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Week 13

Helen Hanson dives into Gothic fiction and its relation to the female Gothic film. As explained by Hanson, the “Gothic” aesthetic has been around for a long time, almost 200 years. It crosses into different forms of media whether through music, art, writing or film. Stories based on Gothic fiction mirror the cultural anxieties of the nineteenth century. They are often characterized as having narratives spun with grim mysteries and supernatural monstrosities that suggest real threats. Where novels explore the narrative aspects of Gothic fiction, film explores its visuals. The visuals of Gothic fiction are iconic to film and horror. Depictions of old decrepit sixteenth and seventeenth century architecture combined with dark skies and thick fog. This aesthetic is most prominent with horror classics like Dracula and Frankenstein but there are a plethora of other Horror films that share the Gothic look. Crimson Peak by Guerrmo Del Toro is one contemporary example. Allerdale Hall is one example in the film that showcases Gothic Horror through the mansion’s decrepit state and overall haunted atmosphere. Though Guerrmo adds a hint of modern style with the use of CGI, there is still a consistency to the conventions of Gothic fiction aesthetics within Crimson Peak. 

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Chapter 12

Jennifer’s Body is an interesting teen film slash Horror film that's very much of its time. The dated feeling of the film is contributed to the film’s soundtrack that consist entirely of angsty 2000s punk and its choice of dialogue filled with dated lingo and derogatory terms. Its poor audience reception given at its time of release was due to the film’s bait and switch. The bait and switch has to do with how the film was marketed as a sexploitation of Megan Fox. The posters, trailers, and film title itself seemed to promise a much different film than what was shown. What was promised was a film for the male viewers that would show off Fox’s body for the enjoyment of the male gaze. The movie that was shown instead flipped the script on its own marketing. Fox’s character, Jennifer, is a literal man eater in the film, in that she eats men. The act of her eating her victims isn't subtle either as some scenes show her mouth extending in a monstrous fashion as she devours men. The film does not shy away from showing Jennifer in a horrific state as well. One scene displays her lying on a kitchen floor eating meat straight out of a freezer, afterwards she vomits dark gunk onto Amanda Siegfried’s character Needy. Not the best look for your lead role who was perceived as the hottest actress at the time. This was ultimately one of the reasons the film faced backlash. The film betrayed the male audiences expectations of what they were going to see. This ties a bit into what Bridgid Cherry writes about the female audience viewing Horror. The genre of Horror tended to embrace the male gaze as it has historically been a genre made by men for men. But Horror films directed by women, in this case Karyn Kasama for Jennifer’s Body, help twist the conventions of the genre that have been prevalent for almost a century.

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Week 11

The monster in the Horror genre is a personification of the things we fear as humans. Whether that fear is an obvious threat like a fear of spiders or something deeper like a fear of abandonment. For the Babadook the personified fear is that of grief and how it can consume somebody’s life. Of course the only reason the personified monster exists in the first place is that fear itself is being repressed. A review of the Babadook by Aiofe Dempsey reveals how the monster, the Babadook itself, thrives off of the repressed grief that Amelia has for her deceased husband. The first sign of the Babadook comes in the form of a large book in which Amelia reads to her son. When she reads the book's horrific illustrations Amelia tries her best to destroy it. Her efforts are futile though as the book keeps returning to her as well as the Babadook himself. Amelia’s efforts to repress and destroy the grief that she feels makes the presence of the Babadook in her house stronger. As the Babadook appears in the house, it's shown wearing a top hat and black coat resembles Amelia’s Husband’s magician outfit. Eventually she overcomes the powers of the Babadook through accepting her Husband’s passing. The film does a great job at visualizing grief and how it can linger and envelop somebody’s life.

