Sam Talks Movies

Reading Analysis:

Barbara Creed’s short yet informative article describes of the horror and the monstrous-feminine. Creed goes to the origins of modern horror, Greek mythology, where the majority of monsters with gender were depicted as female or female presenting, with the most common beast of them all being Medusa.

Creed illustrates the idea of the petrification of Medusa’s male victims is an allegory for the male erection, reinforcing that all media is rooted in the masculine pleasure or phallic. Creed connects the monstrosity of Medusa’s head is metaphor for the women’s vagina as the female genitalia is something monstrous in a patriarchal society.

However, Creed’s main focus is the abject or abjection of the female form and “others” in horror media as well as the abjection of the mother as the child chooses the father to maintain a systematic subconscious patriarchal standard to uphold in bourgeois society. Creed both agrees with this; however, she debunks this slightly, talking about that it was never disclosed what gender the child is, when this transition happens, and what type of family background the child is included or excluded from.

Creed mentions the portrayal of abjection in horror film, which is similar to the analysis provided by Robin Wood. People shun or exclude what is abnormal to societal structures, such as supernatural beings like vampires, zombies, or ghost, none of which fit the bill of being classified as a living, breathing person.

Creed says the ultimate abjection is the corpse The living body excretes loathsome or vile anything that plagues or festers in the body, such as piss and shit. Abjections revolves around the idea of the keeping a societal order with pristine-like conditions. It is rooted in everyday life and starts with the body. The human body is wired to remove anything disgusting in itself or attacking anything foreign to the human anatomy, such as a virus or sickness.

Film Analysis:

With The Exorcist, abjection is turned on its head. The film follows the strange and supernatural occurrences that plague Reagan and the MacNeil household. It is revealed Reagan is possessed by an ancient demonic spirit, Pazuzu, who claims to be the devil.

Abjection centers around the idea of rejection of anything foreign or obscure to any standing and formulated societal structure. “The body protects itself from bodily wastes such as shit, blood, urine, and pus by ejecting these substances just as it expels food that, for whatever reason, the subject finds loathsome” (Creed 70). Throughout the film, Reagan’s soul and the spirit of Pazuzu fight for custody of the tween’s body. It is ambiguous with who is doing the expelling of the green vile, but it returns to the idea of the rejecting anything that isn’t natural to oneself. Reagan could be trying to regain consciousness of her body and expel the demon, or it could be interpreted that Pazuzu is trying to expel any human notions of the Reagan in order to be the loan being in the body. “The body extricates itself from them and from the place where they fall, so that it might continue to live” (Creed 70). Pazuzu is trying to make the foreignness of the human body more habitual for his demonic spirit, and Reagan is trying to fight for control of her own body.

The Exorcist depicts a lot of Catholic and Christian motifs, themes, and concepts in itself due to the fact that exorcisms are deeply rooted in religious practice. “Within the biblical context, the corpse is also utterly abject. It signifies one of the most basic forms of pollution – the body without a soul. As a form of waste it represents the opposite of the spiritual, the religious symbolic” (Creed 70). The goal of hosting an exorcism is to remove and expel an unwanted spirit from the body of the one who habits it.

Pazuzu is not the original host of the body. Reagan is, so it is the priests’ job (Father Lankester Merrin and Father/Dr. Damien Karras) to remove this blasphemous spirit from the pure and pristine body of the young girl. The priests use weapons such as holy water, prayer, and crucifixes to ward the demon out of Reagan’s body. These are all items and objects that represent holiness and purity, something that is absent from the vicious and malevolent spirit of Pazuzu. Items like such would be frightening to something who is not under the submission or aligned with a higher “benevolent” power, such as God, and in turn, they, meaning those aligned with societal structure, would be able to weaken or expel the abject from the societal order.

In the picture above, notice the shape Pazuzu holds Reagan in. It’s the shape of the cross, the pinnacle of holiness. Often times filmmakers use this symbolism to establish a hierarchy of power in the world of the film. Here, it wouldn’t be far off to say that even though Pazuzu is an all powerful being, he is still trumped by the abilities of a higher power, such as God.

Reading Analysis:

As Alexandra West describes in “‘Not in my Movie’: The 90s
Slasher Cycle and Grrrl Power,” with 90s slashers and beyond, 90s final girls had a feminist quality infused into their persona and characteristic in their film, displaying stronger female characters; however, Carol Clover takes this a step further in her “Her Body, Himself” reading by describing the final girl only wins due to the fact that she is more “masculine” than her other female cast mates. She wins because she rejects her own femininity to defeat or subdue the terrorizing, gender confused slasher.

