CA313 Horror Films

Midterm

Rosemary’s Baby

Roman Polanski, 1968

The Exorcist

William Friedkin, 1973

Carrie

Brian De Palma, 1976

The Shining

Stanley Kubrick, 1980

Friday the 13th Part II

Steve Miner, 1981

What is the cultural/ideological approach to defining the horror genre, and which authors are associated with this approach?

Wood, Clover
- horror expresses a culture's social and political anxieties

What is the formal/structural approach to defining the horror genre, and which authors are associated with this approach?

Worland, Rick Altman
- horror is defined by its narrative structure

What is Noël Carroll known for?

- came up with the theory of art horror (characterized by emotions invoked upon the audience and the presence of a monster)
- Thought Theory is the reason we are afraid of film monsters
- Knowledge plots (discovery vs. overreacher)
- Horror links cognition, emotion, and the body

What is Thought Theory? Which author believed this was the theory that explained why we are horrified of monsters?

- we are horrified by the thought of a monster, not by a belief in its existence
- Noël Carroll

What are the Knowledge Plots according to Noël Carroll?

Discover plot & overreacher plot

Discovery Plot

the narrative is dedicated to proving the existence of a monster

Overreacher plot

destruction ensues after a central figure embarks on the pursuit of forbidden knowledge

What are the three ideas regarding pregnant women in horror films?

1) pregnant woman as "hysterical"
- her fears, anxieties, and pain are often dismissed
2) pregnant body as the site of horror
- the body's interstitiality, woman's loss of identity
3) essential motherhood

What does Freud's three-part model of the psyche consist of?

1) id (unconscious well of primal desires)
2) ego (rational self that mediates between internal drives and external reality)
3) superego (internalized moral compass of authority and prohibition)

What is the primal scene?

child's witnessing of parental intercourse

What is the philosophical/ontological approach to defining the horror genre, and which author is associated with this approach?

Noël Carroll
- the study of nature, of being, of knowledge, of existence

What is the cognitive approach to defining the horror genre, and which authors are associated with this approach?

Freeland, Carroll, Berliner
- horror engages cognitive mechanisms like curiosity, moral evaluation, and narrative comprehension

What are the characteristics of the art-horror genre?

- emotions of character(s) invoke the same response in the audience, with both cognitive and physical dimensions
- presence of a monster which invokes fear and disgust in characters & audience, is threatening and impure, and is interstitial/incomplete/formless

Psychoanalysis

a lens used to analyze film, especially horror films, to answer: why do we engage with fiction, especially cinematic fiction?

What is gynaehorror? Who coined this term?

- horror that deals with all aspects of female reproductive horror, including pregnancy and birth
- coined by Erin Harrington

What did Harrington say that female bodies are associated with in horror?

houses or domestic spaces

What are female bodies in horror films associated with?

female bodies are associated with houses or domestic spaces

What was Lucy Fischer's article about?

- horror films portraying births reflect women's fears of childbearing
- the embryo is interstitial
- pregnant women face loss of control/complaints being disregarded

What is syuzhet?

plot; the chain of events as the film presents them
- it is a combination of film form and narrative content

What is fabula?

story; the chain of events in chronological order
- mental construction of the viewer

What is the difference between depicted and inferred events in film?

- depicted: we see the event occurring on screen
- inferred: it is inferred that the event has occurred, but the event is not shown on screen

Diegesis

the total world of the story action

In film, what creates causal logic?

- Characters (who possess traits)
- The plot

What is the difference between flaunted and suppressed gaps in the plot?

- Suppress: the audience is unaware of some information they do not know

- Flaunt: the audience is aware that they are not given some information about the plot

the components of time in film

order, duration, frequency 

What are the three durations in film time?

1) Plot duration: the sum of the slices of story duration
2) Story duration
3) Screen duration: can expand or compress story time

Describe the difference between unrestricted vs. restricted ranges of narration in film.

1) Unrestricted, or omniscient - the audience knows, sees, and hears more than the characters do
2) Restricted - the audience is restricted to what the characters know

What is the difference between objective vs. subjective depth of narration in film?

1) Objective - the plot confines the audience wholly to information about what characters say and do
2) Subjective - the audience has access to the character's thoughts, feelings, sensory experiences, etc.

What are the two types of subjectivity in depth of narration?

