Politicizing the Horrific: How American Anxieties Play Out on Screen

Written by Matthew Jones

*Contains some spoilers for The Purge: Election Year (2016), The Witch (2016), and Get Out (2017).

It is not new or revolutionary to connect the political and social realities of our times to films that we produce and consume. There is a longstanding tradition of drawing political theory from film, and producing films with specific political motivations. As far back as the 1920’s, films from the Soviet Union were produced with the sole intention of promoting socialism and national unity. It could be argued that the vast majority of American war films also have a nationalistic message and pro-democracy slant. Setting aside these more overt examples, it is especially prevalent to read underlying political messages in horror films. Contemporary analyses of the genre have led film historians and critics to theorize that trends in horror films often reflect larger trends in politics. For example, the rise of zombie films in Hollywood tends to coincide with the rise of far-right, conservative parties. These are rather broad trends, both simple in nature and readily identifiable by mass audiences. However, there has been a fracture in American politics in recent years that has been both complex and far-reaching. This fracture, which has many moving parts and intricacies to account for, has been more difficult to see in films. It is most evident in the recent and controversial election of Donald Trump, as well as the rise of the Alt-Right movement, and conversely, with the meteoric rise and popularity of Bernie Sanders, an outspoken socialist and progressive politician, along with such movements as Occupy Wall Street. The nation, as a whole, is simultaneously perceived as having strayed far to the left, becoming more secular under the presidency of Barack Obama, and at the very same time more traditional and reactionary, clinging to Christian fundamentalism and racial discrimination. Income inequality, gun violence, gay rights, climate change, abortion, and religious zealotry, among many other issues, have all exacerbated concerns that the country is careening toward some unknown and possibly terrifying end. And Hollywood has tapped into these fears; catering films to niche audiences that see these issues differently and generally hold vastly different political, moral, and religious views (one would not think that the same people who went to see Heaven Is For Real would also be inclined to visit the theater for Nymphomaniac). But filmmakers have pandered to their audience for decades, and there is very little evidence that this practice has become more pronounced in any major way. Nonetheless, the fractures in American society are not lost in the films we watch. While we may not see notable trends in the popularity of certain genres or subgenres, we can see these fractures within the individual narratives, and our own interpretations of those narratives. This is particularly true of horror films, as they are a unique genre, insofar as the primary aim of a horror film is to frighten its audience. If a certain horror film uses elements that the audience does not find frightening, it falls flat, and fails to execute its intended purpose. Therefore, horror films must implement those things that frighten us.

There is always an element of fear entangled in politics, to varying degrees and in a variety of ways. Politicians use fear for their own purposes, often to cast the opposition party or candidate in a negative light. Groups and individuals use fear to incite violence or chaos, and many people fear that the government or corporations are gaining too much power over their lives. This causes some of our most basic fears as human beings, regarding survival and general well being, to be played out at the ballot box. But, more often than not, all of our complex fears and anxieties are channeled into a singular fear of ‘The Other,’ the invisible enemy that (we believe) undermines our values and can, if left to its own devices, ultimately lead to our destruction. For some, it can be the opposing political party, for others, it can be a different religion or skin color or culture. We are always looking for a scapegoat, someone to embody and justify our fears, something to help set ourselves up as good and righteous by comparison. It has always been a trope of the horror genre to establish a dichotomy between two distinct ideologies (Good vs. Evil, Normal vs. Abnormal, Human vs. Inhuman, etc.), and these distinctions allow for horror films to be easily read as political in nature. The horror filmmakers find what scares us, what keeps us awake at night, and then use those fears within narratives containing two polarized elements that are ostensibly apolitical, to then be read as political. Looking at the following films: The Purge: Election Year (2016), The Witch (2016), and Get Out (2017), it is evident that recent horror films showcase the increasing fracture and polarization of American politics, and benefit from national anxieties and paranoia regarding the future of the nation.

Just like its predecessors, The Purge: Election Year centers on a national holiday (of sorts), during which all crimes, including murder, are made legal. This holiday, known simply as the Purge, was created by the ruling party, The New Founding Fathers or NFFA. At the beginning of the film, riots break out all over Washington D.C. in anticipation of the election and in protest of the Purge. Charlie Roan, a senator running against the ruling party’s candidate, sees the Purge as a tool of the rich and powerful to wipe out the poor and disenfranchised. The day before the annual Purge, the NFFA rescinds a rule stating that government officials cannot be killed, paving the way for them to assassinate Roan and remain in power. “Murder Tourists” flood US airports, excitedly entering the country to watch and/or participate in the Purge. As the Purge begins, chaos ensues; various assailants, including a Neo-Nazi squad working on behalf of the NFFA, chase Roan through the city. This game of cat-and-mouse culminates in a ritualistic mass at a cathedral, conducted by Minister Owens, Roan’s opponent in the presidential race.

The Purge: Election Year (2016)

The second film, The Witch, follows a devoutly Christian family in 17^th century New England. After being forced from the local community over a dispute regarding different biblical interpretations, William, Katherine, and their four children move far from the village, and settle near an ominous forest. Soon after the move, Katherine gives birth to Samuel. While playing with his sister, Samuel suddenly disappears. It is revealed to the audience that Samuel was abducted and killed by a witch living in the woods. The family quickly falls to infighting, with much of the blame for his disappearance falling on their eldest daughter, Thomasin. Though the family lacks food and money, and is terrorized by Satanic apparitions and disturbances, they continue to cling to their faith.

In the final and most recent film, Get Out, a young black man, Chris, is apprehensive to meet the parents of his white girlfriend, Rose. As Chris spends more time with her family, he notices that something is amiss. The family’s black servants act very strangely, and Rose’s mother insists on hypnotizing Chris, under the guise of helping him quit smoking. When Chris tries to escape the family, Rose admits her role in deceiving him, revealing that Rose’s parents habitually abduct black people, hypnotize them, and transplant the consciousness of older white people into their bodies. The victims are forced to live in a subdued state, at the mercy of the controlling white consciousness. Rose’s father claims that they choose black people because they are “the in fad.”

All three films operate as horror films (Get Out is the only one considered a ‘horror-comedy’), with the horror stemming from various sources. In The Purge, the horror comes from the unrestrained violence that society (within the film) allows. Anybody can commit any heinous act they desire during the Purge without consequences. In The Witch, the horror stems from religious anxieties, both in regard to the unknown consequences of sin, as well as the fear of religious persecution. And finally, in Get Out, the fear of racial discrimination, as well as the fear of becoming a slave, create the horror. In all three films, horror also stems from more simplistic and biological fears, those things that we find horrifying at a basic, physical level. In The Purge, the maniacs and NFFA are unsettling and merciless, violent and able to cause harm without remorse. In The Witch, the evil lurking outside the woods is both violent and gruesome to look at, with the witches portrayed as old, grotesque women. And in Get Out, the white attackers seem completely cold to the plight of the black characters, and the black characters under hypnosis are akin to helpless zombies, unable to escape their tortured existence. But there is one element of horror that is present in all three films and underlies each narrative, and that is paranoia. In The Witch and Get Out, the paranoia is more overt, and a centerpiece of the film’s story; in one, it is the paranoia regarding white people and fear of being tricked or brainwashed into submission, and in the other, paranoia within a family and fear of God’s wrath. Lastly, in The Purge, paranoia is an essential part of what makes the premise so frightening. Every citizen is susceptible to being violently murdered or tortured at any moment, and not only is it legal, but the government actually encourages and facilitates the slaughter.

