Teeth: No Man Was Harmed In the Making of This Film

Warning: Spoilers.

Teeth is a film that didn’t seem like something I would rush to see; it didn’t seem like it would be particularly flattering for women considering the film’s premise was that a woman had a scary vagina filled with teeth. But as I put it on to review this week I soon found myself laughing, loving the character, and I quickly realised that the film’s writer, Mitchell Lichtenstein, was very much on the side of our female lead Dawn. It is surprisingly a film you could call feminist in that it understands sexual assault, the mind-set of those who commit it but also those of whom suffer from it all whilst being unapologetic in its condemnation of those who commit sexual violence, admittedly in a unique way.

I also didn’t realise it was going to be so funny, not realising until I was on imdb that it is listed as a black comedy. The film was hilarious in many ways, Dawn could be a bit melodramatic in her innocence and it definitely didn’t treat the male genitals like some god given gift like pretty much everything else does. It was nice to watch a film that played on the horror trope of the ‘monstrous feminine’ body, the apparently petrifying vagina, and actually give the power back to women to show how ridiculous that all is – even when in this case it was well founded. I defy you, even as a man who perhaps squirmed their way through this film, to not laugh at the man who shouted “Vagina dentata!” over and over.

Before I get to the awful male characters depicted in this film, awful in their actions, I would like to just write about how brilliant Dawn is. She is very much a cliché, a playing on many tropes of how women are portrayed in films overall but horror films in particular; she is very chaste as we see her begin the film wearing a red promise ring and talking at a club telling the joys of celibacy and saving yourself until marriage. She often wears t-shirts she seems to have bought in this club, warning about the dangers of sex; her room is full of pictures of fairies and flowers, her bathroom is pink, and fitting with the films very much on the nose metaphors there is a cherry sticker on the wall to match the cherry patterned cup by the sink. We slowly see her innocence and naivety taken away as the film progresses yet she remains a good person, not falling into another cliché of going completely to the other side.

Dawn seems like a simple person, talking about a girl’s natural modesty in response to a flustered sex ed teacher who is trying to explain why in their textbook the picture of the vulva is covered by a sticker but that the diagram of the penis is not. She loves her parents, and is there for her Mum as she is very sick – which leads to a confused Dawn not having anyone to ask about her very confusing anatomy; in the same way that boys may be confused asking their mothers about their body there is only so much her father might be able to help her with her body – though even he would be able to explain that having teeth down there is not natural. Dawn’s body is used by the men in this film as an object yet the film never joins in, it very much keeps her a fully realised character with great acting keeping her interesting and sympathetic.

The film explores the way we view the female body, in the past and in the present; its whole premise is based off an old myth that many cultures wrote about, that there was a woman who has teeth in her vagina, vagina dentata, and that this woman must be conquered by a hero to defeat her – more on that later. As with the sex ed lesson trying hard to avoid displaying the vulva, something a student actually accurately describes as such which shows that even if you try not to teach it in schools students will learn about it. It also shows the cognitive dissonance that exists in a culture that is obsessed with women’s bodies as sexual objects whilst trying their best to be ignorant about the realities of female anatomy; as is shown by the brother’s arguable fear of the vagina, again more on that later, despite the many posters of naked and half naked women all over his walls. This insistence on making the female body a mystery, of giving it a sexual power that many women don’t want or ask for – Dawn’s vow of celibacy means she is even averse to watch kissing etc. in films.

By denying teenager’s sexuality we create a curiosity that could easily be sated with knowledge, with teaching boys and girls about their own bodies and urges. If we pretend that by teaching all teenagers about sex will mean they all go straight out and do it we can’t properly protect those who already are. Teenagers, and older, need to be properly educated about the very real risks of sex such as STDs and pregnancy. Many studies have shown time and again that education along with access to affordable protection and birth control can prevent the spread of STIs and teen pregnancy but still it is something many ignorant people insist is something that shouldn’t be available. Children will find it a lot easier to remain children if they’re not having to raise their own.