1) Perceptual subjectivity - the audience can see what the character(s) sees and hears
2) Mental subjectivity - the audience knows the character(s) thoughts, feelings, etc.

the structure of sympathy

1) Recognition
2) Alignment
- Spatio-temporal Attachment
- Subjective Access
3) Allegiance (morally support the character's actions)

deadlines

when the action must reach a certain stage at a specific time; cannot be delayed

appointments

an event that is coming up; can be delayed

enigmas

a plot element, mystery, or puzzle that is deliberately withheld from the audience to keep them engaged and guessing, creating suspense and a desire to find the answer; may or may not be explained in the film

dangling clauses

something that is drawn attention to that becomes important later in the film; an unresolved plot element that creates curiosity and anticipation by hinting at future events without providing an immediate answer

the paramount decision

The decision by the courts that resulted in movie studios giving up their theater businesses

leitmotif

a recurring musical theme associated with a particular character, idea, place, or emotion

What did Todd Berliner say about The Exorcist? What was his "theory"?

- "At the end of The Exorcist, good triumphs, but it doesn't feel that way."
- Incongruity

According to Chambers, how does The Exorcist create fear?

the film creates fear due to what is seen and unseen, and known and unknown in both religion and science

Amy Chamber’s article

- the 'striking medical realism' (operating room scenes) was the most horrific part of The Exorcist
- Warner Bros. Studios promoted stories of religious outrage against The Exorcist to boost sales
- Friedkin strove for scientific and religious accuracy in the film
- The Exorcist creates fear through what is seen/unseen & known/unknown in religion and science

psychoanalytic film theory

treats cinema as a place where images and sounds give shape to unconscious desires and fears

Who are the key figures in psychoanalytic film theory?

- Freud
- Lacan
- Kristeva
- Mulvey
- Creed

the unconscious

the idea that our behavior and desires are driven by repressed thoughts and memories we are not aware of

What are scopophilia and voyeurism?

the pleasure derived from looking at others

sexual difference according to Freud

the division between male and female subjects, organized around the presence or absence of the phallus

castration anxiety

the unconscious fear, especially in boys, that the father will punish the child's desire for the mother by removing the penis

fetishism

displacement of desire onto an object that substitutes for the absent maternal phallus, warding off castration anxiety

in sum, what did freud do?

foregrounded the unconscious and childhood experiences as key ideas for understanding human psychology

what was Lacan known for?

- the mirror stage
- the gaze
- the symbolic, imaginary and real (three orders of human experience or psychic registers)

the mirror stage

the moment when an infant sees its reflection and perceives itself as a unified whole, separate from the mother

the gaze

the way a subject is looked at by an "Other"; it's a source of both anxiety and desire

The imaginary, symbolic, and real

- Imaginary: the realm of the mirror stage, images, and misrecognition
- Symbolic: the order of language, law, and culture
- Real: a traumatic, unrepresentable reality that resists symbolization

Mulvey

- argues classical Hollywood cinema structures vision around "the male gaze"
- women as having "to-be-looked-at-ness" and men as bearers of the look
- gaze offers voyeurism and fetishism to the male spectator

Kristeva

- theory of abject
- focuses on the body and the maternal (ties abjection to the maternal)
- interested in the process of becoming a subject

the abject

what is expelled in order for the subject to come into being, marks the boundary between self and other, subject and object
- a psychic process of boundary maintenance

According to Kristeva, what are the two categories polluting objects fall into?

- excremental (threatens identity from the outside)
- menstrual (threatens identity from within)

To Kristeva, horror is ________ and to Carroll, horror is _________.

visceral; cognitive

Barbara Creed

- focus on woman as monster, not villain
- the monstrous-feminine: the female body, particularly in its reproductive capacity, is a source of horror and disgust in patriarchal culture (related to the problem of sexual difference and castration)
- female sexuality invokes castration anxiety in male spectators
- woman are almost always represented as monstrous in relation to her mothering and reproductive functions

What are Robin Wood's five recurring motifs that are important to categorizing horror films?

What are Robin Wood's five recurring motifs that are important to categorizing horror films?

1) monsters as human psychotic or schizophrenic
2) the revenge of nature
3) satanism, diabolic possession, the Antichrist
4) the terrible child
5) cannibalism

Stamp’s article

- familiar and familial as horrific
- Carrie's power is a display of sexuality erupting from years of repression
- the film's project was to shift the particular horror associated with Carrie onto a larger female population
- monstrosity is explicitly linked to menstruation and female sexuality
- Carrie's path to womanhood must be navigated by either of two routes (her mother's or Miss Collins')
- Carrie is about the failure of repression to contain the monstrous-feminine

The menstruating woman is in a _______ space. What does this mean?

liminal - she is an object of both aversion and desire

What are the two paths to womanhood offered to Carrie?

