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9/11 attacks open the 21st Century into the fear of the Other, which is coincidentally at the core of the Gothic tradition. In post-911 Gothic texts, the tension of Self and Other can be seen from the gothic family (representing homeland and country) and the gothic monster (representing foreign, dangerous intruder) respectively. This essay is a close study of two sets of Hollywood films dealing with such tension - Twilight saga and The Hills Have Eyes duology. It is argued, with Foucault’s notion of Power/Knowledge, that such Hollywood gothic productions further create and hence reinforce the fear of, but not suppress, the Other. The 21st Century Gothic genre is therefore no longer subversive, but appropriated to educate the unaware public. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The threats found in horror films change with time, each decade consisting of threats that were most frightening for the time period. Horror film scholars, such as Andrew Tudor, determined that in 1970s horror films the threat has migrated from external forces into the home and the family. Invading aliens and monsters were thrown replaced by psychosis and evil children. This notion of making the familiar unfamiliar and threatening is paralleled in concerns addressed during the second-wave of feminism; women were making the normative and familiar idea of mother unfamiliar as they migrated from the private and into the public sphere. This thesis looks at what happens when women from three separate horror films of the 1970s begin to trouble the normative ideas of what a good mother is by exaggerating the very conventions themselves. The films of analysis are Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), The Brood, and Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976). Rather than directly defying normative expectations of the good mother, the women of these films adhere to these codes in such exaggerated fashions that they become monstrous. Once the spectator deems these women as monstrous, their behavior is noted as performative and open to a possible reimaging of what constitutes a good mother. It is in this possible reimagination of the good mother, due to negative illumination rather than positive prescription, where the revolutionary power of the carnivalesque perspective truly lies. As the main theoretical framework for this thesis, Mikhail Bakhtin's carnivalesque perspective grants spectators the chance to participate in the reimaginations of the normative construction of the good mother. It is here where the monstrosity of these mothers can be seen as not solely as monstrous but also as critical of the normative. As the monstrous interrogates the normative, the spectators begin to question the patriarchal ideals and expectations of the good mother, which allows for reimagining of what constitutes the good mother.

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of David Cronenberg's body-horror films in relation to their embodied spectators. In these films, the horror is not only about the vulnerability of the mortal body, but also about the horrific consequences of organizing culture around the philosophical splitting of the mind from the body. To analyze this relationship, I utilize Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body, object-relations psychoanalysis, especially D. W. Winnicott's theory of the intermeshed psyche-soma, various pro-feminist approaches to horror films, and a concept of ideology informed by nonverbal communication research. The historical arc of Cronenberg's body-horror films has produced a unique cultural record of the impact of technological change on physical bodies through dark fantasies of biological-medical technologies in Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, and Scanners; video communication technologies in Videodrome; and genetic-engineering technologies in The Fly . / My primary thesis is that Cronenberg's body-horror films encourage spectators to "read" not only with their rational-cognitive skills but with their embodied experience as well, which includes emotional and sensory memories, and fantasies, both archaic and contemporary. Cronenberg's appeal to an integrated psyche-soma reading is crucial for understanding how the culturally induced splitting of the mind from the body impacts on working class resistance to exploitative ideology. / In chapter one I argue that the diverse and contradictory readings of Cronenberg's body-horror films are possible, because of the interdependence of the cinematic text, historical and cultural context, and the embodied experience of spectators-critics. Chapter two is a preliminary step towards developing an alternative theory of the horror film spectator, by exploring the productive tension between an active, creative and embodied real viewer, and an ideologically determined, ideal subject of the cinematic apparatus. Chapter three compares Cronenberg's fantasy of metamorphosis body-horror to the fantasy of "leaving the body behind" depicted in many contemporary cyborg films. Chapter four is a series of close readings, analyzing how Cronenberg embeds "imaginary spectators" into his body-horror films through interweaving the body language of his characters and the nonverbal communication of the mise en scene with narrative strategies formulated through the plot.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-129). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Visual images produce a version of the world, films do so by several images per minute. Films have power to choose who and what is represented and how. This can lead to misrepresentations and the reenforcing of stereotypes. From the outside, Sweden as a country is usually associated with health, safety and equality. However within Sweden another image is produced regarding its peripheral areas. A rural area which is seen mainly as an opposite of the urban city.    This study aims to use a multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore de reproduction of the Swedish in two selected horror films. The study also explores the concept of place importance in relation to the films stories and setting. The films are produced outside of Sweden but uses Swedish peripheries as its setting and Swedish culture as means of telling a story. The results found that although the films differ in their use and reconstruction of the peripheral of Sweden some similarities were found. Nordic mythology, sects and human sacrifices are just a small part of the mutual display of Sweden between the two horror films.

