Your Film Professor

It’s the Halloween season and so here is my annual re-posting of my two horror film lists.

Like my interest in films overall, my taste in horror films – one of my very favorite genres – also tends to be more cerebral, as I think my blurbs below reflect. As is also reflected below, my interest in the horror genre is especially informed by Robin Wood’s seminal essay “An Introduction to The American Horror Film” (for one place to find this essay, see Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film) not only for its specific focus on the “return of the repressed” but also by his general contention that the horror genre is potentially a “revolutionary” genre, a contention that I think is furthered informed by other scholarly work on the horror genre (including Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection) and is further informed for me by my various interests including Marxism, post-Marxism, feminism/women’s studies, and masculinity studies.

Categorizing the Horror Film:

In terms of how I categorize a film as a horror film, I have to say that I take a very broad view of the horror genre, including films that many horror fans might not consider horror films, e.g., some films that focus on mental illness and films that rupture (identity) boundaries in disturbing ways. For me, the limits that many horror film fans place on the horror genre – that it must be scary and/or graphically shocking – is just too limiting for the numerous films that offer us psychological (identity disintegration) forms of horror, a focus of the human condition that to my mind the horror film explores so well in so many different ways.

(20) Fido (2006, Andrew Currie):

This is my personal favorite zombie film, a horror-comedy film that is as much satire as it is – in some genuinely disturbing zombie moments – horror/zombie film. Like the vampire trope (see more below), the zombie trope has been used creatively for numerous allegorical meanings, the most famous of course being George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and his commentary on how consumerism (American ideology) makes zombies of us all! In Fido, Currie ingeniously complicates this allegorical vision by creating a very strange setting that is both a future world (a zombie outbreak has happened and Zomcon, a quasi-corporate-government entity, has created containment communities – “wild” zombies roam outside the containment fences – where “collared” zombies are domesticated into conspicuous slave labor) and, most inexplicably, a past 1950s sensibility. In creating this alternative universe setting Currie can use the zombie trope for great (multifaceted) effect, both a satiric commentary on 50s ideology and present day issues (for one thing, the zombies are stand-ins for 50s Others, e.g., African Americans and present day Others, Hispanics/Latinos). Truly, a film that is both deep and entertaining!

(19) Would You Rather (2012, David Guy Levy)

Before I get to my thoughts on this film, let me emphasize that I really loathe what has been dubbed “torture porn” horror films. I like this description because to my mind that is what these type of horror films do give us, human bodies being “tortured” in really horrendous ways for the sole purpose to titillate. To my mind, such films do real damage to us, moving us deeper and deeper into pushing the boundaries of how to stimulate us (for profit), while desensitizing us to violence against Others, a mode of being that might be degrading our empathy, which, in turn, contributes to acts of violence by those who are already mentally unstable. (This too is the “videodrome” signal, see my entry below!) And I would say that Would You Rather falls into this “torture porn” sub-genre. However, I have watched the film a couple of times now and I am convinced that despite it seeming to be a “torture porn” horror film, it is that rare “torture porn” horror film that is indeed doing something interesting, in fact using its tropes strategically, for allegorical effect. What this film does that I think is even more rare is use horror film tropes to reveal the monstrousness of capitalism, and make no mistake that capitalism is ripe for horror film tropes since it is in short a put profit before people, dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest (e.g., sociopathic) system. And that is what the film maps out so well, how capitalism (allegorically embodied by Shephard Lambrick/the Lambrick family) degrades humanity by making money the center of being — each character desperately needs money and will do almost anything to get it, including “torturing” Others, which, of course, is what we get on a routine basis in the real world. In other words, by making this film’s focus money as the object of exchange, the film gives us in a very concrete way what goes on more abstractly everyday, that money dictates being, dictates choices, even if those choices mean enacting brutalities on Others. That just begins to get at the complexities in this interesting film; I’ll do a full blown analysis that better fleshes out these ideas at some point in the future.