- sexual repression by her mother
- promise of femininity by Miss Collins
(masquerade vs. telekinesis)

Worland’s article

- the hallmarks of slasher films are: sex, drugs, and adolescent irresponsibility
- the slasher film is an indirect processing of Vietnam's impact on American culture
- "stalk & slash": stalking is just as important as killing
- ineffective authority
- 1970s horror often refused closure/catharsis
- audience as co-conspirator (POV, I-Camera)
- tropes: crisis in gender roles, punishment of sexual expression, breakdown of the family

How does cognitive film theory define a horror film?

- a film that stimulates affective and intellectual responses through horror
- prompts strong emotion and deep thought (cognitive & emotional response)

Freeland’s article

- Kubrick created an evil/uncanny world
- the uncanny evil arises from threats to our paradigms of masculine activity and heroism
- The Shining oscillates between realism and the supernatural
- Danny is an innocent child
- disruptions of time and space do not allow for comprehension of orderly cause and effect narration
- camera is an eerie/disorienting force
- uncanny films are repulsive and dreadful, but also intriguing

What is the psychoanalytical approach to defining the horror genre, and which authors are associated with this approach?

Creed, Kristeva, Wood
- horror represents repressed, unconscious fears and desires

What is semantic genre analysis?

looks at a genre's building blocks, its recurring icons, settings, characters, and themes

What is a syntactic genre analysis?

looks at the structures and relationships that organize the genre's elements: the narrative patterns, familiar character relationships, thematic material

What did Rick Altman suggest in reference to semantic and syntactic genre analysis?

he suggested combining the two ideas, seeing genres as semantic/syntactic systems (where meaning comes from both recognizable elements and their structural arrangement)

Carol Clover’s article

- aims to discover what the slasher movie has to do with gender and sexual attitudes
- young males are the intended audience of slashers
- slasher elements (killer, victims, location, weapon, final girl, shock)
- it is hard for male viewers to identify with a male character (viewers can identify across gender lines)
- abject terror = feminine
- killer = compromised masculinity; final girl = compromised femininity

Describe the victims in clover’s view

- teens
- those who have sex
- females deaths linger
- boys die because they make mistakes, girls die because they are female

Describe the location in clover’s view

- the Terrible Place
- not home
- seems safe at first but isn't

Describe the weapon in clover’s view

not a gun

closeness to the victim is key

Describe the final girl in Clover’s view

- ambiguous (both feminine and masculine)
- sexually reluctant
- intelligent & resourceful

Describe the element of shock in Clover's view.

elicits a combination of suspense, fear, and repulsion in audience

Chosen approach

psychoanalytic: Horror represents repressed, unconscious fears and desires

Key ideas: abject, repression, sexual difference, castration

Text: “Monstrous-Feminine,” “Monstrous Puberty”

Movies: Carrie

Chosen narrative term #1

The Exorcist & Dangling Causes

something we see earlier that is hinting to something later

examples: the opening scene (the preist & being), burke’s head when found dead (turned around), and the ouija board

Chosen narrative term #2

The Shining & time or range of narration

range: restricted, unrestricted - who knows what, when

time: temporal order, duration, and frequency

Carrie as the monster

Stamp describes Carrie through a psychoanalytical lens, not as a victim of sexual repression, but as monstrous herself.

She argues that Carrie's journey through female adolescence towards becoming a woman is commentary on how women are expected to “fit” into society and norms such as purity and cleanliness. S

tamp argues that this raw depiction of Carrie, is not about Carrie being abnormal, but what is happening to her is reality and her becoming a woman of society and expressing/repressing femininity in this process is representative of the climate surrounding female adolescence.

The blood dripping down her leg shows the monster is inside her

Range of narration in the Shining

Jack: Jack’s perspective is warped and he is deteriorating and descending into madness and seeing things (his knowledge/sequences are more dreamlike)

Danny: his shining ability means he knows more (visions and images of direct history)

Wendy: Most rooted in reality

film theory

the concepts and study that defines the film

film history

the evolution of films and how they have changed throughout history

film analysis

using film theory to explain how and why film history has changed