Posted: February 28th, 2023

horror movie

Essay One (1500-2000 words)
Due: February 22th

Write an analysis of one of the films listed that incorporates course material and considers the film’s thematic concerns and ideological implications. Consider what the film is saying about the social world it depicts. More specifically, interpret what is constructed as monstrous and ‘normal’ and the relationship between the two. Your analysis should include reference to course readings and lecture material.

Format requirement:

Use 12-point font, double space and number pages. A cover page is not necessary but make sure you include your name and the course number. Any citation method is acceptable. A timestamp isn’t necessary.

Choose 1 movie below to analyze:

Category:
Psycho Killer and Monstrous Families

Psycho(1960)

Halloween(1978)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre(1974)

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

The Hills Have Eyes(2006)

Wrong Turn(2003)

Turistas(2006)

Boxing Helena(1993)

MARTYRS(2008)

Would You Rather(2012)

THE PURGE(2013)

Course readings and Lecture material(and PDF) are provided:

Please read them carefully before you start writing the essay! Make sure you use them as reference!!!!!!!!

· Wood Intro AM Horror

· Clover Gender Slasher

· Williams T 1980s Family Horror

· Wee SCREAM

· Lizardi Slasher Remakes

· TCSM Presentation

· Psycho-Killers Marginalized and of Means

· Psycho-Killers 1

· Psycho-Killers 2

· Psycho-Killers 3

· Psycho-Killers 4

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Resurrecting and Updating the Teen Slasher: The Case of “Scream”
Wee, Valerie
Journal of Popular Film & Television; Summer 2006; 34, 2;
International Index to Performing Arts Full Text
pg. 50

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Some Interpretative Questions

What makes the monster?

Where does it originate? Under what conditions does it emerge? Who and/or what is to blame? Is it the status quo or the disruption of it?

2) What is the monster?

Is it something that’s completely othered and absolutely evil? Is there an ambivalence about the them/us binary? Is the conventionally sanctioned norm the actual monster?

3) What is the consequence/outcome of the monstrous threat?

Does the film offer narrative closure that sanctions traditional authority? Is there an open ending that may refuse to reinforce the conventional norm? Does the display of horror hinge on the torment of female characters?

Paranoid Horror

1) The threat comes from some aspect of the modernized society such as monstrous medicine, earthly (as opposed to alien) technology or the institution of the family.
2) There’s an ambivalence between sanctioned norm and demonized other possibly leading to a disruption of an unambiguous good versus bad binary.
3) Narrative closure is suspended and order is not restored by sites of ideological authority such as the Christian Church, the US military, or the patriarchal family.

Sawyer Family Album

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

In paranoid films, the horror happens at home.

In the case of North American horror films, home is understood as the familiar, the social world inhabited by the audience.

TCSM begins with a radio news broadcast that lists a variety of violent and self-destructive events suggesting a pessimism about the state of society.

But home is also characterized as the family home.

The family is a feature of many different horror subgenres (and genres beyond melodrama).

In the Slasher subgenre, it’s the family (a familiar, social institution) that gives us the the human monster.

How is the family in TCSM constructed?

It’s patriarchal.

The cook is the father as disciplinarian: “look what your brother did to that door!”

This is not primarily due to the fact that all of the characters are male.

But because the family is authoritarian (there is a definite hierarchy among the characters).

The hierarchy is expressed in abusive behaviour toward those with less power.

Leatherface, the most violent of them, cowers in the kitchen when chastised by the cook.

The male parent is not allowed to play the role of nurturerer.
3

Horror in the Family Home

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The farm house with the windmill is classic Americana, as it’s socially constructed.

Here, the heartland and the pastoral are a place of danger, macabre decorations and furniture made of human bones.

The stone house on the hill is also a site of decay, rot and insect infestation having been abandoned by the owners of the slaughter house.

Horror happens in the most familiar of places, and in daylight.

Even at the dinner table!

But, what made the monstrous family in the first place?

A Monster of Capitalism’s Failures

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The family has been put out of work due to automation and capitalism’s push for profits and expansion.

They’ve been made defunct by the industry in which they worked and have been put out of work.

The characters are economically disenfranchised; they adapt and adopt ways to survive.

There’s a gas station, but there’s no gas (’70s gas crisis).

They make their own furniture by what they can salvage (granted, from the grave yard).

And they hitchhike, as the family only owns one broken down older truck (in contrast to the newer van).

