Halloween Guide to the Philosophy of Film Horror

Animated.gif of an image of Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), posted online by skyggebarnet

Father Damien Karras: Why her? Why this girl?
Father Merrin : I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as... animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.

Philosophers getting excited about horror films may seem incongruous to the average intellectual reader, and saying that one has a "philosophy of horror" may simply sound pretentious. Maybe it’s the bad critical reputation of most monster movies, a perennially popular genre (especially with teenagers) that has always taken its lumps, both aesthetically and morally. Plato wanted to ban all representations of the monstrous from his ideal Republic, and his successors have condemned such depictions ever since. [We] believe that there is ample reason for philosophers to become interested in horror films, for they raise a number of complex and interrelated questions that lie at the heart of philosophical aesthetics.

     Primary among these is the question of horror-pleasure. Why are those of us who enjoy the genre so attracted to watching things that, in real life, would be repellent to us? Like the more traditional aesthetic issue concerning tragic pleasure, there is something puzzling about enjoying in fiction what is painful in reality. Freudian film scholars Laura Mulvey and Robin Wood offered the first compelling solution to this puzzle, and it has been tough to beat. Wood’s thesis that monsters represent a return of the repressed, gratifying the instinctive drives of the id in a cathartic fashion, had almost no serious rival in critical literature from the mid-1970s until 1990. Elizabeth Cowie [also] offers an elaboration on that long-dominant paradigm in her essay [a version of which is linked to below].

      Serious philosophical discussion of horror theory was triggered by Noël Carroll’s seminal treatise, The Philosophy of Horror; or, Paradoxes of the Heart (1990)[...]. Carroll’s cognitivist approach to solving what he calls "the paradox of horror pleasure" was painstakingly modeled on David Hume’s theory of tragedy. We do not take pleasure in the painful and repugnant monster, according to Carroll, but rather in having our curiosity satisfied about its impossible nature, and whether and how the narrative’s human protagonists will dispatch it successfully. His denial that we take pleasure in the monster itself, along with his requirement that the object of horror must be an impossible being—one not believed capable of existing according to the tenets of contemporary science—have generated a good deal of critical ink. [Steven J. Schneider and Daniel Shaw, 'Introduction', Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror (New York: Scarecrow Press, 2003)]

It struck me that certain genres, such as suspense, mystery, comedy, melodrama, and horror, are actually identified by their relation to certain emotions. As a case study, I went about analyzing horror. I began by looking at what kind of horror we expect from horror fiction. At the time, a leading theory of the emotions was what was called the cognitive theory of the emotions, which tries to identify emotions in terms of their object – that is, the criterion that determines whether or not a state is this or that emotion. For example, in the case of fear, in order to be afraid you have to be afraid of a certain kind of thing, namely something that meets the criterion of harmfulness. I argued that horror was made up of two emotions we are already familiar with, fear and disgust. So I crafted my theory of the nature of horror by saying that horror is defined in terms of its elicitation of fear and disgust. Then I needed to say what the object of those two component emotional states were. For fear, there was a long history of analysis of the formal criterion as the harmful, and I drew on that. For disgust, I hypothesized the criterion was the impure.
     [..] I think that film theory should be closer to the practice of filmmaking and fiction-making in general. There shouldn’t be these two cultures. I think in some ways the theorists have made these two cultures exist by being unconcerned with the problems of construction. The Philosophy of Horror is very concerned with the problems of construction. It’s a philosophy of horror, but in the same way that Aristotle’s Poetics is a philosophy of tragedy. Aristotle wrote a philosophy of tragedy, but he called it a poetics, where poetics is a notion that comes from poesis, which comes from making. So poetics is about construction. His philosophy of tragedy is a philosophy of construction of tragedy, and I had hoped that my Philosophy of Horror would be a philosophy of construction of horror in much the same way. [Noël Carroll in Ray Privett and James Kreul, 'The Strange Case of Noël Carroll: A Conversation with the Controversial Film Philosopher', Senses of Cinema, Issue 13, 2001]

Film Studies For Free joins in the usual, general, Halloween hullabaloo with a scary little contribution of its own: a list of links to online and openly accessible philosophical considerations of the horror film genre.

Many of the below studies have been inspired by the extensive considerations of film horror by philosopher Noël Carroll or engage with the themes raised by his work.  

FSFF commends these to you with a little bloggish shudder: they are, after all, somewhat terrifyingly good...

