How is the family represented in American horror films of the 1970s? Part 6

This is the final chapter of my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s. I hope that one day it may be of some vague use to someone, somewhere, somehow.

Part 1 of my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s is here. Part 2 on the monstrous families of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes is here. Part 3 on those charming rape-revenge films of the 1970s is here. Part 4 on the monstrous children of films like The Exorcist and The Omen is here. Part 5 on the monstrous parental figures of film like Alien and Halloween is here.

Part 6: Conclusion

‘It’s people that I’m afraid of…’  (Tobe Hooper, 2000)

In Gregory Waller’s introduction to his book ‘American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film’, he states that ‘the horror film has engaged in a sort of extended dramatization of and response to the major public events and newsworthy topics in American history since 1968’ (Waller, 1987. p.12). The year of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was the beginning of a trend towards progressive horror films that dealt with themes of civil unrest and the negative effects of the capitalist, patriarchal society that America was at the time and still is. Films such as Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) remained progressive in their representations of nuclear families as monstrous products of capitalism. Other films such as Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Carpenter’s Halloween (1979) dealt with the youth of the 1970s and maintained a reactionary view of the world that children were being brought into, with absent fathers and liberated female sexuality rife in society.

Waller also suggests that ‘horror films have proven to be among the most significant documents in America’s public debate over the status of the independent woman in a society still dominated by men’ (Waller, 1987, p.5). The rape-revenge films in particular deal with independent women, both within the family, as in Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972), and also as I have suggested of Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (1978), in opposition to the family. These films seem to be a return to reactionary views of the family where the independent woman is considered a threat to the nuclear family unit. In particular ‘the recent horror-of-personality films seem to reflect as well a disturbing hostility toward women, which seems a direct response to the feminist movement’ (Derry, 1987, p.165). Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (1978) signal the full on return of reactionary representations of female sexuality that would continue in the ‘stalker’ films of the 1980s, including Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980) and Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and their many sequels.

‘The Michael of Halloween (1978), the Jason of Friday the 13th (1980)… do not develop out of the characteristic monsters of the ‘70s; they represent a refusal of everything they embodied’ (Wood, 2001). The characteristic monsters of the 1970s include Leatherface, the possessed Regan, the bourgeois families of Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Ordinary people forced to extreme violence by society and the family of which they are a part. These films are progressive in that they share the theme of ‘the Other as both the “same” as well as “different” from ourselves and somehow implicated in family life’ (Sobchack, 1987, p.177). Michael, Jason, and Scott’s Alien (1979) are not in the same category in this respect. They are ‘purely and simply evil’, reactionary forces out to punish women for being liberated in terms of sexual freedom and also in the case of Ripley, for being equal in the workplace with men.

The relevance and importance of these 1970s horror films is painfully clear in light of the slew of remakes that have been made in the last couple of years. Mark Kermode (2003, p.13) suggests in Sight and Sound that the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Marcus Nispel, 2003) is ‘a hallmark 1970s horror product cunningly rebranded for a jaded 21st-century audience: a perfect example of a trend currently sweeping the horror genre.’ Remakes, sequels and prequels are all abundant to the 1970s horror films discussed in this paper. Most recently there has been the remake of Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2003) and the prequel, The Exorcist: The Beginning (Renny Harlin, 2004). However there is also an upcoming remake of Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Romero’s fourth in his ‘Dead’ series.

Unfortunately Kermode argues of Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), ‘Thematically, however, Nispel and Bay add nothing to Hopper’s blueprint.’ (Kermode, 2003, p.14). Nevertheless, this is arguable, as the film seems to represent the family as a refuge from the selfishness of living as individuals. However it does clearly lack the Marxist themes that can be read in Hooper’s original. Similarly in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2003), new progressive themes are addressed, for example a dying woman is tied to a bed so that she can give birth. This suggests that women are tied to motherhood because of dominating men who will not consider ideas such as abortion and euthanasia. On the other hand these films can still be considered reactionary in their representations of women as mother figures as demonstrated by the ending of Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that has the heroine rescuing a small baby from the monstrous family.

However the resurgence in 1970s style horror can also be seen in films that range from The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sanchez, 1999) to Wrong Turn (Schmidt, 2003). These films seem to be a partial return to the characteristic horror monsters of the 1970s, but are not attacks on the family like their predecessors were. The nihilism of many of the 1970s horror filmmakers seems to have been lost in most recent horror and the family is generally not even an issue anymore. This is the result of the reactionary forces at work in America ever since the end of the 1970s to the present. The family seemed to be the most attacked of all sources of authority and in modern America the ideal of patriarchal family values is no longer to be questioned, especially recently. The nihilism of the 1970s has all but disappeared, after all, ‘If technology, science, medicine, government and other so-called human authorities are ineffective, what possible future can exist?’ (Muir, 2002, p.268)

I think that the American horror films of the 1970s are the last films that dared to challenge such firmly established traditions such as the family. They were a product of uncertain times where America was changing dramatically, in particular with regard to women’s rights. The successors of these classic horror films are generally either mindlessly commercial or purely reactionary in that the family is never questioned or represented as anything other than good.

And here is my bibliography in full for anyone interested!

