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Week 14 – Neo Gothic: Frail Masculinity & Female Excess in 21st Century Cinema

Hanson introduces the gothic genre as having the ability to renew itself, finding new expressions in evolving cultural forms in a mode that is focused on a fraught relationship with the past. She compares film noir with the female gothic and how they are essentially identical in stylistic choices and narrative devices, specifically between noir’s duplicitous femme fatale and the gothic’s mysterious husband. However, film noir is more canonical in comparison to the female gothic although the female gothic saw more success in Hollywood in the 1940s than film noir did. This evaluation between the two genres and which is more of a genre than the other, mainly stems from the female gothic’s labeling of its films, most in relation to melodramas or romance. In discussing these differences in genre based on the gender of each protagonist, I found it interesting how in the female gothic, the female’s perception is rendered as “paranoid or incorrect”, paranoid being characteristic of the Clover’s final girl in slasher films, unless there is a secondary  male character to confirm the female’s perception. This is evident in Crimson Peak, when Edith sees supernatural apparitions throughout the house and runs calling for her husband Thomas to confirm these suspicions for her. As a viewer watching, like Hanson mentions, you may be inclined to not believe the female protagonist and need a secondary character to confirm suspicions; however, the trope of the mysterious husband stands true since his first appearance on screen after Edith’s father investigated Thomas and his sister, which makes him not credible for confirming these apparitions. However, the gothic tropes of the female perceptions being confirmed by a secondary male character does come to pass in some way by Dr. Alan having to come to England with the newspaper clippings to reinforce Edith’s original suspicions.

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Week 13- The Pains of Being a Woman II: Female Directions & the Female Body

Cherry’s reading discusses Williams and Clover and the subversion of the spectator’s gaze when watching a horror film when the spectator is female. Clover explains that the spectator of a horror film is usually male, the monster male, and the victim female, the gaze of the male spectator fluidly switching his identification with the victim and the monster. Williams discusses the female character’s gaze at the monster and how it is representative of her affinity with the monster, seeing herself as other to the patriarchal structure. Cherry reviews a number of audience studies, asking women the types of horror films they like and if they refuse to look. Those that refused to refuse the look said to enjoy horror films and had an affinity with the monster, sometimes in a romantic or fantastical way, because they were able to identify with the monster as other which they could relate to in their childhoods which carried into their adult lives. Cherry found that the most popular type of horror film amongst these female fans and followers was the vampire film, while the slasher was the least favorite. In terms of the slasher, some women agreed with Clover in that slashers were sexist in that the female bodies were tortured and abused on screen while others said that it was even in terms of the kill count of females to males, but that the emphasis was always put on the female body. Cherry also found that women were drawn to vampire films because of their sexual nature and deviance, leading to fantastical viewings when watching these films. Some women said that it was the bisexual nature and open sexuality of the vampires that drew them to those types of films. It is interesting how Jennifer’s Body, contains a female monster that embodies a vampiric demon that feeds on the bodies of men and is also fluid in her sexuality. Jennifer, herself, refuses to refuse the look early in the film when she is looking at her reflection in the mirror in a locker, yet she becomes the monster shortly after.

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Week 12 – The Pains of Being a Woman: Female Directors & Psychological Horror

In the Dempsey reading, she reviews The Babadook in that it is like most horror films in that it involves the return of the repressed but focuses on the supernatural and psychological connection. She continues in this idea of the supernatural/psychological horror in that the monster is not the figure, The Babadook, but rather the repression of Amelia’s traumatic experience, her husband dying the night her son was born. She explains how the director emphasizes this racialization of The Babadook in that it is a black figure, which also is seen in the darkening or blackening of her hands. This tying back to Wood’s in that The Babadook is a return of surplus repression for Australians from when they were colonized.

