Books of 2015: Found Footage, Film Studies for Dummies, Shock Value

I made a determined effort to read more film-related books this year. That started off very well with the first few books, but then petered out by the end of the year. This must also be the first year ever where every book I've read was non-fiction. Here's the books I read in 2015:

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Just brilliant. Not many people are so devoted to studying these often very frustrating films. As I'm in the final year of my thesis on this subject, I read this at almost the perfect time. I managed to reference it a great deal in my thesis and I found it fascinating from cover to cover. I WISH I had read it before completing my book on The Blair Witch Project as Heller-Nicholas' analysis of that film would have given me a lot more to write about. The analysis of Paranormal Activity is also excellent and the detailing of how Highway Safety Films have influenced found footage was also something that I had not considered in my own thesis.

If you like found footage, or are just interested in its appeal, this is an absolute must read. Buy it here.

Film Studies for Dummies by Dr James Cateridge

I'd never read one of these 'for Dummies' books before and I thought that after 14 years of studying and teaching film studies, it would probably cover little that I didn't already know. Wow was I wrong. This book has been absolutely essential reading for me. It has clarified some of the most complex ideas in film studies, it has given me new ways to teach certain topics, it has broadened my knowledge of areas where I had little.

In short, it is a brilliant overview of the subject. I would recommend it for any student who is about to embark on Film Studies A level or a degree course. I think I learned more from this one book, than in much of my studies. Somehow it is perfectly pitched for both beginners and people who have been studying film for some time. Buy it here.

Shock Value by Jason Zinoman

Another must read for horror fans. Covers all the big classics from the 70s and the guys behind getting them made. It was especially timely to read this, as soon after I finished it, Wes Craven sadly passed away. Even though films like Texas Chainsaw, Halloween and The Exorcist have been written about to death already, Zinoman still manages to make this feel like a pretty fresh look at some of the greatest films ever to be unleashed from the genre. It would have been a good book to have around while writing my dissertation on the representation of the family in 70s horror. Buy it here.

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

I saw this in a shop for something like £3 and as it was my favourite film of 2014, had to pick it up. A quick read and well worth it, even if you have seen the film. There are many harrowing parts and a quite a few memorable moments that were not included in the film. Overall, a story that deserves to be told and retold and retold.

Revolution by Russell Brand

Just a massive brain-fart really. I like Russell Brand and I like his outlook, but this came across as hopelessly naive in places. Still, there's lots of good stuff here and I hope Brand continues his crusade to try and change the world. I'm still listening.

The Hell of it All by Charlie Brooker

A collection of Brooker's columns for The Guardian. I laughed out loud a lot. After a whole book of reading Brooker's miserable ramblings, it can get a bit much. But he's still a brilliant writer and a lot of fun to read.

I'm also half way through Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey which is frankly, just bonkers.

What did you read this year? Any recommendations?

A2 Film Studies Exam Practice: Spectatorship and Emotional Response

Would you agree that strong emotional effects are achieved in some films by the careful construction techniques and in others by the subject matter itself?

Films are carefully designed and produced to ensure that they cause the audience to feel something. Emotions towards a film can range from joy to anger and despair. The three films studied for this topic revolve around controversial subject matter such as racism and hatred and therefore cause most viewers to feel angry, sad, shocked and often a great deal of anticipation as to how they will end. These emotions are encouraged by the filmmakers through both their choice of subject matter and also the carefully constructed micro techniques used.

Nothing a director does is by accident and many techniques such as the use of a soundtrack and editing are there to encourage emotional responses in the audience. American History X, This is England and United 93 all feature non-diegetic soundtracks that increase the sadness of events depicted on screen. Typical instrumental music is added to the film in post-production and violins and pianos are commonly used for sad scenes. For example when Danny dies in AHX and Derek is running in slow motion, there are violins playing and when Shaun is all alone on the beach in TIE, there is acoustic guitar on the soundtrack. Shane Meadows even drowns out the sound of one character’s speech with piano music to emphasise how sad the scene is with Combo being racist in front of Milky. The editing also builds anticipation in these films with crosscutting between Derek and Danny as they part at the school gates, cutting between the passengers and the people on the ground in United 93 and cutting to close ups of character’s reactions as Combo tells his story. AHX also uses voiceover to make Danny more identifiable.