(18) A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014, Ana Lily Amirpour)

This wonderfully atmospheric, gorgeously photographed, and cogently symbolic vampire film immediately shot into my favorites horror list. But its visual splendor isn’t the only thing that makes this film sublime. Amirpour offers us a wonderfully subversive film as well, especially as she re-codes the (arguably!) oppressive signification of the hijab (headscarf), suggesting the latent power of women within this patriarchal symbol. That isn’t the only marker of patriarchal oppression; Amirpour doesn’t only give us a wish-fulfillment narrative – of a woman who can both “walk home alone at night” and do so utterly without fear or anxiety – but also a woman who acts as an avenging specter over all of patriarchy as she looms large striking down phallocentric, hypermasculine men who objectify and dehumanize women as well as offering up “scared straight” lessons to young males. Symbolically, Amirpour also offers us up even more supporting illustrations of the destructiveness of patriarchy and phallocentrism, the metaphor of the oil dirges “penetrating” the earth and “sucking” the life out of it for profit and power, emphasizing how we are in effect lost to our singular self destructive consumption lifestyles, a contrast to our vampire’s consumption appetites (e.g., predatory men!), making the men she consumes allegorical, her consumption of them being more than about consuming phallocentric, hypermasculine men (not men in general as she falls in love with a man!) but about consuming – or vanquishing – what these men represent, a history of patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine oppression, objectification, dehumanization of women.

(17) Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell)

Since its infamous reception (the film was widely condemned and it is usually cited as ruining Powell’s career), Peeping Tom has grown in measure, now considered one of the most important horror films in film history. The film’s primary claim to fame is its potent self-reflexive focus on voyeurism, especially in terms of its prescient focus on the objectification, fetishization, dehumanization of women. In the context of what Mark does – his victims are women – we are confronted with our own complicity in how voyeurism is part and parcel of a patriarchal, phallocentric ideology of power that systematically violates and indeed informs a culture of violence against women. But that only begins to get at the complexities in this film. Powell also creates a sympathetic serial killer, a rare thing in the horror (serial killer) film. That is, Powell radically gives us root causes for Mark’s psychopathy and thus suggests that Mark too is a victim, his murders not a simple act of “evil” (psychopaths are not born but created) but rather stemming from horrible parental abuse, e.g., his father’s “experiments” on him.

(16) The Babadook (2014, Jennifer Kent)

The power of this amazing film is to realize at least one of the greatest potentialities of the horror genre, to recognize that the most horrifying monsters are the ones in our minds (as you will soon see, many of my favorites exploit horror tropes to this end). In this case, Amelia suffers from some kind of mental illness, probably dissociative personality disorder, stemming apparently both from the loss of her beloved husband (who she conspicuously deposits in her basement, locking the door, beginning her unresolved issues with his death) and the challenges she faces with her challenging son Samuel who seems to have some behavioral issues himself including some violent tendencies and a too close attachment to his mother, who, as we come to see, sees his clinginess as parasitical and possessive, a further engulfment fear by her. The Babadook creature then is not only a manifestation of her traumatic bereavement issues but also a mechanism that frees her from her symbiotic (from her mentally disturbed point of view) son, another deeply disturbing truth of child rearing that parents encounter and often cannot confront in a healthy way!

(15) Hour of the Wolf (1968, Ingmar Bergman)

First of all, I have to say that I don’t recommend this film to anyone! While Bergman is to my mind one of the most important filmmakers in film history (and one of my personal favorites!), his films are not the easiest films in the world to watch. In terms of Hour of the Wolf, I would say that with Persona it is his most challenging film. If I’ve peaked your interest in this sublime filmmaker (for those of you who haven’t seen his work), I would recommend beginning with one of his more accessible works such as one of his most famous works, e.g., Wild Strawberries and/or The Seventh Seal and/or Fanny and Alexander, all of which aren’t horror films but most definitely have elements of horror in them. Or, coincidental with this list, take a look at one of Bergman’s early classic films The Virgin Spring, famous for being the source material for Wes Craven’s notorious The Last House on the Left. In terms of The Hour of the Wolf, Bergman is doing what Bergman does so well, explore the interior recesses of the mind, though in this case, his uses horror tropes to reveal the horrors of madness. The film is so challenging because it (in my reading of it anyway and that too is why it is so challenging because it is so ambiguous!) collapses “reality” and non-reality (e.g., Johan’s hallucinations) though in classic Bergman fashion, he never makes it clear when we are in “reality” mode and when we are in “hallucination” mode. In sum, few films have explored a descent into madness as well as this film!

