paper
Honor Movie Paper
For this project, youll be researching a horror film of your choosing
Choose film that are NOT shown in class:
(Do Not chose the film list below, chose any other horror films you watched besides these)
Paranormal Activity
Nosferatu
Frankenstein
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Ganja & Hess
The Exorcist
Psycho
Halloween,
Jennifers Body
Screening – It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
Screening – Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
Screening – Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
Screening – Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, 2012)
Requirements (Three parts)
For this particular assignment, youll produce a research report as you begin examining your topic.
This report has three sections. Please write this report as three separate sections
, as explained below.
First section: Summary of the film – 300-400 words
Describe the film youve chosen and your interest in it. Why is it significant? What intriguing questions does it inspire about the horror genre?
Second section: Citations and summaries of at least 1 academic source and 2 primary/trade/press sources – 25-50 words each (75-150 words total, not including the citations themselves)
These should be sources you might use for your final paper. With your summaries, demonstrate you have looked over the source and that there is a reason it might be helpful for your research. (If you want to include more sources than the minimum required here, feel free.) Please properly cite the sources you include in this section. Remember there is an MLA citation guide.
Third section: Proposal – 100-200 words
Describe what questions you plan to ask with your research, and/or what argument you want to make. Youre still in the preliminary stages of your research, so its okay to not have a fully-formed argument or thesis! This is a place to think through your hunches, suggest possible directions for your paper, and in general just establish what you want your paper to do. As you work on this report, I encourage you to keep the final paper requirements in mind – this report is meant to jump start your work on the final paper, so make sure youre thinking ahead to where this research is going to take you.
A good paper will:
raise a thought-provoking question or questions
critically engage with its topic and take a position
consider actors, actions, location, context
connect itself to broader issues with bigger stakes 1
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM
AND FUNCTION
A hoard of shambling, decaying corpses hammer at the glass doors of a
shopping mall. Three student filmmakers get lost in the woods searching
for evidence of witchcraft. A teenage couple are slashed to death after
sex. A man chokes on his dinner, writhing in pain as a creature tears its
way out of his stomach. A womans eyelids flutter in a state of ecstasy as
an undead aristocrat punctures her neck with his fangs and drains her of
blood. A scientist mutates into a disgusting half human-half fly creature
after he teleports himself in a careless experiment. A journalist watches
the ghostly images on a videotape and is doomed to die in seven days. A
doctor saws off his own foot in an attempt to escape from a maniacal
torturer. A vampire tells a journalist about his life of existential angst. A
gigantic, lizard-like, alien creature rampages through Manhattan. A rape
victim castrates one of the men who assaulted her.
All these very different scenes come from films that have at one time
or other been labelled as prime examples of the horror genre. Given
that film genres are intended to be descriptive categories based on
shared common traits, how can so many different scenes of horror be
usefully contained by either popular or academic conceptions of genre?
Surely, it should be easy to define a genre by its distinctive set of char-
acteristics, formulaic plots and identifiable visual style? Yet this is not
quite so true of horror, as evidenced by the sheer variety of characters,
narrative events and styles in the above examples.1 Some are set in the
past, many in the present, one or two in the future. Several contain
impossible supernatural monsters, others merely all-too-human killers,
a small number improbable yet physically possible extra-terrestrial
creatures, the odd exception may not or may after all (hesitation being
the key) even contain a monster. A fair number are extremely violent
and/or gory, others rely on a creepy atmosphere. Some show the horror
in explicit, close-up detail, a few show very, very little or merely hint at
a horrible sight before cutting away. Many tell a story from the point of
view of the victims, others from that of the monster. Some are about
revenge, several feature the struggle to survive, a few embrace death. It
is not simply that there is a range of conventions that offers some
degree of variation on a coherent, formulaic theme (as there are with
other genres such as westerns or action films), but that this genre is
marked by a sheer diversity of conventions, plots and styles.
