| 书目名称 | Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film | | 编辑 | Wickham Clayton | | 视频video | | | 图书封面 |  | | 描述 | Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film fills a broad scholastic gap by analysing the elements of narrative and stylistic construction of films in the slasher subgenre of horror that have been produced and/or distributed in the Hollywood studio system from its initial boom in the late 1970s to the present. | | 出版日期 | Book 2015 | | 关键词 | Film form; Film style; narration; aesthetics; formalism; Horror; Slasher; Hollywood; Remakes; postmodernism; n | | 版次 | 1 | | doi | https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137496478 | | isbn_softcover | 978-1-349-57345-5 | | isbn_ebook | 978-1-137-49647-8 | | copyright | The Editor(s) 2015 |
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Front Matter |
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Abstract
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Introduction |
Wickham Clayton |
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Abstract
Leon Trotsky (1923/1996) once warned of the dangers of formalism. I’d like to think that if he’d seen . ., Trotsky would have changed his mind.
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(In)Stability of Point of View in , and , |
David Roche |
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Abstract
Carol J. Clover opened the fourth chapter, ‘The Eye of Horror’, of her book . with the statement: ‘Eyes are everywhere in horror cinema’ (1992, 167), and Linda Williams (1983/1996) before her had already insisted on the importance of the male, female and monstrous characters’ ‘looks’. Both critics are highly indebted to Laura Mulvey’s famous thesis that Hollywood narrative films posit a male gaze that punishes and/or fetishizes the female body. Clover has argued that the horror genre is just as much concerned with the ‘reactive gaze’, figured as feminine, of the spectator, and thus linked to the victim, as with the ‘assaultive gaze, figured masculine, of the camera (or some stand-in)’, and thus linked to the monster or killer (181). The fact that Clover’s corpus comprises exclusively post-Psycho (1960; dir Alfred Hitchcock) and . (1960; dir Michael Powell) horror films and mainly slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s — unlike Williams, Clover has very little to say about the classical Hollywood movies — would tend to suggest that her insights are especially pertinent when considering contemporary American horror films.
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Undermining the Moneygrubbers, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love , |
Wickham Clayton |
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Abstract
I have written elsewhere about film form and aesthetics in the .. film series and even about the particular strengths of this specific entry in the series; however, there is still much to be said about .. . (1985; dir Danny Steinmann).. It may not have been contemporarily nor retrospectively popular, but this film still stands out as a unique and subversive entry in a successful and exemplary slasher film franchise.. Consistent with my other writing on the film, I maintain that it is so innovative that it remains a prophetic, as opposed to influential, harbinger of the abilities of the slasher to transcend its base connotations as ‘low’ art, which it arguably appears to have done within the last decade.
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I Framed Freddy: Functional Aesthetics in the , Series |
Karra Shimabukuro |
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Abstract
While past scholarship on . focuses on the concept of the Final Girl (Clover 1992; Christensen 2011), the monstrous feminine (Creed 1993), the female as a double for the monster (Williams 1983/1996) and structural analysis of stalker/slasher films (Dika 1990), little has been written on the aesthetics of horror or slasher films. Although the concept that ‘modern film techniques enable the director to practice a kind of . (writing) in film’ (Bordwell 1989, 45) is widely accepted, the concept of a franchise or series acting in a similar way with different screenwriters and directors is not (45). If we apply this concept to a franchise/series in order to look at what narrative is written by the series as a whole, and what elements contribute to this ‘writing’, it is possible to examine the ways in which the narrative is built across a series, expanding Bordwell’s concept that ‘a film’s stylistic texture is pervasive, uninterrupted from first moment to last’ to include a series (Bordwell 2005 a, 36). Christensen states that ‘[t]he original . [1984; dir Wes Craven] helped establish Craven as an auteur with a mastery of the macabre and initiated the sadistic Freddy Krueger (then portraye
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, and , Reimagining the Slasher Film through Urban Gothic |
Stacey Abbott |
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Abstract
Describing Gothic literature as a ‘writing of excess’ (1996, 1), Fred Botting argues that the genre has historically been replete with ‘gloomy and mysterious’ atmospheres, stock supernatural features and desolate and alienating landscapes, signifying ‘an overabundance of imaginative frenzy, untamed by reason and unrestrained by conventional eighteenth-century demands for simplicity, realism or probability’ (3). It is through excess that the emotional affect of the Gothic takes hold. Kristin Thompson argues that excess within the cinema emerges when there is a ‘conflict between materiality of a film and the unifying structures within it’, namely narrative and character motivation (1986, 132). She suggests that ‘the minute a viewer begins to notice style for its own sake or watch works which do not provide such thorough motivation, excess comes forward and must affect narrative meaning’ (132). This is particularly significant with regard to horror cinema, wherein the emotional affect often generated by the aesthetic excess is, in fact, the central purpose of the film, with story and style working together to incite an emotional response. It is precisely at the point where style spill
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Franchise Legacy and Neo-slasher Conventions in |
Andrew Patrick Nelson |
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Abstract
The following scene unfolds about midway through . (1998; dir Steve Miner). Keri Tate (Jamie Lee Curtis), headmistress of a posh northern California boarding school, watches wearily as a string of yellow school buses shuttles her students away for a weekend of camping in Yosemite National Park. The source of her unease is concern for her teenage son, John, whom she mistakenly believes has departed with his classmates. (John has in fact secretly stayed behind with three friends to have a clandestine Halloween party in the school’s basement). Keri turns and immediately collides with her secretary, Norma (Janet Leigh).
