1 Pleasures of the Spectatorium: young people, classrooms and horror films Andrew Burn PhD thesis University of London Institute of Education 1998 BIBL. LON Di )4 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is an ethnographic study of Year 9 school pupils' responses to horror films, and, in particular, The Company of Wolves (Jordan, 1984). It employs social semiotic theory to analyse both film texts and audience engagements with such texts, exploring how such engagements involve transformations of subjectivity, particular kinds of competence in reading visual codes, and certain types of affective response to horror texts. It explores, briefly, histories of elements of the horror genre, especially the figures of the werewolf and the folktale heroine, in the period from the Enlightenment to the present day. The thesis develops a theory of textual pleasure in relation to horror films, drawing on Bakhtin's theory of carnival, Freud's theories of pleasure, and Bourdieu's theory of taste. It argues that fear and pleasure are related in this context; that such pleasures are socially situated; and that they relate to forms of textual identification. A theory of the sublime is also developed in the context of the social semiotics of film, exploring the history of the sublime from Kant and Burke to postmodernist theory. It is argued that sublime images operate through a dialectic of revelation and concealment, and that audiences replicate this mechanism in their viewing, and in the social sites in which they spectate. These structures are associated, furthermore, with socially-determined structures of aesthetic taste, and ways in which these in turn determine texts as popular or elite (or a hybrid of the two). Finally, the thesis addresses the pedagogies of English and Media Studies, arguing that classrooms need to become spectatorial spaces, open to new literacies of the visual, and equipped with the texts, technologies, and practices adequate to these new competences. Pleasures of the Spectatorium 3 CONTENTS Title page 1 Abstract page 2 Contents page 3 List of Illustrations page 4 Chapter 1: Introduction - Madness and Method page 6 Chapter 2: The Company of Wolves: narratives of transformation, and representations of women in horror page 25 Chapter 3: Reading the Image: horror freezeframes and the cinematic still page 65 Chapter 4: Spiders, Werewolves and Bad Girls page 96 Chapter 5: Pleasures of the Text: pleasure, value, horror in the classroom page 121 Chapter 6: Spectatorial pleasures: a case study page 153 Chapter 7: Spectating the Sublime: the Thrill of Horror page 195 Chapter 8: Emptiness and Plenitude: semiotics of the sublime page 229 Chapter 9: Conclusion -The Leaky Spectatorium: Boundaries of the Visual page 266 Bibliography page 280 Pleasures of the Spectatorium ERRATA page no. 20, line 11 "then" should read "than" 20, line 12 "undr" should read "under" 26, para. 1, line 18 "Zipes, 1983" should read "Zipes, 1982, 1983" 33, para. 4, line 2 "th" should read "the" 34, line 4 "third" should read "fourth" 35, para. 3, line 2 insert dash (-) after closing bracket 37, para. 3, line 7 "are" should read "is" 38, para. 1, line 9/10 delete "The juxtaposition ... Gothic settings." 44, para. 2, line 16 "mucous" should read "mucus" 45, para. 1, line 3 "clearly" should read ", I suggest," 46, indented quote, line 1 "Cronenborg" should read "Cronenberg" 46, indented quote, line 3/4 delete "and gives birth ... original body" 48, para 3, line 2 "worldm" should read "world" 57, indented quote Hodge and Kress reference date should be 1988 60, para. 1, line 14 delete "clearly" 61, para. 2, line 1 "the third part of" should read "this" 67, para. 2, line 4 "elseswhere" should read "elsewhere" 82, para. 5, line 1 "taking" should read "talking" 87, para.1, line 1 delete second "it" 88, para. 3, line 10 "into" should read "in" 89, para. 1, line 12 "article" should read "thesis" 102, para. 3, line 2 Kress and Van Leeuwen reference should be 1992 129, para. 2, line 7 "percieved" should read "perceived" 136, para. 2, line 2 "critically" should read "uncritically" 143, para. 1, line 6 "coheent" should read "coherent" 151, second indented quote delete this quote 175, para. 2, line 1 "images are horror" should read "images of horror" 178, para. 1, line 1 "Four" should read "three" 178, para. 4, line 3 "Bourdieu" should read "Bakhtin" 181, para. 1, line 7 "pleasurable" should read "unpleasurable" 183, para. 2, line 6 delete "individual" 198, para. 2, line 7 delete second "the" 203, para. 2, line 2 "itself is an image" should read "itself an image" 207, para. 1, line 11 close quotes before closing bracket 261, para. 3, line 2 "point" should read "points" 264, indented quote "effcts" should read "effects" 276, para. 1, line 3 delete "that" 284 (bibliography) insert "Zipes, J (1982) The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in Socio-Cultural Context, London, Heinemann" Pleasures of the Spectatorium 4 List of illustrations Chapter 1 Illustration 1.1: Rosaleen sleeping Illustration 1.2: Rosaleen's toys from The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984) Chapter 2 Illustration 2.1: Fredric March transforms, in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932) Illustration 2.2: the end of the second transformation sequence in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (Gene Fowler Jr, 1957) Illustration 2.3: the poster of I Was a Teenage Werewolf Illustrations 2.4 and 2.5: the final transformation scene of The Company of Wolves Illustration 2.6: wolf bursting through the picture in Rosaleen's house Illustration 2.7: wolf breaking through Rosaleen's bedroom window Illustration 2.8: Rosaleen's scream - the final image of the film Chapter 3 Illustration 3.1: Ben's image of the transforming werewolf Illustration 3.2: Rosaleen sleeping Illustration 3.3: the Hunter Illustration 3.4: the wolf-Rosaleen Chapter 4 Illustration 4.1: The Company of Wolves - the spiders on Rosaleen's bible Illustration 4.2: Aliens - Ripley attacks the aliens) Illustration 4.3: Johanna's page Illustration 4.4: Terminator 2 - Sarah Connor, guerrilla heroine Chapter 6 (All illustrations from The Company of Wolves) 6.1:Title sequence: doll in the grass. 6.2: Rosaleen in bed, dreaming. 6.3: Burial of sister. 6.4: Transformation sequence. 6.5: Head lands in bucket of milk 6.6: Shot of Rosaleen's bedroom. 6.7: Spiders drop on Rosaleen's bible. She brushes them off. 6.8: The stork's nest 6.9: The Hunter Pleasures of the Spectatorium 5 6.10: werewolf attacked by Granny - huge red tongue lolls out. 6.11: Rosaleen shoots the werewolf with his own rifle. 6.12: Transformation: wolf face emerging from man's face. 6.13: cross round the neck of Rosaleen/wolf 6.14: Rosaleen's scream Chapter 7 Illustration 7.1: The Silence of the Lambs - Clarice Starling seen through Buffalo Bill's night-glasses Illustration 7.2: The Silence of the Lambs - Starling and Lector's hands touch Illustration 7.3: Psycho - Janet Leigh's "dead eye", from the shower sequence Chapter 8 Illustration 8.1: Clare's chosen image from The Company of Wolves: Rosaleen's bedroom Illustration 8.2: Harry's chosen image from The Company of Wolves: the first transformation scene Illustration 8.3: Sarah's chosen image from The Company of Wolves: the second transformation scene Chapter 9 Illustration 9.1: still images within Alex's trailer for The Company of Wolves, showing their foregrounding of female characters. Pleasures of the Spectatoriurn Chapter Introduction - Madness and Method IMAGE REDACTED DUE TO THIRD PARTY RIGHTS OR OTHER LEGAL ISSUES Illustration 1.1: Rosaleen sleeping Illustration 1.2: Rosaleen's toys from The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984) Dear John. You know about the work we did on the Company of Wolves, just before you left, well we have just seen the film. Since you missed it. I will tell you about it, because it's a good film. First of all you see all those mini-stories, like in the book. Except before that, at the beginning. there is a part where you see a girl in nowadays, dreaming. And then in her dream you see the story and that is how it starts off. The actors in the film are quite good, and the granny is that woman from 'Murder She Wrote', remember? Anyway, the dream is all set in the woods a while ago in the past. like in the book. It starts off in autumn, and then ends in winter. The entire film is basically just like in the book, apart from the end. At the end. she (the little girl) ends up, supposedly. turning into a wolf herself (in the dream) and chased. Then she wakes up to find wolves rushing up to her bedroom and then you hear a poem at the very end. Oh yeah, there is another thing made different. Throughout the film you see these toys in all shapes and sizes from her room, in real life. Also, at Pleasures of the Spectatorium 7 the end, the granny gets killed by having her head chopped/knocked off, like a china doll, and smashing on a wall. Funny or what?! Overall, the film is quite good, with a few gory bits and nice lighting techniques. Well, how's life in the North Pole?! Hope to see you soon so you can see this great film! Best Wishes from Leo B Who watches this film, and where? In some ways it is an art-house film, dense with obscure symbolism, derived from the self-consciously literary prose of Angela Carter, who co-wrote it with director Neil Jordan.