(14) The Skin I Live In (2011, Pedro Almodóvar)

(Just a special note that of all the films on this list, this is the one blurb that I would HIGHLY recommend you NOT read until you see the film; part of the power of this film is in not knowing what is coming!)

In a very interesting twist on the “mad scientist” scenario Almodóvar (kind of a “mad scientist” himself) has “mad scientist” Robert Ledgard “create” a transgender woman, though the catch here is that this transformation is against Vincente’s will and that we don’t know this fact until well into the film (add in this classic science fiction-horror trope: “Vera’s” new skin is partially made from pig blood, in effect making “her” “post-human”!). The ramifications of these strategies of delaying this revelation are deep and complex, Almodóvar forcing us to constantly revise our own subjectivity as we slowly discover the horrifying “truth” of what we are seeing. In short, this film fantastically spins one’s head with all of the transgressive potentialities of this figuration of transgenderism! Only Almodóvar could cook up something so subversive!

(13) Black Swan (2010, Darren Aronofsky)

Black Swan is a film that I suspect will be disputed as a horror film, but, for me, it finally passes my horror test due to (A) the film’s really horrific explorations of identity disintegration and (B) the film’s truly horrific imagery. Like the best films that explore identity disintegration, Black Swan has several parts to this collapse, e.g., Nina’s monstrously engulfing mother; a dog-eat-dog ballet venue where people are reduced to animals preying on each other (e.g., brings out the “black” swans in people so to speak!), a putting “profit” (or gain) before people, people whose lives are entirely too dependent on being a “star”; a sociopathic director who inhumanely pushes mentally fragile Nina; and, finally, crucially, the black swan role itself, a trigger that releases Nina’s unconscious desire to free her dark neurotic self barely contained, released in conjunction with a dark (predatory) world’s (Thomas’s) imperative to be “dark”/“perfect.” Aronofsky perfectly blends this recipe for identity meltdown!

(12) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

In my view, this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel is still the best version. A film ahead of its time (in part due to being made before the notorious stifling Hays Code kicked in—this film has some really risqué moments!), it potently realizes Stevenson’s famous exploration of our repressed nature, what film studies scholar Robin Wood divides into “basic repression” and “surplus repression.” One of the complexities of this version is in giving us both of these repressive parts of ourselves, our primitive (prehistoric) self, that animal side of us that, as Wood so stresses, we need to repress – that is healthy for us to repress – so as to get beyond our most primitive self, and “surplus repression,” those natural elements of ourselves that are unhealthy for us to repress, e.g., sexual desire, women’s sexual desire, “deviant” sexuality, and so on. Most tantalizing is how Rouben Mamoulian has Jekyll (Fredric March) and prostitute Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) represent in so many ways characteristics that are a threat to the dominant (oppressive-repressive) ideology, e.g., Jekyll transgresses the elitist decorum of high society (Jekyll offers up an “alternative ideology” to existing class superiority and elitist/tradition dogma) and Ivy transgresses on “normal” female (suppressed) sexuality, her overall free (sexual) spirit behavior subversively transgressing the norms of society. Of course, the glaring emphasis is on Jekyll’s own forced suppressed sexuality, e.g., he clearly bristles at being subjected to suppressing his sexual desires, his “vulgar” (for the time period and for the decorum of his elite environment anyway) expression of verbalizing this sexual frustration distressing the elites around him. The film itself offers up commentaries on the Real of normative (patriarchal, phallocentric, elitist, capitalistic) ideologies, which we especially get with Jekyll’s (not Hyde’s, Jekyll’s!) patriarchal, phallocentric, toxic masculinity monstrousness, him seeing Ivy as an object he can consume. Notable too is the crucial ingredient of the class thread that runs throughout this film, the way that the film is a commentary on the extreme class disparities in society. Truly, a film ahead of its time!

