Week 25

Question 1

What makes a film ‘a horror film’?

Answer 1

-Horror and comedy- visceral cinema
-A transgressive genre

Question 2

Why Horror?

Answer 2

-Psychological/ psychoanalytical approaches
-“the horror film…. first addresses our unconscious”
-The pleasures of vicarious danger
-The “return of the repressed”
-Sociological/ political approaches
-Horror reflects prevailing conditions and ideologies

Question 3

Hayward’s Three Major Categories of Horror

Answer 3

-“Unnatural” Horror
Monsters, bodily mutations
-Psychological Horror
-Slasher/ massacre films

Question 4

“Gothic” Literature

Answer 4

-Prescursor of modern “horror”
-18th century origins
-Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
-Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
- Lewis, The Monk (1796)
-Later examples include’s Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1845).

Question 5

“Gothic”

Answer 5

-A medieval art style (12th- 16th centuries)
-By 18th century, “gothic” = “ancient” and “barbarous”- signaled atavistic qualities

Question 6

Gothic Narratives

Answer 6

-The dead and gone return to haunt the present (ghosts, ancient curses)
-Typical setting: the gothic mansion or castle; the old, haunted house
-Cryptys, dungeons, basements, attics
-Ancient barbarity erupts into modern, civilized life
-Threatening sexuality, animalistic qualities.

Question 7

Folk Horror

Answer 7

-natural rural landscape
-which isolates characters and communities
-This isolation leads to development of skewed moral beliefs
-Those beliefs trigger violent or supernatural happenings

Question 8

Mapping a Genre’s Internal History

Answer 8

-Four broad (overlapping) phases:
-Formative
-Classical
-Revisionist (or critical)
-Reflexive

Question 9

1. Formative Phase

Answer 9

-A genre begins to emerge as a genre
-Conventions and iconography established
-Films come to be seen as belonging to a particular genre only in retrospect

Question 10

2.Classical Phase

Answer 10

-Genre clearly established
-Conventions and iconography now fully worked out
-Audience expectations formed
-Film-makers assume popular consensus: audience shares the values underlying film

Question 11

3. Revisionist (or Critical) Phase

Answer 11

-Values of classical genre revised or called into question
-Underlying moral assumptions of genre questioned
-Consensus gives way to uncertainty re. underlying moral assumptions.

Question 12

Reflexive Phase

Answer 12

-Films begin to reflect on their own status as films
-Parodies are common