It is this paranoia that displays the underlying fracture in American politics. The fear of “the Other,” the fear of unchecked violence, the fear of religious or racial persecution, the fear of unchecked governmental power; no matter the political affiliation, any viewer can read these films as speaking to their innermost fears, and by extension, our larger societal anxieties. This can be further analyzed by the seemingly contradictory and disparate reviews and interpretations of these films. Adam Holtz of Plugged In writes that the narrative in The Witch focuses so much on “wickedness” with “no godly counter and certainly no happy ending.” (Holtz), while Simon Abrams classifies the film as a “feminist narrative” that “feels more like a sermon.” He continues by stating unequivocally that the film is “about women, and the patriarchal stresses that lead to their disenfranchisement” (Abrams). The first review, which is primarily concerned with how ‘family friendly’ the film is, laments The Witch’s lack of hopeful optimism and clear-cut Christian reinforcement, while the second one reads the film as a sermon on the crushing nature of patriarchy and religious fundamentalism in colonial America.

The Witch (2016)

In John Semley’s scathing review of The Purge, he painted the film as having contradictory motives. He wrote that the The Purge “delights in images of excessive, cartoonish, aestheticized violence…[but] at the same time, its ostensible message is that excessive, cartoonish, aestheticized violence is bad and wrong and that we should feel bad about indulging it” (Semley et al). However, Andrew O’hehir, while not finding the film entirely worthy of praise, did see it as a glimmer of hope and a source of escapism from our bleak reality. He wrote that The Purge is “a mind-numbingly obvious political allegory,” but at the same time provides “a more idealistic vision of democracy than any currently available in the so-called real world of Trump and Brexit and post-partisan meltdown.” He believed that the story emphasized “sacrifice and heroism, a story of redemption and renewal and cross-racial working-class solidarity” and showed “the American people finally reclaiming their destiny from the tiny clique of gated-community wealthocrats who run everything” (O’hehir).

In Joe Jarvis’ review of Get Out, he described the narrative as “a vehicle for a racial agenda.” He elaborated, arguing that the film aimed to convince African-American viewers that they “cannot trust white people,” but that the police, and by extension the entire government, should be trusted as they “are only there to help, even when it seems intrusive” (Jarvis). While the reviewer praised the film’s artistry and entertainment value, he saw the subversive message as being ultimately detrimental to African-American viewers and their perception of white Americans. Armond White of the National Review had an even more negative take on the film, decrying it as a “state-of-the-divided nation movie.” He wrote that the director, Jordan Peele, “exploits racial discomfort, irresponsibly playing racial grief and racist relief off against each other, subjecting imagination and identification to political sway.” In this review, the film is simply opportunistic; a well timed attempt to allow white liberals to relish in their recognition of current racial injustices, while feeding off of and fueling African-American fears and paranoia (White). However, in Walker MacMurdo’s glowing review of the film, he wrote that the filmmaker intends to comment on the “quotidian horror of life in black America: You can make all of the right decisions, and still find yourself in mortal danger by being in the wrong place at the wrong time” (MacMurdo).

Get Out (2017)

It must be said that just about every film of every genre has contradictory reviews. Even Get Out, which was (almost) universally praised by critics, had its detractors. But in these reviews, it is not necessarily the reviewer’s perception of the overall quality of the film that truly matters. It is how they go about analyzing and politicizing the films, and what this says about the state of the cinema and the nation, both in regard to filmmaking and film viewership. Was The Witch a secular attack on Christian values or an overly religious rumination on feminism and the evils of patriarchy? Did The Purge force audiences to face the issue of gun violence in America, or did it provide a much-needed escape from the horrors of reality? Was Get Out anti-white propaganda, or biting satire, commenting on the plight of African-Americans? Depending on your perspective, any of these analyses could be true. The point is that all three films gain from our collective paranoia and the fractured political sphere that we now exist in. No matter if you are rich or poor, christian or atheist, conservative or liberal, white or black, these films aim to get under your skin, to pry at your anxieties. And it is not just limited to these three. The current trend in horror is the acquisition of hyper-politicized themes and narratives to draw in audiences and breathe life into our pre-existing unease. This is also evident in The Invitation (2015), Green Room (2015), Don’t Breathe (2016), and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), among others.

While paranoia and political undertones are nothing new in horror films, there has been a recent escalation in films that play on the ever-widening gap that exists in American politics. Whether it is use of a gang of Neo-Nazis, a demagogue with absolute power, seemingly normal white people with sinister, racially-motivated intentions, or even Satan himself, nothing is more effective in horror than seeing our innermost fears played out on screen. These films operate as dark caricatures of our reality, energizing our increasingly biased and one-sided view of the world. With the introduction of ‘alternative facts’ into our collective vocabulary and increasing distrust of our media and institutions, paranoia has quickly become a defining characteristic of American society, thus solidifying the success of these kinds of films. And once fear and paranoia take hold, we look to these horror films, either to escape reality, or to try to answer the question: What can we do?

Abrams, Simon. “The Witch Movie Review & Film Summary (2016) | Roger Ebert.”RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC, 18 Feb. 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.<http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-witch-2016&gt;.

Holz, Adam. “The Witch | Movie Review.” Plugged In. Focus on the Family, 16 May. Web. 25 Mar. 2017. <http://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/the-witch-2016/&gt;.

Jarvis, Joe. “How The Movie “Get Out” Is a Genius Piece of Racial Propaganda.” The Daily Bell. Blacksmith Pte. Ltd., 6 Mar. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.<http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/how-the-movie-get-out-is-a-genius-piece-of-racial-propaganda/&gt;.

Macmurdo, Walker. “Get Out Is As Good As Everyone Says It Is.” Willamette Week.Williamette Week, 28 Feb. 2017. Web. 20 Mar. 2017. <http://www.wweek.com/arts/movies/2017/02/28/get-out-is-as-good-as-everyone-says-it-is/&gt;.

O’Hehir, Andrew. “Which Is Stupider: “The Purge: Election Year” or the Total Insanity of the Real World?” Salon. Salon Media Group, Inc., 3 July 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.<http://www.salon.com/2016/07/02/which_is_stupider_the_purge_election_year_or_the_total_insanity_of_the_real_world/&gt;.

Semley, John, and James DeMonaco. “Latest Film in Purge Franchise Achieves Apex of Idiocy.” The Globe and Mail. Special to The Globe and Mail, 12 July 2016. Web. 17 Mar. 2017. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/film-reviews/latest-film-in-purge-franchise-achieves-apex-of-idiocy/article30713076/&gt;.

White, Armond. “Return of the Get-Whitey Movie.” National Review. National Review, 24 Feb. 2017. Web. 10 Mar. 2017. <http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445206/jordan-peeles-get-out-trite-get-whitey-movie&gt;.