(11) Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)

One of the most famous horror films of all time is also one of the most complex. Like Hitchcock’s other best films, Psycho is best understood not by its most sensationalistic moments (e.g., the famous shower scene) but rather via the seemingly inconspicuous or less important signifiers in the film. Take the stuffed birds of prey that Hitchcock focuses on when Norman and Marion chat in the parlor room, signifiers that seem to point to the reality of what is really going on in the moment, that Norman is a predator preying on his “prey” Marion but that only begins to get at the complexity of this glaring signifier. This “predatory”/“prey” binary actually is writ large throughout the film, beginning with powerful rich Cassidy who clearly “preys” on Marion, not too subtly propositioning her with money (and there seems to be another also not too subtle Oedipal echo of his relationship to his daughter!). And then we get that “Rape of Lucretia” image covering the peep hole, here again ostensibly punctuating Norman’s violation of Marion as he watches her take off her clothes but which may be suggestive of Norman’s violated victimization as well! That is, the most glaring predator of all of course is Norman’s mother, an abusive parent, as she comes through in Norman’s embodiment of her, e.g., it was her monstrous parenting that created a monster (e.g., Norman). In short, simply put, especially via these two glaring signifiers – e.g., Norman’s mother and Cassidy – it seems to me that Hitchcock is targeting two truly destructive ideologies, Christian/Protestant ideology and Patriarchy ideology respectively. We keep getting signifiers of both, the Christian/Protestant ideology signified by Norman’s mother’s Christian scolding (e.g., a taboo on pre-marital sex, sex/sexual desire as obscene/indecent, repression of sexual desires, “family values” as normative behavior/self, etc.), and the latter embodied not just by Cassidy but by his glaringly conspicuous cowboy hat, the ultimate signifier of patriarchal, phallocentric ideology. In this way, Hitchcock has created both one of the most complex serial killers of all time (Norman) and one of the most complex serial killer films.

(10) Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson)

Let the Right One In sets its sights on using the vampire trope to delve into some deep issues and elements of the human condition, including the profundity of “letting the right one in,” that risky proposition of opening one’s self to Others in the hope of finding the “one” who we can put our unconditional faith, trust, and love in, the “one” who will accept our self unconditionally. To my mind, though, the deeper implications of this film are even deeper than this element: Eli signifies the ultimate (abject) “monstrous feminine” (Barbara Creed’s coined conception) for two reasons (1) due to her defunct genitalia, Eli is neither female nor male (not an accident I don’t think that she is eternally positioned in pre-puberty), thus negating the phallic power of masculinity, at least in terms of how it is measured in terms of phallic dominance in terms of gender differentiation; and (2) the most abject Other in the dominant social order are the transgendered (transsexuals, transvestites), because they so utterly transgress the dominant social order, making gender itself a malleable (not fixed) idea, very threatening to a phallocentric order whose identity so hinges on the fixidity of patriarchal, phallocentric gender differences.

(9) The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton)

The brilliance of The Innocents is in its doing what most scholars and spectators say it isn’t doing! That is, most scholars and fans of the film think that it maintains the delicate balance of Henry James’ seminal work The Turn of the Screw (e.g., between whether the ghosts are real or just a product of Miss Giddens’ unbalanced imagination) but in my view they don’t see how director Jack Clayton (and screenwriters William Archibald and Truman Capote) actually use some strategic uses of form to tip the balance in favor of the ghosts not being real! (I can’t map this out here but perhaps at some point I will use this space to diagram this out!) For some, such a loss of ambiguity takes something away from the film. However, I would strongly argue that the film is stronger for this change, because instead of the ghosts destroying the kids, which would mean that Miss Giddens put up the good fight and lost with no one to really blame but the “evil” ghosts, we get a much grimmer picture of already damaged children being destroyed not just by insane (severely sexually repressed) Miss Giddens, who may have been their last hope (e.g., their last hope for a healthy surrogate parental figure), but by an oppressive ideology (Christianity/Protestantism, patriarchy) that creates monsters such as Miss Giddens.