West describes the difficulty of 70s and 80s slasher films to be respected by critiques due to their gory and sexual nature, disliked by both conservatives and liberals. The right criticized the portrayal of provocative sex scenes and the depiction of teen consumption of drugs and alcohol. The left disliked the roles of women in the films, being problematic sex objects with no agency.

Solutions to these complaints are solutions that hold true in modern slasher cinema. Feminist ideals were ingrained into the plot line, allowing for more authentic point of views to be told through female characters by women creatives. Slashers also became self-aware of their stereotypes and cliches that have became embedded into their movies with Scream leading this “meta-ness” renaissance by creating a movie that understood the world it was in, allowing for smarter characters and parodies of the genre.

In her article, Clover says the final girl survives her friend is due to the fact that both she and the killer share two commonalities: sexual repression and gender confusion. The final girl, like the slasher, is often a virgin, unlike her female counterparts, who often meet a bloody and overtly sexualized end. The only way these two express these repressions is during the final battle, where both penetrate each other with their weapon of choice. Both suffer from gender confusion whether it stems from childhood, like Freud believes, or it is projected onto the character, like female characters having “male presenting names” like Sidney in Scream. Their similarities are more numbered than their differences; therefore, only one side of the coin can survive.

Film Analysis:

Queer bait after queer bait, Billy and Stu, the central antagonist of Scream, are no different; however, their relationship can be related back to Clover’s reading.

As Clover describes, “But the ‘certain link’ that puts killer and Final Girl on terms, at least briefly, is more than ‘sexual repression’” (Clover 96). Sidney was unwilling to put out for Billy, her boyfriend, the entire movie, due to the trauma she holds from her mother’s death. However, Stu, Billy’s best friend, is completely open to Billy. The two share a closer, more intimate relationship, arguably, than Sidney and Billy do. When it is revealed that Billy and Stu are the killers at the end of the film, Billy has a motive, where Stu does not. He’s really only doing this with and for Billy.

The two boys share an intimate moment towards the end when they are going to frame Sidney and her dad for the string of murders, both penetrating each other with a knife towards the lower abdomen. Clover describes a similar, yet heterosexual scene, in Texas Chainsaw, Part 2. “When her last assailant comes at her, she slashes open his lower abdomen—the sexual symbolism is all too clear—and flings him off the cliff” (Clover 96). While Billy and Stu are not foes, it has become a collective thought that weapons, such as knives, in slashers are a symbolic representation for the male penis and the sexual repression the killer carries with him. “What is represented as male-on-female violence, in short, is figuratively speaking male-on-male sex” (Clover 99). The delicacy and precision of both boys placing the knives in each other, making sure neither get hurt. It’s morbidly gentle, depending the twisted and tenderness of their relationship. While it is an interpretation, there is undoubtably homosexual undertones to Billy and Stu’s relationship, and in this scene particular, they show and share their sexual repressions and intimacy for each other.

It is not unreasonable to compare Billy and Stu to characters such as Louis and Lestat from the Interview with the Vampire movie (not the novels) or Mac and Dennis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. These characters share the same facade of hyper-masculinity to mask the tenderness and fondness they share for their male counterparts. It’s said that Scream breaks the mold on slasher films, but it reaffirms the system of baiting their LGBTQA+ audience.

Now, it’s not to say Scream does not subvert classic horror movie cliches. Of course it does with the ending with Gale Weathers coming to Sidney’s aid to help her take down Billy. “The Final Girls of this cycle were the products of third wave feminism, 90s alternative culture and the more mainstream ‘Girl Power’ which allowed the focus to shift to the female protagonist, her friends and their survival” (West 3). In the 70s and 80s, often times the audience would see a man coming to the aid of woman, reinstating the “norm” that the woman is dependent on the man and needs his help in order to survive. While Sidney is unable to truly defeat Billy without the help of Gale, this is seen more as a girls supporting girls rather than Sidney being subservient to Gale.

The character of Sidney is one that breaks the mold of the “pure” final girl, a precedent that was created by male creatives, the founders of the slasher genre. Here, Sidney takes control of her life and makes her own movie. “Sidney succumbed to the lure of viewing her life through the lens of mainstream (Meg Ryan) or subculture references (pornography) indulging her desire for Billy only to be taunted by his reveal as one of the killers. There is no win or gain for Sidney in playing a pre-formed role, she must create her narrative” (West 9). Throughout the film, Sidney struggles with identity and emotions due to the trauma she received from the brutality of her mother’s death. She felt guilty that she wasn’t allowing Billy the pleasure that he “deserved,” but she also felt guilty for moving on too quickly from the events. These pressures come originate from a man, Billy, who possesses and controls her life. It’s all she thinks about. It’s not until she kills Billy, a sequel (with him in it) is unable to be made. “Sidney’s definitive stance of ‘not in my movie’ offers a reprieve from the thinly worn character traits of the slashers of the 1970s and ‘80s, allowing a young woman to take control of her narrative, body and effectively dismantle what Laura Mulvey termed the ‘male gaze’ of the camera” (West 9). When Sidney relinquishes Billy’s control of her, it is only then when she is able to take control of her life. She doesn’t need to fit into some mold or a pre prescribed narrative. She only needs to fit into her own story.

