“What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?” Sociocultural Anxieties of America
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“What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?” Sociocultural Anxieties of America Represented in Post-Millennial Horror Films by Nicholas T. Nelsen A thesis submitted to Sonoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Film Theory Committee Members: Marco Calavita, Chair Ajay Gehlawat 15 July 2019 ii Copyright 2019 iii Authorization for Reproduction of Master’s Thesis I grant permission for the print or digital reproduction of this thesis in its entirety, without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorb the cost and provide proper acknowledgment of authorship. DATE: 15 July 2019 Nicholas T. Nelsen iv “What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?” Sociocultural Anxieties of America Represented in Post-Millennial Horror Films Thesis by Nicholas T. Nelsen Abstract Current trends in the box-office have seen an increase in revenue associated with horror films. This thesis will include an examination of previous literature on meaningful decades of horror films and an analysis of sub-genres. The films analyzed will be It! (2017), Hereditary (2017), and Halloween (2018) which will be dubbed Post-Millennial horror. The films will show representations of sociocultural anxieties in contemporary America. MA Program: Film Theory Sonoma State University Date: 15 July 2019 v Table of Contents Chapter Page I. Introduction 1 II. Literature Review 6 III. Horror Subgenres 9 IV. Halloween 11 V. Hereditary 18 VI. It! 25 VII. Conclusion 32 VIII. Bibliography 34 IX. Filmography 41 1 On the 8th of September, 2017 I was managing a modest art house cinema, a four screen that played independent and first run films but maintained a usually low attendance. At this point I had been working in cinemas for 12 years, either as a projectionist or a manager, and had seen a peak in cinema attendance as well as a struggling low point. During these years my mentors would stress the importance of understanding box office trends, and early on I realized the sheer power of the horror film. Not only have I paid attention to the attendance, but I have had a unique perspective of seeing first-hand hundreds of audience reactions to these films. That weekend in September, Andy Muschietti’s It! (2017), shocked the industry with its record shattering grosses. Making $123 million with a September opening weekend, It! claimed the title of “largest September opening, largest Fall opening, and largest opening of an R-rated horror film” (Brevet 2017), to name a few. The second weekend, which more often than not sees a drastic drop in horror film grosses, proved It’s drawing power of that first weekend was not a fluke. It! is not an isolated incident in recent horror, with films such as Hereditary (2017), and Halloween (2018) drawing millions to the cinemas and terrifying crowds en masse. The experience I have in the cinema industry, as a manager and projectionist, has made clear as day why horror films are made; the films are usually profitable with low production costs and high returns. And in the film industry profit will more often than not control the production of films and sequels. It would be useful at the start to clarify what is meant here by a ‘horror film,’ a term that has been interpreted and reinterpreted. Noël Carroll suggested that horror films feature a monster, or an implied monster, and that to be a monster it must be a “fearsome 2 creature not acknowledged by current science” (16). This creates problems in some horror films, such as Last House on the Left (1972) or Silence of the Lambs (1991), where the horror is induced via vengeance or a psychopath. Benshoff notes that problems in Carroll’s theory on horror and monstrosities will never fit all horror subgenres, such as slasher or revenge (2014). A workable definition of horror is a definition that has to be malleable as well, but should include an audience reaction of fear and/or disgust. For this thesis I will lean on the theory of Carroll and include a psychoanalytic framework to clearly define a horror film: a work with realist and/or supernatural traditions that creates an audience reaction of fear and/or disgust. An understanding of the horror film is important to the claims in this thesis, but just as integral is an understanding of Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious. Jung was a student of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; while on a lecture tour Jung had a dream that sparked his research into the idea of a collective unconscious (Mattoon 32). The theory of the collective unconscious in simple terms, although it is far from simple, is that the structures of the unconscious mind are shared among entities of a single species. “To distinguish it from the ego consciousness, which is subjective, Jung characterized the collective unconscious as the ‘objective psyche’ because it is non- personal and, in its power to generate images and concepts, independent on consciousness” (Mattoon 35). Jung’s collective unconscious relied on archetypes, or universal associations in beings, to explain common images in the psyche. These archetypes can show up in horror films as characters or theme, such as Carol Clover’s “Final Girl” trope (1990). The Final Girl of 70s and 80s horror would start as an innocent and virginal teen compared to her friends, but eventually flips gender norms when she 3 confronts and defeats the slasher. This is an example of an archetype that translates across a collective, and while the Final Girl is still a common horror film trope it has obviously changed with the times. The fears and anxieties of society change with the decades, and there is plenty of literature on the history of horror, so it is important that with the changing times scholars show how newer movies reflect a new collective unconscious. This new era of postmillennial horror has not been studied extensively, which offers me the opportunity to contribute to the literature of horror film studies. The horror film genre is becoming more popular by the decade (Murphy), which raises the question of why so many individuals, consciously and/or unconsciously, choose to face their fears in a dark cinema. Why do so many cinema goers put themselves in a state of fear, anxiety, disgust and/or stress so eagerly? As part of this thesis I will look at the foundation of horror analysis by peering into the cabinet of German expressionism of the 1920s, consider the perspectives of Noël Carroll and psychoanalytic interpretation, and discuss the established theories on horror representations of the collective anxieties of audiences and societies. It needs to be made clear that I am not the first, nor the last, to write about the importance of the horror genre in cinema. I am guided by some of these theories, often agreeing with them, but there is always room for skepticism. Wrapping up my look at previous literature on the horror film, I will go over the Horror Paradox theory of the powerful draw of horror films, and the cinema-goers voluntary surrender to fear. After a discussion of the literature on horror and clarifying some essential vocabulary used in this thesis, I will discuss the subgenres of horror and why I am choosing three in particular to discuss in greater detail: the Slasher Film, the 4 Psychological Horror film, and the Supernatural Horror film. The common thread of these subgenres however will still be the social/cultural anxieties represented in the stories and these films’ box office popularity. In discussion of the films I will lightly touch on their 70s roots, but with all the literature on 1970s horror I do not want to be repetitive. While these subgenres are important to understand, my discussion of them is primarily to help support my claims about the representation of sociocultural anxieties in these films. Following the subgenre discussion, I will delve into the meat of this thesis, pun intended, and analyze the main films I chose to represent the popular postmillennial Horror films. These films are IT!, Hereditary (2017), and Halloween (2018). I have only chosen American films to analyze primarily because I have witnessed their powers in theatres and because I feel more qualified to discuss turmoil in a country I inhabit. My discussion of the films will include a short overview of each story, enough to provide context for the discussion, an analysis of key scenes and moments, and a look at how they represent contemporary cultural/social anxieties. And to wrap up the discussion of each film I will look at box office trends to see the changes in horror film attendance in the cinema as manifested by box-office record breaking Post-Millenial horror films. I will discuss and analyze how these films relate to and symbolically represent such difficult and compelling Post-Millennial America topics as racism, sexism and sexual assault, family dysfunction, mental illness, Post Traumatic Stress, and mass shootings. As part of my argument for how these films connect with horror audiences and their collective unconscious it is worth noting here that audiences for these films tend to be younger and more diverse than the American population as a whole. For example, a Civic Science poll 5 shows that Millennials in their 20s and early-to-mid 30s make up 40% of the horror film audience, but less than 25% of the American population as a whole, and that 60% of the horror audience is female (Frey; Enright). In addition, Movio.co breaks down the horror audience as 18% African-American (as compared to 13% in the population as a whole), 31% Hispanic (as compared to 18%), and 42% Caucasian (as compared to 60%) (“Unmasking Horror Movie Audiences”; U.S.