Brottman, M. (1996) Once upon a time in Texas: the Texas chainsaw massacre as inverted fairytale In: Black, A. (ed.) Necronomicon book one: the journal of horror and erotic cinema. London: Creation Books

Clover, C. (1992) Men, women and chainsaws: gender in the modern horror film. London: BFI Publishing

Clover, C. (1996) Her body, himself: gender in the slasher film In: Grant, B. (ed.) The dread of difference: gender and the horror film. Austin: University of Texas Press

Creed, B. (1993) The monstrous – feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge.

Creed, B. (1996) Horror and the monstrous-feminine: an imaginary abjection In: Grant, B. (ed.) The dread of difference: gender and the horror film. Austin: University of Texas Press

Derry, C. (1987) More dark dreams: some notes on the recent horror film In: Waller, G. (ed.) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Dickstein, M. (1984) The aesthetics of fright In: Grant, B. (ed.) Planks of reason: essays on the horror film. Lanham, Md., & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Dika, V. (1987) The stalker film, 1978-81 In: Waller, G. (ed.) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Dillard, R. (1987) Night of the living dead: it’s not like just a wind that’s passing through In: Waller, G. (ed.) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Haskell, M. (1974) From reverence to rape: the treatment of women in the movies. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Kinder, M. and Houston, B. (1987) Seeing is believing: the exorcist and don’t look now In: Waller, G. (ed) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Lehman, P. (1993) Don’t blame this on a girl: female rape-revenge films In: Cohan, S. & Hark, I. (eds.) Screening the male: exploring masculinities in Hollywood cinema. London: Routledge. pp.103-117

Muir, J. (2002) Horror films of the 1970s. London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Polan, D. (1984) Eros and syphilization: the contemporary horror film In: Grant, B. (ed.) Planks of reason: essays on the horror film. Lanham, Md., & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Rodowick, D. (1984) The enemy within: the economy of violence in the hills have eyes In: Grant, B. (ed.) Planks of reason: essays on the horror film. Lanham Md., & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Sharrett, C. (1984) The idea of apocalypse in the Texas chainsaw massacre In: Grant, B. (ed.) Planks of reason: essays on the horror film. Lanham Md., & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Sobchack, V. (1987) Bringing it all back home: family economy and generic exchange In: Waller, G. (ed.) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Waller, G. (ed.) (1987) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Wexman, V. (1987) The trauma of infancy in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s baby In: Waller, G. (ed.) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Williams, T. (1996) Hearths of darkness: the family in the American horror film. London: Associated University Presses

Wood, R. (1984) An introduction to the American horror film In: Grant, B. (ed.) Planks of reason: essays on the horror film. Lanham, Md., & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Wood, R. (1987) Returning the look: eyes of a stranger In: Waller, G. (ed.) American horrors: essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Journal Articles

Kermode, M. (2003) What a carve up! Sight & Sound. 13 (12), 12-16.

Wood, R. (1978) Return of the repressed. Film Comment. 14 (4), 24-32.

World Wide Web

Creed, B. (no date) Baby bitches from hell: monstrous-little women in film. UCLA. Available from: http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/women/creed/creed1.html [Accessed 17th January 2005]

Eklof, T. (2004) Frankensein meets the exorcist: embracing your inner monster. Clifton Unitarian Church. Available from: http://www.cliftonunitarian.com/toddstalks/frankensteinmeetsexorcist.htm [Accessed 17th January 2005]

Kendrick, J. (2002) The last house on the left. Qnetwork. Available from: http://witzamfm.navibar.com/?page=review&id=1000 [Accessed 6^th January 2005]

Schneider, S. (2002) The hills have eyes. senses of cinema. Available from: http://sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/19/hills.html [Accessed 6th January 2005]

Wood, R. (2001) What lies beneath? [online] Cambridge University Press. Available from: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/15/horror_beneath.html [Accessed 27 October 2004]

 

How is the family represented in American horror films of the 1970s? Part 5

I have decided to post my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s in full over a series of posts. I hope that one day it may be of some vague use to someone somewhere somehow.

Part 1 of my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s is here. Part 2 on the monstrous families of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes is here. Part 3 on those charming rape-revenge films of the 1970s is here. Part 4 on the monstrous children of films like The Exorcist and The Omen is here.

Part 5: Monstrous Parents

‘The horror film has obliquely moved from the representation of children as terrors to children as terrorized…’ (Sobchack, 1987, p.181)

In the later years of the decade, reactionary horror returned with a vengeance in films such as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Monstrous parents were not new to the horror films of the 1970s, as Brottman (1996, p.18) points out, ‘In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre… traditional values are refuted and negated by monstrous parent figures that destroy children.’ However the parent figures of the later films are generally reactionary representations as Robin Wood argues of Halloween (1978) and Barbara Creed argues of Alien (1979). Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is the story of Michael Myers and his attempts to kill babysitters on Halloween night. He has just returned from a long stay in a mental hospital for killing his sister many years previously. Scott’s Alien (1979) is the story of a group of people trying to survive a trip through space with a savage alien on board their space ship.

