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Inside vs Outside the Frame: Differences in Horror in Frankenstein (1931) and Vampyr (1932)

This was written for a film history class for my school, I'm quite proud of it so I wanted to post it here, enjoy :') Do not copy or plagiarize

The monster movie genre has been associated with a creature as a singular force of evil and destruction. Frankenstein (1931) aligns closely with this idea as Frankenstein’s monster is made of physical parts, while Vampyr’s (1932) monster is harder to identify as it goes into more abstract ideas about death. While James Whale interpreted the genre as having a physical monster, Carl Theodor Dreyer was more interested in the subconscious fears that surround the idea of one. By examining the storytelling, form and history in Frankenstein and Vampyr, the differences in the way they use the monster movie genre to create fear and develop horror aspects are revealed. Frankenstein creates fear inside the frame, whereas, Vampyr creates fear outside of it.

Both Frankenstein and Vampyr utilize storytelling in order to connect a sense of dread to the monster depicted in each film. However, they diverge in similarities when it comes to creating the horror, as it is achieved using a tight narrative structure in the former and abstract ideas in the latter. In Frankenstein, what is known by the audience is what scares them: the monster itself. They know that the monster is made out of pieces of the dead, it has a criminal mind and it is capable of killing – all things storytelling-wise that lead the audience to develop a perception of fear toward the monster and what it is going to do next. The story lets the viewer get familiar with the monster to anticipate its next move, but not familiar enough to be able to sympathize with its actions. This can be seen in the scene next to the lake when the monster is throwing daisies into the water with the little girl Maria. Frankenstein’s monster throws Maria into the water, thinking she would float as well but instead, it drowns her. At the moment just before this, there is a slight humanity brought to light in the monster with his connection to the girl. However, when the audience has just started to become sympathetic instead of being horrified the monster’s violent nature re-emerges along with his naiveness (Badley). As a result of Maria's murder, both the storytelling and audience perception of the monster change in the film. The shocking event creates tremors of fear and anger in the story, with the whole village storming the monster's hiding place and burning it to the ground. The audience never gets a break from the rising anger and fear building in the narrative, solidifying any sense of dread with the addition of morbid fixation on the death of the monster. Alternatively, what makes the storytelling in Vampyr successful is the lack of information given to the audience. It feels like a waking nightmare with the otherworldly atmosphere executed by the cast of shadows, unexplainable dreams and use of time (Kawin 32). These vague yet haunting images and the subconscious fear of what creature is behind it are what make the vampire horrifying, not the image of the vampire itself. Questions remain unsolved even by the end of the film, creating a sense of enigma surrounding the narrative (Swaab). At the beginning of the film, Allan Grey is visited in his locked room by a man who writes down a message on a book; to only open a book after the man has died. The man then disappears but the book stays, making the scene feel like a dream. However, the audience is forced to accept that it was not a dream as the book still lays there, creating an uneasy feeling that something is not right in this world (Kawin 34). Carl Theodor Dreyer explained that he wanted the horror to be created subconsciously: the physical objects don’t change but the viewers' relationship to them does, as if  “..we are told that there is a corpse behind the door” (Kawin 32).