One explanation for the variation may lie in the fact that genres are
never fixed. In fact, the whole concept of genre is problematic, and this
is especially true when it comes to the horror genre. Individual films
may be shoehorned into marketable categories that can be sold to
audiences, but those films may not exactly fit the formula. Genres evolve,
transforming and hybridizing over time in order to offer their viewers
variations on a theme. Here perhaps is a key to the horror genres sheer
diversity: it has endured for so long, from the earliest years of cinema
to the present day, and derives from so many different sources2 that it
has fragmented into an extremely diverse set of sub-genres. Horror
cinemas longevity (it is now well over 100 years old, not to mention
the fact that horror stories are themselves as old as mankind), means
that the genre has evolved and developed many branches and offshoots.
Deciding on a classification as to what film (or kind of film) is (or isnt) a
horror film may not therefore be straightforward: what might be classed
as the essential conventions of horror to one generation may be very
different to the next, and what one person considers to be the defining
features of a horror film may be in total disagreement with anothers
2 HORROR
classification (Jancovich 2002b: 152). How, then, is it possible to dis-
cuss the horror genre as a coherent group of films? This book approa-
ches that question by addressing its aesthetics, affects and audiences,
and organizes this discussion around four further questions. First, in
this chapter, what is horror? This looks at the traits and characteristics
of the films that comprise horror cinema. Second, in the next chapter,
how does horror work? This considers the way technology has been
used historically to create its affects and audience responses. In the
third chapter, the question of why horror is pleasurable is considered in
the context of a range of theoretical approaches. Fourth, in the final
chapter, the question of where and when is addressed to look at the
ways horror sees and is seen by society.
In his discussion of Giallo,3 Gary Needham (2002) suggests that these
Italian mystery, crime and psychological thrillers are less a genre than a
conceptual category with highly moveable and permeable boundaries
that shift around from year to year. The same could well be said of the
horror genre. So rather than thinking of it as a distinct, unified set of
films with shared conventions, the genre should perhaps be more
accurately thought of as an overlapping and evolving set of conceptual
categories that are in a constant state of flux. Put more simply, horror is
not one genre, but several; furthermore, as those various sub-genres
which Stephen Neale defines as specific traditions or groupings within
genres (2000: 9) change, so the boundaries of the genre as a whole shift.
It is therefore perhaps better to think of the horror genre as a collection
of related, but often very different, categories. These can include:
sub-genres that divide the whole along lines of plots, subject matter
or types of monster;
cycles, defined by Neale as groups of films made within a limited
period of time which exploit the characteristics of a commercially
successful film (2000: 9), that mean one type of film is extremely
popular for a short time, giving rise to many sequels and copies;
hybrids defined by Rick Altman (1999: 43) as the cross-pollination
that occurs between genres to produce recombinant forms borrowing
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM AND FUNCTION 3
conventions from one or more different genre(s) and mixing them
up with horror genre conventions;
styles associated with particular film studios (Universal in the USA
in the 1930s, RKO again in the USA in the 1940s and Hammer in
the UK in the 1960s) or filmmakers (the films of Canadian film-
maker David Cronenberg made in the 1980s were collectively
labelled body horror4).
In addition, the diversity that arises from the large number of national
horror cinemas can be considered. These have developed styles and
varieties of their own based on their particular cultural histories (while
many genre critics focus on Hollywood cinema, genres are also funda-
mental units of other national cinemas). The function of horror to
scare, shock, revolt or otherwise horrify the viewer also means that
filmmakers are constantly pushing at the boundaries in order to invent
new ways of arousing these emotions in their audiences (who over time
will naturally learn what to expect from a specific type of horror, a
process that may well lead to viewers becoming used to or even bored
with the formula) and thus keep the scares coming. In all these ways,
notions of what the horror genre might be or should be are con-
stantly shifting, creating new conceptual categories in order to keep on
scaring the audience. We might, therefore, want to think about horror as
an umbrella term encompassing several different sub-categories of
horror film, all united by their capacity to horrify. This, the principal
responses that a horror film is designed to exploit, is thus a more crucial
defining trait of the horror genre than any set of conventions, tropes or
styles. Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about those different conceptual
categories that make up the horror genre. Some of the primary sub-
categories or sub-genres of horror are presented in Table 1.1.