Halloween (1978) is seen by most to be the beginning of the ‘stalker’ film cycle as Vera Dika called it. She argued that ‘parents, teachers, psychiatrists, or policemen. In the stalker film […] these traditional authority figures have lost their power…’ (Dika, 1987, p.91). Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, is represented as being utterly powerless to stop Michael’s killing spree. The doctor is always behind Michael; he is shown inspecting a car and the clothes Michael has abandoned. He tells people ‘don’t underestimate him’ and ‘nobody listened’. There are numerous scenes of the doctor and the policeman searching houses and streets that Michael has already been to. In addition to this, the policeman does not even listen to the doctor the first time he warns him of the threat. The cop is also represented as a father who has no control over his daughter. In one scene his daughter is rude and disobedient towards him after she has put a cigarette out only moments before. In this scene the cop also blames children for the grave robbing and shoplifting that occurs around Halloween. Parents are also shown as being powerless later in the film where the little boy pulls out hidden comic books that his parents do not like him reading and the scene where a couple have a post-coital cigarette on one of the parent’s bed.

As a result of this powerlessness of parents, Williams (1996, p.211) argues ‘The monster now represents the return of a patriarchy violently punishing the younger generation.’ Michael is first seen in his hometown driving a police car as he watches the young women. The camera is in the back of the car behind the bars suggesting that Michael is punishing these young people, as the police should be doing. Michael also takes the traditional fatherly role of stopping the family dog from barking when he kills it. The girls in the film are shown as liberated in that they talk about, sleep with and ask boys to dance with the exception of Laurie, the final girl who survives because she is a virginal, traditional female who is a good babysitter, unlike her friends. At the climax of the film, it is Laurie who protects the two children and nearly kills Michael. In addition to this, Michael arranges a dead girls body in front of the gravestone of his sister suggesting that he has killed them both for having sex and that he represents the return of patriarchy and the death of female sexuality.

Similarly Wood (1987, p.80) argues ‘the monster… has become essentially a superego figure, avenging itself on liberated female sexuality or the sexual freedom of the young…’. Michael is always watching when bad things are happening; he is represented as an omnipresent and omniscient force. This is most clearly shown in the final shots of the empty house with the sound of Michael’s breathing over the top. He sees the boy at the start of the film getting dressed and leaving the house after having sex and the audience sees this through his eyes. Michael is also shown watching the house as the parents leave, suggesting he is waiting to take over their duties of oppressing the young. He is always in the background or foreground of the shots, depending on where the people he is watching are in the frame. If the young characters talk about sex, Michael appears, behind a bush or in a doorframe. He is often somewhere in the frame watching as they drink, smoke and have sex.

Sobchack (1987, p.184) notes that ‘Father is the synchronic repressed who, first powerfully absenting himself, returns to terrify the family in the contemporary horror film’. As a little boy, Michael stabs his naked sister with a large phallic knife suggesting incestuous desire. He is dressed in a clown suit and holds the knife demonstrating the corruption of innocence in that, his repressed sexuality has been awakened by seeing his sister have sex. The doctor describes Michael as ‘purely and simply evil’. He also says Michael ‘hasn’t spoken for fifteen years’ suggesting that he is full of repressed hatred and sexual thoughts that are confused in his mind, hence his wish to stab/penetrate people. ‘Michael’s body has attained maturity, his mind remains frozen in infantile fury…’ (Clover, 1996, p.76). The camera is often positioned behind Michael and the entire opening shot is from Michael’s point-of-view suggesting that the filmmaker wants the viewer to empathise with Michael and therefore confront their own repressed desires. Michael’s white mask even appears from complete darkness in one shot suggesting he represents repressed desires emerging from the unconscious mind. In addition to this, the little boy refers to his fear of the ‘boogeyman’ throughout the film, a fear that adults have repressed. However this fear returns with the return of Michael, the return of the repressed.

The alien in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) can also be seen as the return of the repressed. It has been argued that it represents male fears of female equality, male rape, castration, and male pregnancy. Creed (1993, p.23) argues ‘The unacceptable, monstrous aspect of woman is represented in two ways: Mother as an omnipresent archaic force linked to death and Mother as the cannibalistic creature represented through the alien as fetish-object.’ She describes the openings of the alien craft as vaginal and the tunnel in the film that leads to the room full of eggs is clearly meant to look organic and therefore represent the fallopian tubes leading to the ovary. In addition to this, the alien is phallicised with its protruding mouth, sharp pointy teeth and large phallic head. This shows the alien as a fetish object as it denies lack in the mother figure. The alien mother is also linked to death in that it lives to kill and even its blood is a defence mechanism that eats through the ship like acid.

In addition to this, the spaceship is also referred to as ‘Mother’ as this is what the ship’s computer is called by the crew. Creed (1996, p.50) argues by the end of the film ‘the “mother’s” body has become hostile; it contains the alien whose one purpose is to kill and devour all of Mother’s children’. At first the ship is represented as the mother as it wakes the crew from their sleep. The crewmembers are kept in little pods that are all connected to the ship in the centre. When they need to communicate with ‘Mother’, they individually enter a little room full of lights. The lights represent the undivided attention of ‘Mother’ to each of her ‘children’. However once the crew disconnect from the mother ship in a smaller vessel, they find the alien and bring it back with them onto the mother ship.