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In 2004, Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, a film that focuses specifically on the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Over a year before its release and well ahead of any studio publicity, the film and its director were at the center of a discussion that sparked criticism from biblical scholars, Jesus historians, and members of the media. In spite, or perhaps because, of this controversy, The Passion was well-received by its audiences if not by its critics. This dissertation explores the cultural, political, and economic factors that led to the box office success of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ and also examines why viewers identified with Jesus, the protagonist of the film. First, this project places the success of The Passion of the Christ in socio-historical and political-economic context of 2004, emphasizing the popularity of neoliberal economic policies, conservative political thought, and Evangelical Christianity. Second, this project explores the specific political and economic arrangements that facilitated the making of the film at Cinecitta studios in Rome. The ease with which Gibson was able to make The Passion outside of the United States is a direct result of neoliberal economic policies that emphasize free trade and, in the process, undermine trade unions and film industry laborers. Third, in addition to a macro- and micro-level political economic analysis of The Passion of the Christ, this project also examines the film as it fits into the horror genre. Horror not only seeks to elicit an immediate visceral reaction from audience members but also manifests the political and economic insecurities of society. Finally, this project connects the film text to these anxieties, including the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and an extended crisis of masculinity. / by Rebecca Kuhn. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This dissertation explores the embodied and sensory dimensions of fantastic film, those elements that are generally held up in contrast to and, often, in excess of, narrative structure. I suggest a departure from the traditional approach to genre study which has been preoccupied with narrative formulas, themes, and iconographies. My goal is not to dispense with those kinds of analyses but to complement them and, importantly, to point to some neglected dimensions of genre pleasure. I propose to transform the presumably excessive pleasures of the fantastic genre into something essential to it. First, I explore the disavowal or avoidance of embodied sensation within popular genre criticism. I then turn to critique existing models of film reception, focusing particularly upon a critique of the ocularcentric or visualist framework. From this critique, I am able to suggest some criteria for an alternative theoretical model based upon embodiment. I propose a theoretical framework based, first, on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who demonstrates that human subjects are constituted materially and culturally through their perceptual relations within the world. Second, I rely upon a further interpretation of this phenomenology by the American philosopher Don Ihde. Ihde’s work, configured as “postphenomenology,” draws variously from technoscience studies, the philosophy of science, feminist, and posthumanist theory, and sketches a system for the application of an experimental phenomenology. With this method, I explore various embodied, sensational aspects of fantastic genre films, i.e., spectacle, gore, musical genre conventions. I describe and relate these aspects of fantastic film to other cultural venues, exploring common themes and structures among them. From this, I draw some conclusions as to the nature of these sensational genre pleasures for embodied human individuals. Simultaneously, I consider the possibilities for embodied difference among individuals. / text

Given feminists’ longstanding concerns about the ideological effects of media images, and prompted by the lack of, but continued need for, feminist activism today, some feminist scholars have become increasingly interested in how popular media shape public understandings of feminism, represent its issues, and define its history. Communication scholars also appreciate that both media texts and social movements are produced and received within particular historical contexts, and that controversies over either are discursive sites in which cultural and political values clash and their meanings are negotiated. During the 1970s, second-wave feminism, especially its radical wing, was a controversial movement which threatened to disrupt basic relations between women and men and, therefore, has been much maligned by men, women, anti-feminists, and a new generation of self-proclaimed feminists. Yet, the second wave is often portrayed inaccurately. This dissertation thus reviews key works, theories, and events associated with radical feminism as well as the debates between it and other schools of feminist thought–liberal, Marxist/socialist, psychoanalytic, cultural, and various ‘new’ feminisms. Then, employing a context-sensitive form of ideological criticism, I examine three films, their promotional strategies, their mainstream critical and scholarly receptions, and how these elements converged with particular feminist discourses within their shared historical contexts. Specifically, I investigate why the horror films Rosemary’s Baby (1968), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), and Snuff (1976)–which each featured an exposed, vulnerable, violated, or ‘monstrous’ female body–became objects of controversy when they tapped into the contemporaneous feminist issues of reproduction, rape, and pornography, respectively, and how the films’ receptions reveal ways in which people have made sense of feminism and its issues. I contend that these controversies, both individually and when viewed as a series, were symptomatic of the hegemonic negotiations of second-wave feminism and its attempts to publicize discourses about sex, violence, and the female body, negotiations which were occurring both inside and outside the women’s movement. Through these controversial cases, then, we can see feminism’s transformation–from an active movement which criticized the structures of women’s oppression to a discursive and primarily academic enterprise focused more on criticizing itself. / text