(8) Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur)

I believe Cat People has always been the consensus pick as the best of the Val Lewton productions, but I still I don’t know if film scholars have fully understood just how special this film is! The film seems to be a prototype for the structure of many horror films from this time period, e.g., the foreign Other-as-monster (e.g., Irena) subversively disrupting the ideological status quo of wholesome American “normalcy,” to be of course “annihilated” by the end of the film, allowing the wholesome normalcy of American goodness (represented by all-American couple Oliver and Alice) to be firmly re-instituted. However, while foreign, exotic Irena is “annihilated” by the end of the film – and her exotic, “deviant” sexuality with her – and the wholesome American couple are left standing, that isn’t quite the end of this story. I would strongly argue that what makes this film so subversive is that it doesn’t entirely quash this exotic Otherness, thus subversively destabilizing the dominant (American) social order!  I say this because of (1) the way the film makes Irena so sympathetic, even at the end when she in effect kills herself, and (2) the way that the film codes Dr. Judd as the “King John” figure of the film, which, in turn, most radically, connects Dr. Judd to the “King John” (Christian, “white man’s burden”) narrative, which to me has the effect of casting doubt on it, may in fact be commenting on how western ideology has been doing this for centuries, conquering indigenous peoples and in the name of “white man’s burden,” “civilizing” them out of their indigenous belief systems! Informing this latter element even more is the other “cat woman” we see who seems to have accepted her Otherness/Self (deftly rejecting the Christian “normalizing” thread in the film!), tantalizingly suggesting that there is indeed perhaps an alternative (Other) path for Irena, making her suicide not a relief but a tragedy.

(7) May (2002, Lucky McKee)

Ah, May is just such a unique and special…and incredibly complex film (too complex to unpack here)! Our inexplicably sympathetic protagonist (even after she has killed I think!) May has fragilely “stitched” together a reality wholly based on her “abject” “lazy” eye, the one “part” of her that, in her eyes, makes her abject, a state of mind instigated by her abusive mother who, like so many others today, can only see value in surface level body image superficialities. And thus, May thinks by “fixing” her “lazy” eye, she will have fixed her one abnormal “part” and thus become part of the “whole” world, which, in turn, will bring her the unconditional love and acceptance that she so craves. When this fragile belief/reality begins to “crack” (and then “shatter” into “pieces” in a powerfully dramatic scene!) – when she sees that the “norm” of this reality is really imperfect people “devouring” each other (punctuated by Adam’s film) – May creates – “stitches” together – her own reality! The film’s complex play on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein adds a layer to this interesting discourse; that is, like Frankenstein’s abject “monster,” May creates an abject “monster” (ironically made out of “perfect” “parts,” well, almost so…) that utterly destabilizes our sense of “normalcy,” making the “perfect” abject and thus making the abject our new “normal.” And that just scratches the surface of this incredibly complex film! A must see film for horror fans!

(6) The Addiction (1995, Abel Ferrara)

To my mind, no vampire film uses the vampire trope as well and as interestingly as The Addiction. In general, I believe the vampire narrative is so popular because it speaks to essential desires in us. That is, the vampire is so transgressive because he or she still looks human but is released from all of the societal and ideological constraints that are imposed on us from birth.  More specifically, vampires are very much in tune with Woods’ “return of the repressed,” literally embodying “surplus” desire, e.g., bisexuality/homosexuality, illicit and “deviant” sexuality (think about the sexual innuendo that surrounds vampires, e.g., “sucking,” “penetration,” exchanging of blood!), and just the capability of breaking free from the societal bondage that disempowers, alienates, and so on, not just in terms of a general hedonism but in terms of real freedom to realize one’s potential and full realization of one’s self. The Addiction plays on these metaphors but then complicates all of them by making vampirism an “addiction” metaphor, though in that – in creating the secondary metaphor of “addiction” – the film deepens the complexity of its deeply pessimistic message: Vampirism is not the addiction; rather, our seemingly endless capacity for “evil” acts is (and boy when we see our history of atrocities and how we are still committing them, it is hard to deny this contention!).  Having said that, as definitive as that seems, I think the film offers us a twist at the end that inexplicably offers us a hopeful ending. That is, finally, for me, the film is about redemption and the nature of our existential potentiality, about the overpowering, crushing weight of what we are (vampires!) and what it takes to overcome our own nature, e.g., accepting our “guilt” and using it to act and live in the world in a way that has a positive impact on Others.