Creed (1993. p.23) writes of ‘Mother’ that she is ‘a treacherous figure who has been programmed to sacrifice the lives of the crew in the interests of the Company.’ This is shown in the scene where Ripley communicates with the computer and the screen reads ‘Crew Expendable’. It is also a female voice that informs Ripley of how long she has until the ship explodes. Like a baby in the womb, Ripley is represented as having no control over her environment at the end of the film when she shouts at ‘Mother’, ‘I’ve turned the cooling unit back on’.

Ripley is represented as a terrorised child as when she asks for help from Ash, the science officer and father figure, she says ‘any suggestions from you or Mother?’ This links them as parental figures of the crew, but they are both ultimately treacherous as Creed suggests. The scene where Ash closes the doors so Ripley cannot escape is the reassertion of male dominance in the ship. Ash is controlling the ship’s doors, and therefore also ‘Mother’ in a way, and he is attempting to control Ripley/woman. This scene links the control of women to pornography as when Ash attacks Ripley there are pictures of naked women on the wall behind him and he then tries to force her to choke on a pornographic magazine. It can even be suggested that the scene links pornography and violence towards women as it ends with Ash climaxing (spurting white liquid) after his attack on Ripley.

Wood argues that Ripley is monstrous and the whole film is reactionary because it plays as a male nightmare of female equality in the future. ‘Having destroyed the alien, Ripley can become completely “feminine”—soft and passive, her domesticated pussy safely asleep’ (Wood, 1984, p.199). Throughout the film she has shown little compassion for her crewmates and has even tried to take charge. However at the end, she is represented as a sleeping beauty in the stars, waiting to be rescued.

On the other hand, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) takes a far more progressive representation of the role of the mother in the family. ‘The active and increasingly resourceful heroine of Dawn…learns in the course of the film to free herself from male domination and all the social formations (marriage, traditional family, dependency) that support it’ (Wood, 2001). The title of the film appears on screen as the heroine is sleeping suggesting that women are the ‘dead’ that need to be woken. She starts the film completely dominated by men as seen in the first scenes at the television studio where her boyfriend tells her to be on the roof at nine and her boss argues with her about having the rescue stations on screen all the time. She takes the traditional maternal caring role in that she wants to make sure that people are safe. Later in the film the heroine dresses the wounds of Roger and we see her surrounded by clothes on the floor and skating round in circles, suggesting that she is trapped, frozen in the maternal, traditional female role.

However as the film progresses, so does the heroine. She is represented as liberated as when asked if one of the men is her boyfriend she replies ‘most of the time’ and when she is offered an abortion, she considers it, but ultimately rejects the idea. She wants to be treated as equal to the men and is clearly the first to realise the danger they are in. She tells them the mall is ‘a prison too’ and tries to not let them know she is suffering from morning sickness, saying ‘it’s my problem’. She learns to shoot and fly the helicopter, therefore taking control of her own life by using traditionally male dominated technology. She rejects the marriage proposal from her boyfriend, saying ‘not now’ and lies awake staring unhappily into nothing during their attempt at domestic bliss which amounts to their possessing of a bed, sofa, gun rack, plants and TV. It seems she is only really treated as an equal by the men after Roger is wounded and they let her run through the mall with them side-by side and armed with a gun.

These films featuring monstrous parent figures are generally far more reactionary than some of the other horror films in the earlier part of the decade. In particular the introduction of the ‘stalker’ cycle of films, of which Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Scott’s Alien (1979) can arguably both be considered a part, is the real beginning of the reassertion of patriarchal values that would continue in many of the horror films of the 1980s. However Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) is a more progressive text in that it negates traditional family values.

Back to part 2 on Monstrous Families.
Back to part 3 on Rape Revenge films.
Back to part 4 on Monstrous children is here.

Part 6 on my conclusions is here.

How is the family represented in American horror films of the 1970s? Part 4

I have decided to post my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s in full over a series of posts. I hope that one day it may be of some vague use to someone somewhere somehow.

Part 1 of my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s is here. Part 2 on the monstrous families of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes is here. Part 3 on those charming rape-revenge films of the 1970s is here.

Part 4: Monstrous Children

‘Innocence of the flower child in sixties mythology has given way to the absolute evil of these possessed children’ (Dickstein, 1984, p.75)

A significant sub-genre of 1970s American horror is the cycle of films that featured the child as the monster. To a large extent they had their roots in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), not just because of an evil offspring being born into the bourgeois family, but also because the urban family home has become the site of the horror. These films seem to be a general shift to the re-establishment of patriarchal values in the representation of the family. Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), in particular, is the story of a young girl possessed by evil demons because of the lack of a father figure in her life. Donner’s The Omen (1976) has the Antichrist adopted by a wealthy bourgeois family and Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974) has a family have a mutant baby that murders people for unexplained reasons.

Sobchack (1987, p.182) describes these monstrous children as ‘figured as uncivilized, hostile, and powerful Others who […] refuse parental love and authority and mock the established values of dominant institutions’. This is seen in many American horror films, particularly William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974) where the police, science, religion and parenthood are all represented as failing, and under attack from the children of the 1970s. The police in the two previously mentioned films are represented as useless, in The Exorcist (1973), the detective fails to discover who is responsible for the murder of a man, and in It’s Alive (1974) the police spend the entire film searching for and getting killed by the monstrous baby. Similarly, in Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976), the police kill the one man who knows the truth about his devilish offspring, just as he is about to rid the world of the great evil. As Muir (2002. p.429) notes, ‘society just saw another abusive, monstrous father hurting his child’, suggesting the horror is not supernatural perhaps, but rooted in religion, society and the bourgeois family.