In the Oliver reading, she discusses Julia Kristeva’s analysis of Freud’s oedipal development. She opens up with Freud’s explanation that women want kids, specifically male, as a substitute for the penis. Kristeva agrees, but rather than for a substitution of the penis it is an antidote or cure for female fatigue, while also flipping this desire from mother to baby to baby, male or female, to mother. Oliver explains Kristeva’s oedipal phases of the female: oedipal prime – the attachment to the mother that leads to both identification with the mother and the desire for her; and, oedipal two – the change in the girl’s love object to the father and to the law. This oedipal process contains a bisexual component, the girl wanting to identify with both the mother and the father; however, with the mother though, she both identifies but refuses identification. Kristeva believes the “cure” to this feminine fatigue is through motherhood. It is in motherhood that this experience of passion and dispassion, and love and hate emerges that allows the mother to properly raise her child; this holding onto and pushing away. This is evident in The Babadook, the beginning of the film, Amelia attempting to be very passionate and loving which eventually drives her “crazy”, not having dealt with psychological trauma, but finally being able to develop a healthier relationship with her son after the “distancing” or hate she experienced.

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Week 11 – Suburban Horror: Blackness & Class

Coleman’s article discusses Black representation in horror from the 1980s to the present. She starts by describing the White retreat to the suburbs. The cities were deemed savage and too violent or unsafe for White people and were overrun by low class/working class people of color, forcing them to retreat to the suburbs to maintain their White normativity. She says this explains why in the slasher movies of the 70s-80s that the victims were all white and the monsters were all white because they were an attack on white suburbia and meant that white people could not label who were friend or foe like they could for Black people or people of color. She continues and says that the Native Americans became the antagonist or enemy within horror movies like The Shining and Amityville Horror, the houses built on ceremonial grounds and must battle possession-like situations to try to survive. The presence of Black people in film did not really come around until the introduction of the Buddy film, where the Black character was tethered to the white character in more of a supporting role, serving the White character. This went into the Black character in horror films as the Black savior. The prime example she used was The Shining. Dick had to be portrayed as an older black man who was attracted to black women to avoid stereotyping him as a pedophile in relation to his interactions with Danny. In the end, he dropped everything he was doing to go save Danny and his mother, Wendy, and ended up dying in the process by Jack’s hand. The Black savior complex does not give the Black character a family of their own to miss or mourn them when they are gone. They are isolated from Black community/culture in order to be presentable to white audiences. Coleman also discusses the Magical Negro, a Black character with supernatural or God-like abilities, in which she references The Green Mile and The Legend of the Beggar Vance, and how these powers are given to these Black characters in a misguided attempt to counter the racist stereotypes, but in a way perpetuate them because these powers give the Black character the moral equivalent of a “normal” white character. She also discusses Michael Jackson and his Thriller and Ghost music videos and how they complicate the mainstreaming of racial subjects in horror.

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Week 10 – Inner City: Real Estate, Race & Reganism

In Wood’s reading, he discusses the construction of American horror, and the “return of the repressed” through the monster and its relation to sexuality. He says that there are two types of repression: basic and surplus. Basic repression essentially differentiates humans from other types of animals and animalistic behavior. Surplus repression varies depending on cultural values and norms and the is constructed through the predetermined roles assigned in those cultures. He continues and says that whatever cannot be repressed is dealt with by oppression which constructs “the Other”. He gives a list of groups that fall under this category: other people, women, ethnic groups, other cultures, alternative ideologies or political systems, children, and deviations from ideological sexual norms. In Hollywood cinema, Wood says that it is noted that horror is implicitly recognized by it being American and familial. The monster is created from that which is repressed which shares relations to “the Other,” those that are oppressed, both being a threat to monogamous heterosexual bourgeois patriarchal capitalist. The only way to deal with the repressed represented in the monster, or the oppressed Other is either by coercing them to assimilate or by annihilating it.

