The Monstrous Years: Teens, Slasher Films, and the Family Author(S): PAT GILL Reviewed Work(S): Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol
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The Monstrous Years: Teens, Slasher Films, and the Family Author(s): PAT GILL Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 54, No. 4 (WINTER 2002), pp. 16-30 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688391 . Accessed: 17/07/2012 02:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Illinois Press and University Film & Video Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Film and Video. http://www.jstor.org The Monstrous Years: Teens, Slasher Films,and the Family PAT GILL IN I978, HALLOWEEN HERALDED a new SUD spread crime, easy access to drugs, unsuper genre of horror,the teen slasher film.Combin vised friendships.The danger iswithin, the ing inventiveviolence and a clever,eerily evoc filmsseem to say; the horrorderives fromthe ative suburban mise-en-sc?ne with engaging, familyand fromthe troublingordeal of being a believable, contemporaryteen protagonists late-twentieth-century teenager. Several critics and a superhumankiller, director and co-writer have noted horrorfilms' overt relationto and JohnCarpenter created a new, effectivetype of covertdependence on theAmerican family,and filmthriller. There were earlierfilms that fea I relyon theirexcellent discussions inthe argu tured teen-aged protagonists, such as The Tex ment thatfollows.2 My focus ismuch narrower as ChainsawMassacre (1974) and Carrie (1976), than the general category of horror, however, some of themgorier and almost all of them and much more punctual. I focus on teen slash more expensively made,1 but Carpenter's cam er films,posit the reason fortheir arrival inthe erawork and narrativestyle distinguished Hal late 1970s, theirmodifications through the loween from these predecessors. Accompanied years, and their recent parodie incarnations. by creepypiano music composed byCarpenter, the Steadicam roams throughthe small town Slasher Roots streets, stalking the victims. Its point-of-view merges into and out of the killer's; every innoc Linkedto a traditionof horrorwhose inceptionis uous movement is made suspicious, every sub most often located inEnglish gothic, contempo urban commonplace menacing. The suburban raryhorror films extend and revisethemes that haven, away from the dangers of the city, not dominated earlierhorror films. Critics generally only fails to protect itschildren, it has become fixthe beginningof Englishgothic inthe second the breedingground of livingnightmares un halfof the eighteenthcentury, with HoraceWal known to urban landscapes. pole's TheCastle ofOtranto (1764).3Contempo Infilms following Halloween, suburban and raryhorror plays outmany of thedefining char smalltown teenagersare put indanger timeand acteristicsof thegothic: defenseless heroines; again, at home, at school, at camp, and on holi suppressed passions; unspeakable desires; day. These filmsseem tomock white flightto fearful landscapes and haunted, uncanny interi gated communities,in particular the attempts ors; untrustworthyand suspicious relationsand of parents to shield theirchildren from the dan relationships;terrifying uncertainty and stifling gerous influences represented by the city: wide knowledge; familialsecrets and theirdreadful exposure; and jarringjuxtapositions of themor pat gill is an associate professor in the Institute al and the monstrous, the sexual and the gro of Communications Research at the University of the virtuous and the violent. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has written on tesque, Mark filth, crime, passion, nostalgia, and "male anxiety Edmundson believes that contempo films" of the 1990s. raryhorror films representa degradation of the l6 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 54.4 / WINTER 2002 gothic tradition.He explains thatthe initial and enforced alienation of the murdercus, wave of gothicfiction afforded a "means of monstrous protagonist,as well as thegender insight,"a "vitalizingeffect" (xiii) in itsrevela dynamicsat work inthe representationof hor tion, indarkened shades, of a world of layered ror.5They have pointed out the familyrelations complexity.He finds thatmost of today's gothic or repressed fearsand desires elaborated by does no such thing,calling contemporarygoth horror scenarios,6 and have described the cul ic (as manifested inselected films,sordid con turalassumptions and political circumstances fessional televisiontalk shows, the reporting at play and underattack.7 Ingeneral, critics and analysis of