All three films are constructed to make the audience identify more with some characters than others. They have clear preferred readings created through their construction techniques in order to make the audience care for and side sympathise with certain characters. For example in AHX and TIE, there are young characters called Danny and Shaun. Danny’s voiceover tells the story of the film and as it is supposed to be him reading his essay, it even continues after his death. In essence, the audience hears his thoughts and perspective on events and therefore is more likely to identify with him. The cinematography aids this process with close ups and point of view shots and also the fact Danny is played by Edward Furlong who was a minor star after appearing in Terminator 2. Similarly TIE follows Shaun through his daily life. There is no voiceover but the camera sticks close to him, even when he is alone and we learn that both he and Danny have fathers who have died, instantly making them more sympathetic. When Danny dies and when Shaun starts to become a racist thug, there is music on the soundtrack to ensure that the audience feels sad. On the other hand United 93 uses no stars and reveals very little about the passengers’ back stories but through the cinematography and subject matter, still makes the victims easy to identify with.

Cinematography can be vital to creating an emotional response, as can be the mise-en-scene that is captured by the camerawork. In United 93, the camerawork is very often handheld and the view is often obstructed by framing that is not clear and feels improvised. This gives the film a great sense of realism, as if the viewer is watching a documentary caught be a camera operator on the plane with the passengers. This makes it more horrifying and saddening. The cinematography in AHX and TIE is much more composed and formal. Thought it may not have the same level of realism as U93, it still can create an emotional response. In both films, the spectator is put in the point of view of victims; Milky when he is physically attacked and Murray when he is verbally attacked. The camera is positioned in a high angle to look down on Derek after he has been raped and also on Shaun when he is all alone in TIE. Similarly, a low angle is used to make the house look imposing when Doris falls to her knees outside it after her fight in with Derek in AHX. The mise-en scene of AHX is particularly shocking with its use of swastika tattoos and Nazi memorabilia but it is also shocking and sad to see the appearance of the World Trade Centre still standing in U93.

On the other hand, it is certainly not only the construction techniques in any of these films that make them so sad. It is also the subject matter in all three films that is essential to creating the emotional response and one of the main reasons for this is their reference to real life events. U93 is a film based on the real life events of September 11^th 2001 when a plane was hijacked and the passengers all died trying to take back control of the plane from terrorists. The real events are still very raw in the memories of many people who watch the film and the real life tragedy clearly makes the film far sadder than if the film was nothing but fiction. The phone calls that the characters make are based on actual transcripts which make the scenes where the passengers say goodbye to the loved ones extremely sad and difficult to watch.  AHX and TIE may not be based on true stories but they frequently refer to real life events, to make the films more poignant and sad. AHX has Derek ranting about Rodney King and the LA race riots but Derek also pushes hot button emotive issues such as immigration and unemployment to make his racist rants appeal to his audience of followers. Similarly Combo in TIE uses immigration and unemployment but also refers to the Falklands War and Margaret Thatcher to try and convince people of his cause. These real life references will undoubtedly mean more to those who remember them in real life but the use of real footage in TIE means the viewer will get the message that director Shane Meadows is trying to share.

All three films are about racism, hatred and violence. These are potent issues for creating emotional responses as many spectators will feel strongly about them. AHX deals with the issue of racism through the redemption of one Neo-Nazi skinhead who goes from brutally murdering an African American to being raped in prison by other Neo-Nazis to agreeing to help solve the problem or racism. TIE tells a coming of age story of a young boy who gets in with an older crowd before being influenced by a racist thug and finally turning against racism. U93 is about four men who want to kill a plane full of people because of their religious beliefs and their hatred of America. These are clearly emotive subjects where characters feel extremely strong hatred, say shocking, vile things and commit horrendous acts against each other.

In conclusion, it is not simply the subject matter or the construction techniques that create the strong emotional responses to these films. It is a marriage of both where the content is disturbing, challenging and often brutal while the music, editing and cinematography encourage the viewer to react with sadness, shock or horror. The script and the performances ensure that the audience care for the characters, even characters who they may have at first hated. The most emotional scenes of the films all occur towards the end where the subject of racial conflict comes to a head but also the music, performances, editing and cinematography add inexorably to the emotional impact.

A2 Film Studies Exam Practice: Spectatorship and Emotional Response

Creating the opportunity for emotional responses in popular films is simply to do with manipulating the audience: mainstream films don’t attempt to use emotional responses to make any more considered points.  From your experience would you agree with this?