Economic inequality is also suggested by the cook’s comments about how the cost of electricity could put a man out of business.

They try to survive by selling BBQ (human) meat.

Robin Wood argues that the cannibalism is a metaphor for capitalism: the idea of people living off of and profiting by the labour of other people.

Monster with a Human Face, Literally

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

There is an ambivalence between the categories of monster and norm, not only because the monster is human and familial.

The so-called normal family bickers and is abusive toward Franklin and each other. (Kirk gifts a tooth to Pam.)

And there is some sympathy expressed for the monster by virtue of their victimization by industry.

Leatherface is perplexed and is only trying to protect his property. It is Texas after all.

The hitchhiker just wants to make friends.

White
Female

Torture and Fear

Conventionally, the psycho-killer is male and the victims predominately female.

Sally and Pam suffer the most brutal deaths. And for an extended period of time.

For example, Sally is chased by Leatherface and suffers through a dinner party for a considerable length of time.

In fact, the entire 2nd half of the film is dedicated to her torment.

The FX woman quit the production rather than construct the mechanism for the image of a female character on a meat hook.

This kind of sexualized violence limits any progressive potential of the film’s critique of economic inequality.

Student generated points:

That Sally, like many other women in horror, is drenched in blood suggests that her very identity is defined by her torture and fear.

Her clothes are also subjected to the same kind of abuse and damage.

Think about the actor having to put on those clothes again and again for each filming day. And the dirty rag with which the cook gags her during the gas station scene. (To be sure, a male actor had to wear the Leatherface mask.)

Regarding the female scream and fear as a central feature of horror: conventionally, men are not allowed to show fear and, if they do, they are marginalized (trivialized, feminized).

No Restoration of Order

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The film ends without narrative closure in the middle of LF’s bizarre dance with the chainsaw.

The implication is that traditional sites of authority are not sanctioned and strengthened in the encounter with the monster.

It’s possible to see this kind of ending as progressive in its pessimism.

The horror here will continue.

There is no safety.

Just when Sally thinks she finds safety in the gas station, she’s hit with a broom, tied up and abducted.
8

Sally Survives

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Sally is the prototype of the final girl.

Not necessarily feminist.

She’s allowed to live to be tortured and suffer.

She’s reduced to hysterics and consumed by fear.

She’s lost her brother and friends.

Her heroics are only about saving herself.

Sally is the one in need of saving, twice.

Student generated point:

The black trucker is denied the role of hero; and the truck driver – “white savior” trope).

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Psycho-Killers: Those Economically Marginalized and Those of Economic

Means

SLIDE

-apart from the classic monsters, I think it’s fair to say that when one thinks of horror the psycho-killer sub-genre may come to mine

-these films are also known as the slasher, splatter or slice and dice sub-genre

-the storylines in these films are fairly simple

-gruesome deaths, usually by knives, chainsaws, axes or anything sharp are common in this subgenre

-these horrible fates are experienced by a group (usually young people or teens)

-they’re terrorized and dispatched one by one by a killer (or killers)

-conventionally, one remains alive able to escape the monster, at least in the current film (what Carol Clover calls “the final girl” -more on that later…)

-in general, they posit an individual (usually male) monster

-the psycho-killer is human without supernatural powers

-now, Freddy Krueger is an obvious exception as he’s dead and has the supernatural power to enter dreams

-but he was human to begin with

-one of the implications of this construction of a human monster is that fear may be directed toward an individual psychopath for (usually) his personal actions

-the monstrous is individual and not systemic

-that’s not to say that a psycho-killer film can’t make a connection between the individual and the social world as we will see

-the construction of the family is one way that the individual monster is portrayed in relation to social institutions

-it’s not always the case that psycho-killer families are portrayed or that the family is a focus (and not all family horror films are slasher films)

-but, in slasher films there’s often some family reason for the monster

-one thing to look for (either for its presence or absence) is who (or what’s) to blame for the psychopath

SLIDE

-conventionally, it’s the mother

-and, in
Friday the 13th (1980) it turns out that the killer
is the mother

-this is not always the case

-in
Peeping Tom (1960) it’s the father who creates the monster

-and, in
The Stepfather (1987 & 2009), the stepfather is the psycho-killer

-the families that generate monsters are often dysfunctional in some way, or positioned outside the normalized, idealized patriarchal heteronormative nuclear family

-now, that’s not the case with
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) for example

