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“The slimy appears as already the outline of a fusion of the world with myself…Only at the very moment when I believe that I possess it, behold by a curious reversal, it possesses me…I open my hands, I want to let go of the slimy and it sticks to me, it draws me, it sucks at me….That sucking of the slimy which I feel on my hands outlines a kind of continuity of the slimy substances in myself. These long, soft strings of substances which fall from me to the slimy body (when, for example, I plunge my hand into it and then pull it out again) symbolize a rolling off of myself and in the slime."

--Sartre  

Stephen. The Horror Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. Print.

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Why Gore is Actually Important

I’ve finally found some horror film theory that I agree with whole-heartedly. The problem with trying to theorize horror film (or any kind of film really) is that there is so much going on in each and every movie. There’s such significance in the plot, the roles, the creatures, the gore, the sex or lack-there-of— it becomes incredibly difficult to theorize it all in one consistent way, without disregarding some crucial aspect of the film itself. Yes, horror films often take the form of social commentary. Yes, they are often the manifestation of our fears. Yes, they help fulfill whatever needs we might repress in one way or another. Yet, what I think is the  most fundamental feature of the horror film, and what is most intriguing about them is that they provides us with a space in which we can transgress boundaries. Our entire social reality consists of a series of classifications: human or non-human, man-made or organic, “acceptable” or “unacceptable”. Our lives are supposed to fit into a set of neatly labeled boxes but let’s be honest, everything isn’t always that cut and dry. We live in a world that leaves little room for grey areas and we have a long (and frightening) history of fearing what we can’t explain or do not understand. Horror films and specifically monsters are the embodiment of the space between all things classifiable. Horror films are amalgamations of order and disorder, the human and the non-human, the natural and the supernatural, they encompass what we find familiarly unfamiliar. They are the space in which boundaries breakdown and one of the biggest boundaries to ever be tackled by the film industry is the human body. The recent increase and even demand for excessive gore in the genre is of great significance. While the hyper-visualization of the body dismantled and the treatment of bodily fluids such as blood, vomit, feces, semen, plasma, and saliva is certainly an area of contention, what this all points to is a breaking down of the body, of sorts.  As Stephen Prince notes: “All of these fluids are universally tabooed because they “are both me and not me” and confound the initial boundary relation between the self and the world. And Manipulations of these boundaries can yield incredibly disturbing images” (Prince, 122). And following Linda Badley: the haunted house is the human body itself. On the cusp of biotechnology, viruses, and cancers that cause our own cells to turn on us, it’s no wonder that it is not supernatural monsters that resonate most with audiences, but the manipulation and destruction of the human body. 

Sources: 

Prince, Stephen. The Horror Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. Print.

Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. Print.

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Notes

Source: Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. Print.

  Chapter one: “The Body Fantastic” Pages 5-38

1986 horror is the most popular of mass media film genres.

Bradley lists the television specials that were on for Halloween of 1986 and discusses the events of Halloween festivities in a small town 30miles south of Nashville: “On this night of the spirits, the supernatural was conspicuously absent, the ghost nowhere in evidence. The text here was not fear of death in any traditional sense but fear and loathing of life, existence perceived as terminal disease. The haunted house was the human body itself—threatened at every turn, covered with tubes, cannibalized for cells, fluids, tissues, and parts, tortured and reconstructed on the procrustean bed of biotechnology.” Page 6.

Halloween of 1986 reflected a growing interest and concern for graphic and clinical horror that would only increase over the next two decades. The interest previously generated by the supernatural was replaced by “clinical images of the physiology of disease, mutation, mutilation, and decomposition”. (6).

Just look at some of the many films that were popping up around that time: Aliens, the fly, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Masacre, Coma, Night of the living dead, Dawn of the dead, Day of the dead, Return of the living dead, Evil dead, Evil Dead II, Re-Animator, Basket case, The Thing.