• Zsolt Bátori, 'Genre Identification and the Case of Horror', Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, vol. 2, 2010
• Birkbeck College Roundtable Discussion on ‘Dawn of the Dead’, May 26, 2011 (with Amber Jacobs, Paul Myerscough, Gordon Hon and Mark Fisher) mp3
• Anne-Marie Boisvert, 'Webmonsters', Ciac's Electronic Magazine, No 18 - Spring 2004 (Mutations and Monsters Issue)
• Curtis Bowman, 'Heidegger, the Uncanny, and Jacques Tourneur’s Horror Films', in Steven Jay Schneider and Daniel Shaw (eds.), Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections On Cinematic Horror (Scarecrow Press, 2003)
• Curtis Bowman, The Uncanny. Other Voices 3, no. 1 (2007)
• Keith Brown, 'Notes on the Terror Film', Forum, Issue 2, Spring 2006
• Kate Bullen, '[Review of] The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. By Noel Carroll. New York: Routledge, 1990', B Sides, Spring 2010
• Noël Carroll, 'Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings', Film Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3, (Spring, 1981), pp. 16-25
• Noël Carroll, 'The Nature of Horror', The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59
• Jodey Castricano, 'For the love of smoke and mirrors: Dario Argento's Inferno (1980)', Kinoeye, 2.11, 2002
• Brigid Cherry, 'Gothics and Grand Guignols: Violence and the gendered Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror', Particip@tions Volume 5, Issue 1 Special Edition (May 2008)
• Brigid Cherry, The female horror film audience: viewing pleasures and fan practices, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 1999
• Elizabeth Cowie, 'Anxiety, ethics and horror: Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1959)', Kinoeye, Vol 2, Issue 13, Sept 2002
• Marty Fairbairn, 'Film and Philosophy Family Reunion', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, 1998
• Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson (eds), The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror (InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009)
• Cynthia Freeland, 'Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films', Originally published in Post-Theory, eds. Bordwell and Carroll (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996)
• Michael Grant, 'Clint Eastwood: Avatar of the Undead', Michael Grant, February 8, 2010
• Tim Groves, 'Entranced: Affective Mimesis and Cinematic Identification', Screening the Past, Issue 20, 2006
• Joan Hawkins, 'Revisiting the Philosophy of Horror', Film-Philosophy, 6.6, 2002
• Matt Hills, '[Review of] Daniel Shaw, ed., Horror: Special Issue of Film and Philosophy (2001)', Aesthetics Online, 2002
• Timothy Iles, 'The Problem of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Horror Films', Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, Discussion Paper 4, 2005
• Kate Ince, 'Reply to Michael du Plessis', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 11, 2007
• Phevos Kallitsis , 'Urban Fears and spatial transformations: the horror movie point of view', CityFutures '09, Madrid 2009
• Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010
• John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996
• Rafael Miguel Montes, '¡Yo Soy Godzilla!—The Possibilities and Futilities of Cuban Horror', Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, July 2009
• Pablo Ortega-Rodriguez, 'How is Disbelief Suspended?: The Paradox of Fiction and Carroll's The Philosophy of Horror', Film-Philosophy, 7, 2003 David Palmieri, 'Carroll Meets Karmina: Québécois Horror Between America and Europe', Equinoxes: A Graduate Journal of French and Francophone Studies, Issue 1, 2004
• Bernard Perron, 'Coming to Play at Frightening Yourself :Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games', Aesthetics of Play, October 2005
• Carl Plantinga, 'Disgusted at the Movies', Film Studies, Volume 8, Summer 2006
• Michael du Plessis, 'Fantasies of the Institution: The Films of Georges Franju and Kate Ince’s Georges Franju', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 11, 2007
• Ray Privett and James Kreul, 'The Strange Case of Noël Carroll: A Conversation with the Controversial Film Philosopher', Senses of Cinema, Issue 13, 2001
• 'Roundtable Discussion: The Post-Cinematic in Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2 (with Julia Leyda, Nicholas Rombes, Steven Shaviro, and Therese Grisham)', La Furia Umana, 10, 2011
• Steven Schneider, 'Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror', Other Voices, v.1, n.3 (January 1999)
• Steven J. Schneider and Daniel Shaw, 'Introduction', Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror (New York: Scarecrow Press, 2003)
• Steven Shaviro, 'Survival of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, September 25, 2010
• Steven Shaviro, 'Diary of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, April 26, 2008
• Daniel Shaw, 'A Humean Definition of Horror', Film-Philosophy,Vol. 1, 1997
• Aaron Smuts, 'Haunting the House from Within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial Experience', Film Philosophy, vol. 6 no 7, April 2002 
• D. Bruno Starrs, '"If we stretch our imaginations": the Monstrous-Feminine Mother in Rolf de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby (1993) and Alexandra's Project (2003)', Scope, Issue 10, February 2008
• David Sterritt, 'Spellbound in Darkness: Shyamalan’s Epistemological Twitch', in Spoiler Warnings: CriticalApproaches to the Films of M. Night Shyamalan, ed. Jeffrey AndrewWeinstock (forthcoming)
• Bryan Stone, 'The sanctification of fear: Images of the religious in horror films', Journal of Religion and Film, 5.2, 2001
• Richard Walsh, 'The Passion as Horror Film: St. Mel of the Cross', Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 40, Fall 2008
• Tobias Wendell, 'Wicked Villagers and the Mysteries of Reproduction: An Exploration of Horror Videos from Ghana and Nigeria', Postcolonial Text, Vol 3, No 2 (2007)
• Robert Yanal, 'Two Monsters in Search of a Concept', Contemporary Aesthetics, Vol. 1, 2003

Paranormal cinematic activity: ghost film studies

Latest update: April 27, 2010

 Publicity still for The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). See an excerpt from this film in Nicolas Rapold and Matt Zoller Seitz's L Magazine video essay 'Bad Seeds: Creepy Kids on Film', embedded towards the foot of this entry

Film Studies For Free has gone and spooked itself, today, with its own scary persistence in compiling a list of links to openly accessible, online, scholarly articles, chapters and theses on international ghost film studies. Oh, and there are two related video essays lurking at the bottom to scare the scholarly bejesus out of you for good measure, too (added April 27) .

Like all the best posts at this blog (IOHO), the list below owes its hefty materiality to its connections with FSFF's author's own (hauntological) research, some of which, hopefully, will be directly shared with her fearless readers very shortly. So do please be a revenant, won't you?