-in that film, it’s the suburban parents that generate Freddy through vigilante justice (they burn him alive)

-and, they are absolutely no help to their children once Freddy seeks revenge by attacking them in their dreams (perhaps betraying a lack of faith in traditional sites of authority)

-however, conventionally, the problem is the mother and family is non-traditional and constructed as
dysfunctional

–
Psycho is credited with ushering in the psycho-killer sub-genre and it’s certainly useful as a point of comparison for later films (as is
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) so I want to spend a little time discussing them

-at the end of
Psycho,
a psychiatrist explains Norman’s condition and in doing so locates the source of the monstrous in Norman’s relationship with his mother

SLIDE/CLIP

-Norman is a product of a family defined by the absence of the biological father

-in fact, his problems start with his father’s death and the over-presence of the mother with whom he has an unusual attachment

-he’s jealous of his mother’s lover, kills them both and keeps his mother’s rotting corpse in the cellar

-in some ways, the mother is also the monster

-one of the film’s key fight scenes is when Marion’s sister discovers her in the attack and turns the chair around

SLIDE/CLIP

-what makes Norman monstrous is the fact that he has taken on his mother’s personality

-as the psychiatrist explains, Norman was never only Norman but he was sometimes only Mother and it was the mother side of him who killed

-he is figuratively possessed by his mother

-to be sure, he’s the killer but he was made in a particular kind of family

-there’s some sympathy afforded Norman during the lengthy clean-up scene when the audience thinks he’s actually covering up for his mother and when the car almost doesn’t sink (the camera focuses on a nervous Norman)

-certainly, the psychiatrist blames the mother

SLIDE

-this emphasis on the family is seen in the image of the psycho house which has gained a great deal of popular cultural resonance

SLIDE

-Norman is also the monster and an example of one who exists here (specifically, in Farevale CA)

-even though this monster has a familiar face, he is still othered, outside of an idealized masculine norm

-he’s not fully an adult either

-he’s both infantilized and feminized

-for one thing, he dresses in his mother’s clothing and a wig when he kills (or tries to as we saw in the previous clip)

-of course, not all psycho-killers are non-binary but it’s definitely something to consider of this kind of monster especially if their psychology is generated by the mother

SLIDE

-in
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) the killer is transgender

-this film is also instructive with respect to how economic class helps to define the monster

[-Hannibal Lector is, to be sure, a monster, however, it’s arguable that his status in the film is elevated over Buffalo Bill who is the actual subject of Clarice’s investigation -we’ll look at the relationship between the psycho-killer and economic class in more detail later in this section]

-in
Dressed to Kill (1980) the killer, whom the audience is lead to believe is a woman, turns out to be a cross-dressing psychiatrist

SLIDE/CLIP

-let’s turn to the consequences of the psycho-killer

SLIDE

-the shower scene has been canonized in the history of film as moment of cinematic brilliance with respect to editing

-the violence of a knife attack is communicated through rapid editing but cuts to the body are not shown -it’s implied

-it’s been argued that this is a way of implicating the spectator in the violence

-any sympathy invoked for Norman may also work to draw a connection between audience and killer [keep in mind -strategy of killer point-of-view]

-certainly, in more recent psycho-killer films the murders are much more graphic -perhaps signaling themselves as spectacle

-it’s a convention of the earlier psycho-killer films that women are often the victims of violence

-men get killed too, of course, but the murders of women tend to be more graphic and extended

-the private eye, Arbogast, is clothed when he’s killed and, in part, filmed in longshot as he stumbles backward down the stairs of the house he entered without permission, so he’s on the defensive

-compare that with Marion’s death -she’s naked in the shower and certainly not expecting company

-in recent psycho-killer films (such as re-makes of and prequels to
TCSM and so-called ‘torture porn’ like the
Saw and
Hostel series) the killing is somewhat more egalitarian

-conventionally, women are stalked by the killer

SLIDE

-and, their deaths tend to be preceded by a predatory objectifying gaze

-the killer, and through him, the audience is a voyeur

-this works to sexualize the character

-what also works to sexualize the characters is sex

-it’s a convention of these films that if you have sex, you will die shortly thereafter

-in that respect, they are very moralistic

-generally, it’s the young women who don’t have sex that are spared the fate of the others

SLIDE

-it’s been argued that Marion is killed because of her sexuality as a punishment

–
Halloween (1978) establishes this association between sexual activity and death in its opening scene