These sub-genre categories illustrate that a range of different forms
can be identified within the genre (this taxonomy is merely intended as
examples rather than a definitive list of sub-genres they could be broken
down further, or other categories could be added). The descriptions in
this table are also kept to a minimum, and are intended merely to suggest
4 HORROR
Ta
bl
e
1.
1
C
at
eg
or
ie
s
of
ci
ne
m
at
ic
ho
rr
or
T
h
e
G
o
th
ic
Fi
lm
s
ba
se
d
o
n
cl
as
si
c
ta
le
s
o
f
h
o
rr
o
r,
o
ft
en
ad
ap
ti
n
g
p
re
-e
xi
st
in
g
h
o
rr
o
r
m
on
st
er
s
o
r
h
o
rr
if
yi
n
g
cr
ea
tu
re
s
fr
o
m
n
o
ve
ls
an
d
m
yt
h
o
lo
gy
D
ra
cu
la
,
Fr
an
ke
ns
te
in
,
Th
e
M
um
m
y
(a
n
d
al
l
su
bs
eq
u
en
t
ve
rs
io
n
s
o
f
th
es
e)
,
I
W
al
ke
d
w
ith
a
Zo
m
bi
e
an
d
ot
he
r
tra
di
tio
na
l
vo
od
oo
zo
m
bi
es
,
M
as
qu
e
of
th
e
Re
d
D
ea
th
,
N
ea
r
D
ar
k,
In
te
rv
ie
w
w
ith
th
e
Va
m
pi
re
Su
p
er
n
at
u
ra
l,
o
cc
u
lt
an
d
gh
o
st
fi
lm
s
Fi
lm
s
th
at
in
vo
lv
e
in
te
rv
en
ti
o
n
s
o
f
sp
ir
it
s,
gh
o
st
s,
w
it
ch
cr
af
t,
th
e
d
ev
il
,
an
d
o
th
er
en
ti
ti
es
in
to
th
e
re
al
w
o
rl
d
,
o
ft
en
fe
at
u
ri
n
g
u
n
ca
n
n
y
el
em
en
ts
Th
e
H
au
nt
in
g,
Ro
se
m
ar
y
s
Ba
by
,
Kw
ai
da
n,
Th
e
Ex
or
ci
st
,
Th
e
A
m
ity
vi
lle
H
or
ro
r,
Su
sp
iri
a,
Th
e
Si
xt
h
Se
ns
e,
Th
e
O
th
er
s,
Ri
ng
u,
Th
e
G
ru
dg
e,
Th
e
Ey
e,
Th
e
Bl
ai
r
W
itc
h
Pr
oj
ec
t
P
sy
ch
o
lo
gi
ca
l
h
o
rr
o
r
Fi
lm
s
th
at
ex
p
lo
re
p
sy
ch
o
lo
gi
ca
l
st
at
es
an
d
p
sy
ch
o
se
s,
in
cl
u
d
in
g
cr
im
in
al
it
y
an
d
se
ri
al
ki
lle
rs
C
at
Pe
op
le,
Ps
yc
ho
,
Pe
ep
in
g
To
m
,
Ey
es
W
ith
ou
t
a
Fa
ce
,
Re
pu
lsi
on
,
C
ar
rie
,
Th
e
H
an
d
Th
at
Ro
ck
s
th
e
C
ra
dl
e,
Th
e
Si
len
ce
of
th
e
La
m
bs
M
o
n
st
er
m
o
vi
es
Fi
lm
s
th
at
fe
at
u
re
in
va
si
o
n
s
o
f
th
e
ev
er
yd
ay
w
o
rl
d
by
n
at
u
ra
l
an
d
se
cu
la
ra
cr
ea
tu
re
s
le
ad
in
g
to
d
ea
th
an
d
d
es
tr
u
ct
io
n
G
od
zil
la
,
Th
e
Bi
rd
s,
Th
e
Th
in
g
fro
m
A
no
th
er
W
or
ld
,
A
lie
n,
Th
e
H
os
t,
C
lo
ve
rfi
eld
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM AND FUNCTION 5
Sl
as
h
er
s
Fi
lm
s
p
o
rt
ra
yi
n
g
gr
o
u
p
s
o
f
te
en
ag
er
s
m
en
ac
ed
by
a
st
al
ke
r,
se
t
in
d
o
m
es
ti
c
an
d
su
bu
rb
an
sp
ac
es
fr
eq
u
en
te
d
by
yo
u
n
g
p
eo
p
le
,
th
e
o
n
ly
su
rv
iv
o
r
a
fe
m
al
e
w
h
o
(i
n
th
e
ea
rl
y
cy
cl
es
)
h
as
n
o
t
p
ar
ti
ci
p
at
ed
in
u
n
d
er
ag
e
se
x
Th
e
Te
xa
s
C
ha
in
Sa
w
M
as
sa
cr
e,
H
al
lo
w
ee
n,
Fr
id
ay
th
e
13
th
,
A
N
ig
ht
m
ar
e
on
El
m
St
re
et
,
Sc
re
am
,
I
Kn
ow
W
ha
t
Yo
u
D
id
La
st
Su
m
m
er,
C
he
rr
y
Fa