• Michael J. Anderson, 'Histoire de Marie et Julien: Jacques Rivette's Material Ghost Story', Senses of Cinema, Issue 32, 2004

• Guy Austin, '"In Fear and Pain": Stardom and the Body in Two French Ghost Films', Scope, Issue 7, February 2007

• Sarah M. Ball, The Uncanny in Japanese and American Horror Film: Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s Ring, MA thesis, North Carolina State University, 2006  

• Colette Balmain, '“Vengeful Virgins in White”: Female Monstrosity in Asian Cinema', in Niall Scott (ed), Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2004) [scroll down through pdf to p. 123]

• Colette Balmain, 'Inside the Well of Loneliness: Towards a Definition of the Japanese Horror Film', Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, Discussion Papers, 2006

• Caetlin Benson-Allott , '“Before you die, you see The Ring”: notes on the immanent obsolescence of VHS, from Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007

• Lesley Brill, 'M. Night Shyamalan: A Preliminary Report', Senses of Cinema, Issue 46, 2008

• Ture Bural, 'Endland Umpire: A placement of David Lynch's Inland Empire', Perforations, 29, 2007

• Jodey Castricano, 'Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and the Strange Question of Trans-Subjectivity', Jung: the e-Journal of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies Volume 2, Number 3, April, 2006

• Brigid Cherry, 'Gothics and Grand Guignols: Violence and the gendered Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror', Particip@tions, Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2008

• Leah A.Cheyne, 'The Sixth Sense: Humanizing Horror', Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2003

• David Church, 'Return of the Return of the Repressed: Notes on the American Horror Film (1991-2006)', Offscreen Journal, Volume 10, Issue 10 (November 25, 2006)

• Michel Ciment, 'Kubrick and the Fantastic', (1982) The Kubrick Site, (date unknown)

• Robyn Citizen, 'Review of The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity by Linnie Blake', Senses of Cinema,Issue 51, 2009

• Ryan Cooke, 'Review of Jay McRoy, Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2008', Screening the Past,Issue 23, 2008

• Lisa Coulthard, 'Uncanny Memories: Stan Douglas, Subjectivity and Cinema, Scope, 2000

• John Culbert, 'The Well and the Web: Phantoms of Community and the Mediatic Public Sphere', Postmodern Culture, 19.2, January 2009

• Jonathan Eig, 'A beautiful mind(fuck): Hollywood structures of identity', from Jump Cut, Issue 46, 2003

• Thomas Elsaesser, 'The Mind-Game Film' in Warren Buckland (ed), Puzzle Films (Blackwell 2009)

• Carolyn Erler, 'The Obama Code: Ghosts and Monsters in the Visual Datasphere', CTheory.net, Resetting Theory Issue, December 2009
  

• Mark Fisher, 'Home is where the haunt is: The Shining's hauntology', k-punk, January 23, 2006

• Mark Fisher, 'You have always been the caretaker': the spectral spaces of the Overlook Hotel', Perforations, 29, 2007

• Brian Grady, '"We're Engaged to Be Engaged": The Paranormal Activity of Trauma and Relationship', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 67, February 2010

• Catherine Grant, 'Giving up Ghosts: Eliseo Subiela's Hombre mirando al sudeste and No te mueras sin decirme a dónde vas', Changing Reels: Latin American Cinema against the Odds, ed. Rob Rix and Roberto Rodríguez-Saona (Leeds: Leeds Iberian Papers - Trinity and All Saints/University of Leeds, 1997), pp. 89-120  

• Coral Houtman, 'Questions of Unreliable Narration in The Sixth Sense', Scope, November 2004

• Wendy F. Hsu , 'Between Narrative and Expressive, Fantasy and Melodrama in Bombay (Bollywood) Film', Virginia Review of Asian Studies, vol. 5 (2003)

• Annamarie Jagose, 'Hollywood Lesbians [Interview with Patricia White about Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability', Genders, 32, 2000

• Fredric Jameson, 'Historicism in The Shining', (1981) The Kubrick Site, (date unknown)

• Brian Jarvis, 'Anamorphic allegory in The Ring, or, seven ways of looking at a horror video', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 3, 2007

• Bruce Kawin, 'Carnival of Souls', The Criterion Collection, Film Essays, 76

• Antonio Lázaro-Reboll , 'The Transnational Reception of El espinazo del diablo (Guillermo del Toro 2001)', Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, February 2007, 39–51

• John Lewis, '"Mother Oh God Mother …": Analysing the 'Horror' of Single Mothers in Contemporary Hollywood Horror', Scope, Issue 2, 2005

• Owen Livermore, 'Gun and Other Play: Takashi Miike and Fantasia Festival 2004', Synoptique, December 2004

• Li Zeng, Horror returns to Chinese cinema: an aesthetic of restraint and the space of horror ', from Jump Cut, No. 51, spring 2009

• Luo Hui, 'Chapter Four: Minor Discourses in New Peripheries', The Ghost of Liaozhai: Pu Songling's Ghostlore and its History of Reception, PhD Thesis,University of Toronto, 2009

• Nina K. Martin, 'Dread of mothering: plumbing the depths of Dark Water', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Ewa Mazierska, 'Between the Sacred and the Profane, the Sublime and the Trivial: The Magic Realism of Jan Jakub Kolski ', Scope, 2000

• Donna McRae, 'Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance', B for Bad Cinema, Colloquy, Issue 18, December 2009

• Thomas Mical, 'Introduction: Hauntology, or Spectral Space', Perforations, 29, 2007  

• Elizabeth Mullen, 'Synæsthetic Specters: Haunting Hill House on the Silver Screen', Image and Narrative, Vol. 10, Issue 1, 2009