Frankenstein’s form is very theatrical and leaves little to the imagination, creating the horror in the frame, not the subconscious. The mise-en-scene is reminiscent of the classic Hollywood style, where the elaborate, stage-like sets, never let the camera break the fourth wall. The camera achieves extreme high angles, able to show as much of the scene as possible. This can be seen in the moment the monster wakes up from his subdued state and chokes Dr. Waldman. The shot starts over the top of the bed, positioned along the fourth wall, and as the monster chokes him it raises higher, giving the most efficient angle to view the horror. Sound is also being utilised to push the horror displayed in the frame. When Frankenstein’s monster is first shown fully, his footsteps are heard ominously echoing throughout the lair before it is even shown. This leads to a feeling of morbid anticipation within the audience, with each step making the fear grow stronger. He is then materialized on screen, ominously backing through the doorway, displaying his ineptitude and unpredictability. The choice to make the sound appear off-screen instead of showing Frankenstein’s monster moving up the stairs is a purposeful one meant to work with the visuals within the frame to enhance each other and create the most fearful scene possible (Hong 220). Vampyr uses its formal elements in a more abstract manner, relating the camera's gaze to that of the audience, making the horror resonate on a personal subconscious level. Where Frankenstein chooses to remain formally on the outside of the events, filming the sets as a stage, Vampyr immerses the camera in the scene. For example, the dream sequence in which Allan walks ghostly through a field, the vampire’s house, and into his coffin is filmed with inquiry, framing the outside of the house in wide-angle shots, and cutting to close-ups of Allan peering through keyholes. The audience sees the house in the same perspective as the character, creating an empathetic mystique, wondering what behind the door might put him in danger. Furthermore, Allan sees himself in a coffin, and the camera takes the viewpoint of his dream corpse staring toward the sky as his coffin is carried to his grave. At this moment the “reverse angle allows us to identify with the character's self-consciousness.” (Kawin 37), playing into the spectator's abstract fears of seeing one's final image. The contrasting of these formal elements reveals the ways in which the two films use the monster genre. Frankenstein looks at the fear of the monster itself, choosing to fill its frame and soundtrack with the anticipation of its attack. Vampyr finds horror in the abstract ideas that may come to fruition through contact with the monster: the fear does not come from the thing itself but the death that may result. This abstracting of ideas arises from the historical contexts surrounding the films, and for Vampyr, it was the German Expressionist movement that gave way to this.

German expressionism, while already existing before WWI, was elevated even higher due to its themes of rebellion, and helped suppress the “association of "'German' with militarism, brutal aggression and the Kaiser” (Elsaesser 63). Films during this time projected emotions onto the mise-en-scene to express reality, by removing realism in favour of distorted and fantastical design (Thompson et al. 89). In Vampyr, these designs are used to create the dreamlike world Dreyer has put the audience in. He places the subconscious of his characters into the framing allowing their own fears to take precedent in the story. Dancing shadows over the walls and the dream-like sequences all add to the warping of reality commonly found in the works of German expressionists. At the same time on the other side of the world, non-expressionist classical form thrived. Frankenstein’s theatrical, horror-in-frame approach to the genre fuelled the critique of pre-production Code Hollywood films as being overly violent, gruesome, and non-conservative. Audiences who viewed the film were cited to have called theatres days after initial screenings, unable to sleep and remove the “graphic” images from their minds (Badley). It was the lasting impression of the horror that made it culturally potent. When looking at the historical context of the film, situated in a period of Hollywood where censorship was far and few between, the overtly dramatic and tell-not-show way of messaging becomes sharp. Taboo subjects are portrayed on screen with very little concealing, an example being Frankenstein’s monster murdering a girl out of confusion and naivety making the evil of the monster hard to critique. By being able to show all of the horror in the frame, Frankenstein is able to make the images of violence last outside of the film. In conclusion, the contrasting use of horror elements between Frankenstein and Vampyr reveals the different ways the genre is used to communicate to the audience in each respective film. By specifically analyzing the narrative, form, and history of the two films, the various ways one can interpret and make use of the monster movie genre are brought to light. It is revealed how different a horror can be depending on the choice of where the fear is placed, either within or outside of the frame.

Citations

Badley, Linda. “Hollywood Expressionism: James Whale's Frankenstein.” South Atlantic 

Review, vol. 85, no. 4, 2020, p. 4.

Kawin, Bruce F. “Fear in a Frame.” Horror and the Horror Film, Anthem Press, London, 2020, 

pp. 32–48. 

Hong, Seung Min. “Contrapuntal Aurality: Exceptional Sound in Hollywood Monster Horror 

Films during the Early Sound Era.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 47, no. 