Reading Analysis:

As Carol Clover describes in “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” the basic premise of every slasher films depends on the antagonist psychotically mutilating and murdering a series of (mostly) young women before his eminent demise from the final girl who has survived his killing craze.

Clover dives into the sexual origins of the slasher film, often the plots revolving around the killer unleashing repressed sexual desires and projecting them onto his victims, as seen in films such as Halloween or Psycho. Michael Myers in Halloween murders young girls because they remind him of his sister and the incestuous feelings he had for her, and Norman Bates murders women because Oedipal relationship he once had with his mother. It may not come as a shock to audiences due to the overtly sexual nature of slasher flicks, but horror and porn are the only two genres of cinema created for the arousal and pleasure of bodily sensation.

Slasher films often marry the sensation of pain and pleasure to portray the repressed desires and thoughts of society. What is not inherently a societal norm in a civilized world can be projected onto psycho killers of the slasher genre. The slasher film is the exploitation of the audience’s subconscious.

Clover goes into detail a lot of what was discussed in the in-class lectures, such as the slasher’s weapon being symbolic for penis, due to its nonconsensual penetration into its young female victims. She discusses how the killer attacks due to some repressed emotion or instant from its childhood and lashes out onto its victims due to this. The trauma of the killer stems from one place in particular (Terrible Place), and the victims of the killer always seem to represent or resemble someone or something from the killer’s past, whether it is a sister, a mother, or the lack of sexual pleasure in the killer’s life. Women are often punished for pleasure, either a gratification or sexual, and women who abstain from such are rewarded by living.

Slasher films are formulaic, and it’s not difficult to pick up that the killer’s trauma stems from early adolescence and slashes due to possession of some “otherness” quality or a deep-seated repression, fear, or trauma.

Film Analysis:

On the topic of repression, the reason why Michael Myers victimizes young women is due to the fact that they remind him of his sister who he was romantically interested in. After seeing his sister with another man, he killed her because he could not comprehend or emote relationships with women. Michael kills to comprehend or process his emotions that he was never taught to control.

In this shot, Michael is shown holding an outrageously sized kitchen knife, which he used to murder his sister. (Spoiler alert!) As Clover mentions in her writing, “The preferred weapons of the killer are knives, hammers, axes, icepicks, hypodermic needles, red-hot pokers, pitchforks, and the like. Such implements serve well a plot predicated on stealth, the unawareness of later victims that the bodies of their friends are accumulating just yards away” (Clover 81). Guns have a displacement in the horror film due to quick and easy release from death they carry with them. A weapon, a like a knife, not only takes the place of a penis to show dominance and control over its victims, but it also allows deaths to be prolonged and pleasurable. The suffering of their victims provides a sense of enjoyment for the slasher (and whether they want to admit the viewer, the audience as well).

According to Clover, “horror and pornography are the only two genres specifically devoted to the arousal of bodily sensation. They exist solely to horrify and stimulate, not always respectively, and their ability to do so is the sole measure of their success: they ‘prove themselves upon our pulses’” (Clover 71). Like previously mentioned, the slasher film is the marriage between these two genres, starting with the exploitation of the vulnerable, sex-positive youth.

The slasher genre, while inherently sexualized, has to be the least sex positive genre of cinema due to the repetition of teens who participate in sexual pleasure only to be murdered in a very prolonged and voyeuristic deaths. Here, Lynda is about to be killed after having sex with her boyfriend by Michael Myers. Now, it would be impolite to say Lynda’s only characteristic in Halloween was sex if it wasn’t true, but other than wanting to be intimate with her boyfriend, this is her only really personality trait. When it comes time for Lynda to die (because God forbid more than one woman makes it out alive), Lynda’s breast are on full display as she struggles to stay alive, producing a noise that replicates those that come from orgasms. Her death is also stretched as long as possible with her boobs bouncing and a look of sexual discomfort adorning on her face as struggles to fight off Myers. “The murders of women, on the other hand, are filmed at closer range, in
more graphic detail, and at greater length” (Clover 84). One must keep in mind the audience for slasher films but also who are the minds behind slasher films. There’s a reason why male deaths are often quick, off-screen, or nonexistent: It is a male dominated field. As already established, slashers play on societal repressions, fears, and traumas. Slashers allow its audiences to indulge in animalistic and carnal pleasures for a hour or two and witness the voyeuristic imagery that the creative minds behind these demented tales have conjured for their viewers.