lls
,
Th
e
Fa
cu
lty
B
o
d
y
h
o
rr
o
r,
sp
la
tt
er
an
d
go
re
fi
lm
s
(i
n
cl
u
d
in
g
p
o
st
m
o
d
er
n
zo
m
b
ie
s)
Fi
lm
s
th
at
ex
p
lo
re
ab
je
ct
io
n
an
d
d
is
gu
st
o
f
th
e
h
u
m
an
bo
d
y,
o
ft
en
in
vo
lv
in
g
m
u
ta
ti
o
n
,
d
is
ea
se
,
o
r
ab
er
ra
n
t
an
d
fe
ti
sh
is
ti
c
be
h
av
io
u
r
(f
o
r
ex
am
p
le
ca
n
n
ib
al
is
m
o
r
sa
d
o
-m
as
o
ch
is
m
)
Th
e
Br
oo
d,
V
id
eo
dr
om
e,
Th
e
Fl
y
(a
n
d
o
th
er
fi
lm
s
by
D
av
id
C
ro
n
en
be
rg
),
Th
e
Th
in
g,
Te
ts
uo
,
N
ig
ht
of
th
e
Li
vi
ng
D
ea
d,
Ev
il
D
ea
d,
H
ell
ra
ise
r,
D
aw
n
of
th
e
D
ea
d,
Sh
au
n
of
th
e
D
ea
d,
Re
sid
en
t
Ev
il,
Th
e
H
ow
lin
g
E
x
p
lo
it
at
io
n
ci
n
em
a,
vi
d
eo
n
as
ti
es
o
r
o
th
er
fo
rm
s
o
f
ex
p
li
ci
tl
y
vi
o
le
n
t
fi
lm
s
Fi
lm
s
fo
cu
se
d
o
n
ex
tr
em
e
o
r
ta
bo
o
su
bj
ec
ts
,
in
cl
u
di
n
g
vi
ol
en
ce
an
d
to
rt
u
re
,
o
th
er
co
n
tr
o
ve
rs
ia
l
su
bj
ec
t
m
at
te
r
su
ch
as
N
az
i
d
ea
th
ca
m
p
s,
ra
p
e
an
d
o
th
er
se
xu
al
as
sa
u
lt
s
u
p
o
n
w
o
m
en
I
Sp
it
on
Yo
ur
G
ra
ve
,
La
st
H
ou
se
on
th
e
Le
ft,
H
en
ry
:
Po
rt
ra
it
of
a
Se
ria
l
Ki
lle
r,
M
an
Bi
te
s
D
og
,
H
os
te
l,
Sa
w,
A
ud
iti
on
,
Ic
hi
th
e
Ki
lle
r,
Th
e
D
ev
il
s
Re
jec
ts
,
Ir
r
ve
rs
ib
le
a
A
n
d
re
w
T
u
d
o
r
(1
9
8
9
:
8
)
u
se
s
th
e
te
rm
to
d
is
ti
n
gu
is
h
cr
ea
tu
re
s
w
h
ic
h
ar
e
fe
as
ib
le
ac
co
rd
in
g
to
th
e
la
w
s
o
f
n
at
u
re
(e
xt
ra
-t
er
re
st
ri
al
li
fe
m
ay
w
el
l
be
p
o
ss
ib
le
,
ev
en
if
w
e
co
n
si
d
er
it
u
n
li
ke
ly
)
fr
om
su
p
er
n
at
u
ra
l
cr
ea
tu
re
s
w
h
ic
h
w
e
kn
ow
ca
n
n
o
t
ex
is
t
w
it
h
in
th
e
n
at
u
ra
l
o
rd
er
(s
u
ch
as
va
m
p
ir
es
,
zo
m
bi
es
an
d
gh
o
st
s)
.
6 HORROR
major conventions or plot directions, in order to avoid setting out pre-
scriptive lists of conventions and thus ensure that these groupings remain
relatively open and flexible. The same reservation applies to the examples
of films given; these are suggestions rather than definitive lists. These
categories are presented in order to illustrate the ways in which con-
ceptions of the horror genre change or ways in which the boundaries
shift. Looking at the examples given, it can be seen that some forms of
horror might be more popular at certain times (for example, the classic
Gothic horrors were more prevalent in the 1930s, whereas slasher films
were dominant in the 1980s), some might be refreshed with a new cycle
after a period of decline (the Gothics resurgence in Hammer films from
the UK in the 1950s and 1960s or the reworking of the teen horror
films in the neo-slashers of the 1990s), some might be representative