4, Oct. 2019, pp. 215–226, doi:10.1080/01956051.2019.1566201.

Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. “Part Three: The Development of Sound Cinema, 

1926-1945.” Film History: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill Education, 2019. 

Elsaesser, Thomas. “Caligari’s Family: Expressionism, Frame Tales and Master-Narratives.” In 

Weimar Cinema and After, 61-105. New York: Routledge, 2000

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The Fetishization of The Female Character in Lost Highway (1997)

Written for film class TMU 2022 Do not steal, copy or plagiarize

Male Gaze in Lost Highway:

The fetishization of The Female Character

In Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), she introduces the idea of the “Male Gaze” an expression of how straight males see and depict women in cinema; or as Mulvey puts it, “women as the image, men as the bearer of the look”. The active and passive audience member concept is also brought up in the essay, with Mulvey attributing the active role to the men who create and watch versus the passive role to the women who are looked at and put on display (62). She mentions many films that reflect these ideas such as The River of no Return, Rear Window and Vertigo. The focus of this essay however is David Lynch’s 1997 film, Lost Highway. Using Laura Mulvey's concepts of visual pleasure and the portrayal of women in film, this paper will examine how the men on and off screen view the female characters in Lost Highway, making active contributions and contradictions to the male gaze. Specifically, three scenes will be analyzed in order to determine how techniques were used to emphasize and counter the male gaze in the film.

The first analysis will be done on the dream sequence Fred describes at the start of the film involving Renee, his wife. Although it doesn’t seem to reflect the idea of the male gaze as clearly as Muley describes it, some of its aspects are still there. In this dream, Fred feels he is demasculinized as a result of failing to satisfy his wife, only feeling this after becoming insecure in his home. This is made even more evident by the smoke slowly creeping through the hallway, being a symbol of Fred's insecurity at home and his relationship with his wife. This could be why he insists that it isn’t Renee in the dream; his image of the perfect wife would never make him feel less than a man. It is Fred’s own way of dealing with the failing relationship and his masculinity, something very important to the male gaze. Mulvey states that the male body cannot be exhibited like the female body, instead, the man must control the narrative and as the bearer of the look rather than the spectacle itself (63). The camera watches Renee from a high angle – almost as if viewing her as a threat – before switching to a POV shot of her being attacked as if it was Fred's reaction to his fear of her. When comparing the mise-en-scene of this scene to the one of Fred’s dream world as Pete, where Renee is depicted as an angelic-like figure with white hair and soft makeup. By looking at Renee's true self with her red hair and dark clothes, it's evident that Fred rewrote the narrative in order to construct the "perfect Renee" that he imagined. 

The second scene which will be analyzed happens around one hour and thirty minutes into the movie when Alice is admitting to Pete how she got to know Dick Laurent. The scene begins with Alice walking into a room full of men all looking at her. Dick Laurent sits in front of a fireplace as a man points a gun at her head, and the whole room waits to see what she is going to do next. In spite of the lack of dialogue, it's clear from their stares what they want Alice to do. She starts to strip as Marilyn Manson’s I Put a Spell on You plays in the background. This scene can be used as a prime example of the male gaze, with every man in the scene looking at Alice as a sexual object, not as an actual woman. Mulvey writes that “in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed,” (62) or in other words, she becomes a sexual spectacle for the male viewer on and off the screen, with Mulvey referring to this type of conformity as “to-be-looked-at-ness” (62). Alice conforms to their idea of the perfect woman who will submit to all desires without question, a type of woman that only exists in the minds of heterosexual men. Looking closer at the technical aspects of the scene, the way the camera holds onto Alice’s body, almost as if representing Laurent’s own eyes. The lighting is soft and dramatic – giving them a theatrical and staged look – which creates shadows that further emphasize Alice’s features. The whole scene revolves around her body, and how Dick Laurent and the men surrounding her react to her body. Every shot is framed so that at least one man is seen reacting to her in some way, whether it be Dick or one of the men in the background. This further emphasizes Mulvey’s point of the active and passive audience, with the men watching Alice being active and Alice herself being passive. Alice is not seen as an actual character, but rather as a concept in the mind of Pete and an object through the eyes of Laurent. Taking the male gaze even further, Alice serves no more purpose than to advance Pete's story, serving as an eye-catching femme fatale, satisfying the desires of the heterosexual male audience. “The woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium” (62) Mulvey writes, which can both be seen with Alice. The camera movements, lighting and framing are not only there to highlight her sexuality in the narrative, but to appease the audience.

