Draped in Death

Fur, Femininity, and the Trauma Logic of Cruella de Vil

Cruella de Vil is a memorable villain. She has an ostentatiously high-camp and menacing aura, a theatrical excess that borders on the grotesque yet remains magnetic. There’s an unnervingly human quality about her—she’s too raw and unfiltered to be safely cordoned off as mere fiction. Cinema villains are captivating because they serve as a site of ambivalence—the villain must disturb and seduce in equal measure. They function as psychic double agents: both disavowed and desired. These figures often refuse the social imperative to repress their shadow selves, instead adorning themselves in rage and grief with unapologetic intensity. They expose a subterranean logic that governs all of us—the pull of the forbidden, the thrill of transgression. Cruella is no exception. She is not simply evil, but represents a stylised pain, reflecting a darker material that most of us would rather not see.