Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark

Studying the Horror Film as an Academic Subject

Michael Jackson’s Thriller (dir. John Landis, 1983)

Horror as Academic Subject – Why?

• Being a genre which consistently meets with so much controversy makes horror and its content worthy of investigation

• Equals other art forms (such as literature, theatre) in its cultural and social significance.

• Film works “to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2, 17-24, 1603)

Horror as Academic Subject – How?

• Auteur Theory – Wes Craven, Guillermo Del Toro, George A. Romero, William Castle, Dario Argento…

• Psychoanalysis – Based upon the theories utilised by Sigmund Freud in his therapeutic practice, later developed and adapted by Jacques Lacan. Often used to explore the complex antagonists in horror (key example being Norman Bates in Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)). Underlying theoretical basis for ‘Powers of Horror’ (Julia Kristeva, 1982) and ‘Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film’ (Carol Clover, 1992).

• Feminism – in terms of the study of film, and particularly horror, readily adopts psychoanalytic approaches – ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (Laura Mulvey, 1975), ‘The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis’ (Barbara Creed, 1993). Well publicised victimisation of women in the horror film invites feminist criticism and exploration.

Horror and Masculinity• Carol Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the

Modern Horror Film (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992)

• Barry Keith Grant, The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996)

Men and Masculinity in Contemporary British Horror

Men as Victims in Horror

Thank you for listening!

l.stephenson@yorksj.ac.uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7LApQtSiLI

BibliographyClover, Carol, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992)

Creed, Barbara, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Oxon: Routledge, 1993)

Freud, Sigmund, The Uncanny (London: Penguin Books, 2003)

Grant, Barry Keith, The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (Austin: Texas University Press, 1996)

Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)

Mulvey, Laura, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Screen, (1975) 16, 3: 6-18

Shakespeare, William, Hamlet (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1992)

FilmographyThe Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920)Cherry Tree Lane (Williams, 2010)Colin (Price, 2008)Dead Man’s Shoes (Meadows, 2004)Dog Soldiers (Marshall, 2002)Eden Lake (Watkins, 2008)F (Roberts, 2010)The Last Horror Movie (Richards, 2003)Michael Jackson’s Thriller (Landis, 1983)Mum and Dad (Sheil, 2008)Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)28 Days Later (Boyle, 2001)Wilderness (Bassett, 2006)The Woman in Black (Watkins, 2012)