Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master in Arts In the Department of Film and Television Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand March 2017 / Drawing on Carol Clover’s theory of the male antagonist or "Bogeyman" and the female protagonist or "Final Girl" that define the American Slasher Horror sub-genre, I analyzed two original Slasher films, namely Halloween (Carpenter 1978) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven 1984). I later outlined the evolution of these conventions within the Slasher sub-genre, using the remakes of both films respectively. I then endeavoured to explain the subversion of these conventions in France with the New French Extremity Movement, and analyse how these filmmakers successfully transposed a typical American subgenre to France. Finally, using New French Extremity, I attempted to subvert and transpose these conventions to South Africa by writing, producing and directing a short Slasher film titled The Teddy Bear Man. / MT2018

Orientador: Marcelo Magalhães Bulhões / Banca: Ana Sílvia Lopes Davi Médola / Banca: José Carlos Marques / Banca: Laura Loguercio Cânepa / Banca: Valquiria Michela John / Resumo: Apesar de recorrente como referência de filmes dos mais variados gêneros, os textos jornalísticos nem sempre ganham a devida atenção no âmbito da pesquisa cinematográfica. Nesta tese, busca-se lançar um olhar ao tema, direcionando o trabalho para as narrativas jornalísticas usadas como referencial para cineastas, que transformam em narrativa audiovisual a representação da realidade de uma história que ganhou as páginas dos jornais ou de um livro-reportagem. O foco da pesquisa é no cinema de horror, que costuma não apenas valer-se deste material, como também se utilizar do vínculo com a não ficção como estratégia para atrair o espectador com a promessa da reprodução de um "caso verídico". Parte- se, pois, da hipótese de que a frase "baseado em uma história real" no início da película funciona como estímulo da curiosidade do espectador. Para o presente estudo, optou-se pelo clássico Horror em Amityville (The Amityville Horror, 1979), adaptado do livro-reportagem homônimo de Jay Anson, de 1977, que ganhou uma nova edição no Brasil neste ano, pela Darkside. O remake de 2005, cujo título é o mesmo, também faz parte da pesquisa. Como corpus de análise, também serão utilizadas reportagens do jornal Newsday, de Long Island, do período em que a história da casa supostamente mal-assombrada foi destaque e do crime que teria dado início à história de assombração. O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar como se dá o entrelaçamento de narrativas jornalísticas, jornalístico- literária e cinema... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Although recurring as a reference of films of varied genres, journalistic texts do not always gain an attention in the space of film research. In this thesis, the aim is to take a look at the theme, to direct the work to narrate the news narratives as a reference for the filmmakers, who transform the audiovisual narrative into a presentation of the reality of a winning story as pages of a book or a book - reporting. The focus of the research is horror film, which is not only a didactic material, but also makes use of a link with a strategy to attract the viewer with the promise to replicate a true case. It is therefore hypothesized that the phrase "based on a true story" at the beginning of the film works as a stimulus for the spectator's curiosity. For the present study, we opted for the classic Amityville Horror (1979 and 2005), adapted from Jay Anson's eponymous book, which won a new edition in Brazil this year by Darkside. The remake of 2005, whose title is the same, is also part of the research. As a corpus of analysis, reports from the Newsday newspaper of Long Island will also be used for the period in which the story of the supposedly haunted house was highlighted and the crime that would have started the haunting story. The objective of this research is to analyze how the intertwining of journalistic, journalistic-literary and cinematographic narratives occurs, seeking in this work to point out how the process of translation from one medium to another was transformed... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

The focus of this thesis is the examination of whiteness as a dominant identity and subject position. Whiteness has conventionally assumed a normative, monolithic status as the template of humanity. Recent theorising has attempted to specify and denaturalise whiteness. In order to participate in this fracturing of whiteness, I analyse examples in which it functions as a site of contested and ambiguous contradiction. To this end, I use contemporary monstrosity to examine whiteness. Monstrosity is a malleable and culturally specific category of difference that measures alterity, and by displaying discursive functions in an extreme form offers insight into the ways in which deviance and normativity operate. I argue that the conjunction of whiteness and monstrosity, through displaying whiteness in a negative register, depicts some of the discursive operations that enable whiteness to attain such hegemonic dominance. I deploy theories of marginalisation and subjectivation drawn from a variety of feminist, critical race, and philosophical perspectives in order to further an understanding of the discursive operations of hegemonic and normative subject positions. I offer a brief history and overview of both the history and prior conceptualisations of monstrosity and whiteness, and then focus on two particular examples of contemporary white monstrosity. I closely examine the representation of monstrosity in serial killer films. The figure of the serial killer is typically a white, heterosexual, middle class male whose monstrosity is implicitly reliant upon these elements. In my discussion of the recent phenomenon of fatal shootings at high schools in North America, I investigate the way the massacre at Columbine High School functions as the public face of the phenomenon and for the unique interest it generated in the mass media. I focus on a Time magazine cover that featured a photograph of the adolescent perpetrators under the heading The Monsters Next Door, which condensed and emblematised the tension that they generated. It is through the perpetrators uneasy occupation of dual subject positions???namely the unassuming all American boy and the contemporary face of evil???that their simultaneous representation as average and alien undermines the notion of whiteness as neutral and invisible.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

This arts-based study discusses using the horror film and monsters as a means of exploring the personification of fear in contemporary society. The paper incorporates the viewing and dissection of horror films into an artistic process to explore fears in order to further artistic expression. It additionally shows how this process can be used in an art classroom within the context of contemporary art to empower students and facilitate art criticism discussions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-221). Also available on the Internet.