• Lindsay Nelson, 'Ghosts of the Past, Ghosts of the Future: Monsters, Children, and Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema', Cinemascope, Issue 13, July-December 2009

• John Orr, 'The Trauma Film and British Romantic Cinema 1940-1960', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Eimi Ozawa , 'Remaking Corporeality and Spatiality: U.S. Adaptations of Japanese Horror Films, 49th Parallel, Conference Special Edition, Autumn 2006

• N. Payasopon, 'The Cultural and Filmic Elements that contribute to the popularity of the Thai film Nang Nak', BU Review, Volume 2, No. 1, January-June 2003

• Jennifer Proctor, 'Différance, the Spectral, and the Work of Mourning in Aaron Valdez’s dissolve', 2004

• Laurence A. Rickels, 'Recognition Values: Seeing The Sixth Sense Again for the First Time', Other Voices, v.2, n.2 (March 2002)

• Juneko J. Robinson , 'Review: Jay McRoy (2007) Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam: Rodopi', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• Caroline Ruddell, 'Breaking Boundaries The Representation of Split Identity in Anime', Animation Studies – Vol.2, 2007

• Steven Schneider, 'World Horror Cinema and the US: Bringing it all back home', Media in Transition 2: globalization and convergence, May 10-12, 2002, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

• Aaron Smuts, 'Haunting the House from Within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial Experience', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 7, April 2002

• Donato Totaro, 'Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Fantastic” Trilogy, Part 1: The Long Take., Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2003

• Donato Totaro, Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Fantastic” Trilogy, Part 2: Mise en Scène', Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2003

• Donato Totaro, 'Tokyo Sonata: Flirting with the Fantastic: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008', Offscreen Journal,Vol . 13, Issue 5, 2009

• Dennis Tredy, 'Shadows of Shadows - Techniques of Ambiguity in Three Film Adaptations of “The Turn of the Screw”: J. Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), D. Curtis’s The Turn of the Screw (1974), and A. Aloy’s Presence of Mind (1999)', E-rea, 2.1, 2004

• Nicholas de Villiers, 'Leaving the cinema: metacinematic cruising in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Gang Gary Xu, 'Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood', Senses of Cinema, Issue 34, 2005

• Young-joon Cho, 'Four Cinema Versions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', Thannhouser Company Film Preservation, 2006

• Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Neda Hei-tung Ng, 'Magic, Medicine, Cannibalism: the China Demon in Hong Kong Horror', David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Working Paper Series, Paper Number: 74, April 2008 

Nicolas Rapold and Matt Zoller Seitz's L Magazine video essay
'Bad Seeds: Creepy Kids on Film',

Matt Zoller Seitz's L Magazine video essay
'Unreal Estate: The Scariest Movie Locations of All Time'

Horror Studies, Issue 1 for free!

Image from The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

' There are [...] two significant [subliminal cuts] in The Exorcist [...] --- firstly during [Father Damien] Karras' [(Jason Miller))] dream of his mother, the screen is filled for two frames with a white-painted image of Jason Miller's leering face, appearing as a death mask; and during the exorcism itself, Linda Blair's tossing head is replaced momentarily with Miller's similarly deathly visage.'  Mark Kermode, 'Devilish Deceptions' (From Fear Magazine, Issue 24 December 1990)

'Only Father Karras, in a final, desperate act of self-sacrifice – of somatic and spiritual simpatico with the demon – comes to reconcile and transcend these extremes, thus restoring Regan to her former state of being.' Larrie Dudenhoeffer , ‘"Evil against Evil": The Parabolic Structure and Thematics of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist', Horror Studies, 1.1, 2010, p. 11 (pdf)

Film Studies For Free is trembling with delicious terror at the news of yet another freely accessible issue of a new journal from Intellect Press - there's just too much to read already... Aaaarrggghhhh...

But seriously, Horror Studies is a peer-reviewed, biannual, academic journal devoted to the study of the aesthetics of horror in all of its cultural and historical forms, from film and literature, music and dance, to fine art, photography and beyond: "With a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity, Horror Studies seeks to foster fruitful dialogue on horror between a wide range of different critical and scholarly traditions."

The first issue contains a good number of excellent film-related articles: on The Exorcist; abjection and masculinity in Todd Solondz’s Happiness; Werewolf of London (Walker, 1935); Dracula in early cinema; the submarine myth and its relation to the shark myth, as it has been propagated in film since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975); and a Deleuzian study of Michael Almereyda's horror films.

As usual, here at FSFF, links to all contents are given below.

Horror Studies 1.1, 2010

• Contents/Editorial/Authors: View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Karen E. Macfarlane , 'Mummy Knows Best: Knowledge and the Unknowable in Turn of the Century Mummy Fiction' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Gary D Rhodes, 'Drakula halála (1921): The Cinema’s First Dracula', View Header/AbstractView PDF
  

• Robert Spadoni, 'Strange Botany in Werewolf of London' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Larrie Dudenhoeffer , ‘"Evil against Evil": The Parabolic Structure and Thematics of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Linda Maria Koldau, 'Of Submarines and Sharks: Musical Settings of a Silent Menace' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Tom O’Connor, ‘Uncontrollably Herself’: Deleuze’s Becoming-woman in the Horror Films of Michael Almereyda', View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Adam Wadenius, 'The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection and Todd Solondz’s Happiness',  View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Catherine Spooner  Dark Looks: An Interview With Valerie Steele View Header/Abstract   View PDF

'Final Girl' Studies

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the final girl of Halloween

Film Studies For Free loves plucky female film protagonists (and false protagonists, for that matter) still fighting on in there at "The End".

