The theme of the whole conference this year was Are You Ready for the Country: Cult Cinema and Rural Excess. Seeing as I'm nearly four years through my part time PhD, I thought it about time I bit the bullet and tried to get myself talking at one of these conferences and as I'd been to Cine-Excess back in 2011 to meet Ruggero Deodato, I thought I'd give in an abstract and see if I got a response.
And I did! So here is the abstract. I'm doubt I'm supposed to publish the whole paper here but if Cine-Excess decide not to use it in their journal, then I will at a later date.
Shooting Backwoods: Footage Found in Rural Locations
What happens when Western filmmakers head off with their
modern technology, into the woods and jungles of the world to record something
more primitive and vicious than they could ever imagine? Films from Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980) to Willow Creek (Goldthwait, 2013) explore
how supposedly civilised characters set out to film the unknown in rural
spaces. Too late do the characters discover that they have become the subjects
of their own audio visual documents as they are terrorised and finally
disappear. The primal forces that attack them range from supernatural beings
such as witches to savage tribal cannibals but all share an archaic
relationship with the rural settings that they inhabit.
Found footage films have flooded the horror genre in recent
years and despite the popularity of the suburban home settings of the Paranormal Activity (2007- date)
franchise, many investigate ideas of culture clashes between the urban
filmmakers and their rural subjects. Leading on from theoretical work
surrounding Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and
Sanchez, 1999), I will analyse how the diegetic-camera-wielding characters and
the foes they face in Welcome to the
Jungle (Hensleigh, 2007), Trollhunter
(Ovredal, 2010), Evidence (Howie
Askins, 2011), and Willow Creek are
dramatising contemporary anxieties over the failure of modern technologies (and
Western youth) in tackling ‘primitive’ enemies.
My findings will demonstrate that found footage films often
take place in rural settings due to their central themes of control, dominance
and superiority. The characters’ mastery of their technology is of little help
to them when they are faced with the rural threats of the woods and jungles
that they venture into. Exploring the aesthetic properties as well as the
representation of youth, gender and race in these films will make this paper
critical in furthering discourse on both the horror genre and more specifically
the contemporary contextual relevance of found footage films.
More academic stuff from I Love That Film:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Join me in conversation! Please leave a comment on your own pondering.