it has also been suggested (e.g., creed, 1993) that the degradation of women and women's bodies in popular culture (and particularly, for example, in slasher films) emerges because of the threat to identity that the mother's body poses: it is a reminder of time spent in the undifferentiated state of the semiotic, where one has no concept of self or identity. after abjecting the mother, subjects retain an unconscious fascination with the semiotic, desiring to reunite with the mother, while at the same time fearing the loss of identity that accompanies it. slasher films thus provide a way for audience members to safely reenact the process of abjection by vicariously expelling and destroying the mother figure.