Following this avenue of thought we meet Tobey, a man who meets Dawn at the celibacy club The Promise, and straight away I knew he would be the one to first assault her. He told her he agreed that they should wait until marriage to have sex, he would accompany her to the cinema and on a trip to the lake with friends and repeated The Promise’s beliefs back to her. Yet later when they are alone he explains to her that he is only ‘pure’ in ‘his eyes’ and explains that he has already had sex once, a year ago. Back at the lake they go swimming, with a little bit of shock from Dawn at seeing Tobey only in his swimming trunks and they both laugh at how they had both already imagined each other’s naked bodies. Whilst in the water they kiss, Dawn laughing, and Tobey feels her breasts but she immediately stops him. She swims away, not wanting Tobey to follow, and goes into a cave that was earlier mentioned as being a place people come to “you know”.

Dawn’s face was one of wonder, happy to be intrigued by the mini-waterfall and the cave as a whole. She seems confused by the blanket and pillows in the cave but uses one to keep her warm; Tobey begins to swim towards her and ignores her protests after he explains that he’s freezing. He sits with her and they begin kissing, they lay down together and he turns her over and goes on top of her. As he’s kissing her neck she makes it very clear she wants him to stop, she shouts no and yet he ignores her; he fights her, covering her mouth to shut her up and in doing so smacks her head off the cave floor and knocks her slightly unconscious. He immediately takes advantage of her dazed state by removing his trunks and he starts to rape her. It is clear it’s unwanted, she fights and screams and he carries on, shouting that he hadn’t even jerked off since Easter – as though his celibacy is something to be rewarded by Dawn, regardless of whether she wants it or not.

It is during the rape that Tobey begins screaming, the audience hearing a crunch sound that is heard throughout the film and no doubt in men’s nightmares, and then we see the place where his penis used to be. The film is very open about showing the blood and devastation that is a consequence of each men’s sexual assault and abuse and with its 18 rating it is also happy to show the removed penis, often applying humour in many, often disturbing ways. After Tobey flees Dawn does too and we see her being extremely confused, horrified and worried that she hasn’t heard anything from him since; we later find out that Tobey died, either from the shock, blood loss or simply falling and drowning in trying to get away. It is a very unique consequence to rape but the fact that a rape in a film has an immediate, negative consequence for the rapist is something that is important to show (many rapes in real life often have no consequences and a majority often go un-convicted). As you’d expect with the premise of the film we unfortunately follow Dawn get taken advantage of throughout.

The next time her vagina uses its teeth is on a male gynaecologist who was causing her pain by forcing four fingers into her, it is a gruesome scene as his hand gets trapped inside her as she tries to push him away; it is another example of a male character ignoring her requests to stop, her obvious pain and discomfort in the pursuit of forcing something into her vagina and its end result is similar. This is the scene that leads to him shouting “Vagina dentata! It’s true”; it is unclear whether he knows of this myth due to his job or whether his research on the female vagina in pursuit of his career lead him to come across it. Either way we later see him in surgery getting his fingers reattached. I won’t even go into his comment about how tight she was but let’s just say it’s more of a comment on the man and his sexual skills than it ever really is about the female body.

The next time her downstairs teeth are used it is with a new Dawn, pun not intended. She is more aware of her body, learning to explore it sexually after thinking she is no longer pure after her rape. This idea of women being uniquely modest is one simply designed to ensure that women are not as sexually attractive as men are; moreover men used to use rape as a way to steal women away from being the property of their father or another man and to make them their property instead and so putting the blame for this act purely on the immodest, promiscuous woman. People, women especially, are neither pure nor impure and the idea of virginity is simply yet another way to treat men and women as being something that is irrevocably changed by sex; this ignores many things such as the fact that a man’s penis is not a magic sword that can change anything it touches but also that things that are used to signify female virginity such as the hymen can be broken in many other ways and even not broken through sex.