The decade of the 1980s has often been considered a reactionary artistic wasteland in film studies, but it was nonetheless a period of volatile changes for the film industry. This period saw the decline of the mainstream horror film and the rise of the family film, two currents that reflect and illuminate the enormous changes in film production, marketing, and distribution. The hybrid genre of the childrens horror film, born in the 1980s, is particularly apt for discussing both the industry changes in this period and childrens relationship as viewers to the medium of film. The thesis defines the childrens horror film as a subgenre and focuses primarily on five films: The Watcher in the Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Gremlins, The Lost Boys, and Lady in White. The following thesis is an electronic document presented in PDF format.

This thesis takes up the genre of the “Asian horror film remake” as a nexus for the illustration of the intersection between two significant theoretical perspectives that inform contemporary film theory: Lacanian psychoanalysis and Deleuzian transcendental empiricism. It employs concepts such as Lacan’s registers of the Real and Symbolic alongside Deleuze (and Guattari’s) theories on the actual present and the virtual past to interrogate terms such as ‘originality’, ‘authenticity’, ‘repetition’, and ‘difference’ in an attempt to account for the role of genre in the production of meaningful reality, both within the bounds of the text and in cultural life more generally. It first deconstructs the term genre as it has been employed throughout classical, structuralist and post-structuralist genre theory, in order to reveal its ephemeral nature, and to show it to be worthy of investigation in its own right as a central component of language, more than simply a critical tool. It goes on to elaborate the contingency of discourse that constructs verisimilitudinous reality, and explicates these ideas through analysis of the Asian horror remake films. It then turns to Lacan’s division between the registers of the Symbolic and the Real in order to explore the function of the repetition that is visible in generic film in relation to the subject’s experience of a coherent and authentic reality. Finally, it proceeds to engage with Deleuze’s ideas regarding virtuality and asignification and argues, with reference to the Asian horror remake, that it is the perpetual tension between sameness and difference that sustains meaningful life. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermartizburg, 2013.

What is at stake for female fans and followers of horror cinema? This study explores the pleasures in horror film viewing for female members of the audience. The findings presented here confirm that female viewers of horror do not refuse to look but actively enjoy horror films and read such films in feminine ways. Part 1 of this thesis suggests that questions about the female viewer and her consumption of the horror film cannot be answered solely by a consideration of the text-reader relationship or by theoretical models of spectatorship and identification. A profile of female horror film fans and followers can therefore be developed only through an audience study. Part 2 presents a profile of female horror fans and followers. The participants in the study were largely drawn from the memberships of horror fan groups and from the readerships of a cross-section of professional and fan horror magazines. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups, interviews, open-ended questions included in the questionnaire and through the communication of opinions and experiences in letters and other written material. Part 3 sheds light on the modes of interpretation and attempts to position the female viewers as active consumers of horror films. This study concludes with a model of the female horror film viewer which points towards areas of female horror film spectatorship which require further analysis. The value of investigating the invisible experiences of women with popular culture is demonstrated by the very large proportion of respondents who expressed their delight and thanks in having an opportunity to speak about their experiences. This study of female horror film viewers allows the voice of an otherwise marginalised and invisible audience to be heard, their experiences recorded, the possibilities for resistance explored, and the potentially feminine pleasures of the horror film identified.

The focus of this thesis is the examination of whiteness as a dominant identity and subject position. Whiteness has conventionally assumed a normative, monolithic status as the template of humanity. Recent theorising has attempted to specify and denaturalise whiteness. In order to participate in this fracturing of whiteness, I analyse examples in which it functions as a site of contested and ambiguous contradiction. To this end, I use contemporary monstrosity to examine whiteness. Monstrosity is a malleable and culturally specific category of difference that measures alterity, and by displaying discursive functions in an extreme form offers insight into the ways in which deviance and normativity operate. I argue that the conjunction of whiteness and monstrosity, through displaying whiteness in a negative register, depicts some of the discursive operations that enable whiteness to attain such hegemonic dominance. I deploy theories of marginalisation and subjectivation drawn from a variety of feminist, critical race, and philosophical perspectives in order to further an understanding of the discursive operations of hegemonic and normative subject positions. I offer a brief history and overview of both the history and prior conceptualisations of monstrosity and whiteness, and then focus on two particular examples of contemporary white monstrosity. I closely examine the representation of monstrosity in serial killer films. The figure of the serial killer is typically a white, heterosexual, middle class male whose monstrosity is implicitly reliant upon these elements. In my discussion of the recent phenomenon of fatal shootings at high schools in North America, I investigate the way the massacre at Columbine High School functions as the public face of the phenomenon and for the unique interest it generated in the mass media. I focus on a Time magazine cover that featured a photograph of the adolescent perpetrators under the heading The Monsters Next Door, which condensed and emblematised the tension that they generated. It is through the perpetrators uneasy occupation of dual subject positions???namely the unassuming all American boy and the contemporary face of evil???that their simultaneous representation as average and alien undermines the notion of whiteness as neutral and invisible.