of different national cinemas (the supernatural has been a strong form
in Japanese horror since the 1950s), and a few might be linked with
horror by association rather than definitive style (psychological thrillers
and some of the video nasties). On top of this, elements of horror might
also be present in films that are not marketed as horror Steven
Schneider (2004a) employs the useful term cinematic horror. Such
instances of cinematic horror might allow viewers who are not usually
addressed by horror cinema (since many horror films are aimed at the
1824-year-old demographic and the typical horror fan is represented
as male, this might include female, older, and high-brow audience seg-
ments) with a similar viewing experience (being scared) without them
having to make overt their taste for horror. Furthermore, categories may
overlap Carrie might just as easily be placed in the supernatural/occult
category and The Others or The Blair Witch Project classed as Gothic, and
films may also be generic hybrids (Alien is a science fiction-horror cross,
which in some respects is an old dark house movie set in space; there are
also any number of horror-comedies such as Shaun of the Dead, horror-westerns
such as Near Dark, and Resident Evil has elements from science fiction but
might also be classed as a computer game movie, and so forth).
What is clear from this is that the longevity of horror cinema, the
sheer diversity of horror film subgenres and styles, the large numbers of
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM AND FUNCTION 7
generic hybrids, and the various national horror film cycles that have
developed mean that horror is an extremely complex genre. Any
attempt at producing a thorough overview of the genre covering all the
styles in all of the historical and national cycles that have emerged since
the beginnings of cinema would result in an extremely lengthy and
convoluted account. This means it is nigh on impossible to provide a
brief, comprehensive, and inclusive capsule definition of the genre that
includes all the forms of horror that have arisen throughout its long
history. Falling back on an overly-generalized or reductive set of generic
conventions would exclude too many films or cycles which might in
fact be widely considered to belong to the category horror. On the
other hand, trying to include every single generic characteristic would
soon lead to over-complexity and potential contradictions. What is
required, is a loose, rather than a concrete, definition of horror cinema.