In the Candyman reading, Briefel & Ngai explain how most victims in horror films are white, middle-class characters that fear change to their societal norms and predetermined roles and divisions. They then say that horror films are primarily these white/ middle-class victim control groups attempts to restore or persist their lifestyle and way of living and the monster represents the change that threatens to disrupt it. This fear connects or is tangential to proprietorship or the owning of property. They then segway into talking about Candyman as a slasher film. Essentially this is a film about the infiltration of colored, low-class Americans that are evicted from subsidized housing. Rather than focusing on the white, middle-class victim control group, the film focuses on working-class African Americans along with the myth of the Candyman. It starts out with Helen attempting to debunk the myth of the Candyman and how it is the reality of life rather than a fictitious myth. She uses her apartment to explain how the myth can be constructed through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom that does not completely separate them from the next door apartment because of a hole and equates that to Cabrini-Green. Where she may be correct in the substructure of it, she fails to mention that economic factors play into the maintenance and appearance of the two places rather than them being as similar as she believes. Briefel & Ngai also discuss Helen’s consciousness aiding in the construction of the Candyman through the three different stories she is told. This is evident that it is the construction rather than a dream-like sequence similar to Nightmare on Elm Street because of the ordering of the sequence. Over the course of the narrative, Helen shifts from skeptic to believer as she slowly experiences interwoven events from the three stories she was told. Similar but also different from Nosferatu, she is a martyrdom and a final girl in that she becomes both the savior and the culprit by being a sacrificial lamb, only to become the haunter herself.

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Week 8 – Hell is Other People: Slashers & Final Girls

In Clover’s article she discusses gender relations in the slasher film. She notes that Hitchcock’s Psycho is an ancestor of the slasher and in some ways a model of it. The specific factors or components of the slasher that Clover discuss are the killer, the terrible place, weapons, victims, final girl, shock, and the body. Stereotypically, Clover argues that the killer in most slashers are males that experience/experienced the absence and/or projection of the maternal figure onto the killer; the killer is somehow repressed or locked in childhood or a child mindset; and the male killer may experience gender confusion. The terrible place is described as a place where obviously the horror of the film happens, but it is not the place that makes it terrible, but the terrible families and their construction of the monster(s) of the film. The weapons are pretechnological, and most specifically always representative of the phallic. The victims are usually sexual transgressors that are punished early in the film; however, the males are killed swiftly and most times off screen while the females are tortured, their deaths lingering. The final girl is the one who is not sexually active, not as feminine as her friends, aware to the point where it could be considered paranoia and survives the film by fighting the monster long enough to be rescued or kill him herself, most times, embracing the phallic weapon. In regard to shock, the horror resides more so in the implication of the actions on screen, the horrific kills and how they are interpreted by the audience, rather than the actual images themselves. Finally, the body deals with the identification of the audience with the killer and the victim (final girl). The audience is typically male, and while the killer is typically male and the victim/protagonist female, it offers a fluidity for the male audience in whom they identify with. The use of the I-camera represents the killer and offers the male audience to enact their fantasy of a violent or sexual act they wish to push upon somebody, that is until the final girl embraces the phallic and the male audience can now identify with her and root for her in killing the killer.

In Halloween, I think it is clear that Michael Myers is obviously the killer, a product of viewing his sister have sex as a young boy and killing her as a result, and Laurie Strode being the final girl, although it is not progressively feminist because she has to suffer/be tortured in order to survive, because not only is she the last one standing and sexually inactive, but also because she does fend Michael off long enough to be “saved” which contends with Clover’s ending A. However, in Sleepaway Camp, everything is blurred, the protagonist being both the final girl and the killer at the same time. It appears as though the killer is a product of several traumas: witnessing the death of their family, viewing their father in a primal homosexual act, and the coercion of identifying as a female. On the other hand, the final girl is more boyish and sexually inactive. There is a question of if Angela and Pete both commit murders or if it is Angela and her cousin. It is difficult to say because the victims, although more male than female, are of both sexes and typically are an act of revenge/avenging. At one point in the film, we view Angela through the I-camera, which gives her somewhat of an alibi for being the killer, and then we see that it is Paul, indicating, that the killer is probably male. Especially because Angela provides the paranoia aspect of the final girl by saying she thought he was the killer.