(5) Antichrist (2009, Lars von Trier)

Okay, first of all, I just have to emphasize – no, make that hyper-emphasize – that I not only don’t recommend Antichrist, I recommend to most of you out there to NOT watch this film! For one thing, the film has one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever seen in cinema. More generally, the film is as graphic and disturbing as any film I’ve ever seen. (Add in that the film is also pretty challenging in terms of its methodical pacing and uncompromising withholding of any respite from its abstruseness.) Second, I have to confess that of all of the films on this list, this is the one film that I have not really put under my analyzing lens and, well, figured it out to my satisfaction. In part, that’s because I have never taught the film but in part that is because the film is just so dang dense! Even the cursory bit of research I have done on the film only furthered my uncertainty on how to read this film. At some point, I’ll put the film under my analytical lens (and then perhaps change my mind!) but until then the one thing I know is that (A) Lars von Trier is one of my very favorite filmmakers and (B) this film engrossed me like very few films have done. The one thing that perplexes me is the view by many scholars that the film is misogynistic! Perhaps I am the one who is way off base but I actually thought the film was most definitely not misogynist but indeed feminist! I read the film this way: The film radically excoriates a historical misogyny, going back to Christ/Christianity, which made “He” (and this connects to the film not giving the characters names but referring to them as “She” and “He”) the ontological (phallocentric) center of “nature” (inscribing a patriarchal God centered ontology) inscribing all that follows in a patriarchal, phallocentric mode of being, creating in this inscription a kind of “gynocide” (She’s thesis), where women were/are inscribed as both “nature(ally)” “evil” (Eve, witches) and whose body is controlled by (hu)man nature. In this context, what She discovers in her research is that she is by her very nature inscribed as “evil” and thus when her son dies while she is experiencing her natural desires (she is having sex with her husband) – suggesting to her a kind of proof that she is a bad mother and thus indeed “evil” – She begins to fall deeper and deeper into the spell of this inscribed ontological (Christian, patriarchal, phallocentric) compulsion. Of course, this reading leaves out a ton of signifiers that may or may not support this reading but alas I’ll have to leave it at that for now!

(4) Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg)

A lot of fans of this film might think I have this film in the wrong genre, e.g., that this is a science fiction film not horror, but to my mind it is both, especially considering that in classic Cronenberg fashion, the film has some of the most disturbing and horrific images ever, a prime example of his “body horror” phase (and at least one reason why I think the film is just such a turn-off for so many people). To my mind, Videodrome is one of the most prescient (and thus important) films of all time. For one thing, the film presciently predicted the direction our overstimulated, instant gratification consumerist culture would go, e.g., in short, the videodrome content, an allegorical stand-in for all of the repellent content that permeates our media discourses today, sensationalistic reality shows, torture porn horror films, pornography, simulated snuff films, animal stomping videos, posted “death” videos (beheadings the latest one), and the list goes on. As the film posits, there is a vicious domino effect here, where sensationalistic stimulation begets more sensationalistic stimulation, to what end? Further, like the videodrome signal changing people’s brains (e.g., it gives people tumors, the source of their hallucinations) media discourses and technologies are also literally changing us, e.g., creating a sea of personality disorders, attention deficit disorders, anxiety disorders and so on. Even more disturbing is what Videodrome also tells us about our current milieu: Max becoming a living, breathing VCR controlled by the powers-that-be metaphorically signifies how we too are controlled by corporate owned media discourses and ideology in general, not just in terms of how consumerism dictates our tastes and interests but how because of our utter addiction for consumerist stimulation, we are literally directed away from the issues that impact our lives (and potentially threaten transnational corporate power!). Finally, Videodrome potently and cogently telegraphs how as representational realities come to more and more permeate our lives (and become more sophisticated), “reality” and “representation” collapse, blurring the boundaries between the two, (e.g., think, for example of how gaming and avatar technologies actually create preferred “realities” for people!).

