DOCTORAL THESIS Bearing Witness to a Whole Bunch of Murders The Aesthetics of Perspective in the Friday the 13th Films Clayton, George Wickham Award date: 2013 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 04. Oct. 2021 Bearing Witness to a Whole Bunch of Murders: The Aesthetics of Perspective in the Friday the 13th Films By: George Wickham Clayton III, BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Media Culture and Language Roehampton University 2013 Abstract With twelve films released over the last thirty years, the Friday the 13th series has proved a popular mainstay of the slasher sub-genre of horror, in spite of negative critical reception and minimal academic engagement. The academic discourses that do address the series often frame their arguments based on socio-political function, socioeconomic platforms, psychoanalytic traditions, and cultural relevance. While there is some work that attempts to understand the generic positioning and function of the Friday the 13th films, little work has engaged with the film texts in order to understand and explain the form and structure of each instalment in the series. This thesis not only aims to explore and describe the aesthetic form of the slasher sub-genre of horror, but also to argue the central significance of perspective on the aesthetic effect of the slasher. Perspective, a term that builds upon theories of point of view and subjectivity, permeates the formal design of the slasher film. Therefore, this relationship will be the driving focus of the analysis undertaken with regards to the Friday the 13th films, which will include chapters focusing on specific uses of the camera, sound, editing, and sequences creating a narrative understanding of preceding films in the series. Following this analysis, the aesthetic development of the Friday the 13th series will be contextualised within contemporary generic trends, demonstrating to what extent this franchise is representative of the slasher, and where it proves anomalous or progressive. This will not only demonstrate the role the Friday the 13th films play within the slasher, but also how the slasher has aesthetically evolved over more than three decades. Ultimately, the relevance of this analysis and formal historicizing will be suggestive of the wider context of film studies and cinema as a whole. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................iv The Friday the 13th Films..........................................................................................vi Introduction..............................................................................................................vii Argument x Aesthetics and Formalism- A Methodology xi The Friday the 13th Franchise xix Structure xxii Introduction Part 2: The Historical Context of the Friday the 13th Franchise....................................................................................xxviii Friday the 13th in Context xxviii Chapter 1: Perspective.............................................................................................1 ‘Perspective’ Defined 5 Uses of Perspective Without and Within Horror 9 Perspective in Horror to Perspective in the Slasher 14 How is Perspective Created? 18 Chapter 2: The Eye/Camera Defined and Established.........................................23 Eye/Camera Definitions and Critical Understanding: 23 Early Cinema and the Evolution of the Eye/Camera: 38 The Development of the Eye/Camera in the Slasher Film: 45 Victim-Camera and Peeping Tom’s Eye/Camera / Victim-Camera Integration: 64 Chapter 3: The Eye/Camera in the Friday the 13th Series...................................74 Adapting and Utilising the Eye/Camera in Friday the 13th 74 iii Direct Eye/Camera 83 Manipulations of the Eye/Camera Model 102 Developing Effects of the Eye/Camera 111 Chapter 4: Unverified Diegetic Sound, Editing and Overlap.............................118 Creating Victim Perspective 138 Aggressor Perspective 147 Perspective Shifts Within a Sequence, Omniscience, and Witnesses 150 Series Development and the case of A New Beginning 157 Chapter 5: Viewer Perspective, Serialisation and Nostalgia Aesthetics............164 Film Clips Establishing Narrative 172 Ongoing Narrative Implied Through New Footage 182 Transition and Subversion of Familiarity in A New Beginning, Safely Adapted by Jason Lives! 194 Remake and Nostalgia 199 Chapter 6: Conclusion and Defence of Method...................................................208 Perspective and Friday the 13th 208 Form vs Theory 214 Appendix 1: Plot Summaries for the Friday the 13th Films................................231 Appendix 2: List and Description of Characters in the Friday the 13th Films.240 Works Cited: Text and Online..............................................................................267 Works Cited: Music...............................................................................................300 Works Cited: Films................................................................................................301 iv Acknowledgements Without the following people, this thesis would probably be considerably different, if it would even exist at all. My supervisors, Dr. Stacey Abbott, Dr. Michael Chanan, and Dr. Paul Sutton have all given valuable advice, tireless effort, and extraordinary commitment. They also shared a fair chunk of their knowledge with me, for which I am greatly indebted to them. Thank you to my family, who have given me lots of moral (and financial) support. Lots. The Clough family has also sacrificed much to get me to this point, and their contribution is greatly and humbly appreciated. Many thanks to Sarah Harman and Zalfa Feghali, both of whom have provided valuable editorial comments, encouragement and support. Sarah and Zalfa also had the incredible good humour to field late night panicky texts from me. For various pieces of information and moral support, I would like to thank Dr. Todd Berliner, Dr. Kate Egan, Dr. Ian Conrich, Johnny Walker, Tom Watson, Laura Mee, Sarah Wharton, Jarkko Toikkanen, Nick Hall, Emma James, Emma Grylls, Michael Ahmed, and Dr. Gareth James. For tireless encouragement from the moment I conceived this idea, through the initial application process, and consistently throughout my research, I’d like to thank Jerry DeMario, Jason Russell, and Joe Ketchum. I would like to thank Noel Cunningham for an incredibly polite e-mail in which he declined, in lieu of his father, participating in an interview. If the Cunninghams continue making films, I will harbour no resentment. There are numerous others to thank, and all of them are fantastic. Finally, to my son, who has kept my spirits up while I persevered through this project, I owe a lot, and I will probably end up paying back every bit of it. v I dedicate this to my son, Wicklet, from whom, if Robin Wood and Tony Williams are to be believed, I have much to fear. vi The Friday the 13th Film Series Friday the 13th (1980; dir. Cunningham) Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981; dir. Miner) Friday the 13th Part III 3-D (1982; dir. Miner) Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984; dir. Zito) Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985; dir. Steinmann) Jason Lives! Friday the 13th Part VI (1986; dir. McLoughlin) Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988; dir. Buechler) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989; dir. Hedden) Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993; dir. Marcus) Jason X (2001; dir. Isaac) Freddy vs. Jason (2003; dir. Yu) Friday the 13th (2009; dir. Nispel) vii Introduction The impetus for this thesis can be credited to three primary sources. In 2001 I attended the opening lecture for an Introduction to Film Studies course taught by Dr. Todd Berliner at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. After roll call, he began the lecture by saying, in effect, “My courses focus on aesthetics, which is the study of what people in fact value about art (the pleasure it gives them), as opposed to what people think they ought to value about art (its meaning).”1 As he began to explain this position, reactions from students ranged from confusion to anger to interest. I admit to experiencing all three, in that order. Although I have not fully adopted his position for the purpose of this thesis, I did find Berliner’s approach both surprising and refreshing. His argument is that students of the arts are taught very early on to analyse works and texts to understand meaning and message, placing importance on subtext, symbolism and allegory. Berliner claimed that there is no academic value in this sort of interpretive criticism, and that most students of the arts have been deceived by this