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Week 7 – Dangerous Sameness: Lesbian Sexuality & European Exploitation Film

Linda Williams’ “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess” discusses the “gross” factor of pornography, horror, and melodrama films and the gender implications and excess that are created by these genres. Williams writes that these three genres correlate to a specific type of audience: pornography—active men, horror—adolescent teens (male), and melodrama—females. She argues that the thing that categorizes these genres as “gross” is their intention of invoking the same or similar bodily response/excess in the audience member that is displayed in the characters on screen while all of them implicating a time relation of orgasming during sex: pornography— “on time”, horror—” too early”, and melodrama— “too late”. She then talks about the bodies that are involved in creating these “gross” factors, all of these bodies being female, simply saying that to return to heteronormative society, we must torture the women. She argues that there are three fantasies that try to solve these enigmas portrayed in each of these genres: the enigma of the origin of sexual desire, an enigma that is “solved” by the fantasy of seduction; the enigma of sexual difference “solved” by the fantasy of castration; and finally, the enigma of the origin of self, “solved” by the fantasy of family romance or return of origins. All of this to say that these genre stereotypes that create this “gross” factor in these three genres always involve the invasion/slashing/excessive convulsions or release with the female body in order to satisfy the primarily male audience with the exception of the women weepies.

Bonnie Zimmerman discusses the myth of the lesbian vampire film and her portrayal in cinema. Zimmerman discussing Daughters of Darkness contrasts the stereotype that Williams describes as a return to heteronormativity or as to please the male audience/spectator. Where most vampire films involve a male seeking the woman, we have a lesbian vampire that seeks out the newly wedded woman. Zimmer man argues that the general stereotype of lesbianism is that it must be vampirism, elements of violence, compulsion, hypnosis, paralysis, and the supernatural. Essentially saying that it is this deviance from heteronormativity by coercion of the lesbian vampire on the heterosexual woman that is at play. However, what the lesbian vampire film really signifies is the fear and anxiety of men and their power and supremacy being threatened. In the film, we never see the penetrative action or violence from the lesbian vampire, opposite of what the stereotype deems of her. This film breaks the stereotype of satisfying a male audience by the victimization of the female body and subverts it by victimization of the male body, and the only male figure who must seek his dominance through sadism, being killed to symbolize this perpetuation of this “radical” ideology spreading in society.

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Week 6 – Beautiful Death: Italian Giallo, Auteurism & Monstrous Feminine

Barbara Creed uses Julia Kristeva’s theory of the monstrous feminine in relation to the horror film and specifically the maternal figure and Kristeva’s term abjection, which I comprehend as another word for the Other, something that disrupts the heteronormative patriarchy and all of its societal/cultural rules and standards.  Creed further explains this as separating the human from the non-human. She discusses how Kristeva’s definition of abject/abjection ties to ancient religious and historical notions of abjection, which she addresses as religious “abominations” – which translate to the exploration of sexuality, specifically female sexuality and its perversions. Creed finds Kristeva’s argument problematic because it can be read as prescriptive rather than descriptive. Creed wants to use Kristeva’s argument as grounds to theorize and explore the construction of the abject in horror films instead of, like Kristeva appears to be doing, claiming that this construction is necessary and must be followed to maintain the natural order of things. Creed discusses three ways in which the abject is represented in the horror film. First is through the corpse by mutilation of it as well as the excessive bodily waste that emits from it. The second is the concept of a border in which the monster or threat attempts to cross rendering it abject. Third, is the construction of the maternal figure and the mother-child relationship. This mother-child relationship is described as the child attempting to break free from the mother, but the mother struggles to hold on to the child because once the child is free, they will turn to their father which represents law, and the mother becomes abject. Creed’s issue with Kristeva and others’ description of the maternal figure and the mother-child relationship is that the maternal figure is always described in a negative connotation rendering it as abject in horror, and the child that is referenced is never specified as male or female. It is important to know the gender of the child being discussed because Creed states that the maternal figure “refusing to relinquish her child prevents he/she from taking its proper place in relation to the Symbolic”; however, how are we to know the child’s proper place in the Symbolic in relation to gender roles without knowing the gender.