Wood (1978, p.30) argues that ‘‘The Omen’ is old-fashioned, traditional, reactionary: the “goodness” of the family unit isn’t questioned, “horror” is disowned by having the devil-child a product of the Old World, unwittingly adopted into the American family, the devil-child and his independent-female guardian… are regarded as purely evil’. However the father is represented as being responsible for bringing the evil into the family. He is implicated from the very beginning of the film. Firstly a nun holds the baby behind a pane of glass, as the father looks at them and his reflection is shown in the glass over the top of the baby. This clearly represents the father as the reason for the devil-child being brought to the family. Not only this, but he also brings the child to his wife and hands it to her and also agrees to lie and keep the death of their real child a secret. Both parents are then even further implicated in creating a monstrous child by having the mother discard the child with a servant as she follows her husband to hear about his promotion. Then the couple shut out the nanny and the child at the window in order to talk about going upstairs and having sex.

The figure of the independent woman is also interesting in the film in that, although she may seem evil and does not want the child to go to church, she is also positioned in opposition to the mother of the family. Her dress suggests she is traditional and Victorian, whereas Mrs Thorne is often dressed in trousers and talks about abortion, which suggests she is a more modern woman. The independent female nanny is also seen as the sole protector of Damien, suggesting that the child needs protection from the modern family unit and in particular the father who by the end of the film is trying to kill it. Therefore the family in Donner’s The Omen (1976) is not represented as being as innocent as Wood suggests. Like in Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), religion is used for supernatural occurrences, but the family is also implicated in causing the horror.

Williams (1996, P.112) writes that ‘The Exorcist appeared at a time of fundamental changes within the family. Despite its enshrinement within American ideology, the unit bore little relationship to ideologic representations.’ Women’s liberation lead to women having to decide between, or balance, motherhood with a career and also increasing divorce rates. The family in Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) consists of a mother, Chris, and her daughter Regan. Chris and her husband are divorced and therefore Regan’s father no longer lives with them. Williams (1996, p.112) also argues ‘The seeds of Regan’s possession lie within the family’ and this argument stems from Creed’s essay on the film in her book ‘The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis’.

Creed (1993, p.34) asks ‘What better ground for the forces of evil to take root than the household of a family in which the father is absent and where the mother continually utters profanities, particularly in relation to her husband?’ In a particularly telling scene, the audience sees Regan in the foreground listening to her mother having a phone conversation in the background of the same shot. Regan’s mother can be heard getting angrier as she shouts ‘he doesn’t give a shit’, ‘for Christ’s sake’ and ‘I’ve been on this fucking line for twenty minutes’. She is trying to get through to her husband so he can talk to his daughter on her birthday. Mother and child are linked because they are in the same shot, the absence of the father having a negative effect on them both as Chris gets angry and upset and Regan’s possession becomes worse. The lack of a father is also suggested as being a cause of the possession in the scene where mother and daughter use the oiuja board. Regan says she has been communicating with ‘Captain Howdy’ who refuses to let the mother in on the game and will not answer if he thinks the mother is pretty. This is a suggestion that the daughter has created a surrogate father figure in ‘Captain Howdy’.

Father Merrin is represented as the returning father figure for the fractured family. The demons inside Regan even say his name on the tape when it is played in reverse. This suggests that Regan’s subconscious is crying out for a father figure to re-establish patriarchal law. The audience sees Merrin in the woods, then the devil-girls face, then the taxi carrying Merrin pulling up to the house, and then the face of the girl again. They are clearly linked by this succession of images and the man returning to the family seems to be the answer to the problems. In the shot of Merrin outside the house, he looks like a typical bourgeois father returning from a day at work, briefcase in hand. When Merrin enters the house, the demon instantly shouts his name. This suggests Regan has been waiting for a man she already knows, to return to the house. Merrin is the perfect representative of patriarchal law, an elderly white male who is a priest. When he enters the house, he is not interested in the background of the case, suggesting he does not see a little girl possessed. He merely sees a demon, a vile little girl who has no respect for religion and patriarchy and therefore needs to be taught to be submissive and acceptable to a repressed, male-dominated society. Father Karras is also a representative of a patriarchal institution, the church and Chris automatically depends on him, in one scene leaning on his shoulder and saying ‘just help her’. The scene where Chris irons Karras’s clothes can also be read as her return to subordination and taking a traditional female role in the family. The final scene represents the return of patriarchal order as Regan’s eyes lower in submission as she sees the priest and the mother says ‘Goodbye Father’ and then Regan immediately kisses the priest on the cheek showing her new respect and thanks to patriarchy for putting her back in her place.

