This paper will consider the function of queer space and presence in the post modern horror film genre. Beginning with George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and continuing through to contemporary examples of the genre, the paper posits the function of the queer monster or monstrous as integral to and representative of the genre as a whole. The paper analyzes both the current theory and scholarship of the genre and through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and queer theory offers a theory of how these theories can add to existing theory and scholarship.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:42:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Veronica DAgostino Piqueira.pdf: 959865 bytes, checksum: af3af03c97b9613293c5dcfac01b96ee (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-01-23 / Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie / Hoping to contribute to broaden the discussion on the issue of popular American cultural imaginary, the objective of this dissertation is to reflect on the concept of normality and abnormality featured in the movie Freaks (1932), dedicated to the representation of the social and cultural universe of sideshows. We will present the influences that pierced the way director Tod Browning, searching referrals for the formation of his author cinema in his history since his youth as itinerant artist until the dimension of slapstick actor, director and writer of his own films. We'll also discuss some of the reasons that led to the emancipation of the horror genre during the Great Depression, seeking aesthetic, literary and political references in the narrative of his major classics. Based on these studies, this research transits in an interdisciplinary way by languages History of Culture and Film, presenting an encounter between monsters and humans and the way how they are expressed in the body exposed in Freaks. / Esperando contribuir para ampliar as discussões sobre a questão do imaginário cultural popular americano, o objetivo da presente dissertação é refletir sobre o conceito de normalidade e anormalidade apresentado no filme Freaks (1932), dedicado à representação do universo social e cultural dos sideshows. Apresentaremos as influências que transpassaram o caminho do diretor Tod Browning, buscando referências para a formação do seu cinema autoral em sua história vivida desde a juventude como artista itinerante até a dimensão como ator de pastelão, diretor e roteirista de seus próprios filmes. Discutiremos também algumas razões que levaram à emancipação do gênero de horror no período da Grande Depressão, buscando referências estéticas, literárias e políticas na narrativa de seus principais clássicos. Baseando-se nesses estudos, esta pesquisa transita de forma interdisciplinar pelas linguagens História da Cultura e Cinematográfica, apresentando o encontro entre monstros e humanos e o modo como são expressos no corpo exposto em Freaks.

Ever since the introduction of sound in film, sound effects have played a big part in the experience of the film audience. Acousmatic sound effects are diegetic sounds that lack a visual source on screen, and they are frequently used in horror films. This research explores the relationship between familiarity with sound effects and the emotional response in the audience. An experiment was conducted where two test groups watched an excerpt from a horror film where acousmatic sounds were a big part of the soundtrack. One of the test groups watched a version where there were reoccurring familiar acousmatic sounds, and the other group watched a version with random un-familiar acousmatic sounds. Data was collected through self-report and physiological measurements. The results suggest that there is a dissonance between the conscious and unconscious emotional experience of suspense and fear. The physiological measurements indicate a higher emotional arousal in the group that watched the unfamiliar version of the stimuli, while the self-report propose a stronger conscious build-up of suspense leading to a stronger experience of fear in the group watching the familiar version. Further research directions based on the result of this research are presented.

This thesis is a close reading of the horror film His House (2020) and has its theoretical base in the works of Sara Ahmed. It focuses on the emotional experience of the film’s lead characters who are South Sudanese asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. The study is set out to chart which emotions the characters feel, which of them are the most overpowering and what does the presence of these emotions imply about the asylum experience. Close reading shows that feelings typically understood as negative are dominant – guilt being particularly present as it is tied to the film’s monster. The thesis argues that the film calls for attention to asylum seekers’ mental health through showing the horrors experienced by the heavily traumatized lead couple. The study also argues that horror fiction is a window to public anxieties, and as such offers a valuable research avenue to ethnic and migration studies as well as social sciences at large.