-it also provides the audience with the killer’s point-of-view

-viewer’s share the predatory gaze

SLIDE/CLIP

–
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) also visits the most graphic consequence of the monstrous on its female characters, even if they don’t die

SLIDE/CLIP

-Carol Clover argues that the final girl is a way for male audience members to identify with the character who defeats the monster (at least temporarily, if not actually) even though they are female

-she observes that often the final girl has traits commonly associated with men (resourcefulness and resilience)

-and, they’re usually the ones who abstain from sex, say no to drugs and are trusted to baby sit

-this isn’t necessarily progressive

–
it’s important to note that the final girl doesn’t usually save her friends

-and, she survives to be tortured and tormented

-not all psycho-killer films focus on sexuality, and certainly that’s not the only lens through which they may be read

SLIDE

-unlike
Psycho, the family in this film is all male and multi-generational along patriarchal lines (the character at the end of the table in the slide is grandpa)

-both families are ‘dysfunctional’ but for different reasons

-in
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the family is not defined by sexual repression or a mother problem but by social status and economic class

-much is made of the slaughterhouse closing down due to mechanization and their subsequent unemployment

[-even with
Psycho’s psycho-sexual themes, it’s also true that Norman is the owner of a failing business (a highway went through and cut him off from traffic)]

-Robin Wood argues that the monstrous family is generated by capitalism, or rather, its failings

-and, that their cannibalism may be seem as a metaphor for capitalism in that it invokes the idea of people living off the flesh/labour of other people

-this family is capitalism’s return of the oppressed

-and, the violence isn’t located solely in the monstrous family but in the society as a whole

SLIDE

-conventionally, psycho-killers and monstrous families are often othered in terms of economic class

-this is done partly through depictions of their homes and the classist/elitist association between poverty and filth

-these kinds of families are sites of disgust and revulsion

-it’s their lack of privilege (their status as economic other) that makes them monstrous

-psycho-killer narratives are often about encounters between those with economic means and those without

-those with privilege are usually the representatives of normalcy

-their cars frequently signify their economic status and are an important motif in the films

-they drive vintage Mustangs, Land Rovers and BMWs and tow Airstream trailers

-at the very least, they have the ability to travel, indicating some means of disposable income

-in the first
TCSM, the difference between the young people’s van and the Cook’s old truck suggests this economic disparity

-the groups’ privilege is established in opposition to those they encounter

-the monsters of these films are socially and economically disenfranchised

-on the margins of society

SLIDE

-they are the mutant families of
The Hills Have Eyes (1977 & 2006)

SLIDE

-and, of
Wrong Turn 2003 (and its sequels – the most recent one is number 7 from 2021)

-this family is even more isolated than the Sawyers who have access to the highway

SLIDE

-there’s also
the bushman of
Wolf Creek (2005) (number 3 has a 2022 release date)

-whether by choice or not, the others in these films are disconnected from the legitimatized system of commodity exchange (from mainstream society)

-they are, in a sense, survivalists, living off what they can hunt down, sometimes humans

-there are frequent images of the cars of the privileged left abandoned, broken-down and rusting

-normalcy’s sign of consumption (luxury cars) has no meaning for these monsters

-these monsters, emerging from the economic and social margins, are a reminder of capitalism’s victims

-part of what makes the monsters monstrous is not only their depravity (such as cannibalism) but also their deprivation

-this monster is capitalism’s other

-there are, however, ideological differences among these films in the ways in which they frame class encounters

-to use Wood’s terms, some may be considered progressive while others may be considered reactionary

–
WC and
WT articulate the monstrous as a dreadful disengagement from conventional social and economic relations

–
TTCM (series) and
THHE (original and re-make) imagine the horrific effects of the oppressions resulting from those relations

SLIDE

-and,
Turistas, locates the cause of the monstrous threat in the oppressions and consequences of colonialism

-the majority of psycho-killers are from the social and economic fringes

SLIDE

-but some films locate the monstrous in economic privilege

-certain monsters of means may draw attention to systemic inequality while others mask it

-as with economically disenfranchised monsters, the ideological implication may be found in the difference between a monster inscribed with signs of the social order and one who is an aberration of it.

-the following considers economically marginalized monsters first

-the second section focusses on monsters of means

MARGINALIZE MONSTERS

BOOKMARK CLIP:
Wolf Creek

SLIDE

-Mick, the killer in WC, is a self-excluded Australian bushman

-he is separate from ‘civilization’

-he lives in the outback with ‘no fixed address’

-as he say’s, “you never know where I might pop up.”

