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.

Thesis--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliography (p.112-137).

Senior Honors thesis--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 6, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A. in English)--Washington State University, August 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on mon. day, 2009). "Department of English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-79).

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 282-293).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Literatures in English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-296).

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Annette Van; submitted to the Dept. of English. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Aug. 25, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-54).