The final scenes in Lost Highway seem to contradict instead of depicting the male gaze. They happen near the end of the film when Fred’s dream world as Pete starts to fall apart. Before killing Andy, Pete sees a pornographic video of Alice playing on a projector. The act of viewing something so explicit can be seen as a meta-commentary on the male gaze itself, with Pete being the audience member trying to get satisfaction from the woman being made a spectacle on screen. However, in this case, Pete’s image of Alice is of disgust instead of satisfaction with her angel-like persona breaking down in front of his eyes. Again, he is losing control of the narrative and can no longer view Alice as a fantasy of his own mind. In Mulvey’s essay, she mentions scopophilia – also known as the love of looking – explaining Freud's theory as “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (59) which is what Pete has been doing to Alice throughout the whole film. He only looks at her superficially, with her outfits in this particular last part being extra revealing, even going as far as to wear nothing at all. Pete’s gaze only looks outwards, focused on how Alice’s actions affect him yet not necessarily on what he thinks of himself. Near the end of the film, Pete – who is now Fred – is confronted by the mysterious man played by Robert Blake, who records him with a handheld video camera. Fred runs, unable to feel the judgement of the same gaze that he puts on Renee/Alice throughout the film. When the film cuts to the perspective of the camera recording him, Fred is forced to confront himself as the lines between the dream and his reality are blurred. This flipping of the narrative gives the film a whole new feeling, almost as if it was putting a mirror up to the audience. Its choice to end with such a powerful yet terrifying conclusion helps leave a lasting impact on the viewers watching and actively participating in the male gaze themselves.

Though there are many cases of sexualization and scopophilia in David Lynch’s film Lost Highway, the criticism of its own audience is something that should be noted as well. Informed by Laura Mulvey's concepts of visual pleasure and film portrayals of women, this paper examined how the male characters in Lost Highway are viewed on and off-screen, actively participating in the male gaze while also combating it.

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Roger Deakins' Cinematography

Best known for movies like Fargo, Blade Runner: 2049, 1917 & and so many more, Roger Deakins is one of the most talented and influential cinematographers working today. His work is very beautiful and inspiring, and it is clear he knows what he is doing with the camera.

One of my favourite things about his style of cinematography though is his use of lighting to create harsh silhouettes. His use of contrast and shadows always put the character into a profile, making them stand out more against the strong colours of the background. Speaking of, colour is also something that Deakins understands. No matter how many colours are on screen at a certain moment, or just in the whole film in general, he finds a way to make them stand out and look beautiful. An example can be the movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a movie that takes place in the west, main colours being different shades of brown, yet he still finds a way to make them stand out and make the film visually stunning. The main way he does this is by the use of contrast, either by contrasting the brown dirt with the bright blue sky and the black clothing with the pure white snow or by shining a light source to create his signature sharp silhouettes.

Compare The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford which is a film with a rather monotone colour palette to a movie like Blade Runner: 2049 a film with almost every colour on the spectrum. Even with these two drastically different movies, Deakins still finds the beauty in each, while still finding a way to leave an imprint of his style.

Deakins has been in the industry for years, working with directors like the Coen brothers, Denis Villeneuve and Sam Mendes. With so many iconic shots and new techniques, it will be interesting to see the impact that his work has on future directors of photography and cinematography as a whole.