Sex and the Creation of Horror in It Follows

Since the earliest days of horror films, sex has been a key component of the genre. Sometimes the sexual content is overt, and other times the mere allusion to or repression of sex allows for horror to occur. There are thousands of examples of intercourse being used for a variety of purposes in horror films, but it is most often a staple of the genre that sex is intrinsically linked to the monster or the source of horror in some way. In the film It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014), sex occupies a complex position in the narrative, operating as a catalyst for the onset of horror, a mark of the horrific entity, as well as a necessary part of the alleviation of horror.

In films such as Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007) or A Serbian Film (Srđan Spasojević, 2010), intercourse is the centerpiece of the horror, itself disgusting or abhorrent in some fashion. In Teeth, a teenage girl’s vagina has teeth that castrate those who attempt to have intercourse with her, while in A Serbian Film, an aging porn star is given drugs that cause extreme aggression and sexual arousal, leading him to participate in horrific sexual acts with no memory of what has occurred. In both of these films, it is the sex itself that is horrific. It defies normal expectations of intercourse and makes it disgusting, unsettling, and ultimately horrific for the viewer.

Phallic imagery emphasizes the sexual frustration of Irena’s affliction in Cat People (1942)

In earlier films, like Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942), sexual desire, particularly unrestrained female desire, is seen as being able to transform a character into something horrific. Cat People plays with the idea that female sexuality, if left unrepressed, can create a monster. In the film, the lead character, Irena, turns into a bloodthirsty jungle cat whenever she becomes sexually aroused.

Still in other films, the threat of nonconsensual sex creates horror for the audience. In the film Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975), the capability for sex to be acted out on unsuspecting humans by the monsters creates horror. It is also the act of sex that transforms the victims into the very same monsters, thus enhancing and continuing the horrific scenario. The threat of sex is also an underlying quality of many of the “final girl” films of the 1970’s and 80’s, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) where there is a constant threat of death and possible sexual violation by the crazed family pursuing the last remaining female character.

And finally, in many slasher films, such as Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) and Friday the 13^th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980), teenage libido and pre-marital sex are often the root cause for killing and horror in the narrative. Sex does not transform the characters into something horrific or even serve as a characteristic of the monster, but instead allows for horrific acts to occur. For example, in the opening scenes of Halloween, a 6-year-old Michael Meyers kills his older sister after she and her boyfriend have intercourse. Similarly, in the opening scenes of Friday the 13^th, Jason Vorhees kills two Camp Crystal Lake counselors as they undress and prepare for a sexual encounter. Unrestrained sexual desire is used as narrative justification for psychotic characters to begin their killing sprees.

The entity’s first victim.

It Follows uses sex in a similar fashion, but with an important deviation from the standard formula. In the film, a girl, Jaime “Jay” Height, is followed by a malevolent, shape-shifting entity after having sex with her new boyfriend. The entity can take the form of any person, and simply follows its prey, and, if caught, violently kills them (as evidenced in the opening scenes of the film, in which a previous victim is left horribly contorted on the beach). The “curse” is passed on from person to person through sexual intercourse, and Jaime soon realizes that she will need to have sex with someone else, and explain the curse to them, so that they may continue to pass it on, lest the monster kill them and then pursue her again. Jaime is naturally upset by this revelation, and at first refuses to pass it on. But eventually, the constant fear of being pursued and the knowledge that she could be  killed by the monster at any moment forces Jaime to give in and have sex with Greg, a friend from school who has been trying to help her. Greg doesn’t really believe in the curse, but later the entity kills him and begins to pursue Jaime again. She and her friends try to confront and kill the monster by luring it into a swimming pool and electrocuting it, but this also does not work. Jamie eventually decides to sleep with her friend Paul, who has harbored a crush on her for years, and the film ends somewhat ambiguously, with the implication that the entity continues to follow Jamie and Paul as they begin a romantic relationship.

Jaime, who at the beginning of the film had no idea that the monster existed, suddenly becomes its primary focus, due entirely to her sexual encounter with the monster’s previous prey. If not for sex, the monster would not exist for the characters. However, it is also through sex that the monster can be “banished,” insofar as the curse can be passed along to another person, and then another, and another. The “cure” is to have sex with a new person before the monster catches up, but if the new victim is killed, then it will continue to kill each previously cursed individual in the chain of sexual encounters. It is never explained how or why, but sex is inherently a part of the monster’s existence. Surely, without sex, the monster would have no victims to pursue. However, sex is also an alleviation of the curse, albeit in a temporary and wholly incomplete way.

While the primary use of sex in It Follows is as a means for the monster to continue to exist, and as an insufficient cure for the curse, it is also linked to the production of horror for the audience. When the audience is first introduced to the monster as a physical manifestation, it is as a naked woman walking slowly toward Jaime. Later in the film, in one of the first close encounters Jaime has with the entity, it manifests as a disheveled, bloody woman. Her breasts are partially revealed to the audience and she begins urinating on the floor as she approaches Jaime. Later in the film, the entity is seen as a naked man standing on a roof as Jaime passes by. Nudity is frequently used as a visual indication of the monster’s relation to sex, often in horrific or unsettling ways, and to identify the entity as especially horrific.

The entity appears as Greg’s mother.

This is most clearly illustrated after the entity is passed from Jaime to Greg. The two strike up a romantic relationship and, since Greg is skeptical of the validity of the curse, he is more than willing to take the risk. Three days after the two have sex, Greg says that he has seen no evidence of the curse and concludes that he is safe. However, that same night, the entity finally does appear to Greg, pounding on his bedroom door. When Greg opens the door, the entity, which appears as his mother, is only wearing underwear and an unbuttoned nightshirt, revealing her breasts. She immediately pounces on Greg, and begins gyrating on top of him, her legs wrapping around his, even as the life is removed from his body. The camera lingers on her underwear as she rubs against Greg’s pelvis, emphasizing the sexual nature of the entity, while simultaneously enhancing the horrific effect by generating images of incest between mother and son.

The camera lingers on the sexual nature of the monster during Greg’s death.

While not every manifestation is characterized by an emphasis on nudity or sexuality (the entity also appears as an old woman in a hospital gown, a very tall, menacing man with gouged out eyes, a young boy who hisses, and a variety of seemingly normal people), the horror is enhanced through the implementation of sex, and the association of sex with the creation and transference of the horrific entity. Thus, while certain films use sex as a horrific act, and others use sex to lead to horror or transform characters into horrific beings, and still others make the threat of sex horrific, It Follows allows for a more complex relationship between horror and sex. There are moments in the film when the sex itself is horrific, like when the entity appears as Greg’s mom and attempts intercourse with him. And, it is an essential aspect of the plot that sex leads to horrific situations by transferring the curse and the presence of the monster between characters. However, what makes It Follows unique is that sex also serves as an insufficient cure for the curse, allowing the characters to be temporarily free from peril. Sex is not only a detriment to the characters, but also a possible remedy.  However, as there is always the risk that the new victim will be caught, and that the curse will work its way back down the line to the initial recipient, the entity can never truly be killed, making it all the more horrific.