I detta examensarbete undersöks ljuddesign för skräck inom scenkonst. Skräckberättande kan i stora drag delas in i två förlopp: väntan på det otäcka och det otäcka. Här sätts Seth S Horowitz teorier om människans förmåga att medvetandegöra faror i relation till skräckberättande. Horowitz teorier kan enklast sammanfattas med att lyssna och att höra, vilket blir en av de viktigaste aspekterna i uppdelningen av skräckberättandets två förlopp. Definierandet och konkretiserandet av dessa två förlopp blir i denna rapport ett designverktyg för ljuddesign inom skräck. Undersökandet sker genom enskilda experiment samt genom analys av designprocesser för föreställningen Life Before/After. / In this thesis the student examines sound design in horror performing arts. The craft of horror storytelling can broadly be divided into two parts: waiting for the horrifying to happen and the horrifying happening. In this thesis, horror storytelling principles is compared to Seth S. Horowitz’s theories of the human brain’s ability to process auditory information in order to recognize danger. Horowitz’s theories can roughly be divided into listening and hearing, which also define the two parts in horror storytelling. This principle has not just been the theoretical foundation of this thesis, but also a practical tool in designing sound for the experiments and the performance Life Before/after.

The freak played a significant role in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century entertainment, but its significance extended beyond such venues as sideshows and minstrel shows. This dissertation examines the freak as an avatar emblematic of several issues, such as class and race, traditionally focused on in studies of Turn-of-the Century American literature and culture. Disability and freakishness are explored as central to late-nineteenth- and early twentieth- century Americans’ identity. Freakishness is applied to a series of ways in which Americans in this period constructed their identity, including race, gender, and socioeconomic class, showing the dual role that the freak played for many white, able-bodied, upper-class American men. Freaks threatened such men’s sense of their own disability, triggering such complexes as Wounded Southernness or white masculinity. But contrasting themselves with freaks also solidified their visions of themselves as models of American normalcy. Besides freak shows, they encountered freakishness in a variety of arenas, including lynchings, slums, and early horror films. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s fascination with freakishness is situated as an outgrowth of that period’s eugenics movement, showing how the entwined concepts of eugenics and normalcy traversed ground that went much further than studies of physical aberration and chronic illness. This extended notion of the freak is discussed by analyzing various literary texts, especially the novels of William Dean Howells and Jack London. The autobiographies of Booker T. Washington and Helen Keller exemplify how double consciousness can serve as a means of enfreakment. Further, all these texts are situated culturally by medicalizing a series of historical events, including specific lynchings, as well as laws that reconfigured urban landscapes. The final chapter focuses on early horror film, arguing that film became the new American sideshow and in the process changed the definition of freak to something far more monstrous. In short, this dissertation demonstrates how the freak show pervaded America at the turn of the twentieth century and turned the country into one large dime museum.

Through the lens of the horror film and the fairy tale, this thesis explores the notion of the grotesque as a boundary phenomenon—a negotiation of what is self and what is other. As such, it locates the function that the monstrous and the grotesque have in the formation of a personal and social identity. In asking why we take pleasure in the perverse, I explore how permutations of guilt, victimhood, and desire can be actively rewritten, in order to construct a stable sense of self.

This thesis focus on the presentation of the filmic room the viewer sees in George A. Romero´s three horror classics Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead. The hypothesis goes as follow; fear and element of tension becomes greater if the audience/viewer has a good knowledge about the filmic room in the film, in other words, a good spatial awareness. The conclusion is that it does. The environment is active in its becoming and in its presentation to the viewer. Rooms and places, even objects, is a catalyst and a mean to create emotion. To tackle the problem regards to human emotion, which is highly subjective, ANT (actant-network-theory) is used. This theory is a tool to help decode what it is we find emotionally enticing regards to room and objects in the films.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T14:46:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3360568 bytes, checksum: 1c01f6b8c73ab099752603932d52c725 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Since the release of the film Ringu, in 1998, the Japanese contemporary horror cinema, or J Horror, became a filmic addressing form for the West. These Japanese horror movies have created a way of production that was soon "discovered" and exported by Hollywood through remakes for international audiences. The fact that the production of a remake will present differences between the original film and the new version is clear and doubtless. When these horror films are analysed as entertainment, it is possible to study much more than just filmic differences presented by cultural aspects. We developed our analysis in the perspective that there are reframings in the remakes of the movies as this means part of a productive logic way of the film industry as entertainment. In addition to the comparisons between Ringu and its American remake, The Ring, this research aims to develop the elements of production, distribution and exhibition as these three topics answer the aspects of the cinema as an industry. Through this triad, besides the cultural environment, it may be possible, for example, to find answers to suggest the changes we can notice in the remakes due to get an extension of an international audience as the original movie is usually released only in Japan. / Formatado a partir do lançamento do filme Ringu, de 1998, o horror japonês contemporâneo, ou J Horror, tornou-se uma forma de endereçamento fílmica para o Ocidente. As obras japonesas geraram um modelo de produção de sentido logo descoberto e exportado por Hollywood com refilmagens para um público internacional. Que a produção de um remake gera diferenças entre o filme original e a refilmagem, não há dúvidas. Mas, ao analisar o cinema de terror como entretenimento, é possível perceber muito mais do que apenas diferenças fílmicas em função de aspectos culturais. Trabalhamos nossa análise na perspectiva de que há reenquadramentos temáticos nas refilmagens de obras uma vez que as mesmas fazem parte de uma lógica produtiva da indústria do cinema como entretenimento. Além das comparações entre Ringu e sua refilmagem norte-americana, O Chamado, esta pesquisa pretende se debruçar, em particular, nos aspectos extratextuais do cinema como entretenimento em cada nação, o que faz necessário debater elementos de produção, distribuição e exibição. Por meio desta tríade, além do entorno cultural, talvez seja possível, por exemplo, compreender as mudanças feitas nas refilmagens em função de obter um alargamento de um público internacional ao qual o remake é destinado em comparação com o produto original, que costuma ser exibido apenas no Japão.