" It's the lens choices, it's the frame, it's what's in the frame, the balance of the frame, whether it's a formal symmetrical frame, whether it's off-balance. It's such a complex palette you've got to play with. Colours, light. That's what's wonderful about it really " - Roger Deakins

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Love, Victor and it's problems

Hello! First post here! I know this isn't a movie, instead of a show, but I feel like I have a few things I have the urge to spill out, so here it goes.

I've watched both seasons of Love, Victor and finished the second one the day it came out, June 11. It's now June, 26 and I've let a few thoughts and problems I've had about the show sit in my brain for a while now but they're starting to get antsy. Is the show really that serious to pick it apart and point out its flaws? No, it's supposed to be a cute little show about a boy exploring his sexuality, and I know that. But man I can't help myself, what else am I suppose to do this summer anyway? So, that being said, let's get started!

Actually, before I start I just wanted to get out of the way that I am a queer girl myself, who is also a teenager, so that is the type of viewpoint I am watching this show through. Do with that what you will :D Now we can get started, here are the three main problems I had with the show;

i. The Writing

The writing of this show is... something else to say the least. It has its good moments for sure, but man is it hard to get through an episode without cringing once or twice. Now I am no writer myself, so I can't judge too hard, but I wish the show didn't try to fit in so many pop culture references and twitter lingo to try and appeal to teens. It's so obvious while watching that the writers themselves only have a vague idea on how to use it. There is a scene of the show that is going around on twitter, instagram and tiktok where a character says something along the lines of "We stan you!" and "We're all gay AF!" (link below for the whole video).

.... like... what? My god my body collapsed in on itself when I heard that. I think the writers maybe tried to make the line of "We're gay AF" as a cringy joke to show how oblivious the character was, but the line "We will forever stan you" shows how oblivious the writers are to the use of the word "stan", or at least that's how it came off the way the actor said it. The line is said with no implication that it's supposed to be cringy or something to laugh at. I don't know if the writers were aware at the time that this is something teenagers do not say about or to their friends unless they purposely want to sound out of touch. Someone in the replies even said "In real life that won't happen ever" and they're correct. This is just one instance where the writing feels shaky but there are many more sprinkled throughout the show. This probably is super nitpicky but it's just so prevalent in the show that I felt that I had to write about it.

ii. The Love Interests

Now on to another problem, The characters of Rahim & Benji. Let's start off with Benji. He serves as the love interest for the main character Victor, which is fine! It's great! Except it isn't because that's all Benji is... a love interest. He barely has any personality and the only three things I know about him are that he is gay, is in a band, and is a recovering alcoholic. With those three things, there is so much to do with his character. They mention in the show that his dad wasn't too happy when he came out, and brought him to a strip club in order to make him "straight". I thought maybe the show would show how his relationship with his dad has been damaged and how they're slowly trying to repair it, or maybe Benji doesn't want to forgive his dad and all! But no, the restaurant scene comes and everything seems fine like something as traumatic as your own father refusing to accept your sexuality and trying to convince you to be someone else never happened. If you're going to make your character go through something like that, it would be good to show its consequences, not to sweep it under the rug! In the first half of the season, if I remember correctly, we see almost every character in a different location doing their own storyline, except Benji, who only exists at school and in the coffee shop to show that he's Victor's boyfriend. I don't think there's a single scene where it's just Benji alone doing something that doesn't involve Victor. It isn't until the later episodes where he gets his own plotline, one that revolves around him being a recovering alcoholic and being 1 year sober. Now don't even get me started on this... the fact they waited a whole season and a half to get to this huge revelation?? This is a big part of Benji that he kept secret and they could do so much with it, but it ends up being just a plot device so that Victor can break up with him and end the season on a cliffhanger. It seems like every one of Benji's plot points is to benefit Victor in some way (all except for the band, but they also never expand on that either so :/). The other couples, for example, Lake & Felix, have their own problems and stuff they're going through, not just things to benefit their love interest story. I get that Victor is the main character, but if this show is about him discovering his sexuality, should his love interest be a huge part of that? Shouldn't there be more focused on his love interest rather on his best friend? I don't know that's just how I view it.