Nevertheless, before discussing horror cinema further, it is useful to
engage with accounts of what is commonly considered as horror, even
though we might want to put such accounts to one side in the long
run. Engaging with genre theory in this way is only intended to serve as
a broad introduction to horror cinema and a context for further dis-
cussion of particular subgenres or styles.
To begin, it is appropriate to consider why genres are important to
the film industry and why the horror genre in particular has been so
prevalent and popular. Horror is highly profitable for both the main-
stream and the independent, low-budget or cult sectors of the industry.
A few examples illustrate the economic significance of horror films.5
The Exorcist (the leading film in the cycle of 1970s mainstream occult
cinema) is among the most successful of all horror films. It was made
for $12 million in 1973 and took $193 million from its domestic box
office on initial release. With several re-releases, it has taken a world-
wide lifetime gross of over $441 million. More recently, Scream 2 (with
a production budget of $24 million) took $33 million in its opening
weekend in 1992, at that point, the highest for a December release. In
total to date, Scream 2 has taken over $101 million in domestic and over
$172 million in worldwide lifetime grosses. In the independent, low-
8 HORROR
budget sector, The Evil Dead cost an estimated $350,000 to make, and
grossed over $2 million in the USA on its initial release in 1983. After
a re-release in 2005, The Evil Dead has taken $11 million worldwide.
Another low-budget horror film, The Blair Witch Project was made for
$60,000 (although quoted figures vary according to whether the costs
of the marketing website are included, see Highley and Weinstock
2004: 16) and has taken a total of almost $141 million in domestic
sales and almost $249 million internationally. Of course, there are
horror films that are not as successful in terms of box office takings or
indeed have flopped, but these examples illustrate that horror films are
lucrative economic units for studios and independent filmmakers alike.
Genres are also, by their very nature, fundamental to the mainstream
film industries (within Hollywood and without); they are units around
which production and exhibition are organized. Barry Keith Grant
(1986: ix) defines genre movies as those commercial feature films
which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with
familiar characters in familiar situations. Such films, he says, have been
exceptionally significant in establishing the popular sense of cinema as a
cultural and economic institution. According to Grant, genre cinema is
thus created by an industrial model based on mass production. Pro-
duction practices within the mainstream film industry (especially in the
classical Hollywood era) tend to be centred around specializations, with
studios, filmmakers, effects technicians and actors all becoming asso-
ciated with particular types of film. At the consumption end of the
industrial process, viewers tend to have particular tastes and want to see
the kinds of films that they know they will enjoy, so genres have
become a major selling point in the marketing and exhibition of films.
However, such specialization in terms of production practice is
common across genres, and there is no reason why this alone would
explain horrors endurance. As much as there are large audiences for
horror, it is not the only genre in which the general public is interested.
Production and consumption contexts are central to the development of
genres in general, not for any one genre in particular. In any case,
horror has tended to be regarded as somewhat disreputable and it is
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM AND FUNCTION 9
often independent filmmakers and the smaller or less powerful studios
that have specialized in horror. This does, in effect, mean that horror is
successful outwith the mainstream film industry to a greater or lesser
extent at different times. There ought therefore to be other more spe-
cific reasons that can help explain why horror as one of several pop-
ular genres that have become essential economic units to many national
film industries has endured.