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Week 10

Jordan Peele’s Get Out does something with itself that is rarely presented within the genre of Horror. It stars a lead Black character, which is something that the Horror genre has always shied away from. American Horror, specifically in the 80’s, has a tendency to be predominantly white centric. Robin Coleman writes about this tendency in their paper, Horror Noir. They explain how the 80’s Horror films in particular excluded the presence of black actors. They also point out how the settings of these films focused on white spaces, suburbs, summer camps, etc. Candyman from 1992 is particularly significant as it's a Horror film that focuses on the “urban” ascribed setting of Cabrini Green. Though Candman still stars a white lead and paints itself within a white viewpoint, the inclusion of a black community within an American big budget Horror slasher film was enough to inspire Jordan Peele to write and direct Get Out. Get Out’s Horror centers around control, specifically the control that whites have historically inflicted over others. A concept by W.E.B Du Bois called Double Consciousness is explored in Get Out. Double Consciousness is the “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”, as explained by Du Bois. 

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Week 9

How Much did you Pay for this?, written by Aviva Breifel and Sianne Ngai, takes a deep dive into the film Candyman. The paper’s main focus on the film is how Candyman shows how fear is perceived as privilege. A fact pointed out by the writing stated how slasher films perpetuated the notion that only the privileged express fear. This rings true for movies like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street where the victims were the white suburban middle class. Not until Candyman in 1992 was there an inclusion of African Americans within the slasher genre. The film makes an effort to visualize the stark contrast of Candyman’s setting compared to the majority of slasher films. This being the contrast between low income neighborhoods as opposed to middle class suburbia. Much like the fear of property ownership envelops the white families of Elm Street, the same fear perpetuates through the residents of Cabrini-Green.

Film Theorist Robin Wood writes about the Horror genre through the lens of Freud and Marx. In his writing, An Introduction to the American Horror Film, Robin explains the different forms of a capitalistic society’s repressions. These repressions refer to both sexual repressions and the repression of women. This creates the concept of Otherness, a model for a group of people portrayed as living wrong. The Otherness exists as a means to establish a model for normalcy in a civilization. In turn the Otherness becomes a scapegoat for which the repressed place blame on. Women, people of different cultures, and children are often grouped together and framed as the Other. This leads us to the monster of horror and how it reflects society's repressions. The monster takes many forms and is always framed as an opponent towards the normal. The structure of Horror is centered around the relationship between the monster and the people who are deemed as normal. 

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Week 8

Carol J. Clover writes about the Slasher sub genre within Horror and its abundance within the 70’s and 80’s in Her body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher film. One concept that Carol brings to light is the trope of the “final girl” portrayed in Slasher films. The final girl is often the last survivor of a slasher film and are almost always female. The characteristics of the final girl are always written as being tomboyish and never sexually active. These characteristics allow male viewers to identify with the final girl as she is coded as being ambiguously gendered. In Halloween the final girl is Laurie, who survives the murderous intentions of Michael Myers, though she does not survive without experiencing the terror of witnessing her friends being killed. This prolonged terror is what the final girl character survives with at the end of the film. In some ways for the character it is a fate worse than death itself. The Slasher film, Camp Sleepaway, plays with the conventions of the Final Girl by blending the roles of the Slasher and the Final Girl. Angela is portrayed as being a prime candidate for the final girl as she portrays traits of gender ambiguity throughout the film. We are led throughout the film to believe that the killer is male, though this is still true by the twist ending we are caught off guard to learn that eventual Final Girl is in fact male and the killer.

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Week 7

In Daughters of Darkness: The Lesbian Vampire Bonnie Zimmerman dissects the film Daughters of Darkness and explains how it differs from the tropes ascribed to similar films of the time. As explained by Zimmerman, the concept around the female lesbian vampire has been presented through history with different interpretations. Though its through film where the mythos of the lesbian vampire are established. From its earliest interpretations during the golden age of Hollywood, where any signs of lesbianism was only hinted at through suggestion. The ‘60s and ‘70s introduced a new wave of indie filmmaking, this perpetuated the mythos of the lesbian vampire even further as sex and violence were now established in film. These films were often labeled as exploitation films for their mix of violence and sex as well as having a smaller production budget. What makes Daughters of Darkness standout is its high quality production in terms of set design, art direction, and acting talent. Though pornography is still present in Daughters of Darkness it's almost used sparingly and at least tasteful. These elements set it apart from the standard exploitation shlock of the ‘70s involving lesbian vampires. 