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Week 5 – Fighting the Power: Latin American Horror & Political Subversion

Rocha discusses the Latin American aesthetic of filmmaking which the European observer takes interest in due to its primitivism. This primitive aesthetic is seen from the European observer’s perspective as strict violence; however, Rocha argues that the aesthetics of violence are “revolutionary rather than primitive”. If we take a look at At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, one can infer that Ze’s behavior toward the people of the film and especially female bodies in the film, that he is the Brazilian equivalent to the white colonizer, who results to violence if his demands are not met. However, in the end, he pays for what he has done throughout the film by the one he has wronged the most. The director could be putting this film in direct conversation not only with Hollywood horror films, but with American culture/society in general by the people of this film, both Ze (“the monster”) and the people (the passive), owning up to the internal “invader”/other, but in contrast to this Hollywood films construct the Other as foreign and external and it must be vanquished to restore order, all the blame being placed on the foreign Other rather than taking accountability.

Jancovich discusses genre and the complex processes that go into deciding what films belong to what genres and what factors constitute a specific genre. I personally believe that while there are some guidelines as to what constitutes genre, like Jancovich mentions, it is in a way, subjective and dependent on social and cultural bases and various experiences as well as just taste. Jancovich talks about sci-fi fans and horror fans and the discourse between the two of which movies are recognized as one genre or the other, as well as fans within the same genre arguing which films are more authentic than the other. For example, if we look at At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul again, some might say that it is not a ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ horror film; however, Jancovich also notes that these opinions are made in relation to films of their taste or culture. Like Jancovich says, we should view these films in cycles or fragments and not a continuous and linear stream of movies where the previous and the following dictate what is horror.

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Week 4 – The Past Never Dies: Hollywood’s Studio System, Colonialism, and its Anxieties

In Spivak’s article she poses the question: can western cultures investigate and research non-western cultures (or “the other”) without perpetuating this imperialistic and colonizing affect of these cultures. She essentially claims that the west is incapable of doing so because of this pre-established relationship/dichotomy of the West as a colonizing and imperial force that must dominate or control these other groups of people and the lands on which they inhabit. Freund’s The Mummy (1932) is a perfect example of Spivak’s ideology. The opening scene follows a scientist of sorts that is in Egypt, digging and searching for Egyptian artifacts so that he can report his findings to the British museum. When he is instructed not to continue his exploration, he states that he will not let anything get in the way of his scientific exploration. Later on, a decade later, their findings of the Egyptian culture are stored in a museum in Egypt. The scientist’s son makes a comment on how they should’ve been able to take it back to the museum in England which perpetuates this colonizing factor in excavating something from a “third-world” country and taking it back to their land to show off and study and providing writings and information on the culture without letting the people speak for themselves. We see this also in King Kong from last week. Originally they were going to the island to make an ethnographic film to take back to America, but rather end up taking a piece of the island back with them, Kong, who is unable to express his feelings, emotions, and thoughts on his own origins. He is strictly seen as a monster through the eyes of the westerners because they are the ones that wrote his story, condemning him to the title of monster.

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Week 3 – The Actress and The Beast: Racializing Monstrosity

In Rony’s piece on King Kong (1933) she explains how the film is literally about making an ethnographic film and the insistent blackness or darker skin of the native people of Skull Island and of Kong himself. What really caught my attention was the Rony’s hierarchy of the Other. “Ann is the other to the white man, and the native is the other to Ann, but the native woman – the bride of Kong – has no other: timid, naked, docile, and mute, she is firmly established as less worth of spectacle.” Here she is saying that the film states that empowerment is distributed by first, race, and then gender with the white man at the top, being the Other to nobody else, and the black woman, or woman of color at the bottom, having no Other. I think it is interesting how, from Rony’s perspective, the film states that Ann must be punished for being an active viewer, holding the gaze that is asserted as only white and only male, and on the other hand, the black woman or woman of color does not have anything, not even agency. She only looks up once the white crew is spotted by the native people. The native people seeing that the white woman has more value than the black/colored woman, they essentially erase her from the narrative and pursue the white woman to offer to Kong.