Other productive and well-loved genres have waxed and waned
according to public preferences and cultural trends; genres that were once
well established (westerns and musicals, for example) have declined to
be replaced by others (action films and teen comedies, for instance) that
better suit contemporary tastes. In contrast, despite periods of threa-
tened (or media proclaimed) stagnation and decline, horror cinema has
invariably been revitalized by new forms of the horror film, or varia-
tions on existing forms of horror cinema, sometimes combined with
elements of other genres, often provided by low-budget, independent
or international crossover hits. Drawing on the Russian Formalists theory
of genre development, Neale (2000: 213) explains that these kinds
of displacements in the genre occur through the acceptance (or canon-
isation) of a junior branch that contributes, via some new artistic
direction, to the process by which genres are contested and changed.
On this level of course, horrors longevity is then simply explained by
the artistic expansion of the conceptual categories. If horror cinema is a
collection of evolving sub-genres and cycles, new forms can simply be
added into the whole without destabilizing the genre as a whole. The
many different forms of horror (sub-genres, cycles and hybrids) can also
satisfy the tastes and preferences of various audience segments, thus
increasing the range of horror films on offer and increasing audiences
overall. But the question still remains, why should horror be an excep-
tion in defying its often-prophesied decline and continuing to flourish
(even if on the fringes of or outside of the mainstream film industry)?
All films to a greater or lesser extent reflect the conditions existing at
the time and place in which they were made. Genre films, because they
are made as economic units that rely on formulaic narratives that are
10 HORROR
especially vulnerable to reflecting a dominant ideology, are more likely
to be barometers of the cultural moment. They meaningfully address
contemporary issues and reflect cultural, social or political trends. By
way of illustration, this is an argument that can be used to explain the
decline of the western the ideologies that were encoded in westerns
reflected myths about the taming of the American wilderness and
the role of the lone hero in those myths. As America moved into the
postmodern period after the Second World War, the need for that myth
declined and so did the genre. Successful westerns that were made
after this time were more likely to reflect the rewriting of those myths
to incorporate the histories of the Mexicans (A Fistful of Dollars), Native
Americans (Dances with Wolves), African-Americans (Posse), and women
(The Ballad of Little Jo), or reconceptualize the traditional cowboy (Unfor-
given), though the latter examples tend to be standalone films rather
than becoming a junior branch which revitalizes the genre.
Horror cinema, on the other hand, has always appeared to be rather
more flexible and adaptable in its encompassing of the cultural
moment, giving scope for filmmakers to encode changing socio-cultural
concerns with ease. In fact, since fear is central to horror cinema, issues
such as social upheaval, anxieties about natural and manmade disasters,
conflicts and wars, crime and violence, can all contribute to the genres
continuation. Since horror films tap into the cultural moment by
encoding the anxieties of the moment into their depictions of mon-
strosity, there is an endless flow of material to inspire horror film-
makers. Horror is thus a genre that is always ready to address the fears
of the audience, these being fuelled by events and concerns on an
international and national level. In this way, horror cinema is extremely
flexible, and able to adapt easily to various periods of cultural change
and differences across national boundaries. This can also explain his-
torical forms of horror cinema, for example, the science fiction-horror
hybrids of the 1950s (which encoded the oppositional politics of the
Cold War), the slasher film cycle (reflecting social policies, class and
the failure of social responsibility in the era of Reaganomics), and
postmodern zombie films (social and political alienation in the
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM AND FUNCTION 11
consumer society). Such films are thus cathartic, allowing for these
anxieties and other negative emotions towards the world or the society
one inhabits to be released safely (a bounded experience of terror
according to Pinedo 1997: 41). And, of course, horror cinema can also
represent more personal fears and phobias, which are ever present, and
thus act to confront or release those fears on a psychological as well as a
social level. We can thus see horror cinema as fulfilling a basic human
need for society and for the individual.