Freeland and Mulvey: Psychoanalysis and Contextual Readings in Feminist Film Theory

 

During the second wave of feminism in the 1960’s and 70’s, feminist theorists put increasing attention on representations of women in media. Many Hollywood feature films attracted attention due to their pervasive impact in culture and their history of problematic female representations. Laura Mulvey was particularly influential in the field of feminist film theory. In her article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey uses psychoanalytic theory to argue that films, on a structural level, present negative images of woman as “objects” that are subject to the “male gaze.” Spectators, male and female, are made to identify with this “gaze,” thus objectifying the female in the spectator’s mind and in the narrative. Over 20 years later, Cynthia A. Freeland wrote “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films,” which critiques this psychoanalytic approach to spectatorship, and offers a different approach that analyzes the female representations in specific films of the horror genre in relation to their historical and cultural context. While the theories of Freeland and Mulvey focus on different topics in film, namely genre and spectatorship, they both look at film from a feminist perspective. Freeland provides a stronger argument for feminist film theory by putting less emphasis on psychoanalysis and analyzing the representations of women and cultural contexts of individual films.

Laura Mulvey begins by establishing her intentions to connect the filmic image of women with politics. Specifically, she uses psychoanalysis to interpret the way in which “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” (Mulvey 711). First, patriarchy, at its most fundamental level, relies on the symbolic image of the powerful phallus. This image is given more power by the conceptual and physical lack of a phallus on the part of women. This “castration,” according to Mulvey, brings “order and meaning to the world” Mulvey 711). The phallus (and patriarchy) is given power by being juxtaposed with the woman who is “lacking.” Thus, women do not serve a significant role in society, because they are lacking a phallus, and they try to make up for this loss by being the child-bearer. In short, the female is only given symbolic meaning in relation to the phallic image, and the meaning is one of subordination and deficiency. The woman is the “bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Mulvey 712).

Using the symbolism that structures patriarchy, classical Hollywood cinema developed a medium that assuages anxieties stemming from gender differences. The Hollywood style arose from the “skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure” by coding “the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order” (Mulvey 713). It is through this language that the Hollywood film creates the status of the film medium as one of pleasure for the spectator.

Film is, at its most basic, a source of scopophilic pleasure. Scopophilia refers to the act of looking as a source of pleasure (Mulvey 713). Most importantly, this pleasure is associated with “taking other people as objects, [and] subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey 713). Mulvey argues that film itself and the circumstances in which spectators view a film feed this pleasure. The standard narrative of a Hollywood film creates a world of space and time that progresses without any regard for the spectator. This formal trait helps create a sense of separation between the events unfolding on screen and the spectator watching them unfold. The spectator is also in a dark room, which is juxtaposed with the bright, flashing images on screen. Both of these factors help promote the “illusion of voyeuristic separation” for the film spectator, thus adding to the scopholic pleasure of the film medium (Mulvey 714).

Mulvey also argues that the pleasure of film spectatorship stems from the Lacanian “Mirror Stage” and the formation of the ego. This stage is defined as:

“A time when the child’s physical ambitions outstrip his motor capacity, with the result that his recognition of himself is joyous in that he imagines his mirror image to be more complete, more perfect than he experiences his own body. Recognition is thus overlaid with misrecognition: the image recognized is conceived as the reflected body of the self, but its misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself as an ideal ego” (Mulvey 714).

Essentially, it is during this stage that a child truly becomes self-aware and gains a sense of subjectivity. However, this subjectivity is born out of the misrecognition of an ideal self, the “better” child that is seen in the mirror. This misrecognition and tension between the ego and the ideal ego is reenacted in the film-viewing process as an adult. It is the cinema’s “intensity of expression” that allows for a “temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego” (Mulvey 714). When a spectator watches a narrative film, they transcend their own identity and temporarily forget where they are or who they are. The story, combined with the bright, overwhelming images, force spectators to become completely engrossed in the film. In this sense, the spectator regresses to the stage of life before the Mirror Stage, in which a sense of identity has not been formed. The concept of the ideal ego is also reinforced by Hollywood’s star system, which promotes idolization and identification with the actors and actresses on screen. This identification is intensified by the common characterizations of rich, beautiful Hollywood stars portraying “ordinary” people (Mulvey 714).

These two contradictory aspects of film spectatorship, scopophilia and misrecognition, simultaneously promote the separation of spectator and film image, and identification with the ideal image. This creates a kind of imaginary world between spectator and film image, a world that is born from the castration complex. This complex and the image of the woman force the look of the spectator to be “pleasurable in form,” but “threatening in content” (Mulvey 715).

Mulvey continues this psychoanalytic approach to spectatorship by focusing on gendered differences in the act of looking. The key distinction is between the “active/male” and “passive/female” (Mulvey 715). Women’s primary role in film is to be the object of the active male gaze. A woman is displayed in a manner that appeals to male sexual desire and attracts the voyeuristic look. Thus, the woman becomes the object for the gaze of men in the narrative and spectators in the theatre. These two gazes are “neatly combined without breaking verisimilitude” (Mulvey 716). The presence of the female image becomes a part of the spectacle of the narrative film, but also a hindrance to plot development. As a passive object, the woman cannot advance the story, which allows the active man to move the narrative along, thus ensuring that the man will never become the object of the gaze, but will remain the bearer of the look (Mulvey 716). The “star” qualities of Hollywood male actors do not make them the object of sexual desire, but rather the ideal ego that the spectator misrecognized as a child. Since the male protagonist represents the ideal, he can “make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator…[and] is free to command the stage, a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action” (Mulvey 717).

While the female is the object of sexual desire, her image is also a source of displeasure. The female image connotes the “threat of castration” (Mulvey 718) for the male spectator. This threat can be assuaged in two ways. The spectator can look at the female star with fascination in an attempt to “demystify” the threat of castration, or else disavow castration with the substitution of a fetish object, most often the female star (Mulvey 718). In both cases, the female image remains as the source of displeasure (stemming from the castration complex) and as the object of desire, which works to divert the threat of castration. From these psychoanalytic interpretations, Mulvey comes to the conclusion that the female image represents the threat of castration, and in turn becomes a “one-dimensional fetish” that only serves the “neurotic needs of the male ego” (Mulvey 721).

Alternatively, Freeland works to challenge some of the basic assumptions of Mulvey’s psychoanalytic approach to feminist film theory. Freeland first identifies the majority of feminist film theory as being “psychodynamic,” in that they focus on the “motives and interests” of the spectator and they typically rely on a “psychoanalytic framework in which women are described as castrated or as representing threats evoking male castration anxiety (Freeland 628). Freeland argues that Mulvey’s argument is weakened by its reliance on psychoanalysis. The basis of a psychodynamic argument is the assumption that it is built from some kind of universally accepted psychological theory. However, Freeland points out that psychoanalysis is far from being widely accepted (Freeland 631). Mulvey’s and other psychoanalytic arguments also do not produce valid readings of individual films, because they apply the theory with little regard for how well it applies to a given film. In this way, psychoanalysis becomes too broad and applies (to a certain extent) to every film, which devalues it as a stepping-stone for critical analysis.