Reading Analysis:

It is often difficult for women to see themselves in horror films because more often than not horror films only have female characters to have them act as toys to portray the filmmaker’s own demented sexual fantasies. Laura Mulvey and Linda Williams put it best in their respective articles, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and “When the Woman Looks.” While women may play a part in horror films , they have no agency in what happens to them. It’s plainly simple as the trend has been growing since horror films were birthed. Women are objectified and tortured for the sake of voyeuristic pleasure. At times, the audience understands or has a better understanding of what is happening during the film than the female protagonist. Whether it is the killer creeping up behind the woman’s back or the audience being a third wheel in a sex scene, movies are inherently voyeuristic, and the audience is just a bystander to the woman’s demise.

The woman is there to be a character, yes, but she operates more as a reverse Chekhov’s gun. A character that was significant in the beginning is now an unimportant prop in the killer’s fantasy. She might as well be replaced with a sex doll by the time she is inevitably murdered with the little significance and control she has in her own story.

One could argue the final girl subverts this stereotype male writers and directors have created as a precedent for future horror makers, but without reason or fail, the final girl must suffer the torture of losing everyone important in her life only to be toyed with and barely escape death.

The woman is an object to take part in sexual deviancy, rather than a character we can feel any other emotions than terror or sorrow for.

Film Analysis:

The Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho centers around a woman on the run who goes missing at the infamous Bates Motel and the asocial innkeeper, Norman Bates and his ill mother, Norma. Out of courtesy, one should give the woman’s name, Marion; however, it does not feel necessary to do so as she is quickly offed by Norman in a gruesome and exploitive way. As stated by Williams, “The woman’s gaze is punished, in other words, by narrative processes that transform curiosity and desire into masochistic fantasy” (Williams 19). Marion is taking a shower after several tedious days of traveling when Norman, disguised as Norma, intrudes on her, naked, in the shower, a very intimate and vulnerable where the person in the tub touching themselves to become clean or “pure.” This not only touches on the issue of the objectification of women in horror cinema but also takes into count Mulvey’s thesis. Mulvey notes the recognition of voyeurism starts with Freud by saying “His particular examples center around the voyeuristic
activities of children, their desire to see and make sure of the private and the forbidden (curiosity about other people’s genital and bodily functions, about the presence or absence of the penis and, retrospectively, about the primal scene)” (Mulvey 3). No, Marion is not a child, but there is something to be said about the innocence of a shower. It is an intimate act that one performs with oneself on a daily and could easily be misconstrued as sexual or pleasurable as seen her in this shot below. “But even when the heroine is not literally blind, the failure and frustration
of her vision can be the most important mark of her sexual purity” (Williams 18). Marion is washing herself, a symbol of being clean and pure in this intimate and defenseless act.

Norman creeps onto the unsuspecting Marion, giving a preview to the audience as to what is to come. Marion has no agency in this scene as she cannot see what is behind her. The only ones who have control in this scene is Norman and the audience, spectators to animalistic and deviant torture that awaits the poor woman.

Marion is a woman trapped in a man’s world. Whatever she does to survive in this film will always bring to her demise due to her sex having no say in the rules. This is very evident in the dinner scene between Norman and Marion, as Marion comments on Norman’s hobby, taxidermy.

Norman confesses that he likes the look of birds (women) rather than beast (men). It is easier to stuff them and shape them to however he wants. They are easier prey. Unfortunately for Marion, she is the bird. She is the easy target in a man’s world. She could never not be the prey in this world she is trapped in. “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 4). With the bird metaphor, it shows exactly who and what Marion is supposed to be. Pretty and prey.

Even in the scene where it is revealed that Norman has a peep hole to spy on Marion, it is clearly recognized that Marion’s privacy is not her own. It is shared with Norman and the audience. Williams acknowledges this by saying, “in the classical narrative cinema, to see is to desire” (Williams 17).

Norman has this desire for Marion, which cannot be expressed properly or healthily, due to his Oedipal relationship with his deceased mother. The invasion of Marion’s is glorified, romanticized, and sexualized as she changes in public. “She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualised” (Mulvey 6). She is less of a person but more of an object of desire that can be interchanged if need be. She is a plaything rather than person.