(3) Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski)

As I conveyed in my opening blurb, I suspect many horror fans are going to be upset that I include films such as Repulsion. But, again, I take a much broader view of horror, including films that offer not just physical horrors but psychological horrors as well, not to mention the horror tropes that are used to inflame these psychological terrors. In this case, to me, Repulsion is perhaps the most mind bending of all psychological horror films, a film that begins with our sad protagonist’s eye, a provocative suggestion of her deeply abject view of the world and thus suggestive of us entering into Carol’s interior view of the world. That is, due to her psychosis, we begin to experience Carol’s world as a bleak “grotesque” “abject” world; moreover, I would argue that this cannot but affect the way we see the world as well, us seeing what Carol sees and experiences through her hallucinatory, abject state of mind. Almost every element in the film contributes to painting this abject (grotesque) view of Carol’s “repulsion” of sexuality and the men she can’t help but associate with sex. That’s what the “abject” can show us: It forces us in the most dramatic, shocking way to see how a traumatic event (childhood sexual abuse in this case) can fragment, dis-locate, un-constitute an individual, and, by extension, make us see the dysfunctional (grotesque) latent within the seemingly functional. Of course the most blatant example of this is the haunting photo at the end, depicting a seemingly typical (warm) happy family, with the dirty little secret lying just below the surface.

(2) The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

Because of its density, The Shining is another film that is difficult to encapsulate! Kubrick is one of my very favorite directors, a filmmaker who consistently offered up deconstructive visions of American ideologies. As he does in most of his films, in this film Kubrick reveals the REAL lurking below the glossy surface. The glossy surface of the hotel seems ordered, functional, harmonious, but the Real below the surface is really chaotic, disordered, disharmonious. But here is the more profound metaphor: If the hotel is a metaphor for America (as I think it is!) then the glossy surface is America and the Real is its “cannibalistic” past and present. In other words, America has built its wealth and power on the grounding under of Others, not just Native Americans, but African Americans, women, the working class, children, and so on. Like the Donner party (referenced in the film), America eats its own (the cannibalism metaphor). So the eruption of blood that we see in the film is a figurative eruption of our societal (ideological, humanity’s) “return of the repressed.” That is, for me, it signifies America’s violent past and its suppression/oppression (consumption) of Others. In this framing, Jack’s desire to be one of the “best people” (e.g., especially exemplified in his conspicuously verbalized “white man’s burden” comment!) allegorically makes him the stand-in for America and his ensuing “consumption” (“big bad wolf”) of his family and Halloran are appropriately figurative stand-ins for what American ideologies (patriarchy, phallocentrism, hypermasculinity, capitalism) having been doing to Others for centuries, eating them!

(1) American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron)

To my mind, American Psycho isn’t just an important horror film, I would strongly argue that it is one of the most radical political films ever to come out of Hollywood. I’ve written an essay on the film that more thoroughly explicates why I think it is just such an important film (see Fast Capitalism Issue 13.1). In short, American Psycho examines how, via the allegorical figuration of Patrick Bateman, consumerism robs individuals of an authentic identity, replacing it with a consumerist (“inside doesn’t matter”) identity, which, in turn, is symptomatic of a collective sociopathy in our cultural milieu (e.g., consumerism/capitalism makes “sociopaths” of us all!). To better explicate this idea, here is the opening paragraph to my essay on the film: “Perhaps no film more radically reveals the ‘serial killer’ (cannibalistic) nature of consumerism than American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron). The implications of this disturbing ‘reality’ are cataclysmically far reaching: The end of the world may not come from some tangible material catastrophe (at least insofar as it isn’t a corollary of this dehumanization process); rather, more insidiously, it may come via a psychological de-humanization process whereby we literally lose our humanity from the inside out. To understand this development, the film didactically reveals an all-consuming consumption fixation that begins with a food fetish but then is extended to the consumption of women in particular, Others in general, and, most disturbingly – and informing the first two – the ‘self.’”