Williams (1996, p.112) argues the film contains ‘assaults upon the forces of law, medicine, religion, and motherhood – patriarchal institutions that depend on the family to maintain female subordination’. The mother, Chris, is acting in a film that depicts student protests which hints at the changing of society in the 1970s. The protest is about education and military intervention and Chris’s character is attacking the institutions. Religion is also attacked in the film, the Church is desecrated and the monstrous child masturbates with a crucifix before causing the deaths of two priests. Karras’s mother is also trapped in poverty because of her son’s dedication to the church. This is shown in a scene where Karras’s uncle suggests that she would be living better if he had become a psychiatrist. Karras’s dedication to his religion means he must lead a life of poverty and therefore his mother dies alone in a hospital full of mental patients. The medical profession is also assaulted in that they have no answers for Regan’s symptoms. In one early scene, Regan spits in a doctors face and calls him a ‘fucking bastard’ before the men in white coats hold her down and escort her mother out of the room. This shows their attempt to keep the women subordinate by controlling and restricting them when they become emotional and fight patriarchal institutions such as the medical profession and the church. Kinder and Houston (1987, p.49) argue ‘This attack on science is part of a larger condemnation of sophisticated, decadent, bourgeoise culture…’. It can also be argued that Karras assaults motherhood with his line ‘you son of a bitch’ which he shouts at the little girl/demon as he tries to get the demon to come out of her. Although he seems to be addressing the demon inside her, this can be read as his true feelings toward Regan, a ‘son of a bitch’, a bitch that had no respect for the church and could therefore not control her child properly.

Interestingly, the story which the book and film were based on was about the possession of a little boy, but, as Kinder and Houston (1987, p.53) point out, ‘the sex change also introduces the dimension of woman as the weaker vessel’. Regan is more susceptible to the evil that possesses her because she is a girl and she has no father to protect her, the film suggests. In addition to this women are represented as a point of weakness for men in the film. The devil tries to weaken and anger Karras by using his mother’s voice and pleading with him and also by telling the priest that his mother ‘sucks cocks in hell’. Karras is also tempted away from religion by the poverty and illness of his mother as he says to another priest that he may be losing his faith after visiting his mother.

Creed also emphasises the repression of the bourgeois family in Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) when she writes ‘it suggests that the family home, bastion of all the right virtues and laudable moral values, is built on a foundation of repressed sexual desires including those which flow between mother and daughter’ (Creed, 1993, p.35). This repression of sexual desires is most clearly represented in the scene where Regan forces her mother’s head down to her genitals and shouts ‘lick me’. Regan also kills her prospective new father, Burke Dennings, the director of the film Chris is starring in. She unconsciously sees the man as a threat even though she tells her mother that she can ‘bring him’ on a sightseeing tour. Regan also asks ‘you don’t like him like Daddy?’ signalling her awareness of their relationship. The scene with the psychiatrist/hypnotist reveals further repressed desires as Regan grabs the man by his genitals, whether to remove them or for another reason is not clear. The psychiatrist says it is an ‘unconscious rebellion’ that ‘starts with a conflict or guilt’. This suggests that Regan is rebelling against the men that are trying to take her mother away from her and perhaps feels guilty for the love she feels towards her mother. The scene where Chris wakes up to find Regan in bed with her can be read as Regan beginning to no longer repress her sexual desires for her mother. She offers the excuse the bed was shaking but this could be seen as a typical child’s lie to cover the fact they just want to be near their mother. In the end, Regan wins, as Creed argues in her essay, ‘Baby Bitches from Hell: Monstrous-Little Women in Film’, ‘In the final scene Regan and her mother depart the battleground, arm-in-arm, restored to their former relationship in which they related happily like lovers.’ (Creed, no date).

On the other hand, in Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974) the monstrous child is the object of repression, as Muir (2002, p.268) asserts, ‘it represents a rampant fear of the time: a fear of having children and maintaining family.’ The mother asks the father before the birth, ‘you’re not going to feel trapped?’ and it is revealed that they have inquired about abortion in the past. In addition to this, a police officer in the film says, ‘people without children don’t realise how lucky they are’. This hatred of children is also shown in the scene where the baby is stealing food and milk from the fridge. The child is represented as a consumer that steals from parents. The lingering shot on the van that has ‘Stop Children’ written on the back also reinforces this view. In another scene, the child murders a milkman and as the blood and milk flow out of the truck, they mix together which represents the corruption of innocence. This is taken further in the explanations for why the child is a mutant, of which lead, smog and radiation are all pollutants, poisons to an unborn child.

The film seems to take a reactionary view in that the mother is suggested as being a possible cause of the mutation when she ponders ‘maybe it’s all the pills’ and this is hinted at again in the scene where the soon-to-be fathers are talking together. One man, a bug exterminator, tells the others about how bugs can evolve and adapt to poisons, so they cannot be terminated as easily, suggesting this could be the same thing with human babies as contraception becomes widespread. In addition to this the final scene shows the father reunited with his child and running away in the sewers from his wife suggesting it is the mission of men to stop women from deciding the fate of children.

