises, Kirill’s (Vincent Cassel) queer sexuality is contrasted against Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). In M. Butterfly, Song Liling’s/Butterfly’s (John Lone) queer gender is contrasted against René Gallimard (Jeremy Irons). Therefore, I will explore how M. Butterfly and Eastern Promises portray the abject in a different “monstrous” form in relation to Cronenberg’s past representations of horror. Horror here becomes polymorphous with a direct connection to queer embodiment of gender and sexuality whereby queers are made into Monsters. I will explore these cinematic representations through the critical framework of a feminist perspective, particularly queer and gender theory.