The Reparative Bite of the Zombie Mouth

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article examines the Zombie Mouth Fleshlight, a product from the Fleshlight line of male masturbatory sex "toys." Modeled to resemble the oral orifice of the zombie, the Zombie Mouth presents the illusion that it is biting its user's genitals. Drawing upon Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's reparative motive and Jane Gallop's theory of queer phallic castration, I argue that the Zombie Mouth can be interpreted as a site for imagining queer-feminist forms of sexual representation. Relatedly, the Zombie Mouth can counter the heterosexism that has been seen as underlying both male sex toys and Freudian psychoanalytic theory and present new, perverse forms of phallic sexual pleasure. To develop this argument, I focus on the act of zombie biting, which is central to the fantasy of the Zombie Mouth, and I document the origins of this oral act in the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and its 1990 remake. I address how the Zombie Mouth borrows the zombie bite and, by association, representations of the oral-erotic destruction and entanglement of women's bodies from the 1968 and 1990 films. Consequently, it becomes possible to re-create castration, when signified through the interaction of the Zombie Mouth and its user, as a queer-feminist act steeped in both violence and eroticism.