the0. J.Simpson trial,and who examine familialhorror speak of family some recent fiction), "no-fault, dead-end and structuresgone horriblyawry, not merely of politicallyimpotent" (68). The attractionof this deep-rooted dissatisfactionsand unbearable lattertype of gothic,Edmundson explains, is repression,but also of simulatedor makeshift that it"offers epistemological certainty;it al familyunits engaged in repugnant,gruesome lowsus to believe thatwe've foundthe truth" behavior: of obsessed father-creators and re (68). The truthis that theworld isa hopeless, fractory son-monsters; appalling mothers and terrifyingnightmare. endangered or psychoticsons and daughters; ForEdmundson, gothic despair isa salve, a creatures in savage search of or rebellion from manufactured,albeit gloomy,meaning that deficientparents; parents inhideous huntfor relievesus ofmaking meanings of our own, of or inghastly revengeof lostchildren. Teen livingthrough an engagementwith "the com slasher filmsare indeed densely populated by plexityof our problems and the breadthof our instances of all these characters and arrange responsibilities"(68). It isalso a catalystfor ments. The familystructure that interestsme in what Edmundson calls "a cultureof facile tran horror films, however, is an absent one. Teen scendence," a contemporary willingness to slasher filmsboth resolutelymock and yearn lookfor salvation inthe formsof simplisticpop forthe middleclass Americandream, the prom psychologies and group therapies,psychic hot ised comfortand contentmentof a loving,sup lines,uplifting popular novels and self-help portivebourgeois family. books, narratives of angelic intercession and Slasher filmsshow teenagers inperil, with spiritualredemption, and "fantasies of renew no hope of help fromtheir parents. Mostly al" such as Forrest Gump and Iron John (179). In these parents are generally too busy or too in this argument, Freddy, the gleeful, brutal mur volved intheir own problemsor pleasures to dererof adolescents ofA Nightmareon Elm help. Even caring, concerned parents are impo Street (1984), serves a bizarrelyapotropaic tent;often they are hapless and distracted, function: his savage presence wards off the far unaware of theirchildren's problems and likely more unsettling circumstance of unknown evil, to dismiss or discount theirwarnings and fears. of personal guiltand social indifference.Our Indeed,parents likethese need guarding,and contemporary gothic fears astonish us, freeze childrenfrequently find themselves inthe us intellectually,successfully short-circuiting stressfuladult roleof protector.8At times the the possibilityof any imaginativepersonal or parents,albeit unwittingly,have created the social transformation. Gothic despair becomes monsters. Some action in their past has an end in itself,a pointof stasis resistantto broughtabout this relentlessevil forceto wreak visionary change. havoc among theirchildren. What is striking Althoughfew critics share Edmunson's view about most of these films is the notable use of the psychological reliefto be found inseeing lessness of parents, theirabsence, physically theworld as an evil, randomlyviolent, godless and emotionally,from their children's lives. universe,most do find thatgothic horrorfunc Teens must deal with the extraordinarilyresil tions inpsychologically and culturallysignifi ient monsters on their own. cant ways.4 Critics have analyzed the otherness Forthe past thirtyyears, sociologists, psy JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 54.4 / WINTER 2002 I7 chologists,and familytherapists have pointed "Postmodern parents are not necessarily out the accelerated changes inthe structureof more self-indulgent or less self-sacrificing than contemporaryfamilies, theorizing recently on modern parents," David Elkind remarks. "It is the ramificationsof these changes on the de simplythat the demands of postmodern lifeare velopmentof children. Ingeneral, divorce has differentfrom those thatobtained inthe mod been seen as the primarycatalyst inthese ern world_This said ... the imbalance of changes. Inthe opening paragraphs of TheDi the family'sability to meet the needs of its vorceCulture, Barbara DafoeWhitehead writes members has shifted infavor of adult needs over those of childrenand youth" (3-4). Ado The entire of American divorce can be history lescents seem to suffer most, or at least the divided into two one periods, evolutionary most visibly,from the changes inthe families and the other For most of the revolutionary. caused eitherby divorceor byother structural nation's history, divorce was a rare occur modificationsof the family."Given