Sleepaway Penis: The Return of the Territorialized Repressed
in Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp
D. Harlan Wilson

The raw exposure of the phallus in the climactic scene of Sleepaway Camp turns its theoretical machine on end. Throughout the film, the knife as phallus functions as the dominant source of social, psychological and physical violence. The suspicion that it is a female — the introverted, traumatized camper-virgin Angela (played by Felissa Rose), who uses the knife/phallus to commit murder — elicits a basic postfeminist type: the Female who employs the destructive technology of the Male to destroy the Male. Hence Angela exists as a vagina+knife/phallus. Here, however, her existence is deconstructed, reifying the illusion of the postfeminist type in terms of power. We learn that she is a he, or rather a s/he, not a vagina+knife/phallus but a penis(-vagina)=knife/phallus. The scene then is not horrific, not revealing, not even surprising. It is simply the return of a repressed territorialization of gender dynamics.

D. Harlan Wilson is a noted man of letters. He hangs out online at www.dharlanwilson.com and www.myspace.com/dharlanwilson.