However, the film also takes a more progressive view in that the father of the family is also seen as a cause of the mutated baby. Williams (1996, p.107) argues ‘It’s Alive presents its monster as the logical product of the typically affluent American family.’ The father is a liar, as shown in the scene when he tells his wife ‘you’re more important’, after we have seen him at work desperate to keep his job. He is also keen to murder the child from the beginning, his wife asking ‘why are you so anxious to be the one to do it?’ The father believes ‘it’s not my child’ and when selling the baby’s body for medical research, he also says ‘it’s no relation to me’. His apathy towards the well being of his child is even further demonstrated in the scene when he is told the child is to be destroyed and he replies ‘I don’t care’. The father is torn between his pride and his job and becoming a father again. The film ends with him taking responsibility for the child and this is when it is not seen as a threat anymore, until the police become a threat to it. Again the police are represented as useless as they never manage to capture the infant and at one point in the film, surround and point all their guns at an innocent child, a visual representation of the theme of society wanting to destroy children.

Therefore these films are generally fairly reactionary in their representations of the family, particularly towards female characters and the absence of a patriarch in the family of Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973). However there are also some progressive elements in these monstrous children films as argued in the above readings of The Omen (1976) and It’s Alive (1974). Nevertheless these films are not as progressive as Hooper’s and Craven’s critiques of the bourgeois family and yet they still all retain the idea of the family being in some way responsible for the monsters.

Back to part 2 on Monstrous Families.
Back to part 3 on Rape Revenge films.
 
Part 5 on Monstrous Parents is here.
Part 6 on my conclusions is here.

How is the family represented in American horror films of the 1970s? Part 3

I have decided to post my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s in full over a series of posts. I hope that one day it may be of some vague use to someone somewhere somehow.

Part 1 of my dissertation on the representation of the family in American horror films of the 1970s is here. Part 2 on the monstrous families of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes is here. Now for part 3 on those charming rape-revenge films of the 1970s.

Part 3: The Rape-Revenge Films

‘Out there, in the woods and on the placid lakes, there is danger from the “locals.”’ (Muir, 2002, p.543)

Wes Craven’s two major films of the 1970s, The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and The Last House on the Left (1972) are both severe critiques of the bourgeois family. As a result they share some thematic elements. The “locals” in The Last House on the Left (1972) are not the ‘monstrous’ proletariat however. Instead they are the vengeful bourgeois parents of a raped and murdered virgin. On the other hand, in Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave (1978) the “locals” are a small group of men who gang-rape and nearly kill an independent woman from the city. However the horror, Barbara Creed and Robin Wood respectively argue, stems from the figure of the ‘femme castratrice’, and the repression of female sexuality, not the local men.

Williams (1996, p.138) argues that in Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) ‘The Collingwood family live in the American Dream’s self-deceptive image; it contains disturbing contradictions they choose to ignore.’ The tranquillity and peace of the rural area in which they live is emphasised from the very first shot of the ducks on the lake. This peacefulness of nature is emphasised throughout the film but then when Mrs Collingwood asks her husband about ‘the outside world’, he says it is full of ‘murder and mayhem’. Similarly, Mari is going to see a band called ‘Bloodlust’ who dismember chickens. She does not care about the chickens and instead fantasises about ‘making it’ with ‘Bloodlust’ in cotton wool. Another contradiction is demonstrated when the Stillo family point out that ‘people in China eat with sticks’ while these supposedly civilised people have an abundance of silverware.

Williams (1996, p.139) also argues that ‘The Collingwood family repress the violence and sexuality excessively seen in the Stillos.’ This is clearly demonstrated when Mr Collingwood tells his wife he wants to attack her. This leads to a small kiss, not a full violent and sexual attack, like the one that befalls Mari and Phyliss. Mrs Collingwood is shown as hypocritical as she and the father comment on Mari’s lack of a bra. Mari counters that her mother would have worn bras that made her breasts look like ‘torpedoes’ in her day. Mr Collingwood stresses that her nipples can be seen through her top as he is trying to repress his daughter’s sexuality. However Mari says to her friend that because of her breasts filling out, ‘she feels like a woman for the first time’. Another example of how the bourgeois family repress violent tendencies is in the scene in which Mr Collingwood has to go down into the basement, a common filmic representation of the unconscious mind, in order to find the weapons that he will use to kill the Stillos.

Muir (2002, p.212) points out that ‘The two families… are paralleled throughout the film to suggest that they have more in common than first meets the eye.’ This is done mostly through the crosscutting between the two families. This technique is first used when the Stillo family are tormenting the two girls and alternatively the Collingwoods are preparing for the celebration of Mari’s sixteenth birthday. This is possibly meant to be a glimpse into the future where the Stillo’s actions cause the Collingwood parents to prepare traps for their daughter’s killers. The fathers of both families are trying to control their children, Mr Collingwood by commenting on Mari’s lack of a bra, and Krug by keeping his son addicted to drugs. Having Mari and Sadie both first appear in a bathroom also connects the families, as does the inclusion of close-ups of the family cat and the family dog belonging to the Stillos and the Collingwoods respectively. Also the families are both represented as capable of showing guilt, as the close ups of the Stillo family’s faces and the blood on their hands after they rape Mari shows. They are clearly sickened by themselves and wash the blood off themselves soon after. This is linked to the final shot of the Collingwoods as they sit together covered in blood and the policeman pulls the chainsaw from Mr Collingwood’s hands. Mari and Junior are also paralleled as Mari vomits after being raped. Junior later vomits, though whether this is because of withdrawals or from guilt is unclear. However the fact that as his head lifts after vomiting, Mrs Collingwood sees the peace symbol around his neck, and also his eventual suicide, suggests that it may be his guilt that is making him sick.