-although he is currently camped in an abandoned mine, he has no work history there

-the account of his job as a “head shooter” who clears “vermin” suggests less relations of wage-labor than leisure

-he expresses enjoyment in killing

-he even kills “roos” in his spare time as a “public service”

-the point is that he is relatively unmarked by signs of social organization and economic relations

SLIDE

-he is at one with the harsh desert

-in several shots he is shown in silhouette

-and in the final shot this silhouette image dissolves, visually blending him into the landscape

-he’s the individual (and isolated) psycho-killer

-his cruelty is motivated by nothing more than his nature (the beast within the individual)

-specifically, he is beastly because of his social disengagement, his refusal to participate

-like WC, WT suggests that what is monstrous lies in the disengagement from the social order

SLIDE/CLIP

SLIDE

-according to the title sequence, the problem is the
biological effects of inbreeding that brings with it, “psychosis,” “violent outbursts” and “resistance to pain”

-all features that separate them from what is coded as ‘’normal’ human

-in this film, the family of killers is monstrous because they represent a disregarded for the most basic of social directives, the incest taboo

-they are generated in the extreme isolation of the mountains: Greenbrier Backcountry of West Virginia

-where the unpaved roads may or may not lead to the highway

-there’s no cell phone coverage

-and the pay phones don’t work

-as if to further differentiate these monsters from the social order they are denied entry into the symbolic, into language

-they don’t speak but rather communicate with each other in grunts

-they’re also monstrous because they wage an attack on the sanctioned norm of the film, the heterosexual (non-related) couple

-much is made in the film of couples

-one couple just got engaged

-the trip was taken as a way of getting a female character over being dumped

-and the film’s ‘happy ending’ (or as happy as these things get) involves the (temporary) annihilation the monster and the promise of her re-coupling

-conversely, in
TTCM and
THHE the monstrousness of the families is seen to be a direct result of dreadful encounters with, rather than isolation from, society (capitalist relations and the military, respectively)

-in the
TCSM automation has rendered the slaughterhouse workers redundant, leaving an entire town deserted and one family left to fend for themselves

-so, they turn to cannibalism

–
TTCM depicts a monster generated from the collapse of industry

SLIDE

-in the 2006 version, closed businesses, such as the meat company and the old Crawford mill provide the background for the action

-in fact, the introduction to the family is through a young boy who emerges from (and seems to live within) the abandoned mill

-the monsters in the 2006 remake of
THHE have an even greater association with the social, specifically, the military order

-they are a direct result of nuclear testing in the New Mexico desert

SLIDE/CLIP

-this title sequence provides an instructive counterpoint to that of
WT

-while the former insists on the genetic (biological and essential) nature of the monsters,
THHE locates them as products of the ‘military-industrial-complex’

SLIDE/CLIP

-nuclear testing drove them from their homes to the hills

-reduced everything to ashes

-and condemned them to a legacy of genetic mutation

-as one character puts it, “You’ve made us what we’ve become.”

SLIDE

-now, they live in a nuclear ‘test village’ constructed in the perfect, if somewhat dilapidated and dusty image of ‘50s America

-the monsters of
TTCM and
THHE are generated by economic failures and government/military actions

SLIDE

-the doctor in
Turistas is
motivated by the history and consequences of colonialism, slavery and resource extraction

-in
T the trade in organs (rich Americans and Europeans acquiring the organs of poor Brazilian kids) is what motivates the doctor to entrap tourists and harvest
their organs

-CLIP FROM DVD: doctor’s explanation of his motivations

-it’s his way of helping them find a way to give back

-the organs he acquires are destined for the People’s Hospital in Rio

-this monster, too, is the return of the oppressed

-there’s logic, albeit depraved, to his actions

-he takes out his justifiable rage about oppression and colonialism on the body of the tourist

-it’s worth mentioning that the tourists are not portrayed in the most sympathetic light

-they don’t know that Portuguese is the language spoken and one of them exerts her privilege by photographing a young child

-this causes a conflict with the locals because of the western trade in organs -they think that’s why she took the photograph

-so, the horror when the harvesting begins has more to do with the graphic display of organ removal than with the audience’s sympathy for, or identification with, a particular character

-it’s worth mentioning that the doctor has his own economic privilege but it’s arguable that it’s colonial privilege that’s demonized

MONSTERS OF MEANS

SLIDE

-an early example is
The Most Dangerous Game (1932) in which a bored Eastern European aristocrat (he’s a Russian count) traps people on his private island so he can hunt them

SLIDE/CLIP

SLIDE

-this film is instructive for the ways in which it presents a privileged monster but works to obscure systemic inequality

-the monster is defined less by his relation to capitalism than by his separation from it

-he tells his ‘guests’ that his father was a “very rich man” who owned land in Crimea and “escaped the revolution with much of his fortune.”