Due to the shortcomings of psychodynamic film theory, Freeland offers a feminist approach to the horror genre that is more historical and inclusive of subgenres. The specific focus of the argument is on what Freeland calls the “intra-filmic” role of feminism in film studies (Freeland 637). This approach puts emphasis on the “representational contents and on the nature of their representational practices, so as to scrutinize how the film represents gender, sexuality, and power relations between the sexes” (Freeland 637). Freeland argues that feminist readings could benefit from an approach that focuses more on plot elements and characterization within the broader cultural context in which the film was produced. However, these readings must also be specific to the interests of feminist theory. Having this in mind, Freeland outlines a feminist critique as one that “analyzes a film’s presentation of certain naturalized messages about gender – messages that the film takes for granted and expects its audience to agree with and accept” (Freeland 637). These messages most often deal with the exploitation of women in a patriarchal society (Freeland 637).

After establishing her methods, Freeland uses her feminist approach to analyze several horror films, however I will focus on her reading of Jurassic Park. In this film, the central female character is a botanist, Dr. Ellie Sattler. Ellie is portrayed as intelligent and successful in her field. She is also brave and physically active (Freeland 642). However, her role as a botanist is secondary to Dr. Alan Grant (the male protagonist), who is an expert in dinosaurs, which is the subject of the entire narrative. Her association with plants can even be read as being symbolically linked to “nourishment and care-giving” (Freeland 642). Visually, she is also presented as being young, blonde, and attractive. Unlike many of the male characters, she is frequently wearing shorts to show off her legs (Freeland 642).

Another interesting aspect of the film is the connection between “monsters” and femininity. All of the dinosaurs in the film are female, and most often reflect negative female stereotypes. There are the “fat, sweet, and gentle” dinosaurs, but there are also the “thin, vicious, and scheming” dinosaurs (Freeland 642). The sexuality of the dinosaurs also comes into question, which the male scientists on the island find perplexing and mysterious because the dinosaurs are able to convert their sex and reproduce without a partner. This reflects a “culturally coded threat centering upon a kind of uncontrolled, rampant female sexuality, as well as awesome reproductive abilities” (Freeland 643).

Freeland also notes that men are the main cause for the progression of the narrative in Jurassic Park. The teenage girl in the film, Lex, is given a subordinate and stereotypical role that has very little impact on the story’s progression. Even though the narrative alludes to the fact that she is a computer hacker, this ability is only used to complete the menial task of closing a door. Throughout the majority of the film, Lex is seen crying and hiding from the dinosaurs, while the male characters protect her and work to solve the problems that they have initiated. Ellie’s characterization appears to be positive, but her subordinate role is quickly established. While Ellie is busy comforting the children and nursing sick dinosaurs back to health, Alan and the other male characters are “setting up the problematic situations, making them worse, and then resolving them (Freeland 643). In this way, the gender ideology of the film initially portrays Ellie as confident and intelligent, but quickly relegates her to a subordinate role, emphasizing her ability to be “pretty, flirtatious, and nurturing,” while also limiting her to these stereotypes (Freeland 643).

While both Mulvey and Freeland provide interesting perspectives for feminist film theory, Freeland makes a much stronger argument by not relying on psychoanalysis and instead focusing on contextual readings of individual films. Psychoanalysis (or a psychodynamic approach) is not a strong basis for feminist film theory for several reasons. As Freeland noted, it is not a universally or even widely accepted theory. More importantly, the theory itself (as outlined by Mulvey) relies heavily on simplified interpretations of complex sexual development. Psychoanalysis forgoes empirical evidence in favor of conjecture based on broad, simplified half-truths. For example, it is theorized that the Lacanian Mirror Stage is the time in which a child sees him or herself in a mirror and forms a sense of identity. While there is little physical evidence of this, it is not a completely ridiculous assumption. It stands to reason that a toddler would have a greater sense of identity by seeing him or herself in a mirror. However, the theory goes further and supposes that there is a sense of misrecognition of an ideal self. Not only is there no evidence for this, but it does not even seem rational to suppose that it is true. While theories, by definition, are not concrete facts, they do require some plausible foundation to be more than mere conjecture. Mulvey’s argument suffers due to these questionable underpinnings in psychoanalytic theory.

Alternatively, Freeland’s argument is made stronger by having a greater emphasis on direct readings of film texts. While Mulvey broadly applies her theories to film a priori, without regard for individual texts, Freeland’s approach is open to an interpretive reading of the text itself within a feminist framework. Using the example of Jurassic Park, Freeland is able to look at the relationships between men and women in the narrative. On the surface, the male and female characters do not seem to reveal any negative stereotypes, but by analyzing the film in conjunction with the underlying patriarchal ideologies of American culture and the negative gender stereotypes often portrayed in Hollywood films, more subversive representations can be revealed. As a result, the film can be seen as an artifact that is representative of its time and place in history and the impact of implied gender differences on Hollywood narratives. By interpreting the representations of women based on their visual and narrative characteristics in a film, combined with the cultural and historical background of the film’s production, Freeland provides a much more plausible argument for interpreting films with a feminist perspective.

Although Laura Mulvey had a significant impact on the history of feminist film theory, her argument does not provide a solid framework for analyzing the representations of women in film. The argument is weakened by its reliance on psychoanalysis, as well as the lack of evidence from readings of individual films. However, Cynthia Freeland is able to reevaluate the way in which feminist theory is applied to film in a way that focuses on contextual evidence. As a result, Freeland improves the preexisting methods for interpreting the representations of women in film and provides a much stronger framework for feminist film theory.

Freeland, Cynthia A. “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films.” Film Theory and Criticism. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 627-48. Print.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 711-22. Print.

“Birth” as a Problematic Test Case for Art-Horror

Noël Carroll’s theory of “art-horror” lays out a structure for classifying works of horror in fiction. Specifically, he identifies the genre based on its intended effects on audiences. While his evaluation does accurately define characteristics of fictions that lie at the “core” of the genre, his theory is not without fault. An interesting test case is the film Birth (2004), directed by Jonathan Glazer, in which a woman encounters a young boy, Sean, who claims to be her dead husband. Though the film meets many of the requirements of a horror film laid out by Carroll, it does not reflect the basic intention that delineates horror from other genres. While Sean does fit Carroll’s definition of a monster, and Birth’s narrative also fits the complex discovery plot structure, it is problematic to consider the film to be part of the horror genre due to the clear lack of intention to arouse “art-horror” in the audience on the part of the filmmaker, effectively weakening the applicability of Carroll’s theory.

In Birth, a 10-year-old Sean intrudes on a party in order to speak to the protagonist of the film, Anna. He proceeds to tell her that he is the reincarnation of her husband, also named Sean, who died ten years prior. Though she and her family initially dismiss the boy, young Sean persists and eventually persuades Anna by answering questions that only the real Sean would know. She quickly falls in love with the boy, much to the dismay of her family and her husband-to-be, Joseph. Eventually it is revealed that the boy is probably not Sean, because the real Sean secretly loved Clara, Sean’s sister-in-law, while young Sean clearly loves Anna. While Anna and the boy decide to part ways on the assumption that he is not really Sean, the ending is left somewhat ambiguous regarding the legitimacy of his reincarnation.