Linda Williams writes about the fascination with gore in horror films in Film Bodies. Though the paper is really about the exploitation of bodily fluids on film excreted by men and women(mostly women). As the paper is dense with detail, I want to focus on one particular infographic that Williams includes which does a great job of summarizing how the body is exploited through film. The infographic is titled, Anatomy of Film Bodies. It categorizes film bodies into three distinct genres; pornography, horror, and melodrama. From these three genres we see very similar means of exploitation. For horror the excretion of blood is involved, for melodrama its tears, perhaps from the characters and the viewer themselves. Porn is self explanatory and easily the genre with the least amount of subtlety and forethought put towards it in terms of plot. There are certain Horror films that rise above the label of just being exploitations of violence and gore, the same can be applied towards melodramas. The infographic gives examples of contemporary works from the time for the three genres as well as classical works. I found Williams’ paper on body excretions in film very interesting to read as it highlights similarities within three wildly different genres of film.

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Week 6 - Barbara Creed

In Barbara Creed’s paper, Horror and the monstrous-femenine: The Imaginary Abjection, she dives deep into the identity of the female monster. The idea of the feminine monstrosity harkens back to Greek mythology with Medusa, a serpent haired monster who turns anybody who gazes into her eyes into stone. According to Sigmund Freud, Medusa embodies the fear of male castration with her serpent hair representing the female genitalia. At its core femenine monstrosity ties into the terrifying aspect of motherhood and the abject nature of the female genitalia. Creed uses the word abject in several ways, one way she uses it is to describe the grotesque visuals in horror films. Abject is a French word that literally translates to something being cast off, for the instance that Creed is using its referring to bodily fluids like blood and tears to name a few. In the art world, Abject art embraces the grotesque nature of the body and its fluids. Abject art is displayed throughout the horror genre in films such as Susperia and Black Sunday. Susperia pertains the most to Creed’s paper through its display of abject art horror. Scenes of grotesque mutilation of female bodies are shown in great detail. These scenes display the feminine quality of cleanliness juxtaposed with the grotesque abject nature of biological bodily fluids.

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Week 5 - Rocha and Jancovich

The Aesthetics of Hunger by Glauber Rocha is about the creation of Cinema Novo and how it was significant towards Brazilian Cinema in the 60’s and 70’s. Cinema Novo was the artistic response made by Brazilian directors against the one dimensional portrait of Hollywood’s portrayal of Brazil. This portrayal usually painted Brazilians as being uncivilized, and primitive in comparison to North Americans. Many Brazilian films around the 40’s and 50’s tried to replicate the shallow style of Hollywood productions through musicals and dramas. Cinema Novo was a movement against this style in Brazilian Cinema. The film At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul is one such film that deliberately avoids the trappings of Hollywood's influence. It does so by embracing its low budget production and grotesque scenes of violence through the lens of horror. In Rocha’s paper on Cinema Novo, he states how violence is “normal behavior for the starving”, and how Cinema Novo, “teaches that the aesthetics of violence are revolutionary rather than primitive”. Perhaps the point of At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul is to portray its violence as something more than primitive and uncivilized entertainment and more so as a way to strike against the influence of Hollywood. 

Mark Jancovich’s paper on film genre dives deep into the fundamentals of what makes a horror film classified as horror. As he points out in the third part of his paper there are a variety of ways a horror film can be classified along with a number of misconceptions that come with that classification. For example he makes the point that blood and guts are not an outright requirement for a film to be a part of the horror genre. With this I completely agree and I also feel that the genre of horror is based solely on the element of fear. There are a lot of examples of great horror films that lacked blood and gore. As he continues he brings up the authenticity of genre itself and how art-house is inherently anti-genre with films that try not to adhere towards certain genre tropes. In conclusion to his paper, Jancovich explains how there could be alternatives to using the term genre as a blanket categorization of all horror films and instead using the term cycles. He explains how categorizing films under cycles could lead to a better organization of specific types of horror films instead of a generic genre. For example, horror films that center around cereal killers would have their own “cycle” in theory.

