“Let Them Know That Men Did This”: Medusa, Rape, and Female Rivalry in Contemporary Film and Women’s Writing

Abstract

The character of Medusa shifts “meaning” from the origins of her myth, through the reclamation of Medusa’s narrative by second- and third-wave feminist poets, and finally to the re-appropriation of her story by late twentieth- and twenty-first-century film, advertisement, and gaming culture. This essay argues that representations of Medusa in popular culture evidence a backlash against feminist interpretations and rewrite or render invisible the Greco-Roman narrative of her rape. Hyper-sexualized in popular culture, Medusa is both titillating and terrifying, a threat that implicitly invites male conquest and control.