Mainstream films have a reputation for often being shallow and involving clear-cut heroes and villains with no moral ambiguity.  Emotional response is key as audiences want diversion from everyday life and to be thrilled, happy, excited or saddened by the on-screen events.  However despite the manipulative techniques used by mainstream filmmakers to provoke responses from the audience, some films do deal with serious issues and try to raise serious points about subjects such as racism

Manipulation of the audience’s emotions can be subtle or blatantly obvious.   Sometimes this is just to make the audience feel something and to enjoy the piece of entertainment.  The films studied for this topic are all challenging and do provoke strong emotional responses in the audience.  ‘American History X’ (AHX), ‘This is England’ (TIE) and ‘United 93’ (U93) all deal with the issue of racism and conflict between races.  The films are constructed to manipulate the emotions of the viewers.  Each film is categorised in the drama genre and as expected ends with the viewer encouraged to feel sadness.  This is achieved through the narrative structure, the script, the performances of the actors and the construction of the film form (micro-elements).  The soundtracks of all the films mentioned are particularly manipulative.  The use of violins, a choir and piano music is designed to provoke strong feelings of sadness in the audience.  The end of AHX uses slow motion running, close ups of crying characters and strongly emotive music to generate a feeling of sadness in the audience when a main character dies.  Similarly the ending of U93 uses violin music and handheld cinematography to create a feeling of unbearable tension and sadness in the viewer and likewise, TIE has moments where the piano music is designed to evoke feelings of sympathy and sadness. 

However the films studied do not just use these manipulative techniques to create an emotional response.  The films use these emotional responses to make very well considered points and challenge expectations that viewers will have of characters.  In AHX, the protagonist Derek is a racist skinhead gang leader that kills a group of African Americans for attempting to steal his car.  The film encourages hatred of Derek and disgust at his actions but also gives him a platform to air his shocking and controversial but very articulate viewpoints.  The camera, the script and the narrative structure all identify Derek as the focus of the film but the viewer is encouraged to empathise most with his younger brother Danny.  The death of Danny at the end of the film makes the audience sympathise with Derek.  After he has been raped in prison by white inmates and helped to recovery and rehabilitation by his African-American school principal, Derek is changed and the viewer is challenged to change their feelings for him.  The film uses Derek as a symbol by revealing that even the most hateful characters can find redemption and deserve a second chance.  Similarly the killing of Danny by a young African American in the film suggests the never-ending cycle of hatred that is spawned from the actions of racist people.  

This is England makes an explicit link between racism, nationalism, war and politics.  The use of real footage of Thatcher, the Falklands war and extreme right-wing rallies shows the context of the film and the real-life events that were occurring in the 80s when the film is set.  Shaun’s father has been killed in the war and Combo uses his anger to mould the young boy into a racist, hateful skinhead.  This makes a serious point about the dangers of sending men to war and training them to be racist in order that they can kill their ‘enemies’.  The idea of unification and the diversity of 80s Britain is emphasised through much of the reggae/ska soundtrack and is juxtaposed with the hijacking of skinhead culture by those raised to hate.  Thatcher is explicitly blamed by Combo for starting the war and much of Combo’s anger is directed at immigrants who he sees as the cause of Britain’s problems. 

United 93 is very manipulative of the audiences emotions using a recent real-life event and tear-jerking music to gain a response from viewers.  However there are some considered points in the film that are subtly put across to the audience.  For example, the film intercuts between the passengers of the plane praying for their lives and the terrorists also preying.  This subtle use of editing implies the similarities between the God-fearing, religious Muslims and Christians.  The titles on screen at the end of the film force home the message that this is a real-life event and that many real people lost their lives on September 11^th 2001 and that the official story of what happened to United 93 is true and that rumours it was shot down are untrue.  However originally the titles were to say ‘the war on terror had begun’ implying that the people on board were the first to fight against terror in the ongoing war between America and its enemies.  This message was changed to avoid controversy however.

The films listed here are not as mainstream as Hollywood blockbusters but were all very popular with critics and audiences.  Their tackling of a serious issue like racial conflict suggests that they are going to make some serious and considered points.  However as they are mainstream narrative films, they do this with interesting characters and dramatic plot elements to encourage audiences to have strong emotional responses.  The films try to engage viewers by creating anger, sadness and even disgust but also give the viewers things to think about and a chance to challenge their own views and preconceptions, as well as extremist ideology.