To begin, it is important to establish how exactly Sean constitutes a “monster” by Carroll’s definition. Carroll defines the monster by three basic traits: 1) the monster cannot be explained by contemporary science, 2) the monster is threatening, and 3) the monster is impure. Sean fulfills the first criteria by being a reincarnation. While the truth of his reincarnation is not made explicit, the potential for a supernatural account of Sean’s return is maintained throughout the film, only to be strongly challenged with physical evidence towards the very end. Therefore, Sean (as a potential reincarnation) cannot be explained by science because reincarnation is mystical by nature and has no scientific grounding. Regarding the second criteria, Sean is not threatening in a physical sense. He is not trying to kill Anna or her family. However, his intrusion into their lives does pose a threat to their conventional way of life, as well as a threat to Anna’s engagement to Joseph. Additionally, as Anna begins to show physical attraction to Sean (namely during separate scenes in which they briefly kiss and sit together in a bath tub), he suddenly poses a threat to conventional Western beliefs regarding sexuality. An adult female being sexually attracted to a ten-year-old boy is considered very taboo, and Anna’s family proves this by threatening to call the police if she does not stop seeing him. Sean meets the third criteria by occupying contradictory categories, including his status as both young and old, boy and man, dead and undead, and married and single. His existence does not fit into a “normal” worldview, thus making him seem impure.

With Sean playing the part of the monster, the narrative follows Carroll’s outline of the Complex Discovery Plot. The four stages of this plot structure are: onset, discovery, confirmation, and confrontation. The onset is the stage in which the monster is presented to the audience. During the discovery stage, the characters are made aware of the monster. In the confirmation stage, the monster’s existence must be proven to an authority figure, and in the final confrontation stage, there must be a battle between the humans and monster. While this outline may seem a little too rigid to apply to Birth, the general progression of the story fits this structure, and Carroll also allows for variations as well as overlapping stages for this plot type.

The onset and discovery stages are mostly overlapped in Birth, because the audience is made aware of Sean’s “monster” status at the same time as Anna, and only shortly before the rest of her family, however none of them actually believe that he is what he claims to be. This requires that Sean prove his story to them, which leads to the confirmation stage, when Anna finally accepts that Sean is actually her dead husband. It is most evident that Anna finally believes Sean during a scene in which she and Joseph attend the opera, and the camera slowly zooms in on her shocked expression while music swells in the background. This stage is brought on after the family sits down to listen to a recording of Sean answering questions asked by the late Sean’s brother, who is also a doctor. Though it would seem that the doctor would be the one who must be convinced (since doctors are most often the “expert” characters in horror films), it is actually Anna whose confirmation is most important. Sean is only interested in convincing Anna because, as her formerly dead husband, he loves her. So despite the fact that the rest of Anna’s family never comes to believe Sean’s story, it is irrelevant to his intentions to be with Anna. And despite their not believing him, he still poses a threat to their familial wellbeing. One might question whether he is still impure if the majority of characters in the film do not accept his interstitial existence, but he still manages to appear impure (to a degree) through his behavior. He knows things that he should not know, he has the uncanny ability to persuade and possibly even seduce Anna, and he also never really acts like a “normal” child. He sits and stares without saying much, and he continues to make outrageous claims that make him seem completely foreign to the other characters.

However, it is this very skepticism that allows for the confrontation stage to take place. During this stage, and even beginning in the previous stage, three separate groups emerge: the monster (Sean), the victim (Anna), and for lack of a better term, the angry mob (Anna’s family). It becomes the family’s mission to save Anna from the spell that Sean has cast on her. Although the family shows their skepticism throughout the film, they become increasingly dismayed as Anna becomes more convinced of Sean’s story. In one scene, Anna’s sister and mother try to physically stop her from seeing Sean and threaten to have her arrested. In another scene, Anna’s fiancée, Joseph, even attacks Sean out of jealousy, however Joseph leaves after this and becomes relatively irrelevant to the struggle between Sean and the family. Eventually, adult Sean’s sister-in-law, Clara, confronts Sean and reveals that the adult Sean was actually in love with her, not Anna. At this point, the audience is made aware of the love letters from adult Sean that young Sean discovered, providing the potential for a naturalistic explanation for all of his previously inexplicable knowledge about adult Sean’s life. However, it does not fully explain why he is so convinced that he is the reincarnation of Sean, and strangely it is only his confusion upon hearing that adult Sean actually loved Clara more than Anna that convinces young Sean that he may be wrong. He reasons that because he truly loves Anna, and the real Sean truly loved Clara, he must not be the real Sean. In this way, Clara (and by extension the rest of the family) defeat Sean and “banish” the monster out of him. He admits his mistake and decides to leave Anna alone. He is defeated now because: 1) he no longer considers himself a reincarnation, making his existence explainable by science, 2) he is no longer a threat to Anna, her marriage, her family, or their general way of life, and 3) he is no longer impure because he does not occupy multiple contradictory categories. However, a possible “return” of the monster is hinted at in the final scene, which shows Anna running out on her wedding with Joseph, implying that she may still believe that the boy is actually Sean, suggesting that the monster is still out there.

While Sean’s status as a monster and the narrative structure of the complex discovery plot make Birth fit into the horror genre by Carroll’s definition, this distinction is complicated because the film does not seem to be a horror film. It does not seem to be the intention of the filmmaker to induce “art-horror” in the audience, which is the most fundamental characteristic of a horror film (according to Carroll). There are no attempts to startle the audience with buses, the soundtrack does not try to imply a sense of dread, and while the reactions of the majority of the characters (namely Anna’s family, particularly Anna’s sister) show disgust and contempt for the boy, there is no indication that the audience is meant to reciprocate these emotions. Instead, the audience is meant to sympathize with Anna. The story is told mostly from her perspective, and her anguish over her lost love makes her the tragic hero of the story. We do not identify with the rest of Anna’s family because they are not portrayed as “positive” characters per se. They appear to be the most rational characters in the film, but their skepticism and disgust with Sean serve as barriers to Anna’s happiness, rather than an indication of an intention to induce “art-horror.” Although Anna is skeptical at first (and by extension the audience is also skeptical), she eventually comes to believe Sean, and by extension the audience does (or at least is meant to) as well. While the implied sexual attraction between Anna and Sean may be obscene to some audiences, it is not Sean himself that causes the disgust, nor is this plot point intended to frighten audiences. Although Anna may be the victim of Sean’s intrusion into her life, their relationship is tragic rather than horrific, because it is based on Anna’s love for her lost husband, and their mutual love that is not accepted by society.

While Birth fits Noël Carroll’s structure for a complex discovery plot and Sean meets the criteria for a horror monster, it is problematic to identify the film as horror. Even to consider it as lying on the periphery of the genre is difficult, because the key feature of Carroll’s theory on horror, the intention of the filmmaker to induce “art-horror” in the audience, is completely absent from the film. While it can be argued that Carroll’s theory is too exclusive (because it arguably excludes many films with psychotic killers), Birth shows that his theory also runs the risk of being too inclusive. Because Birth meets the structural criteria for a horror film, and yet it does not produce the effect of “art-horror,” it becomes a problematic test case for Carroll’s theory of the horror genre.

 

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.