It also loves Carol J. Clover’s 1987 essay 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,' (Representations [Number 20: Fall 1987, pp. 187-228] - later included by Clover in her hugely influential book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1992]), which was the first work to coin the resonant phrase 'Final Girl' to name climactic female survivors of slasher/horror/fantasy-sci-fi-horror films.

Clover's essay asked the following, rather fascinating, question: why, in these films which are supposedly principally aimed at male spectators, are the surviving heroes so often women characters?

It's a question that has been frequently addressed, since, in film, television, and now videogame studies, many of them freely available online. So here's Film Studies For Free's not-so-weak-and-feeble list of terribly-brave-and-resilient links to open-access "Final Girl" Studies, beginning with Clover's key essay, and then proceeding in an orderly alphabetical direction, by author surname:

• Carol J. Clover, 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film', in Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, e-Book, Edited and with a New Introduction by R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 continues here and here
• Holly G. Barbaccia, 'Buffy in the “Terrible House”', Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy Studies, 1.4, December 2001
  
• Arial Yuan-Jie Chou , 'On Horror Films: A Psychoanalytic Approach On A Nightmare On Elm Street Series' E-Thesis Providence University July 2006
• Celestino Deleyto Alcala, 'Masochism and Representation in Modern Horror: The Case of Alien 3' , Atlantis VVIII (1-2) 1996
• Sérgio Dias Branco, 'Being Her/She in ‘Who Are You?’”. It’s the End of the World. Again?!?: Why Buffy Still Matters, Conference at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, March 16, 2007
• Elizabeth Ezra, 'Resurrecting the Alien Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Hollywood', Stirling Online Research Repository, originally published in New Cinemas volume 1, no. 1 (2002): 54-60
• Robert Genter, 'Imagining murderous mothers: male spectatorship and the American slasher film', Studies in the Humanities, June 1, 2006
• Sara M. Grimes, '"You Shoot Like A Girl!”: The Female Protagonist in Action-Adventure Video Games', Digital Games Research Association - Level Up Conference Proceedings, November 2003
• Andrew Grossman, 'Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part One)', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 47, February 2005
• Andrew Grossman, 'Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part Two)', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005
• Tamiko Southcott Hayter, 'Perverse Pleasures: Spectatorship, The Blair Witch Project,' E-Thesis, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2005
• Lacy Hodges, '"Scully, what are you wearing?": the problem of feminism, subversion, and heteronormativity in The X Files', e-Thesis University of Florida, 2005
• Irene Karras, 'The Third Wave's Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Thirdspace, Vol. 1, Issue 2, March 2002
• Mikel J. Koven, 'The Terror Tale: Urban Legends and the Slasher Film', Scope, May 2003
• Jenni Lada, 'Feminizing the Final Girl', Cerize Magazine, October 2007
• Colin Le Sueur, 'Misogynism and the Macabre: An Analysis of the Representation of Women in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses', Film Fortress, June 9, 2006
• Uel McMahan, 'The Alienation of Ripley and the Maturation of the Final Girl', Wiggledog's Song, June 21, 2008
• 'Mittens', 'Feminist Horror Film Theory', Everything2, [date unknown]
• Victoria Newsom, 'Young Females as Super Heroes: Superheroines in the Animated Sailor Moon', Femspec, ('Girl Power' Issue) 5.2
• Marc Ouellette, '"When a Killer Body Isn't Enough": Cross-Gender Identification in Action-Adventure Video Games', Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)
• Iva Radat, 'Haute Tension: Lesbian Audience and the Slasher Film', Transgressing Gender Conference, Zagreb, Croatia, 2005 (scroll down to page 20/262)
• David Robinson, 'The unattainable narrative: identity, consumerism and the slasher film in Mary Harron's American Psycho', CineAction, January 1, 2006
• Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, 'Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism's Third Wave: "I'm Not My Mother", Genders Online Journal Issue 38 2003
• Steven Jay Schneider, 'Introduction - Psychoanalysis in/and/of the Horror Film', Senses of Cinema, July 2001
• Shweta Sharma, 'The Killer Father and the Final Mother: Womb-Envy in The Cell' Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 1, No 2 (2007)
• Elizabeth J. Silas, Abstract Themes of Awakening in Mainstream Films: Female Subjects and the Lacanian Symbolic, E-Thesis, Miami University, 2005
• Anneke Smelik, 'Feminist Film Theory', from Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink, (eds), The Cinema Book, second edition. London: British Film Institute, 1999, pp 353-365
• Ashley Lorrain Smith, 'Girl Power, feminism, girlculture and the popular media', E-Thesis, University of North Texas, August 1999
• Donato Totaro, 'The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror', Offscreen Journal, January 31, 2002

FSFF also highly recommends that you visit Slayage: International Journal of Buffy Studies for lots of other relevant studies.

Voluptuous Masochism: Gothic Melodrama Studies in Memory of Joan Fontaine

Updated January 20, 2014

 

RITES OF PASSAGE by Catherine Grant

A video essay, completed in memory of Joan Fontaine, studying the liminal moments of her character in Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940). This low resolution, educational compilation also samples and remixes music originally composed for the film by Franz Waxman.