Rahim is Victor's second love interest who is introduced halfway through the second season in the episode called Sincerely Rahim. He, like Benji, the only purpose of his character is to serve as a love interest for Victor and create a love triangle that can end season 2 on a cliffhanger, just like season 1 did. The show cared even less about Rahim than they cared about Benji since they didn't even bother to show his coming-out scene. It sucks because he comes from a Muslim family and that coming out scene could've been really meaningful, for once showing a Muslim family being accepting of a gay son instead of shunning them, which is how the media normally portrays Muslim families.

iii. The couple bias

Probably my biggest problem with this show is the clear bias to the straight couples compared to the main gay couple of the show. Like I said before, Benji being a shell of a character compared to everyone else, I don't think that's a coincidence. I am aware that there was at least one gay writer on the team, but they didn't seem to make up the majority. It's obvious the writers felt more comfortable writing straight characters and couples (eg, Victor and Mia as a couple for the majority of season one) which is fine, but if you're writing a show with a gay couple in it then get gay writers who will actually understand and have an easier more natural approach to them. This is why I think diversity in the writer's room is just as important as diversity on screen. You can put a gay character in your show but if they're written by a straight person it's not going to feel authentic and can easily fall into stereotypes. But that's a conversation for another time.

Some other small problems I had but weren't worth a whole section

-The lack of sapphic women. I think they might start a wlw plotline the next season with Lake but man.. took them two seasons in a show that's suppose to be a representation to even hint at a sapphic relationship.

-Benji's timeline for his alcoholism... if he's 16 now (junior) and been sober for a year... that means he entered rehab when he was 15... which means he's been drinking heavily since he was like 14, so much so they had to put him in rehab?? Are his parents really that neglectful? This why I am so confused about his parents because what his dad did to him was awful and yet when they show Benji's parents, his mother seems to adore him and they are both extremely welcoming to Victor. The only reason I see why he would start drinking at such a young age is that he felt bad because of his sexuality... but man, at 14 do you even understand what's going on enough to be like "this is bad I should drown my sorrows in booze".... idk such a strange timeline.

-They didn't keep up Rahim's texts to Victor, it was one and done. I get that it was supposed to be like continuity with what Simon did to Bram and then what Victor did to Simon but it felt so forced that I wish they didn't do it at all. Felt like they just left it hanging there.... ok I will admit it is really nitpicky and I'll stop now I promise!

So... that's it! I know this can come off as annoying or I'm giving huge pessimist vibes because of this but I swear me having long rants about how I feel about a show's problems is rare. Normally I like deconstructing the parts I did like rather than the parts I didn't. I do think this show is cute and serves its purpose of entertaining, and I don't hold anything against someone who enjoys it! I can easily see this being someone's comfort show, and that's completely fine. I also realize that I did dig into the writers quite a lot here, so I just want to make it clear that in no way am I questioning their talent (one is a new york times bestseller and two others have been nominated for Emmys). Hopefully, my posts in the future will be more positive but for now, I hope this deconstruction was decent!

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hello! i have no followers on here so i dont expect anyone to read this, oh well.

im going to try and write reviews or analysis of movies that i enjoy (or not) on this blog type thing, so yeah! maybe even a book or two if i ever feel strongly enough for it.

i am aware that there are the apps letterboxd and goodreads and while those are great and i use them often, i think that this will give me more room to really go in depth about what i thought about the movie or somethings ive noticed in general. im not sure how to explain it properly but hopefully as i start posting more it will become clearer.

i wont post every movie i watch on here, just the ones that really stand out to me and that i feel i have a lot to say about. i hope with this i can venture out of my comfort zone in relation to movies and writing and also just see films in a whole new light as i start to analyze them.

hoping for the best!