Bodies Without Borders: Body Horror As Political Resistance in Classical
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Bodies without Borders: Body Horror as Political Resistance in Classical Hollywood Cinema By Kevin Chabot A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Film Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2013 Kevin Chabot Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-94622-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-94622-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada Abstract This thesis argues that body horror, and the cinematic representation of the mutated body in particular, allows us to experience our bodies as Other and allow us to confront and transcend the constraints of socially constructed notions of normalcy. In order to accomplish this, I investigate films that concern the mutated and mutating body in the 1930s and 1940s. The case studies I employ are Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) and Freaks (Todd Browning, 1932). These films provide very different representations of the mutating body, which encourage different kinds of identifications between the characters onscreen and the spectator. I investigate the shifting relationship between the mutated body as symbolic, performative and as an actual confrontation with the body as Other. Using this model, I designate Cat People as a symbolic representation, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as iconic and Freaks as indexical. Acknowledgements I am indebted to the guidance of my supervisor Andre Loiselle whose patience, understanding and constructive feedback made this thesis possible. His passion for horror is contagious and always a motivator to do my best possible work. Thank you to my external examiners Marc Furstenau and Grant Williams who facilitated a lively discussion and debate regarding the issues addressed in this thesis. Additionally, I’d like to thank professors Erika Balsom, Charles O’Brien, Malini Guha and (again) Marc Furstenau who provided much needed advice and support not only academically, but also in the far scarier prospect of “real life”. My fellow graduate students Mary O’Shea and Amy Jane Vosper as well as Frederick Blichert, Devin Hartley, Emily Gleeson, Dan McKenna, Chelsea Churchill, Dylan Cousineau and Caleb Hopkins. Our many pub nights (and pub afternoons) were welcomed escapes from student life. Of course, I could not have made it through the semesters without my pub trivia team with Diana Macecek, Jamie Lee, Darcy Corbin, Craig Macnaughton, Mandi Gingrich, Scott Marchant, Christel Doubleu, Sheila Molnar, Dan Boccaccio, and Dan Baker. Our weekly nights of fighting, shouting and cheering for sweet victory was intellectually stimulating in its own unique way. To my friends back home, Mai Ali, Dan Nayda, Jess Brain, Reed Collis, Krista Parsons, Ben Schattmann, Dennis Moore, Sean Kidnie and Nicholas Pearson for keeping me grounded as well as ensuring my visits back home were amazingly good times. Thank you to my family who, although not fully understanding what it is I do, are supportive nonetheless. My mom and dad, brothers Jason and Daniel, sister-in-law Allecia, and my brand new niece Charlotte. You are a safe haven I can always return to, and for that I am eternally grateful. Lastly, thank you to the government of Ontario, to whom I will literally be indebted for the foreseeable future. Contents Abstract........................................................................................................................................... ..ii Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction...................................................................................................................................... ..1 Why 1930s and 1940s Body Horror?............................................................................................. ..6 Symbol, Icon, Index........................................................................................................................8 The Interpretation of Screams: Symbolic Psychoanalysis in Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942).... 13 Val Lewton and RKO’s Horror Cycle............................................................................................ 15 Cat People and Psychoanalysis...................................................................................................... 21 “She Never Lied to Us”: Conclusion ............................................................................................. 33 Performance, Sexuality and Class Consciousness in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)......................... 35 Mamoulian and his Cinematic Adaptation...................................................................................... 41 Performing Jekyll......................................................................................................................... 42 Becoming Hyde............................................................................................................................ 47 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 51 The Enfreakment of the Spectatorial Body ........................................................................................ 53 Freak Shows and the Development of Cinema ............................................................................... 58 Degeneration Theory and the Construction of ‘Freaks’ .................................................................. 62 “One of Us”: Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 72 Long Live the New Flesh .................................................................................................................. 75 Works Cited.................................................................................................................................... 8 0 Introduction Linda Williams argues that horror film, along with melodrama, musicals, comedies and pornography, place particular emphasis on “body movement” and “body spectacle” to warrant their inclusion into a specific generic categorization: the body genre. She writes that these genres exhibit visceral emotional states onscreen and produce similar involuntary reflexes in the viewer including, “musical rhythm, terror, [laughter and] sorrow”.1 Similarly, Steven Shaviro contends that cinema is firstly an affective experience in which the spectator feels and responds to the images on the screen before he or she knows, understands or reflects upon the image: “film shows before it says.”2 Although I do not share Shaviro’s wholesale dismissal of psychoanalytic film theory as a means to explore the significance of cinematic images,3 his emphasis on the corporeal reflexes of film spectatorship is an essential characteristic to consider, particularly in the horror genre. Indeed, the horror film is so named for its provocation of fear, anxiety, screams and physical jumps and shudders the spectator experiences. Although these visceral responses undoubtedly occur in other genres,4 horror is unique for its emphasis on the destruction and corruption of the human body. What both Shaviro and Williams lack in their interpretation of the horrific body, however, is a consideration of how the body is actually represented on screen. While the horror film certainly has a tendency to emphasize gory depictions of corporeal disintegration, which would likely cause the type of affective response that Shaviro describes, there are many instances of 1 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power; Pleasure and the "Frenzy o f the Visible",