-this European aristocrat who renovated the ruins of a castle is defined by a life of leisure (he describes life as “one glorious hunt”).

-his is an inherited wealth disconnected from the system of exchange

-and, his monstrousness is a matter of individual sadism and not his exertion of power over those of less means

-his victims too occupy a privileged position: one arrives on a yacht; another we are told owns a “place in the Adirondacks;” and the one who survives is a big game hunter

-class differences among characters and the privilege and disenfranchisement structured within capitalism is underplayed

-the count and his victims transcend material relations

-the monstrous is located in means but economic privilege remains unexamined

-the same can be said of
Masque of the Red Death (1964) in which Prince Prospero’s diabolical deeds are the result of his debauchery and the devil

-there are other more recent monsters of means disconnected from social systems

SLIDE

-for example, in
Boxing Helena (1993) and
The Human Centipede (2009) the wealthy doctors who perform unspeakable acts are aberrations representing their own peculiar predilections

-their economic privilege is unexamined as the focus is on the mutilation of the victims

SLIDE

-the same might be said of
Martyrs (French original in 2008; and American re-make in 2016) in which a group of wealthy people capture and torture women in the hopes of witnessing the moment of transcendence to the afterlife captured in the eyes of their victims before the moment of death

-the film makes a point of locating the source of the threat in privilege

-in the original film participants are seen arriving at the secluded house in luxury cars, most notably Mercedes, complete with drivers

-as they gather it becomes clear they are all elderly, themselves approaching the moment of death

-their desire to see beyond is facilitated by their wealth but it is not systemic inequality that defines them as monstrous

SLIDE

-what makes them monstrous is their perversion of traditional sites of religious authority

-the female leader of the group explains that the desire to see beyond the material world is not just the purview of the church, implying a disconnection between them and socially sanctioned religious practices

-that the group is led by an older woman suggests a certain displacement of anxieties away from the systemic economic relations

-the film focuses more on their horrific practices and the victims’ bloody revenge and self-abuse than on privilege, which is arguably reduced to a narrative need to explain how they can afford such an enterprise

SLIDE

-in
Would You Rather, a millionaire gathers people in need to his foundation’s estate for a dinner party to determine the most deserving of help

-the sadistic twist is that dinner devolves into a parlor game that forces the ‘guests’ to choose between two equally undesirable tasks: would you rather, have your head held under water for two minutes or have all of your teeth extracted?

-inequality and need provide the context for this narrative but like
The Most Dangerous Game the monster here is disconnected from the system: his wealth is inherited; his actions are an aberration

-more to the point, inequality may be what motivates the relationships among the characters but it is not the cause of the horror

-the cause is his control over the guests but significantly their willingness to harm each other to avoid their own suffering

-inequality is unexamined and is secondary to the unleashing of the monstrous acts of which all people are capable

SLIDE

–
The Purge series (2013; 2014
The Purge: Anarchy; 2016
The Purge: Election Year; 2018
The First Purge; and 2021
The Forever Purge) are examples that fit within the psycho-killer subgenre

-they are set in the context of class difference that defines the relationships among characters as a matter of privilege

-the rich and the powerful can prey on poor and marginalized communities for the purge

-the third film makes it clear that the economic and socially disenfranchised are the targets of government-orchestrated eradication

SLIDE -CLIP

SLIDE

-these films do thematize inequality and the violence done to those marginalized but they do so in ways that suggest a beast within all

-more to the point, violence is the result of the suspension of the system (all law is suspended) and not because of it

-economic inequality is less the problem than the government that allows the violence

-the problem is a matter of not enough law rather than an unjust execution of it

-there are other economically privileged monsters that are systemic, an extension rather than an aberration of the norm

SLIDE

-capitalist economic relations define Patrick Bateman, the psycho-killer in
American Psycho

