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This study explores the patriarchal unconscious underlying the Korean horror genre through a critical feminist psychoanalytical reading of the family dynamics and female agency in three landmark texts, namely, The Public Cemetery under the Moon (Kwon, Chul-hwi, 1967), Mother's Han (Lee, Yusup, 1970) and Woman's Wail (Lee, Hyuksu, 1986). By closely examining these horror film texts using insights from feminist psychoanalytic approaches and situating the texts within historical events and popular culture in the Park Chung Hee era, this study produces an understanding of the cultural dilemmas of women's desire and agency, and especially those of mothers. These textual analyses demonstrate that Confucian virtues, especially as been reinvented under Park Chung Hee's leadership to facilitate developmentalist goals, have formed the roots that shape the mother-child relationship into one that both parties want to dissolve. Through placing the cinematic representation of the monstrous feminine within a historical understanding of Korean horror cinema, this dissertation also demonstrates that the sacred, perfect image of the mother as it is known in Korean popular culture today is in fact historically produced formation within the genre. Besides, with Woman's Wail, a very characteristic Confucian female monster is discussed, namely, the mother-in-law. With this very rare type of the female monster, the misogynistic gender politics within Confucian patriarchy is saliently represented. The feminist psychoanalytic discussion on the spectatorship focuses on the interplay between the image and the Confucian female spectator. In a close reading of the two women's desires in The Public Cemetery under the Moon, this study explores the ways in which the female spectator may find visual pleasures in Korean horror cinema and the ways in which they are communicated and negotiated vis-à-vis the matrix of gender politics in Confucian culture. Taken together, this work demonstrates how the Confucian value system re-invented in the Park Chung Hee era has been a crucial apparatus for women's oppression, and at the same time, how women's agency is nonetheless evinced despite the strictures of Confucianism.

This thesis aims to explore the influences and references, with a particular focus from occultism and western esotericism, found in the film trilogy of The Three Mothers directed by Dario Argento. The trilogy composed of Suspiria, Inferno and The Mother of Tears was produced in a timeframe of thirty years from 1977 to 2007, so it embeds three decades, it also reflects the willingness from the director to disconnect himself from the usual representation of supernatural and horror films of witches and power. The three films Suspiria, Inferno and The Mother of Tears, present an innovative point of view, first of all, the representation of power in the context of horror and secondly, for the nature of references distributed throughout the trilogy. This thesis presents a film analysis of Suspiria, Inferno and The Mother of Tears investigating the semiotics behind the symbols, storytelling, characters, and technical aspects of film production. This work concludes that the deep desk research conducted by Argento on occultism and western esotericism before engaging into the production has deeply influenced it. The references to occultism, western esoteric schools, Steiner and alchemic influences are several, Christianity is also present in the trilogy with a dystopic lent. There is also a gender aspect analysed in the trilogy connected with the representation of feminine power, as the mothers in the trilogy represent witches, a supreme independent source of truth and power disconnected from any Christian and/or masculine representation. Suspiria, Inferno and The Mother of Tears can be then interpreted as a way to challenge the patriarchate power. This thesis is opening with the relevance of references from occultism to be found in several expressions of popular culture in our contemporary society. However, this aspect has not been investigated further than that. It has been utilized to serve the purpose of highlighting the elements in common between Argento’s trilogy and those expressions of popular culture (i.e. horror and supernatural TV series). If this research will be one day extended, the next step would be to find, in other expressions of popular culture (films, manga, graphic novels…), references in line with the ones traced in the trilogy. This would lead to investigate further the way occultism has influenced expressions of art and culture. Another point that is kept for a potential future research, would be to investigate which other examples of horror and supernatural films will be produced (or had been produced), where power and feminine representation breaks the traditional tendency of connecting power either with a Christian notion of evil or with a patriarchal form of power. In this regard, I am sure expressions from Artificial intelligence will come to play a role, but this is due maybe for the future, and maybe for another research to connect these dots.

