Why horror? (Andrew Tudor 1997)

WHY HORROR? THE PECULIAR PLEASURES OF A POPULAR GENRE.
Cultural Studies , Volume 11, Number 3, 1 July 1997 , pp. 443-463(21), Routledge.

Abstract:
What is the appeal of horror? Various attempts have been made to answer this question, generally combining arguments about the nature of horror texts with arguments about the distinctive character of horror consumers. The most common attempts at general explanation are grounded in concepts drawn from psychoanalytic theory, some depending quite directly on Freud's 'return of the repressed' argument in his discussion of 'the uncanny', others utilizing the framework of 'structural psychoanalysis' to explore the ways in which the unconscious structures forms of representation. Examples of both forms of analysis are discussed - largely in relation to horror movies - exemplified in the recent work of Wood, Twitchell, Creed and Clover. General explanations which do not use psychoanalytic arguments are less common, though Carroll has recently offered one such approach which is given consideration here. It is argued that these attempts at posing general explanations of the appeal of horror are, at worst, inappropriately reductive and, at best, insufficiently specific, failing to distinguish the diverse pleasures that heterogeneous horror audiences take from their active involvement in the genre. Alternative, more particularistic approaches are considered (exemplified in aspects of work by Biskind, Carroll, Dika, Jancovich and Tudor) which seek to relate textual features to specific social circumstances. It is argued that such approaches pre-suppose a social ontology centred upon active social agents who use cultural artefacts as resources in rendering coherent their everyday lives. This is in some contrast to attempts to provide general explanations of horror's appeal where the tacit model is one in which human agents are pre-constituted in key respects, horror appealing, therefore, because it gratifies pre-established desires. It is suggested that the former, active and particularistic conception is to be preferred and that this necessitates a renewed attempt to grasp the diversity of what is, after all, a heterogenous audience capable of taking diverse pleasures from their favoured genre.

Vera Cruz: imagens e historia do cinema brasileiro (Sergio Martinelli et al ) Sao Paulo: abooks 2005.

A Vera Cruz nunca faliu. Endividada, passou as acoes para o Banespa (Banco do Estado de SP) em 1954 que colocou um interventor acabando com a gestao de Franco Zampari (produtor do sucesso internacional O Cangaceiro - 1953- Lima Barreto).

Abilio Pereira de Almeida crious um empresa paralela de producao e distribuicao, chamada Brasil Filmes, que continuou produzindo dentro da Vera Cruz. Nesse periodo mais de sete longa metragens foram produzidas, inclusive dando oportunidade para varios cineastas novos da epoca, sendo um dele o proprio Walter Hugo Khouri, que filmou O Estranho Encontro. A producao da Brasil Filmes pode ser considerada como pequena, de baixo custo e obrigatoriamente de rapida producao, um conceito diferente do que existia na Vera Cruz. Mesmo assim o Banespa resolveu fazer a liquidacao da empresa. Nesse momento, Walter Hugo Khouri, que havia trabalhado na empresa e era apaixonado pelo projeto, iniciou um verdadeiro "trabalho de formiga", descobrindo quais eram os outros acionistas minoritarios, entrando em contato com cada um, comprando acoes, as vezes recebendo como doacoes.Com isso conseguiu reunir um volume suficiente para impedir a liquidacao da empresa, em assembleia que o banco realizaria.

The matter of misogyny in horror films

Linda Williams’s (1983) claim regarding women’s identification with the monster via a shared sense of being a social ‘outcast’, is similarly pursued in Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993). Creed engages with an exploration of horror cinema from a psychological perspective, with particular reference to “mothering functions” and female monsters. Her core argument proposes that when the ‘feminine’ is constructed as monstrous it is frequently done in conjunction with the woman's reproductive body, which she divides in seven categories. The seven faces of the monstrous-feminine are: the archaic mother, the monstrous womb, the vampire, the witch, the possessed body, the monstrous mother and the castrator or female castratice. Creed’s discussion of sexual differences attacks Freudian explanations of the human physique (based on the centrality of the Oedipus complex) which present the woman as the sexual other of the man and often cast the woman as the victim. While Freud suggests that a woman terrifies because she is a castrated human being, Creed counters this by proposing that women are primarily terrifying because they might castrate. She inverts and dismantles Freud’s assumptions about the human mind framework by claiming that the monstrous-feminine is the manifestation of men’s fear of the woman as the “castrating other”. According to Creed, the woman is whole without a penis and this, along with her reproductive body, is what inspires fear in men. The vagina dentata is the image she uses to illustrate the masculine fear of castration and to challenge a patriarchal worldview. Her study of horror films draws largely on the literary concept of “abject”, proposed by French feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (1982). The idea of social otherness which underpins both Williams’ and Creed’s work is illuminating; however, their women-as-the-monster claims can be challenged with the argument that the majority of monsters and serial-killers are in fact male, not female (Neale 1980: 61).