Film Studies For Free presents its last entry of the year on the gothic film melodrama. Sadly, this entry appears just a short time after the death of one of the most notable stars of Hollywood's female Gothic tradition -- Joan Fontaine (22 October 1917 − 15 December 2013) -- and is dedicated to her memory. Other tributes have been comprehensively collected by David Hudson at his Keyframe/Fandor site, including a particularly fine one by Josephine Botting for the British Film Institute

FSFF's own collection of resources begins with an item that also doubles as a tribute: its own videographic study of Fontaine's masterly physical performance of "voluptuous masochism" (to borrow the brilliant words of Molly Haskell in From Reverence to Rape [p. 191]) in the context of Alfred Hitchcock's mise-en-scene for Rebecca (1940), together with Franz Waxman's lushly uncanny musical score for this film.

The resources continue at length below in a customary -- for FSFF -- list of links to online scholarly resources on the cinematic gothic more generally. You can also find further, closely related studies in FSFF's earlier entry on Final Girl Studies.

FSFF warmly wishes its readers very happy holidays if they're having them! It will be back with lots more open access film studies in the new year.

• Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies
• The Gothic Imagination website, University of Stirling 
• BFI Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film Resources
• BFI Gothic in the Classroom Resources 

• Elizabeth Abele, 'The Glory of Cary Grant and Other Girlish Delights. 3: Suspicious Looks', Images, Issue 5, 1997
• Glennis Byron, '©Branding and Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture: the case of Twilight', The Gothic Imagination, December 31, 2010
• David Cairns, 'Felicitous Rooms: Fritz Lang’s House by the River', Senses of Cinema, October 2005
• Fergus Cook, 'Questions of Authorship and Audience: A Study of Artefacts Related to the Film Rebecca (1940)', Bill Douglas Centre Documents, date unknown
• Amanda Leigh Davis, 'Gothically Postmodern: Film Noir-Gothic Hybrids and the 1980s', Velox: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Film, Vol 2, No 1 (2008)
• R D’Mont, 'Changing form: Stage, film and TV adaptations of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca', In: Carroll, R., ed. (2009) Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities. London: Continuum, pp. 163-173
• 'Du Maurier + Selznick + Hitchcock = Rebecca', The ASC, July 1997 
• Coralline Dupuy, '"Why don't you remember? Are you crazy?": Korean Gothic and psychosis in A Tale of Two Sisters', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Issue 3, 2007
• Added Thomas Elsaesser, Mirror, Muse, Medusa: Experiment Perilous', Screening the Past, 18, 2001
• Winfried Fluck, 'Mass Culture Modernism: Guilt and Subjectivity in Film Noir', Romance with America (Heidelburg, 2009)
• Catherine Grant, 'Rites of Passage [on Joan Fontaine in Rebecca]', Vimeo, December 2013
• David Greven, 'Bringing out Baby Jane: camp, sympathy, and the horror-woman’s film of the 1960s', Jump Cut, 55, Fall 2013
• Eoghain Hamilton (ed), The Gothic: Probing the Boundaries (InterDisciplinary Press, 2012)
• Jenni Heeks, Teaching Resources on The Innocents for a BFI Workshop, Autumn, 2013
• Steven Jacobs, excerpt on Rebecca from The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (101 Publishers, 2007)
• Stuart M Joy, 'The Patriarchal Reception of Hysteria: Understanding thePossessed Woman in the Paranormal Activity franchise', Monstrous Spaces/Spaces of Monstrosity, 3.1, 2013 
• Frank Lafond, 'With them, I'm howling: Guillaume Radot's Le Loup des Malveneur (The Wolf of the Malveneurs, 1942)', Kinoeye, 1, 2005
• Mark Jancovich, 'Bluebeard’s Wives: Horror, Quality and the Paranoid Woman’s Film in the 1940s', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 12 (Summer 2013) 
• Mark Jancovich, 'Shadows and Bogeymen: Horror, Stylization and the Critical Reception of Orson Welles during the 1940s', Participations, 6.1, May 2009
• Mark Jancovich, 'Crack-Up: Psychological Realism, Generic Transformation and the Demise of the Paranoid Woman's Film', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Issue 3, 2007
• Bill Krohn et al, 'The Original Ending Shot for Suspicion', The MacGuffin, 2007
• Samatha Jane Lindop, 'The Homme Fatal and the Subversion of Suspicion in Mr Brooks and The Killer Inside Me', M/C Journal, 15.1, 2012
• Adrian Martin, 'Lady, Beware: Female Gothic Variations', Australian Centre for the Moving Image, March 2005 
• Gary McCarron, 'Moralizing Uncertainty: Suspicion and Faith in Hitchcock's Suspicion', Canadian Journal of Communication, 27.1, 2002
• Ken Mogg, 'The Day of the Claw: A Synoptic Account of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009 
• Eithne O'Neill, 'Kazan's Streetcar: Film Noir, Woman's Film or Noir Woman's Film?', Cercles, 10 (2004) 
• John Orr, 'The Trauma Film and British Romantic Cinema 1940-1960', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009
• Phillip Novak, 'Performing Politics (Review)', PMC, 19.2, 2009
• Esther Pereen, 'Introduction: The Spectral Metaphor', The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014)
• Ana Salzberg, Beyond the looking glass: the narcissistic woman reflected and embodied in classic Hollywood film, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2010
• Aaron Smuts, ' Haunting the House from Within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial Experience', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 7, April 2002 
• Monica Cristina Soare, 'Chapter 5: The Final Girl as Female Quixote', The Female Gothic Connoisseur: Reading, Subjectivity, and the Feminist Uses of Gothic Fiction, PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 2013
• Jack Sullivan, excerpt on 'Franz Waxman and Suspicion', from Hitchcock's Music (Yale University Press, 2006)
• Elizabeth Tucker, '[Review] Secrets Beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives, By Maria Tatar, 2006', Journal of Folklore Research Reviews, 2007
• Michael Walker, Hitchcock's Motifs (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
• Patricia White/Annamarie Jagose, 'Interview', Genders, 32, 2000
• Tony Williams, 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?', Senses of Cinema, Issue 41, 2006
  