If we look at other horror films involving a monster, whether supernatural, fantasy, or scientific, most of them portray white men who are meant to protect and save the white woman, the white woman who is the object of desire by the monster, and the monster who is either a white man who is mutated or psychologically deemed as other or a black man. The black woman or woman of color is absent from this hierarchy. The one film that comes to mind that gives the black woman agency and is the heroine of the film is Jordan Peele’s Us. Although all of the characters of the film encounter othered and estranged version of themselves, it is the black woman who is at the center of it. This time, unlike in King Kong, the black woman has an other; however, the other is herself. She is estranged to herself, but because of what the white men and white society have placed upon her in how she should act and behave, and it is only when she eliminates that other is she able to truly be free.

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Week 2 – The Damsel & The Monster: Gendering the Gaze

Laura Mulvey introduces the male centered voyeuristic tendencies of cinema and the dichotomy it presents, male as bearer of the look and woman as bearer of the image. She further exemplifies how the male character on screen that is the bearer of the look is a surrogate for the audience member, both seeking to possess the woman. Linda Williams accentuates Mulvey’s claim and discusses how classic horror films make a statement that women are the monsters, or her desire is seen as monstrous. She first talks about how the male gaze provides a safe distance while the female gaze is too close allowing for her impending doom in the end. This impending doom is a result of the trancelike gaze she imposes on the monster, because she has sympathy for the monster seeing their likeness in that they are both feared by men, not because of their representation of castration, but the lack of castration and the power hold because of pure difference than men.

In Nosferatu, it is repeatedly stated throughout the film that the blood from a woman “pure of heart” is the only way to stop the vampire. While watching the film, I thought it was interesting that the vampire only attacked men and not women and defeating him could only be done by a woman. Originally I thought that the vampire was a representation of the fear of homosexuals since he was attacking men from penetration of his fangs and he would only be defeated/cured by a woman, essentially saving him from his homosexual tendencies. Although there may be some truth to that, I think it the gendered victims of the vampire align more closely with Williams’ claim that the monster is a distorted reflection of the woman and her desires, specifically sexual desires due to the penetrative nature of the monster. The film concludes with the death of both the vampire and the woman, but only by each other’s hand which attests to Williams’ claim that classical horror films present the monster and the woman as one, both feared by men because their “castrated” bodies and are ultimately each other’s doom.

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Week 1 – Horror, A Hybrid Genre

In Carroll’s reading, she discusses the many structures of horror and how they forge a horrific monster. First is fusion, where two or more categorical distinctions are fused or conflated into one in a spatio-temporal manner meaning they are simultaneous. The opposite being fission, where two categorical distinctions are split—temporal fission, meaning they operate the same body, but not simultaneous, i.e., a werewolf—or, spatial fission, which is represented by a double, or doppelganger. The next two being magnification and massification of something that is already horrific or disgusting, by augmenting their powers. Finally, there is horrific metonymy which takes something that is not perceptually disgusting and makes it perverse through its surroundings.

In Event Horizon, I argue that the element that makes the film’s “monster(s)” is fusion. Carroll notes that fusion is typically associated with the conflation of two categorical distinctions into a single body; however, she also mentions how the conflation of two categorical distinctions can merge in a place. The two categorical distinctions at hand are, at the surface, the Event Horizon spacecraft and the other worldly place that the characters perceive as a dimension of hell. The result of this fusion occurs throughout the film when the characters see visions/glimpses of loved ones and crew members who are either alive or deceased. The two horrific concepts that are being manifested in this fusion is that of scientific exploration and its potentially fatal consequences.

Carroll also mentions that it is the emotions that are elicited in the audience parallel to the characters on screen. She notes how the characters’ reactions to the monster are a surrogate or representation of how the audience should react to the monster. In terms of the fears of scientific exploration and its consequences, there are two sides represented in the film. There is Dr. Weir who spearheaded the expedition and is pro-scientific exploration, thus his descent into being a vessel for the monster, and then you have the rest of the crew who appreciate science and its findings, but heir on the side of caution because of the unknown consequences that follow. Overtime, this structure tells the audience which side of the line they should be on: for scientific exploration no matter the cost or survival.