-Bateman comes from Wall Street, not Elm Street

-in this film, economic privilege doesn’t just provide an ability to carry out aberrant acts, it defines the monster and it structures the violence perpetrated

SLIDE/CLIPS x 3

SLIDE

-Bateman’s confession that he’s “not there” allows for his character to be seen less as the unique individual with peculiar perversions (or a so-called dysfunctional family) and more as a radical extension of a corporate agenda that, like Bateman, sees people (like rival Paul Allen) as competition to be eliminated, or (like Christy, the sex-worker) as collateral damage in a will to control

-his victims come from all walks of life but the film pays particular attention to the two encounters with Christy

-the threat he poses to her is characterized in terms of exchange relations: he pays for her to be there and her lower social status results in her chainsaw death

-that she’s a so-called streetwalker and not an escort like the woman he allows to leave emphasizes the social and economic inequality between them

-it is that inequality that frames the violence

-this is most clearly articulated in Bateman’s murder of the homeless man

-berating the man for not having a job Bateman makes explicit the motivation for his violence: disgust at those he deems unequal and therefore unworthy of living,
worthless

SLIDE

-in the
Hostel series (2005; 2007; 2011) the monsters are produced in their engagement with exchange in humans

-the very structuring of these narratives around the absorption of the body into a system of exchange suggests that the monster is capitalism

-it’s the buying and selling of people for profit that’s horrific and the film makes it clear that torture transcends national boundaries.

-significantly, what links the clients is their shared identity as business people (both men and women)

-the clients come from various national, ethnic and racial groups

-the economically disenfranchised of Slovakia may provide the infrastructure for torture, but it’s the economically privileged who are the monstrous perpetrators

-the spectacular violence that characterizes these films is framed within relations of exchange either in terms of auctions for victims or bidding on torture methods

-the films thematize the literal commoditization of the body

SLIDE/CLIP

SLIDE

-it is significant in terms of global economic and political relations that it is the privileged (misogynist and racist – he orders a Japanese woman) American who is depicted in gleeful anticipation of his role as torturer

-although he rejects the gun as “too American” and decides to go “old school,” that he
is American is a counterpoint to accusations that the film is simply xenophobic

-also of interest is the surviving protagonist

-he is Mexican-American

-speaks German

-and at one point declares, “Look at me. Do I look American?”

-later he realizes why not being American in this context is important

-Russians fetch five thousand dollars, Europeans ten and Americans twenty-five

-this pricing has less to do with the actual use value of Russians versus Americans for the purposes of torture and killing, and more to do with their exchange value

-the rarity of Americans in Slovakia makes them more valuable, the proximity (and therefore availability) of Russians renders them more plentiful and therefore of less worth, at least according to the logical of capitalism that the monsters of
H exploit

-the
Hostel series represents an engagement with capitalism that takes it to its logical and brutal conclusion: the horrors of the commoditization of the human body

-this is the human subject rendered thing-like (an object for torture) in the system of exchange

SLIDE

-the third installment takes place in Las Vegas and exchange relations are emphasized

CLIP/DVD 31:19

SLIDE

-the audience is comprised of Vegas’s high-rollers

-this adds another level of privilege as there’s both the torturer who buys the human subject and the spectators who gamble on the method of torture

-this focus on the relationship between privileged audience and tortured body points to exchange relations as defining the relationships among characters and the cause of the violence done to the body

-it is arguable that these monsters of means embody the logic of capitalism and point to the oppressions within it

-this focus on class difference is a feature of some other subgenres of horror and science fiction films as well

SLIDE

–
Land of the Dead (2005) and
Elysium (2013)

SLIDE

–
Snowpiercer (2013) and
High-Rise (2015)

-in each of these films, it’s the social and economic division that is seen as monstrous

SLIDE

–
Land of the Dead portrays a world over-run by zombies in which the wealthy have taken refuge in a self-contained complex across the river while the poor struggle to survive in the run-down city

-the ‘happy ending’ of the film is the destruction of the social hierarchy and the expression of mutual respect between zombies and the disenfranchised protagonists

SLIDE/CLIP

SLIDE

-the zombies are seen as victims of inequality

-the violence they perpetrate is in resistance to the violence done to them

SLIDE

-in
Elysium, the privileged have fled a devastated earth to an elevated world defined by abundance, luxury and leisure

-although the narrative revolves around health care, economic inequality informs the relationship between the world of Elysium and earth