Reversing Traditional Gender Representations in Contemporary Zom-Coms

 

Following the success of The Evil Dead series in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, the popularity of zombie horror-comedies, or “Zom-Coms,” has steadily increased throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s. This popularity solidified a new conformity in certain narrative components of the subgenre, particularly in its gender roles and relations. While the comedy in The Evil Dead films mostly derives from the over-the-top violence and zany one-liners, its spiritual successors, such as Braindead (1992), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and Doghouse (2012), among others, emphasize the emasculated male hero attempting to deal with the undead as the source of humor. The women serve as the source of this emasculation and the first link in the causal chain that forces the men toward the threat (zombies) that they are ill equipped to handle. Thus, in contemporary zombie horror-comedies, the male protagonist is emasculated at the hands of the oppressive female, and this emasculation renders the protagonist incapable of repelling the zombie hordes, which serves as both a source of intensified horror and comedy.

First, it is important to note how these films function as horror-comedies. In Noël Carroll’s essay, “Horror and Humor,” Carroll argues that many genres can be identified and distinguished by certain character types that inhabit their narrative worlds (Carroll 147). In the horror film, the most central character type is the monster. By Carroll’s definition, a monster must meet three criteria: the monster cannot be explained by contemporary science, the monster must be threatening, and the monster must be impure, with this impurity arising from a violation or contradiction of cultural categories (Carroll 150). As the reanimated dead, zombies are certainly inexplicable by modern science. They are also threatening in that they attempt to kill and eat living people, and they are impure because they occupy the contradictory categories of being both living and dead.

However, the presence of a monster is not sufficient for a comprehensive definition of horror. Monsters can exist in films without producing what Carroll refers to as the emotion of “art-horror” (Carroll 149). Horror films, whether they are successful in producing art-horror or not, are “generally designed to guide audience response” (Carroll 149). Therefore, the second necessary condition of a horror film is the intention of the filmmaker to produce art-horror in the audience, with the object of that emotion being the monster. This can be read in a horror film through the reactions that characters have toward the monster, with the implication that the audience should reciprocate those reactions (Carroll 150).

While all three of the aforementioned films meet these requirements, with the zombies constituting monsters and being the object of art-horror, they also have the intention of producing comic amusement in the audience. The emotions of art-horror and comic amusement may seem incompatible at first glance, but Carroll argues that they actually work well together because they share the attribute of being “necessarily linked to the problematization, violation, or transgression of standing categories, norms, and concepts” (Carroll 152). In comedy, what is referred to as the incongruity theory involves “the bringing together of disparate or contrasting ideas or concepts” (Carroll 153). Thus, what causes a sense of impurity in the monster of a horror film can also create comic amusement in certain contexts. For the genre of horror-comedy, this most often requires the subtraction of the second attribute of a monster (that it must be threatening). Once the frightening elements of a monster are removed, and it no longer poses a threat to the characters in the film, then it is reduced to a scientifically inexplicable contradiction of categories, and is therefore capable to produce comic amusement for the audience (Carroll 153).

However, while the comedy in a horror-comedy film can be achieved by removing the threatening attribute of a monster, it is not a necessary requirement of the genre. In Braindead, Shaun of the Dead, and Doghouse, the threat posed by the zombies remains throughout the films, and yet the films are still comedic. This is accomplished through the characterization of the male hero and his female counterparts. In Katherine Low’s essay on gender representation and biblical allegory in post-apocalyptic films, she argues that it is the learned expectation of audiences that the male hero will require certain traits to take on whatever threatens humanity (Low 12). In a film that presents an end-of-times scenario in which a male protagonist is pitted against an all-pervasive threat or force of evil, the audience is trained to have the “active expectation of masculine behavior” (Low 5) which is further perpetuated, particularly for Western audiences, by the “popular American fascination with the lone sacrificial male hero who prevails in the end through his strength” (Low 12). This characterization is further exemplified in the film that originated the tropes of the modern zombie genre, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). In this film, the central male character, Ben, becomes the traditional male hero that audiences anticipate when he takes action to try to save the group of survivors and becomes increasingly violent to fight off the zombies (Bishop 204). In post-apocalyptic horror films, a singular, strong male is expected by audiences of the genre to fight and defeat the monstrous threat.

In contrast to this conception of the male hero is the secondary female character. Within the established audience expectations of the genre, this character functions either as a sexual prize for the male hero, or a sexualized barrier that distracts the hero from his goals (Low 15). In either case, the females are only defined in relation to the male hero and do not “command primary action in the film” (Low 16). Instead, the male hero holds power over both the action of the narrative and the female body, whereas the female’s only purpose is the sexual fulfillment of the male. In short, audiences have come to expect “a sexualized femininity…[and] an active and violent masculinity” from the female counterpart and the male hero, respectively (Low 16).

While the characters of Braindead, Shaun of the Dead, and Doghouse all exist in post-apocalyptic scenarios, in which some kind of virus or biological disaster is causing a threat to all of humanity, the gender representations do not align with audience expectations, and by extension cultural norms. In fact, the gender representations and relations directly contradict the cultural norms that have been established for such a post-apocalyptic setting. In these contemporary zom-coms, the male protagonists exist in a “state of enigmatic stasis where goals are unreachable” (Pagano 81). The male “hero” is stripped of his productive, action-guiding nature and emasculated by the oppressive female, rendering him ineffectual against the zombie hordes.

In Peter Jackson’s Braindead (released as Dead Alive in North America), the protagonist, Lionel, is a shy, self-effacing man who is psychologically abused by his overbearing mother, Vera. When Lionel becomes attracted to another woman, Paquita, Vera becomes jealous. While secretly pursuing Lionel and Paquita on their date at the zoo, the mother is bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey and falls ill. She eventually turns into a zombie and starts killing people, creating more zombies. Lionel tries unsuccessfully to hide his mother in the basement and contain the outbreak, but she escapes and creates even more zombies. During the final confrontation between Lionel and the zombies, Lionel finally stands up to his mother, who has now mutated into a giant, zombie-rat hybrid creature. Once Lionel embraces his masculinity to defeat his mother, he is able to live happily with Paquita.

Similarly to Braindead, the male hero in Shaun of the Dead is inadequate when trying to defeat the zombies. The film establishes the title character, Shaun, as lazy and unmotivated. He lives with his best friend, Ed, who is equally lazy and unmotivated. The tension between Shaun and his girlfriend, Liz, is established early and quickly leads to Shaun getting dumped. Following a night of drinking to lament his dead relationship, Shaun wakes up to find that the dead have risen from their graves all across London. With Ed’s help, he decides to find Liz and his mother and save them all from the epidemic. However, the majority of their group ends up turning into zombies (including Ed and Shaun’s mother), due mostly to a series of poor decisions made by Shaun. However, in the end, Shaun and Liz survive and live happily together, with Ed as their pet zombie.

In Doghouse, a group of seven male friends go on a “boy’s weekend” to escape the respective women in there lives and to help the central member of their group, Vince, get over his recent divorce. While each member of the group feels trapped and emasculated by their girlfriends and wives, they attempt to free themselves and flaunt their masculinity, only to be faced with a horde of zombified, man-hating women at their destination. After the zombie women kill four of their friends, Vince and three other members of the group eventually make it out alive. As they drive away, the remaining survivors laugh about their ruined vacation.