Changed the way we view films, specifically the horror genre. Like pornography, the plot was superfluous and the character was introduced or developed only to be dismantled later, the gore arrested the plot and seemed to be reward for shitty interactions or tentatively tame adolescent sex (7).

“However, oddly, as Tania Modlesky pointed out, like the transgressive avant garde film valorized by intellectuals, the slasher film refused the assurances of a progressive order or closure” (Terror 8-10) (7).

Subgenres during the 1970’s:  cyberpunk: combination of science fiction, action, horror—trope was always the organic machine—blade runner, terminator, alien. Grotesque or Fantastique film—trope was always transformation.

The Grotesque Film- almost always evoked the “beast within” and went on in the late 80’s-to early 90’s to become a staple in the genre. The moral that these often represented? “Death was a pain, one of life’s processes, and whether decomposing or burgeoning with new flesh, embodiment was the horror, its agony so extravagant as to have its own perverse beauty”. (7).

In the 80’s the horror film became an agonistic body language for a culture that perceived itself as grotesquely embodied and in transformation. (7).

Here she claims that the horror classics of the 1930’s were directly responsible for the contemporary horror phenomena…hmmm okay but we should not overlook all of the massive cultural and societal changes that occurred between those 50 years.  (8).

This is kind of a cool insight though: “Contemporary horror fiction is parasitic and omnivorous, incorporating film and television, theater and the visual arts with equal gusto.

In the 80’s horror did not “degenerate” into special effects—it returned to the foundations of the theatrical—the side circus shows, the wax museums, and the Theatre of Cruelty. She suggests that this should tell us something about horror: It is the only genre named for its effect on its audience.

Terror tales developed from and absorbed the ghost story—and became centered on things like psychosexual and physical horrors—murder, suicide, torture, madness, vampires, lycanthropy and the monstrous. And our lovely Edgar Allen Poe became less interested in ghosts and more interested in the “most poetical topic in the whole world” the death of a beautiful woman. Look at more of Poe’s work—The Tell-Tale Heart- especially. (9).

1980’s horror- became a spectacle offer transcendence through the body in a recharged, regendered, and regenerated sense—through shock, transposition of the senses, intense feeling and special effects.

Here she argues that horror had changed from a norm-affirming genre that had offered the intimations of immortality into a carnival of the perverse.  The new wave of horror seemed to subvert certainty, identity, and reality (10). ß-- This is important.

The genre started to become speculative and started exploring some of the issues that it exploited the most—first violence against women, and then violence against any body, against the human body itself as a sacred image, unity, and the site of the self.

Horror started becoming more symptomatic than ever before? Hmmm not so sure I agree with this, I believe that horror was always sympotamatic—however, I think that in its origins it was utilized as a form of social control but it still reflected the concerns, issues, fears and belief systems of those who created fictionalized stories. I think the major differences that need to be taken into account is that during the 70’s and onward, film makers and writers had more creative freedom and the politics around speech and the arts starting to change in a way that allowed creatives to start really engaging and playing with the moral panics and cultural fears that they saw growing but also manipulating those fears and evoking them for that shock value.

Monsters started becoming victims and characters that we could sympathize with. Mythical projections of evil were no longer believable or necessary: From interview with a vampire: “All your demons are material/call them pain/ call them hunger/call them war.” (10).

Horror descends into primal fear and desire. It is a loss of ego in cellular chaos. –Fair but I don’t agree with this completely. 10.

Horror is rooted in transgression: norms are inverted, taboos are acted out, and metamorphosis is celebrated.

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“On this night of the spirits, the supernatural was conspicuously absent, the ghost nowhere in evidence. The text here was not fear of death in any traditional sense but fear and loathing of life, existence perceived as terminal disease. The haunted house was the human body itself—threatened at every turn, covered with tubes, cannibalized for cells, fluids, tissues, and parts, tortured and reconstructed on the Procrustean bed of biotechnology.”

From an amazing book: 

Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. Print.