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Week 4 Reading: Spivak

Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak is a dense paper on postcolonialism and its effect on the modern mass media and pop culture. The subaltern in the title refers to the perceived lower class in relation to white colonialism. Obviously this lower class within colonialism includes almost everybody who isn't white and male. Spivak explains how the concept of the Other is constructed in popular culture and is perceived to be a reflection of the subaltern. This concept of the other is then portrayed in a negative light within the white male centric world of Hollywood and from the capitalistic mass media as a whole. In Hollywood films the genre of horror allowed the personification of the Other to exist on screen as a monster. This monster is often portrayed as a primitive force of savagery and is symbolized as a threat towards western society. The monster is almost always taken down by the male white lead. This is the case for The Mummy which represents the Other, or more specifically the monster, as the foreigner to the western world from ancient Egypt. As Egypt is seen as a “Third World Country” to the west and located within the African continent it's easy for Hollywood to paint an Egyptian as the Other for their ambiguously perceived history and non white appearance.

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Week 3 Reading: Rony

King Kong and the monster in Ethnographic cinema dives into the undertext of the 1933 Hollywood Classic. The paper written by Fatimah Tobing Rony focuses on the Ethnographic connections within the film and broadens its points to mass media. The paper starts out with the story of Ota Benga, a Chirichiri native who was taken away from his home and was “displayed” in a Bronx zoo. Rony explains how Ota was sometimes caged up along with monkeys and how eventually protests arose to stop the captivity of Ota. Suffice to say the experience of being placed on display for the public of New York to gawk at was a damaging blow to Ota’s psyche and soul, which unfortunately drove him to commit suicide. The parallel of Ota’s story to the story of King Kong is quite evident, which is why Rony insisted on starting her paper on the story of Ota. In the film, King Kong is also taken from his homeland, chained up and displayed for all to see in New York. Rony then uses references to early horror outside of King Kong and analyses how the “monsters” of these films aren't necessarily beast like but instead include racial underpinnings. Island of the lost souls was one such film that Rony analyzed. They then tackled other examples of Ethnographic “Monsters” through mass media and showed how contemporary works by modern artist helped to flip the script on the spectacle Ethnographic Cinema.

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Week 2 Reading: Mulvey

Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to dive deep into the concept of the gaze in cinema in her paper, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Her paper is split into four parts, starting with the introduction that explains the significance of Phallocentrism. She writes that Phallocentrism in film is a paradox in that it is not centered around the object of the man but instead the existence of the woman. Women give the concept of the Phallocentrism its meaning from the woman's lack of phallic representation. The second part of Mulvey’s paper dives into the pleasure in looking, so more specifically the male gaze. Mulvey writes about how an industry run entirely almost by men provides an audience composed of a majority of men with scopophilia, the pleasure of looking at beautiful women. This in turn creates the perception of women as objects for the viewer and nothing more. Though cinema has evolved extensively there are still modern examples of the male gaze at play. How this “male gaze” and the concept of Phallocentrism pertains to the genre of horror is quite obvious. In a horror movie such as King Kong the female lead lacks nuanced characteristics that her male counterparts acquire. Her role is to be the prize, a human trophy that the “uncivilized other” (King Kong), and the “civilized men” (White men) fight over. This applies to a considerable amount of horror films produced during the Hollywood golden age.

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Week 1 Reading: Noel Carrol

Carrol makes a point about the monster within horror movies in the beginning of her book when she states, “Horrific Monsters are threatening.” Reading further into her writing she makes a point to distinguish all the separate ways that a monster can not only appear threatening but feel threatening as well. From Carrol’s writing, the outward appearance of the monster should be threatening and should provoke feelings of impureness from the audience. This impure quality is achieved by the fusion of categorical characteristics. Some of these infusions involve the living and the death, flesh and insects, or flesh and machine. Every monster depicted in film is the result of a fusion that causes a mismatch of biology and ethics, this in turn creates the elicit feeling of impureness. Another aspect that monsters elicit feelings of dread is the use of phobias. Common phobias such as the fear of spiders and sharp objects are often implemented but some monsters cover more rare phobias, Like the fear of clowns in “It”. Carrol summarizes that the foundation for art-horror is that of sight, and of the fear people have of the physical threatening. In Carrol’s opinion, this is the very essence of a horror monster.