In all three films, the male hero, and occasionally his male compatriots, are emasculated, with this emasculation functioning as the source of intensified horror and comedy for the spectator. While the zombies in all three films serve as the central object of art-horror, the art-horror is intensified by the inadequate nature of the male hero. By Katherine Low’s analysis, in a post-apocalyptic scenario, audiences come to expect a singular male hero to be aggressively masculine and capable of handling a powerful threat (Low 5). However, Lionel, Shaun, and Vince contradict this expectation. They are weak, relatively unintelligent, and unprepared to fight or even cope with the existence of the zombie threat. By making these characters ineffectual, the tension is heightened in the film. Having an unmotivated or timid protagonist of this sort decreases the likelihood that the characters will make it out alive, thus amplifying the threat that the zombies pose and intensifying the emotion of art-horror for the spectator.

However, the shift from hero to ineffectual coward also functions as the source of comedy in these films. As Carroll argues, horror and comedy share the trait of being necessarily involved in the application of contradictory or problematic categories. Much like with the impurity of horrific monsters, incongruity comedy involves the “inappropriate transgressions of norms or commonplace expectations” (Carroll 154). In these zom-coms, the comedy arises from the denial of our expectations regarding gender representation. The spectator expects to see a strong, masculine hero, but instead the male protagonists are nothing of the sort.

For example, in Braindead, Lionel is repeatedly associated with maternity and objects of the home life, which, in Western society, are stereotypically associated with femininity. In one such instance, a group of zombies pursue Lionel into the laundry room, where he drops a pile of linens on them to allow for his escape. Shortly after this, Lionel breaks through a wall using a laundry iron. During an earlier scene, Lionel, attempting to care for the zombified baby of a deceased friend, wheels the child around the park in a stroller. Even this proves too much for him, as he loses control of the stroller and must chase after it before someone discovers the child’s condition. Lionel even tries to diffuse the situation and appear “normal” by imitating a nearby woman who is playing with her child. In this way, Lionel functions as a contradiction and regressive version of the traditional male hero. The film functions as an “inversion of the hero’s journey, proceeding through the inner spaces of the home and the maternal body” (Badley 44). In all of these examples, it is Lionel’s contradiction of common expectations that becomes comedic. He is feminine rather than masculine, and in turn ineffectual rather than effective against the zombie horde.

In Shaun of the Dead, Shaun is frequently identified as being underachieving and undeserving of a relationship with Liz. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert notes that Liz is “smart and ambitious and wants to get ahead in the world” whereas Shaun and Ed are slackers who “maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger” (Ebert 7). Rather than associating Shaun with objects of femininity to render him ineffectual, the film simply portrays Shaun as lacking a strong, masculine drive. If the male hero drives the action of the narrative, and Shaun is markedly lazy and unmotivated, then he lacks a key feature of what it is to be a man in the traditional sense, and is therefore inadequate as the male hero.

In Doghouse, the male characters, particularly Vince, are presented as ineffectual through a physical inferiority to the female zombies. When the men arrive at their destination, the female zombies are stronger and much more physically aggressive than the men. In the end, their only hope for survival is to run away. The men are simply incapable of defeating the female monsters due to physical difference. In this way, the expectation of a strong, masculine hero is undermined by the even stronger female.

However, in all three films it is only when the protagonists rediscover their masculinity that they are able to defeat, or at the very least evade the zombies. Lionel must confront his mother about her terrible treatment of him and ultimately kill her, while Shaun must rescue Liz and kill the zombified version of his mother as well. While the men of all three films must come to similar revelations to overcome the threat, the conclusions drawn in Doghouse are more overtly misogynistic than Braindead and Shaun of the Dead. This is most evidence when Vince “realizes, having fought tooth and nail with one hell-bent [woman] after another…no woman is worth the bother” (Wigley 60). In all three films, the male hero can only reaffirm his masculine qualities and defeat the monstrous threat when he frees himself of the oppressive female.

It has already been established that all three films utilize a male antihero to amplify the emotion of art-horror and produce comic amusement in the audience, but it is also necessary to address the narrative cause of the male’s ineffectuality. Whereas the traditional expectation of the female is as a powerless secondary character whose only function is to fulfill the male hero’s sexual needs, the females of the contemporary zom-com operate in a very different way. The females of these films work to contradict our expectations in a way that justifies and intensifies the male protagonist’s shortcomings. Rather than merely being sexualized objects of male desire, the women function as oppressive, powerful characters that cause the initial emasculation of the protagonist. In this context, the female is defined through her ability to metaphorically “remove the phallus” and, to a degree, become a threat to the male as a “castrating woman,” resulting in a feminized male (Patterson 106). While the narrative is still driven by the male characters (albeit through their bad decisions), it is the females that function as the source of emasculation and the force that pushes the men toward the zombie threat.

In Braindead, the mother, Vera, is domineering and works to make Lionel believe that he is incapable of existing without her. When Lionel falls for Paquita, it is only Vera’s overbearing nature that leads to her own infection. Without his controlling mother or the intrusion of Paquita in their lives, Lionel would not be the emasculated hero. In Shaun of the Dead, Shaun is initially emasculated when Liz dumps him. This confirms that he is a lackluster boyfriend and bruises his ego. He is also emasculated by his mother, who frequently berates Shaun like a child for not respecting his stepfather. And similarly in Doghouse, the entire narrative depends upon the initial emasculation that the female, and any form of intimate relations with a female, impose on the male. Vince and his friends try to free themselves of females, only to find that this is impossible. The females initially force them towards the threat, and this threat also happens to be female. Once the female zombies have physically emasculated them, Vince and the remaining survivors must shamefully return to the women they disdain.

It is important to note that this trend is not isolated to these three films. The emasculated male/oppressive female relationship is prevalent in many other contemporary zombie-comedies, such as the relationship between Francesco and the unnamed widow in Dellamorte Dellamore (1994), Columbus and Wichita in Zombieland (2009), and “R” and Julie in Warm Bodies (2013). In all of these films, the intensified horror and humor derives from a contradiction in our expectations, and by extension our conception of cultural norms. The strong male hero who embodies traditional notions of masculinity is replaced with a weaker, ineffectual hero, whose inadequacy is the result of an oppressive female. By being weaker, the men are made completely inept against the monstrous threat, which serves to increase the tension caused by the threat and simultaneously allow for comic amusement. Ultimately, these elements have shifted the zombie-comedy subgenre into a more reactionary state. While the monsters are not always defeated (in Doghouse they are simply left to become someone else’s problem), they are still represented as entities that should be defeated. More importantly, at the end of each of these films, the male characters are only able to defeat or escape the zombies when they rediscover their lost masculinity. While the films start with non-traditional character types (weak male/strong female), the narratives end up reinforcing traditional gender roles and institutions, namely that of a strong male in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship with a weaker female. Ultimately, the films reinforce the very contradictions that initially work to produce art-horror and comic amusement for the audience.

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Patterson, Natasha. “Cannibalizing Gender and Genre: A Feminist Re-Vision of George Romero’s Zombie Films.” Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead. Ed. Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2008. 103-15. Print.

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