• Dagmara Zając, 'Gothic Cinema: Horror on Screen and the Perils of (Over)Interpretation', The Gothic: Probing the Boundaries, ed. by Eoghain Hamilton (InterDisciplinary Press, 2012)

Four Issues of INTENSITIES: The Journal of Cult Media and a Call for Papers

Screencap from the credit sequence of Games (Curtis Harrington, 1967). Read Steven Jay Schneider's 2003 article for Intensities in which he discusses this and other cult psychological thrillers and horror films.

Film Studies For Free just bumped into the new online incarnation of Intensities, the wonderful journal of cult media studies. Oh yes!

Always a highly innovative and valuable project, Intensities was first launched at Cardiff University in 2001 under the editorship of Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones. As its new website tells us, it later moved to Brunel University, where it was edited by David Lavery. The journal has relaunched in 2013 with Leon Hunt as its new editor and will publish two issues a year. The journal addresses all aspects of cult media including cult television, cult film, cult radio, cult comics, literary cults and cult authors, new media cults, cult figures and celebrities, cult icons, musical cults, cult geographies, historical studies of media cults and their fandoms, cult genres (e.g. science fiction, horror, fantasy, pulp fiction, Manga, anime, Hong Kong film etc.), non-generic modes of cultishness, theorisations of cult media, relevant audience and readership studies, and work that addresses the cult media industry.

In addition to publishing refereed essays (of between 6000 and 8000 words), Intensities also features a non-refereed Cult Media Review section which will carry shorter speculative reviews, reviews of cult phenomena (e.g. cult TV series, cult films, cult novels, science fiction, comics), short critical essays, interview transcripts, conference and convention reviews and articles about aspects of industry, fan culture, production and authorship.

Intensities' latest calls for papers are reproduced below, as are the tables of (linked) contents from the excellent first four issues of this journal. Let's all wish Intensities a very happy and long online life at its new website. Its entry has been updated at FSFF's permanent listing of open access film and media studies journals.

Call for Papers
Intensities will publish two themed issues in 2013.  Essays should be between 6000 and 8000 words, referenced Harvard style and sent as a word document – a 200 word abstract should be sent as a separate document.
Issue 5 Comic Book Intensities – Comics and Cult Media
The first new issue seeks submissions dealing with comics as cult media.  Topics might include:

• Cult comic book auteurs – Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Joss Whedon.
• Cult films from comics – Cinefumetti, Manga and Anime, the Turkish KIlink films, Dredd 3D.
• National and international comic book cultures – French bandes dessinees, Italian fumetti, Japanese Manga.
• Comic book fan cultures – Cosplay and beyond.
• Underground and alternative traditions.
• Beyond the cape and mask – neglected comic book genres.
• From EC to Dark Horse – Horror comics.

Deadline extended to Friday March 1^st 2013

Issue 6 Historical Approaches to Cult TV
This issue seeks submissions examining TV shows that have acquired cult status at a historical distance – both established cult shows (The Avengers, The Prisoner, the ‘classic’ series of Doctor Who) and those that have received less (or possibly even no) critical attention.  In addition, the papers will locate those shows historically, either by drawing on archive materials or suggesting new cultural, historical or institutional contexts in which they might be understood. Deadline for submissions: May 31^st 2013

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 4 – Mysterious Bodies (2007)

Special Issue – Mysterious Bodies
Guest Editors: Rayna Denison and Mark Jancovich

• Rayna Denison and Mark Jancovich, ‘Introduction’ Jancovich_Intro
• Mark Jancovich, ‘An Unidentified Species: Horror, the Body and Early Television’ Jancovich, Unidentified Species
• Lincoln Geraghty, ‘Painted Men and Salt Monsters: The Alien Body in 50s and 60s American Science Fiction Television’ Geraghty, Painted Men and Salt Monsters
• Milly Williamson, ‘Television, Vampires and the Body: Somatic Pathos’ Williamson, Television, Vampires and the Body
• Matt Hills, ‘”Gothic” Body Parts in a “Postmodern” Body of Work? The Hinchcliffe/Holmes Era of Doctor Who (1975-77)’ Hills, Gothic Body Parts in Postmodern Body of Work
• Rayna Denison, ‘The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence: Investigating the Complexity of the Television Body’ Denison, The Muppet Show Sex and Violence
• Rebecca Feasey, ‘Investigating Angel: The Hair, the Car and the Wardrobe’ Feasey, Investigating Angel
• Peter Hutchings, ‘Welcome to Royston Vasey: Grotesque Bodies and the Horror of Comedy in The League of Gentlemen‘ Hutchings, Welcome to Royston Vasey
• Elke Weissman, ‘The Victim’s Suffering Translated: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the Crime Genre’ Weissmann, Victim’s Suffering Translated
• Julian Savage, ‘The Lost Cult of Wake in Fright‘ Savage, Lost Cult of Wake in Fright

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 3 – Horror Issue (Spring 2003)

