Presenter: What marks horror as different from other genres is both the relationship it has with the audience and its tendency to twist and subvert cultural norms. I intend to explore that subversion today, and hopefully arrive at a deeper understanding of certain features. Click to next slide, a quote from Alfred Hitchcock (Item 10) “I have always believed in following the advice of the playwright Sardou. He said “torture the women!” The trouble today is that we don't torture women enough.” - Alfred Hitchcock Presenter: Alfred Hitchcock has at times been criticised for rampant sexism, at others heralded as a master of subversive cinema. According …show more content…
Click to next slide, Janet Leigh in the infamous “shower scene”(Item 3) Presenter: The “shower scene” from Psycho is infamous for many reasons. The close-up of Janet Leigh, naked, whilst she is assaulted with a knife has gained iconographic status within film criticism and academia. Hitchcock's film sparked two key features of the horror genre as we know it. Firstly, the hyper-sexualisation of female victims. Janet Leigh is filmed in long, lingering tracking shots time and time again, particularly when she is dressing or undressing. The camera acts as the “male gaze” (Item 9) which sees the woman on screen as an object of desire, rather than a subject with autonomy. Or to put it more simply, the woman is there to be looked at, by men, rather than to look. Although the film portrays Norman's voyeurism as unwholesome, the audience itself is indulging in the same activity. Click to next slide, Norman Bates from Psycho (Item 3) …show more content…
The Final Girl is presented as a pseudo-boy, rather than a strong girl. And herein lies her flaw, she is a male character dressed in a facsimile of a female one. How is Scream different? Click to next slide, a shot of Tatum from Scream (Item 1) Presenter: Scream presents a post-modern, self-aware piece. Characters within the film frequently make reference to other films, such as Tatum (pictured here) suggesting they are playing out “I Spit on your Garage”, a nod to rape-revenge flick “I Spit on Your Grave”. Later, Sydney declares that she wishes to “pick which genre” of movie her life is going to be. As well as contributing to the dark humour present in the film, these references also demonstrate the production team's familiarity with horror, particularly its codes and conventions. This is what allows Scream to modify those conventions so easily. Click to next slide, depicting Sidney from Scream (Item 1) Presenter: Sidney is presented as quite a quiet young woman, old-fashioned in some ways. She goes to bed in a long nightgown and wears high-necked tops and sensible shoes. She shares many of the boyish traits of the 70's “Final Girl”, so how is she
To begin with, some people would say they enjoy a horror movie that gets them scared out of their wits. They go see these movies once a month on average, for fun, each time choosing a newer sequel like “Final Destination” or “The evil Dead”. King says “When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a horror movie we are daring the nightmare” (405). As a writer of best-sel...
These have been adapted from the early twentieth century, and have developed a whole series of genre conventions into a familiar variety of scary settings, iconography, and stereotyped characterisation. Audiences have a clear understanding of this, and they use it to their advantage. They can keep putting the audience through the jolts that horror conventions continue to give. An effective way of keeping the horror fresh would be to break the cycle, by breaking certain conventions. The isolated setting in the two films is a key device used to establish a threatening atmosphere.
“Do you like scary movies?” purred a sinister voice over the telephone, and immediately Scream had marked itself out as something new in a tired genre. When it was released in 1996, the classic slasher franchises had all pretty much ran out of steam. Scream was different, it was a breath of fresh air: smart and self-referential, it reminded horror fans what they loved about the genre in the first place, and scared them silly at the same time.
Why is Alfred Hitchcock's shower scene so revolutionary? Hitchcock used a variety of shots to create the feeling of suspense and mystery. He was one of the first people to use nudity in a film which caused a lot of controversy, the way he used sound effects created a sense of fear to the audience.
Works Cited Cowie, Elizabeth. A. A. Representing the Woman: Cinema and Psychoanalysis. Minneapolis, MN -. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Perhaps no other film changed so drastically Hollywood's perception of the horror film as did PSYCHO. More surprising is the fact that this still unnerving horror classic was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who never relied upon shock values until this film. Here Hitchcock indulged in nudity, bloodbaths, necrophilia, transvestism, schizophrenia, and a host of other taboos and got away with it, simply because he was Hitchcock.
Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.
Modern day horror films are very different from the first horror films which date back to the late nineteenth century, but the goal of shocking the audience is still the same. Over the course of its existence, the horror industry has had to innovate new ways to keep its viewers on the edge of their seats. Horror films are frightening films created solely to ignite anxiety and panic within the viewers. Dread and alarm summon deep fears by captivating the audience with a shocking, terrifying, and unpredictable finale that leaves the viewer stunned. (Horror Films)
This book researches how feminism explores sexuality and the portrayal of women in films, and how that is used in psychoanalysis, which is the study of the unconscious mind. Doane discusses how Sigmund Freud has contributed to the use of females within film and contains information on the ‘female spectator’, and how film use feminism to capture female spectators and engage with them. Doane uses sources from various pieces of media test. For example, her analysis of Gilda (1946) gives insight to the sexualisation of woman, particularly through stereotypes on women, based on their appearance.
How does the film support or negate tgis point? In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey states that, “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.” (Mulvey 40). A woman’s role in the narrative is bound to her sexuality or the way she draws attention away from the narrative.
Hitchcock employs plenty of unique visuals, including camera tricks that confuse depth perception, invasive close-ups, film noir lighting, and rapid cuts to show nudity with out showing nudity or extreme violence / killing without much blood. The movie “Psycho” was a first for several filmic elements making it sometimes more notable than effective. At its heart, however it’s a extreme thrilling murder/ mystery that boasts a climax unlike any other before its time. The suspense and anticipation are almost unbearable, keeping the ultimate, answers brilliantly stowed until the very
In most countries, horror movies are beloved and popular genre for certain group of people who are eager to have different types of feeling and emotion. It usually delivers wired, freaky, uncanny, fearful and uncomfortable feeling to its audiences. There have been thousands ways of expressing fearful emotion to the horror film lovers, however, most horror film have something in common that provokes fearful emotion by using particular context, such as gender discrimination and trauma of wars. Without understanding such a context, foreign horror films are understandable to other nations audiences, which means that the process of feeling threatened and fearful does not need to rely heavily on certain cultural or historical information. In this
Kubrick’s Gaze In Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” she uses the concept of scopophilia, or pleasure obtained through looking at things, to discuss the portrayal of women in film as passive sexual objects, while inferring that it is the active male “gaze” that objectifies them. Mulvey’s ideas are extremely relevant to Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut, in which the themes of sexuality and voyeurism are abundant. Gender roles are very clearly defined in Eyes Wide Shut. Men control the “gaze” and obtain scopophilic pleasure by looking at women.
Horror films are designed to frighten the audience and engage them in their worst fears, while captivating and entertaining at the same time. Horror films often center on the darker side of life, on what is forbidden and strange. These films play with society’s fears, its nightmare’s and vulnerability, the terror of the unknown, the fear of death, the loss of identity, and the fear of sexuality. Horror films are generally set in spooky old mansions, fog-ridden areas, or dark locales with unknown human, supernatural or grotesque creatures lurking about. These creatures can range from vampires, madmen, devils, unfriendly ghosts, monsters, mad scientists, demons, zombies, evil spirits, satanic villains, the possessed, werewolves and freaks to the unseen and even the mere presence of evil.
Sound is an incredibly relevant part of filmmaking. Although often misunderstood, it helps to generate a more realistic episode by recreating the sonic experience the scene needs. Its main goal is to enhance the emotions that each section is trying to convey by adding music and effects alongside moving images. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), is one of the most popular films of the XX Century (Thomson, 2009). Commonly recognised as a masterpiece for its cinematographic, editing and musical values, it changed cinema forever by “playing with darker prospects (…) of humanity such as sex and violence (Thomson, 2009)”. This paper will analyse the sound effects used in the shower scene and its repercussions