Le personnage principal féminin actif du film d'horreur voit le jour dans les années 1970. Sa naissance a eu un impact important sur le genre : elle est à l'origine de l'émergence de nouveaux sous genres(le slasher, le woman's horror film, le film d'horreur/mélodrame familial et l'action/horror auquel la série Alien donne naissance dans les années 2000). Ces sous-genres se distinguent par leur structure narrative, leur mode de production et le public auquel ils s'adressent. Chacun d'entre eux accorde du reste son rôle principal à un modèle différent de personnage féminin. Le traitement réservé par ces sous-genres à la question de la relation de leurs protagonistes féminines à la société, à leur corps et à leur sexualité évolue entre 1970 et 2007. Alors que dans les années 1970, la majorité des personnages féminins héroïques du genre étaient des femmes indépendantes, entre 1980 et 1995, elles sont remplacées par des mères sacrificielles, tandis qu'entre 1996 et 2007, les femmes indépendantes refont surface et se mettent à partager le devant de la scène avec des mères-célibataires. La mutation monstrueuse ou héroïque de ces personnages dépend aussi de leur relation à leur corps : celles qui ne parviennent pas à contrôler la "nature transformable" de leur biologie féminine (celles qui tombent enceintes ou qui ont leurs règles) deviennent des monstres, alors que celles qui sont disposées à contenir leur corps, ses mutations et leurs désirs sexuels parviennent à survivre. Notre analyse chronologique de ces sous-genres montre que l'évolution de leur discours sur leurs personnages féminins est due à l'impact que les différents courants féministes qui ont traversé l'histoire des États-Unis et le(s) backlash(s) contre le féminisme ont eu sur le genre de l'horreur. / The birth of the active female main character of the horror film in the 1970s has a significant impact on the genre of horror : this phenomenon prompted the emergence of new sub-genres (the slasher, the woman's horror film, the horror film/family melodrama and the action/horror to whom the Alien series gives birth in the 2000s). These sub-genres differ in their narrative structure, their production mode and the type of audience they address. Each of them grants the leading role to a different type of female character. From 1970 till 2007, the relationship of the female protagonists of horror film to the society in which they live, their body and their sexuality evolves. While in the 1970s, most of the heroic women of the genre are independent women, between 1980 and 1995, they become sacrificial mothers, and from 1996 to 2007, the independent women resurface again but are often single mothers. The ability of these female characters to become heroes or monsters is also affected by their relationship to their body : those who cannot control the "changeable nature" of their biology (i.e. those who become pregnant or have their period) turn into monsters, while those who can contain their bodies and sexual desires survive. The chronological analysis of these sub-genres shows that their discourse on their female main protagonists and the way it evolves are influenced by the different feminist currents that come to birth in the United States from 1970 till 2007 and by the backlash(es) against them.