Edited by Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones

• Steven Jay Schneider, ‘Murder as Art/The Art of Murder: Aestheticising Violence in Modern Cinematic Horror’ Schneider, Murder as Art
• I.Q. Hunter, ‘Even Baser Instincts: Notes on Hollow Man‘ Hunter, Even Baser Instincts
• Stephen Harper, ‘”They’re Us”: Representations of Women in George Romero’s ‘Living Dead’ Series’ Harper, They’re Us
• Kate Egan, ‘The Amateur Historian and the Electronic Archive: Identity, Power, and the Function of Lists, Facts and Memories on “Video Nasty”-themed Websites’ Egan, The Amateur Historian and the Electronic Archive
• Linda C. Badley, ‘Spiritual Warfare: Postfeminism and the Cultural Politics of the Blair Witch Craze’ Badley, Spiritual Warfare

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 2 (Autum/Winter 2001)

Edited by Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones

• Marie-Laure Ryan, ‘From The Truman Show to Survivor: Narrative versus Reality in Fake and Real Reality TV’ Ryan, From The Truman Show to Survivor
• William D. Routt, ‘Bad for Good’ Routt, Bad for Good
• Mark Jancovich, ‘Placing Sex: Sexuality, Taste and Middlebrow Culture in the Reception of Playboy Magazine’ Jancovich, Placing Sex
• Bertha Chin and Jonathan Gray, ‘”One Ring to Rule Them All”: Pre-Viewers and Pre-Texts of the Lord of the Rings Films’ Chin and Gray, One Ring to Rule Them All
• Will Brooker, ‘The Many Lives of the Jetman: A Case Study in Videogame Analysis’ Brooker, Many Lives of the Jetman
• Intensities interviews Henry Jenkins @Console-ing Passions, University of Bristol, July 7th 2001 Intensities interviews Jenkins
• Ben Talbot, Conference Review: Compete, Command and Conquer – Playing for Space at the International Games Cultures Conference Talbot, Compete, Command and Conquer

Intensities 1 (Spring/Summer 2001)

Edited by Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones

• Lynette Russell and Nathan Wolski, ‘Beyond the Final Frontier: Star Trek, the Borg and the Post-colonial’ Russell_Wolski
• Mark McLelland, ‘Why Are Japanese Girls’ Comics Full of Boys Bonking?’ McLelland
• Alan McKee, ‘Which is the Best Doctor Who story? A Case Study in Value Judgements Outside the Academy’ McKee
• Patricia MacCormack, ‘Becoming Hu-Man: Deleuze and Guattari, Gender and Third Rock from the Sun‘ MacCormack
• Annette Hill and Ian Calcutt, ‘Vampire Hunters: the Scheduling and Reception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the UK’ Hill_Calcutt
• Will Brooker, ‘Parallel Earths: Diana 2000 – a Review Essay’ Brooker_Earths

"Horror in Homeopathic Doses": Franju's Eyes Without a Face

Les Yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju,  France/Italy, 1959)

More than any other image, an erased human face remains horribly eloquent. In fact, a face cannot be made to vanish completely: it stays sufficiently human to horrify by its exact lack of humanity. Hence the unnerving effect of Georges Franju's film Eyes Without a Face (1959), in which a young woman, disfigured in a car crash, is subjected to her father's insane and murderous plan to give her a new face. We never see the daughter's ravaged face, but the featureless white mask she wears for most of the film is enough to suggest her uncanny oscillation between human and inhuman.
Brian Dillon, 'The Revelation of Erasure', Tate Etc., Issue 8, Autumn 2006

Being a horror buff of the rather squeamish and easily frightened kind, Film Studies For Free usually likes its scary, gory movies to be Lyrical... Poetic... Beautiful. That way, it finds, it doesn't have to avert its eyes from the screen too much. 

Thus, FSFF is a particular fan of the truly horrific but extraordinarily beautiful film Les Yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face. Georges Franju's classic delivers its 'horror in homeopathic doses', as Franju himself so aptly put it. 

So, it's the film FSFF just had to choose for its little homage in scholarly links this Halloween. (P.S. If you are based in the USA or Canada, you can also currently watch it for free online as part of October Halloween Festival of free films at The Auteurs website).

• Curtis Bowman, 'A film without politics: Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1959)', Kinoeye, Vol 2,  Issue 13, Sept 2002
• Elizabeth Cowie,  'Anxiety, ethics and horror: Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1959)', Kinoeye, Vol 2,  Issue 13, Sept 2002
• Paul Cronly, 'Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face)', Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Issue 5, December 2008
  
• Lee Hill, 'Skin Deep', Vertigo Magazine, No. 17, May 2008
  
• Reynold Humphries, 'Dr Franju's "House of Pain" and the political cutting edge of horror', Kinoeye, Vol 2, Issue 13, Sept 2002 
• Kate Ince, 'Reply to Michael du Plessis', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 11, 2007
• Gary Johnson, "Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face', Images Journal, 2004 
• Katerina Loukopoulou, 'Review of Georges Franju by Kate Ince [Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005]', Scope, Issue 9, October 2007
• Michael du Plessis, 'Fantasies of the Institution: The Films of Georges Franju and Kate Ince’s Georges Franju', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 11, 2007  
• Donato Totaro, 'Martyrs: Evoking France's Cinematic and Historical Past', Offscreen, Vol. 13, Issue 5, 2009
  
• Donato Totaro, Salute Alida', Offscreen, Vol. 10, Issue 5, May 31, 2006 
• Catherine Wheatley, 'Les Yeux sans visage', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, 2007