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I am the only living soul on this entire floor at the library and it feels very zombie-apocalypse and it is kind of scaring the shit out of me. It is so silent in here that I am getting annoyed with the sound of my own breathing. 

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Once I'm finished a moderately long day at work today me and the library, we have a super hot date. And the literature, all of the literature, I'm salivating at the thought of all of the literature that's going to happen. Oh my god and the notations! So many notations. It's going to be quite the scandal, I tell you. 

I think making the decision to go to the library once I'm finished with my visits today already makes me feel productive. I feel good about this. And after I shall reward myself with an episode of Hemlock Grove. I'm sorry Kitty, I cannot wait! But I promise I will re-watch them with you in marathon form with many horrible snacks and no spoilers. 

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The heart of The Hills Have Eyes is the duel between two families, one from “civilization” and one from the wild. The battle for survival takes place not on neutral territory but in the home court of the uncivilized clan, in this case the barren landscape of the Yucca desert. The landscape plays a critical role in the film. [��] Here he defines a landscape of danger that is as much a nemesis of the Carter family as is Jupiter’s killer clan.

from Wes Craven: The Art of Horror (via mamajupe)

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Cast members Robert Houston and Susan Lanier on set of The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

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The Exorcist sparked an outcry of controversy from religious groups during its original theatrical run in 1973/4. While many lauded its strong message of faith; others interpreted the film’s unrelenting portrayal of evil as exploitative and pornographic. Christian evangelist Billy Graham even went as far as to publicly denounce the film, insisting that there was a "power of evil in the fabric of the film itself".

Here is one example of a flyer handed out by Christian groups at a screening in the UK, warning impressionable moviegoers of the “adverse effects” the film may cause them to experience.

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My Trip to the Library Today: Will I get through all of these books? Absolutely, not a chance in hell

CB361. W66. Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture

DA533.V515. Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque

D231. M66. Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe

HV6529. S32. 2005. Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture

HM116.K55 2006. Killing Women: The Visual Culture of Gender and Violence

HQ1233. G58 Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutant, Slayers and Freaks.

PN1995. 9. M6.S64 2012. Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology

PN1995. 9. H6. T73  2014. Transnational Horror Across Visual Media: Fragmented Bodies.

PN1995. 9. G7. E39. 2013. The Grotesque

PN 1995. 9. M46. F68 2009. Mysterious Skin: Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema

PN6725. K75. 2011. Mutants & Mystics: Science Fiction, superhero comics, and the paranormal

PN1995.9. L6. S38 2012. Screening the Dark Side of Love: From Euro-Horror to American Cinema

PN1995.9.H6 S585 2011. Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classical Horror Cinema

PN1995.9. E93. C43 2007. The Changing Face of Evil in  film and television.

PR830. T3 D46. 2010 Demons of the Body and Mind: Essays on Disability in Gothic Literature

PR5397. F73. B3. In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and nineteenth-century writing

QM691. B63 2009. Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies tell us about Development and Evolution 

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An Ode to my anxious brain

My brain is a racehorse breathing hard, Nothing but Iron and bone and muscle And nostrils that steam Titillation and adrenaline But the thing is, My brain is a bitch of a mare. Defiant and uncontrollable To eager for her own good Teeth chomp the bit Hoofs pound dust Wide eyes stare. Behind the gate She’s not thinking about the race-- But the moment that she plans on Throwing the jockey.

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So it is finals season. And like all of my peers, I am in paper writing hell. I just wrote an introduction, that I hate with such burning passion that my soul evaporated into a mist--a mist that formed a fist giving me the middle finger, before it evaporated into the atmosphere and turned into a soul-fist-finger cloud that rained all over my parade. Oh the horror's of grad school will leave you soulless in soggy clothes. 

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Studying Horror Problem # 1:

It's all fine and dandy during day light hours, when your academic brain can rationalize and dismantle some of the gruesome and disturbing films you view. But, at night, when you're all alone in your century old basement apartment, well...I think it's time to invest in a few night-lights.

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