The bourgeois family is not the only institution that is criticised in the film however. The police are represented as useless idiots with no real authority and are ridiculed throughout the film. They are shown playing games when they could be searching for Mari, they take no notice of the Stillo’s abandoned car, they wish they were not police officers and they arrive just in time to witness the end of the parents revenge but not stop it. The final shot where the cop takes the chainsaw from Mr Collingwood indicates that the police can take away weapons but they cannot stop people having violent impulses.

Nevertheless the film seems to take a reactionary view of feminism. The independent young girls are trying to buy drugs in the middle of the night when they are captured and the reason that the Stillos are after the girls is blamed on Sadie who wants ‘a couple more chicks around’ because of reading ‘women’s lib. magazines’. Mrs Collingwood is also represented as a castrating mother figure as she bites off Weasel’s penis during oral sex.

In Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (1978) the independent woman is positioned in opposition to the traditional family and the role of women that it promotes. This positioning is shown most clearly in the scene where Jennifer, the independent woman, watches from a distance the family of the man who she is planning to castrate. Another example is when she first arrives at the house she will be staying at. The house looks large and imposing and instead of choosing to go inside and look around, Jennifer takes all her clothes off and swims in the river. This signifies that she is an independent, liberated woman and not confined to the home with a traditional female family role. In addition to this, Jennifer is represented as vulnerable because she lives alone and therefore seems frightened when she hears noises in the night.

Creed (1993, p.129) argues it is the independent woman who is the monster in this film as she is the ‘femme castratrice’ who is ‘monstrous because she castrates, or kills, the male during coition’. This is represented by the scenes of Jennifer’s revenge, where in two of the four cases she gets the men aroused and then hangs the retarded one and castrates the family man.

However, the film is not wholly reactionary as the house is also used as a symbol of female subordination in relation to the family. The third rape in the film occurs in the house where Stanley is extremely violent towards Jennifer by beating her before he rapes her. This can be read as a comment on domestic violence as one of the men says ‘you wanted total submission’ and the men do not beat Jennifer outside of the house. It seems to suggest that independent women are not the only victims of violence and rape, and that it can also just as easily happen in the family home.

Robin Wood (1984, p.167) notes in ‘An Introduction to the American Horror Film’ that the genre often contains ‘severe repression of female sexuality/creativity’. In the opening scenes of the film, Jennifer is dressed in a red dress and wears make-up. The red signifies the danger she represents to the ‘locals’, men who are not used to seeing independent women from the city. Immediately, Johnny, the rapist and family man, watches her suspiciously as she gets out of her car to stretch her legs. He is clearly threatened by her sexuality as he talks to her and looks at her legs. She even calls herself an ‘evil New Yorker’ to the retarded rapist Matthew as he says she is from ‘an evil place’. When Johnny is begging for his life he blames Jennifer for arousing the men, commenting on the fact that Matthew could see ‘tits with no bra’ when she answered the door to him.

Female creativity is also clearly repressed in the film in two scenes. Firstly when Jennifer is in her hammock trying to write, the voiceover tells the viewer what she is thinking and writing. The voiceover is then drowned out by the noise of the approaching motorboat with the two men in it and her creativity and thought is stopped by the noisy interruption. Then when the men are attacking her in her home, they read and laugh at her writing, before tearing the pages up.

The only family in the film are Johnny’s, who has a wife and two children. The family is represented as the victim of the independent woman’s killing spree. The wife and children are only glimpsed in the film before Johnny’s castration and subsequent death. Afterwards they are seen waiting for him to return and fretting about his safety. Johnny, the family man, is the only victim of Jennifer’s revenge that gets to share his point-of-view with her and therefore the spectator. As he begs for his life he says ‘you can’t do this to me, I’ve got a family’, before later revealing that ‘you get used to a wife’ and that is why he raped Jennifer. The character of Johnny criticises the family as oppressive for men, saying, ‘whether he’s married or not, a man is just a man’ and his wife even calls him ‘a good father and a good husband’, but this is probably because she thinks ‘he’s loyal’, an obvious mistake. Johnny grins as the attack on Jennifer begins while the other men look on with concerned expressions. This suggests marriage and family life have made man even more antagonistic towards women.

On the other hand, the men without families are represented as wild animals as they run through the woods making animal noises like a primitive mating call and chasing Jennifer. They are also to blame for Johnny’s disappearance in the eyes of his wife as she thinks they are the ones who have influenced her husband and got him into trouble. Unfortunately she is mistaken in her loyalty to him, as her husband is the obvious ringleader of the group.

I Spit On Your Grave (1978) therefore maintains a disturbingly reactionary view of independent women in opposition to the woman in the family unit. However it could be argued there are some progressive elements in the film. Overall both films are reactionary in that they present violent sexual threats to independent liberated women. However Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) also has a progressive representation of the bourgeois family as a site of repression and the parents as hypocritical authority figures.

Back to part 2 on Monstrous Families. 
Part 4 on Monstrous children is here.
Part 5 on Monstrous Parents is here.
Part 6 on my conclusions is here.