-the characters are, in part, defined by the ability, or not, to pay for live-saving treatment

-it’s significant that economic power is centered around the female character while the male character is the resistance-fighter (and white savior for a Latinx mother and child)

-the solution offered by the ending is a kind of performative missionary outreach to earth, that supplies a few with medical aid while leaving structural inequalities unexamined and power in place

SLIDE

-the train and the self-contained apartment building in
Snowpiercer and
High-Rise respectively are apt metaphors for class difference and social stratification

-both ways of containing humans enforce social division

-order depends on each remaining in their station or on their floor invoking a system that results in increasingly extreme differences in wealth and privilege

SLIDE/CLIP

-by the end of the film the train crashes and finally stops circling the globe

-the film not only suggests that systemic inequalities are monstrous but, that abandoning the system that enforces them might not be such a bad idea

SLIDE

–
High-Rise is about the lower classes/residents moving up in the building

-they invade the space of the wealthy and collapse the hierarchy in a frenzy of violence in which everyone partakes (beast within all?)

-the veneer of ‘civilization’ of the upper class slips and their abuse of power and privilege is exposed

-the film suggests it’s the inequality that causes the resistance

-the failures of the building are most acutely experienced at the lower levels

-electricity and food are not fairly distributed as the buildings systems start to fail

-by the end, the imposed order has disintegrated

-the ‘hero’ roasts a dog-leg over an open fire on his balcony

-this is dismal ending is seen as a better alternative than restoring the old order

SLIDE

-Jordan Peele’s
Us (2019) is premised on the division between two worlds

and the disenfranchisement of those who exist beneath

-given the current social context of a more publicized awareness and discussion of economic inequality and the consequences of unexamined privilege it’s not surprising that genres like horror respond to anxieties and fears stemming from these social conflicts

SLIDE

–
Get Out (2017) makes clear horror is also an ideal site for the critique of racial, as well as economic, privilege

-we’ll return to this later in the course

Isolated From Society

Wolf Creek (2005)

The Monstrous Family is Outside the Social Norm

Wrong Turn (2003)

Norm and Other is clearly defined.

Wrong Turn (2003)

2006
Closed Companies

The Monster’s Source in History

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Military Industrial Complex

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

“You’ve made us what we’ve become.”

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

A Monstrous Image of 1950s America

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

For The People’s Hospital

Turistas (2006)

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Count Zaroff

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Psycho-Killers & Monstrous Families

Jason Voorhees

The Sawyers
Michael Myers
Freddy Krueger

“A Clinging, Demanding Woman”

Psycho (1960)

“He was already dangerously disturbed. Had been ever since his father died.” Psycho (1960)

Mother as Monster

Psycho (1960)

Horror in the Home

Psycho (1960)

The Monster Has a Familiar Face

Psycho (1960)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Transgender Monster

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Psycho (1960)

Marion’s death is preceded by her sexualization and Norman’s predatory gaze.
Psycho (1960)

“If you have sex, you will die!”
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020)

Halloween ( 1978)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

An Open Ending and a “Final Girl’

A Family Without a Mother
(Although, Leatherface is wearing make-up…)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

A Messy Kitchen
Bad Housekeeping

The Marginalized

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

“You’re in the back of beyond now.”
(Hillwalkers, 2022)

Wrong Turn (2003)

Consequences of Colonialism

Turistas (2006)

Economic Privilege

Hostel 3 (2011)

Self-excluded ‘Bushman’

Wolf Creek (2005)

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The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Systemic inequality is
unaddressed.

Unexamined Economic Privilege

Boxing Helena (1993)

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A Perversion of Traditional Sites of Religious Authority

MARTYRS (2008)

Would You Rather (2012)

Class and Race Privilege
THE PURGE (2013)

A ‘Polite’ Request

THE PURGE (2013)

Company’s Coming

THE PURGE (2013)

2005

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American Psycho (2005)

2011
2005

2007

The Privileged as Monster

Hostel (2005)

Hostel 3 (2011)

2011
Exchange
in
Humans

2005
2013

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5
2013
2015

Social and Economic Stratification

Land of the Dead (2005)

Return of the Oppressed

Economic Inequality
is Gendered

Elysium (2013)

Snow Piercer (2013)

High-Rise (2015)

Us (2019)
“Hands Across America”

‘Body Snatchers’

Get Out (2017)

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