Il presente studio mira a constatare lo stretto collegamento tra la figura femminile e il cinema thriller e horror italiano, qui denominato genericamente “fantastico” in un’ accezione estensiva, a evidenziarne caratteristiche comuni relative a entrambi i generi. La periodizzazione della ricerca va dagli anni sessanta agli anni ottanta ed il primo obiettivo è stato quello di valutare secondo un approccio culturalista l’interdipendenza donna-horror, spesso sfociata in un approccio misogino al genere. I risultati sono stati spesso discordanti rispetto alle premesse di partenza: le donne sono raffigurate solo come vittime, il gradimento del pubblico è esclusivamente maschile. La messa in discussione di questa tesi si è resa possibile attraverso una ricerca empirico-applicativa di un campione di film e una disamina di scritti più recenti che mirano in qualche caso a rovesciare il paradigma di partenza. Il secondo obiettivo ha rilevato differenze tra rappresentazione femminile nel cinema italiano e americano, muovendo dal presupposto che le teorie su cui ci si è basati provengono dagli stati uniti e hanno previsto un campione per lo più di film non italiani. quindi l’ intento dello studio è stato anche quello di misurare l’applicabilità di alcuni paradigmi teorici al caso italiano. lo svolgimento della ricerca ha previsto un’indagine di tipo quantitativo (rilevazione del corpus estensivo di film) e intensivo-qualitativo (analisi di alcuni principali stereotipi femminili, tratti dalla letteratura e dal cinema: damsel in distress, belle dame sans merci, final girl), per giungere poi alla conclusione che il genere fantastico italiano ha risentito forse più di ogni altro di una conflittualità permanente, tra bisogno di emancipazione e resistenza conservatrice. / This current study aims to ascertain the close connection between female figure and Italian horror/thriller, cinema, here called "fantastico" in an extensive meaning, in order to highlight common features related to both genres. The periodization of research goes from 60s to 80s and the first purpose was to evaluate, according to a culturalist approach, the woman-horror interdependence, often focused in a mysoginic approach to the genre. The results have often been conflicting with respect to the starting presuppositions: the women are represented only as victims, the audience’s satisfaction is exclusively male. The discussion of this thesis was possible through an empirical and applicative research of a film sample and a careful investigation of latest writings that aim in different cases to reverse the paradigm of the starting point. The second objective detected differences between female representation in the Italian and American cinema, moving from the assumption that the theories which we are based on, come from united states and have provided a sample of more American films than Italian ones. Therefore the intent of this essay was testing the applicability of some historical theoric paradigms to the Italian case. the research’ s method involved a quantitative cataloging of extensive film corpus and an intensive one, which analyzes the main female stereotypes drawn from literature and cinema (damsel in distress, belle dame sans merci, final girl ). the conclusions show that the Italian fantastic genre has resisted more than other ones of a permanent conflict between emancipation and conservative resistance.

Gender representation in the horror genre has many interesting discussions surrounding it through multiple perspectives such as psychoanalysis and culture. This article intends to expand the investigation of how female characters are portrayed in horror games. The research on female representation will investigate the potential connections between horror cinema and horror games in the survival horror game Fatal Frame (2001, Koei Tecmo), the first title of a series that is iconic f0r drawing inspiration from Japanese mythology and horror tropes while simultaneously using a large cast of female characters. To gather information about the audience to support the game analysis, an online survey will be released targeting players of the games. Thereafter, recorded, non-commentary footage of the first game, Fatal Frame (2001), will be observed and textually analysed through a framework with data points, based on the background of psychoanalysis, horror cinema, culture, and game theory.

This thesis addresses the complexity of digitalization and humanities research practices, with a specific focus on digital archives and film history research. I propose the term “Frankenstein Complex” to highlight and contextualize the epistemological collision and empirical challenges humanities scholars encounter when utilizing digital resources with digital methods. A particular aim of this thesis is to scrutinize digital archiving practices when using the Media History Digital Library (MHDL) as a case for a themed meta-inquiry on the preservation of and access to classic horror cinema in this particular digital venue. The project found conventional research methods, such as the close reading of classical cinema history, to be limiting. Instead, the project tried out a distant reading technique throughout the meta-inquiry to better interrogate with the massive volume of data generated by MHDL. Besides a general reassessment of debates in the digital humanities and themes relating to horror film culture, this thesis strives for a reflection on classic horror spectatorship through the lens of sexual identity, inspired by Sara Ahmed’s perspective on queer phenomenology. This original reading of horror history is facilitated by an empirical study of the digital corpus at hand, which in turn gives insights into the entangled relation between subjective identities and the appointed research contexts.

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