Dawn finally has sex of her own choice, after going to him when she has no one else to turn to. She even tells him about her downstairs teeth, though he brushes her off and jokes that he is the hero who will conquer her. However there are many problems with this sexual encounter such as the fact that he may very well have drugged her, he hands her a pill whilst she is in the bath that his mother apparently uses to relax, and when we see her later open her eyes her towel is undone and he is using a sex toy on her. This already starts the sexual encounter with an extreme lack of consent, very much being sexual assault, and Dawn, inexperienced but happy to have someone touch her intimately despite knowing about her teeth, consents to further sex. The next day they have sex again and whilst she is on top of him he gets a call and answers it, he laughs and promises that he did it and tells her to say something into the phone. As the audience may have already figured out he only slept with her for a bet.

He saw Dawn as a challenge, something to conquer not due to her teeth but due to her vow of celibacy; he tells her that he had a feeling it wasn’t something she was too serious about. Not only does this once again reduce Dawn to an object, ignoring any choice she may have, it treats her as forbidden fruit – there are a lot of serpent metaphors in this film, and a mention of Eve. Women, despite popular belief, are in fact people, with full lives and interests and autonomy and we exist in and of ourselves. We don’t need a man to see us to exist, we don’t need him to touch us to be solid, and we don’t need to be fucked to be whole. This is something that the film tries to teach as this disrespect of Dawn results in yet another severed penis, leaving him literally crying for his mother and clambering around trying to collect his penis.

By now Dawn has very much learnt how to control her teeth, a weaponised vagina if you will. She has learnt, the hard way, that there are men in her life who are happy to treat her as an object for sex rather than a human being and she now has a tool to deal with it. The film also argues, briefly, that humans and animals evolve over time to change their anatomy to protect themselves. The implication is that Dawn – “it’s about you Dawn” – has adapted to protect herself from the men who would inevitably sexually abuse and assault her. Whilst this argument implies that men are destined to sexually assault the film itself tries to show men that that route is not without its very real consequences; this is something you think would be obvious yet the threat of prison does nothing to deter men from rape and instead we’ve happily created a world where the social, emotional, and physical consequences are much, much worse for the victims of rape than for the rapists themselves.

As the final act of the film begins Dawn’s mother has sadly passed away, her step brother Brad ignored her screams to have sex with his girlfriend, and Dawn is setting out to get revenge on him for letting her die, as well as for setting his dog on his Dad after he tells him to move out. Throughout the film her step brother is heard arguing with his girlfriend, he refuses to do anything other than anal intercourse with her and there is even a weird and uncomfortable scene where he uses a dog biscuit to simulate raping her mouth. She is there when he makes his dog attack his father and as she learns what the audience might have guessed – that Brad is ‘in love’ with Dawn. The film opened on Brad and Dawn sitting in an inflatable pool in their front garden, him complaining about her and saying he doesn’t like her; after Dawn’s Mum stops Brad’s Dad from having a go at him for saying he hates her we are, almost casually, introduced to the premise of the film in the context of him sexually assaulting her. Young Brad holds up his bloodied bitten finger and we know that it’s because he had assaulted her and she bit back.

It’s this bitten finger that is used to show his feelings for her as we see him pretend perhaps to not remember what happened to it, and we even later see him sucking it. He explains to his father that he wishes he hadn’t made Dawn his sister and that he always wanted her. Dawn, after realising his feelings and what she can do with them, dresses in a thin white dress and comes onto him. He protests ever so slightly, only to ask why now, and immediately flips her over as he knows exactly what is down there. Yet she turns back around and lifts her dress up, and after he spends time trying to get a look he decides it is worth the risk to finally sleep with her and he does. However he quickly realises what a mistake that was as again we hear the crunch, see his face of realisation and pain and he gets what has always been coming to him as his penis is very much bitten right off. What follows is a rather disturbing and gross, but surprisingly funny, scene of his dog then eating his penis and Dawn leaving him to bleed and realise exactly what he did.

Teeth draws to a close and we see Dawn having to hitch-hike a ride out of town after her bike tire gets punctured. As soon as she stuck her thumb into the air it was obvious what was coming; the old man driving the car later pulls up, locks the doors, and simply smiles at her and sticks out his tongue. Dawn starts off pissed off, annoyed that yet another man is deciding to sexually assault her, and the film ends with her looking provocatively at him and at the camera as we are left knowing that now every single man who hurts her will get utterly and exactly what he deserves.