Iconographic Genre Conventions in The Terminator

James Cameron’s film The Terminator is a hybrid of genres with action, science-fiction and horror being most notable. It contains many of the generic conventions of each of these three genres. Producers use genre to help sell their films, audiences use genre to help choose what films they will watch and even the creative people behind the films use genre to help script their films. Genres are about repetition and formula but they are also about creating expectations and often subverting those expectations. Genre films have to tread a fine line between being familiar enough to entice and audience but also being too repetitive and predictable.

The Terminator ensures it will appeal to a wide ranging audience by containing many conventions of different popular genres. This means there will be much that is familiar to audiences about it but there will also be a lot that is new to them as well. Generic conventions can be divided into iconography, narrative and thematic. I will focus on the iconography of The Terminator, analysing what conventions it uses to appeal to horror, action and sci-fi fans as well as how it updates, changes and subverts expectations that the audience might have.

Action movie iconography

Although early in his career, Arnold Schwarzenegger was already becoming typecast in American films by the time he starred in The Terminator in 1984. He was known for his huge muscles, a physique crafted from years of bodybuilding and for his Austrian accent. He has already starred in fantasy action films such as Conan the Barbarian and looked like the kind of alpha male hero Hollywood could feature in an action film. However Arnold Schwarzenegger was cast as the villain in The Terminator to help make the hero look like more of an underdog and therefore make the film more suspenseful and exciting.

The early scenes of the film feature a fight between The Terminator and some punk youths. This involves a knife which should be a terrifying weapon. However the Terminator is not frightened by the youths, their knife or hurt when he is stabbed. This sets him up as a dangerous villain that will be hard to kill. The film also features lots of chases, both on foot and in cars. These are fast paced and exciting for the audience and are shot, edited and scored to make them appear tense and thrilling with the sound of screeching tyres used to emphasise speed. Guns are often used and the sound of gunshots can be heard which also adds excitement as guns can be used to hurt people from a distance and they are a symbol of power and deadly force. The Terminator also features fire and explosions which are major signifiers of destruction and are caused by using weapons. The tension around an impending explosion is built through intercutting between shots of the fuse burning and then shots of the people who may be affected by the explosion as in the scene where Reese puts a bomb in the tanker that Sarah is being chased by.

Police cars and police uniforms also feature in The Terminator but they are not the heroes of the film, as is often typical with action films. The hero is a plain clothed soldier from the future and to further subvert expectations, the villain drives a police car at one point.

Science fiction iconography

The Terminator also has many iconic conventions of the science fiction film. It frequently uses special effects such as lasers that fly across the screens, representing the firepower of futuristic weaponry. The idea of a robot that looks human not something that has been invented yet and is therefore futuristic. The audience is made aware that Schwarzenegger’s Terminator is not human in a number of ways. There are point of view shots that have a red tint and written data scrolling on screen and this is accompanied by robotic noises so the viewer knows they are seeing what the robot sees. Eventually it is revealed that beneath the skin, The Terminator has a metal skeleton with bright red eyes. This signifies strength, anger and death and makes him appear to be from the future and also dangerous and almost impossible to kill.

There are also scenes set in 2029 when machines are hunting and killing humans. The future is bleak with destruction everywhere and humans living underground. The machinery looks unfamiliar to modern audiences and the world is unrecognisable. The connotations of machinery that flies through the sky shooting lasers while humans scurry around on the surface trying to fight back is that technology has taken over the planet and has become more powerful than humans. This is a typically dystopian vision of the future that is reminiscent of other science fiction films such as The Matrix and even Jurassic Park where technology allows people to re-create dinosaurs than then go on a rampage.

Horror iconography

The Terminator also has elements of the horror film in its iconography. James Cameron uses suspenseful music during chases to build the idea of threat. Most of the film takes place at night with low key lighting. The idea that only bad things happen at night and the poor visibility of night time adds to the excitement and suspense. There is blood and gore and a focus on injuries in some scenes. For example when The Terminator cuts his arm open or takes his eye out, there is the kind of graphic detail that might be expected in a horror film.

Though the killer uses a gun as his weapon of choice, he also hunts down women who appear weaker and more innocent than he is. This focus on female victims and also that we see from the killer’s point of view is similar to slasher film conventions. The fact the killer murders his defenceless victims in cold blood and never shows any remorse or emotion is also similar to slasher film villains like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees. The Terminator is also occasionally shot from a low angle to make him look dominant and Schwarzenegger’s face never changes to show that he is robotic, inhuman and impossible to reason with... just like a slasher killer!

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.