Yet if horror cinema is ideally suited to address issues of anxiety, the
fact that it represents these anxieties as monstrous entities that commit
acts of violence or disrupt the social order also imbues it with a taboo
status. A further aspect of the genres longevity may, then, be due to the
fact that the depiction of such horrors is often regarded as being at
worst dangerous and at best somewhat disreputable. Horror
cinemas outsider status derives largely from the fact that (unlike many
genres which are designed as pleasurable escapist entertainment) it is
designed to elicit negative emotions from its viewers something that
does put many people off. While its viewers do love to watch horror
cinema and enjoy being vicariously scared in the safety of the cinema or
living room, many people are put off or find such films distasteful.
While there are horror fans who love the more extreme forms of
horror, these films do often gain a lot of negative publicity which
further reinforces the low cultural standing of horror cinema generally.
And if in terms of reflecting the cultural moment, horror films deal on
an unconscious level with fears of violence by depicting acts of vio-
lence, might they not be easily misjudged for influencing their viewers
and contributing to the violence in society? This is obviously a difficult
question to answer, tied up as it is with the mass media effects debate:
do horror and other violent films merely reflect violence in society or
do they trigger it? Whatever the points in this debate are, the whole
genre is potentially tainted. It has therefore been denigrated or ignored,
never quite wholly acceptable, and relegated to areas of low budget,
independent production and even when it is embraced by the main-
stream (clearly it is a profitable genre and since profit is the main
12 HORROR
driving force of the mainstream film industry, big budget, mainstream
horror films are produced), it can never quite be tamed and it con-
tinues to exist on the margins when it has gone out of fashion (where
it is freer to confront taboos or contentious issues). As some sort of
cultural other, horror flourishes thanks to its status as forbidden fruit.
This is not an inconsequential point, considering that horror films are
particularly popular among younger audiences and underage teens are
very likely to regard seeing a higher rated horror film as a rite of pas-
sage. Horror cinemas continued success therefore depends to some
extent on it remaining taboo.
In these different ways, horror cinema acquires cultural longevity
both within mainstream cinema and as cult, low-brow or trash cinema
on the fringes of film culture. In the wider popular culture, horror also
has strong and long-established traditions in the fields of the arts and
entertainment. It is a productive and persistent genre within television,
literature, comic books and the theatre. For example, horror novels and
short stories are, and have been for some considerable time, an extre-
mely popular literary genre (since the eighteenth century at least, but
more recently with writers such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, Anne
Rice and Joyce Carol Oates). Horror has also been a significant form of
television drama from the early days of The Twilight Zone and Quatermass
serials through to The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural in
recent years. Horror cinema is thus often presold by dint of its
popularity and common cultural currency in other forms (fans of
horror film are also likely to consume it in these other media). And
since horror itself has a basis in older forms of storytelling such as myth
and folklore, it is apparent that horror fiction generally (in whatever
medium) might fulfill some necessary psychological or social function,
being an essential dimension, for many individuals, of the human
condition. The logical conclusion, then, is that this human need is also
key to explaining the genres enduring qualities. Despite the fact that
horror is variously depicted as trash culture, suitable viewing only for
hormone-ridden teens, or as a dangerous social problem inciting
viewers to acts of actual violence, filmmakers have continued to be
THE HORROR GENRE: FORM AND FUNCTION 13
attracted to the genre across the globe and audiences have flocked to
their films to be by choice scared, grossed out, transfixed, amused
and even sexually aroused.
In the light of this success (the genres popularity, reach, complexity
and economic viability, as well as its ability to reflect the anxieties of the
cultural moment), it seems that horror cinema is an important context
for studying genre theory as well as cinematic horror in its own right.
GENRE THEORY AND THE COMPLEXITIES OF
HORROR CINEMA
Having established that horror cinema is an extremely heterogeneous
collection of films, it seems appropriate to consider what the terms
genre and horror genre might mean, not simply in terms of locating
films within a genre, but also in terms of what the methodological and
theoretical contexts of the classification process itself might imply about
such terms. Underlying this question, of course, is what is meant by the
term genre itself within the contexts of film production, marketing,
consumption