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Roses Are Red, Violence Is Too: Exploring Stylistic Excess in , |
Mark Richard Adams |
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Following the unprecedented success of . (dir Wes Craven) in 1996, the next few years saw a resurgence of horror films, primarily in the same postmodern slasher style as their progenitor. This neo-slasher cycle would often utilize successful young actors known for their television work and have a self-referential approach to the genre. Notable, and memorable, films include not only the two initial sequels to . (1997, 2000; dir Wes Craven) but also the . films, the semi-reboot sequel . (1998; dir Steve Miner), and . (1998; dir Jamie Blanks), as well as numerous others. Released in 2001, towards the end of the cycle of films, . (2001; dir Jamie Blanks) is perhaps one of the least remembered, potentially due to its lacklustre box office results, and is perhaps most noted for its performance from cult television star David Boreanaz.
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Puzzles, Contraptions and the Highly Elaborate Moment: The Inevitability of Death in the Grand Slash |
Ian Conrich |
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I have argued that the slasher film encapsulates a diversity of texts that need to be differentiated rather than clumped together (see Conrich 2010). The influence of key slasher films such as the . and .. series on modern horror cinema is unquestionable, but these movies did not emerge from nowhere, nor did they cease to evolve. Before the slasher film there was the pre-slasher, and after the slasher there was what I have defined as the post-slasher, followed by the neo-slasher, the grand slasher and the slasher revival. The high impact of the grand slasher narrative on commercial cinema began with the . series of films in 2000, and such productions can be seen to include the . (1997–2004), . (2001–03) and . films (2004–10), . (2012; dir Drew Goddard) and by extension . (2005; dir Eli Roth), . (2007; dir Eli Roth) and . (2011; dir Scott Spiegel).
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The Killer Who Never Was: Complex Storytelling, the , Saga and the Shifting Moral Alignment of Puzzl |
Matthew Freeman |
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Abstract
As of 2013, Lionsgate’s series of . films stands as the most commercially successful horror movie franchise to date. Its seven entries, each released yearly around the Halloween period beginning in 2004 and ending in 2010, have grossed over $873 million at the worldwide box office. Despite its commercial prominence in contemporary American cinema, few scholarly works have ventured into the world of . and its unique stylistic and structural identity. A small number of scholars, most notably Kim Newman and Matt Hills, have attempted to position this particular series in relation to broader generic or sociological concerns, the latter examining the extent to which the films ‘can be interpreted as being “about” contemporary political and cultural contexts’ (Hills 2011, 107).. For reasons presumably concerned with the cultural distaste surrounding a series whose primary audience ‘must’ comprise, as film critic Mark Kermode argues, ‘either people who appreciate its lack of quality or glutton[s] for punishment’, (2011, 182) the . films themselves remain largely bereft of any substantial critical investigation. The exception is Steve Jones’ work, which suggests that the lack of critical at
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Resurrecting , |
Gary Bettinson |
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Abstract
Few horror films have flirted with slasher-genre categorization as tentatively as Brian De Palma’s . (1976). While some studies of the slasher film have granted . serious treatment, the film has so far resisted assimilation to that genre.. And yet, if . is not wholly subsumable to the slasher category, it nonetheless shares with it compelling generic features. Further, De Palma’s movie has shaped slasher-film norms in indelible ways. By highlighting patterns of imitation, innovation and influence against what formalists call backgrounds, or ‘norms of prior experience’ (Thompson 1988, 21), it can be shown that both . and its 2013 remake (signed by Kimberly Peirce) are integral to the slasher genre’s inception and evolution. Formalist concepts can also usefully illuminate aspects of artistic practice and generic evolution, a premise exemplified in this chapter through the case of slasher cinema.
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Reframing Parody and Intertextuality in , Formal and Theoretical Approaches to the ‘Postmodern’ Slas |
Fran Pheasant-Kelly |
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As a pivotal slasher film of the 1990s, . (1996; dir Wes Craven) is distinctive from earlier productions of the genre in its multiple allusions to other films and art forms that had preceded it. Its uniqueness arises from the fact that even as it is composed of fragments of previous ‘texts’, these are reframed to generate a set of revised aesthetic and narrative characteristics for the genre, which, in turn, provide a template for subsequent slasher films (though the genre underwent further change following the September 11 attacks [see Wetmore 2012]). Moreover, although these often-blatant intertextual references are directed towards a knowing audience, the film is genuinely horrific because its gruesome scenes of death not only offer homage to the conventional slasher but also accentuate to the extreme the genre’s abject aspects. In short, it displays both visual and intertextual excess while its numerous cross-references signal a more pervasive cultural shift from authorial perspectives to one that privileges other texts as source material, and, even though the names of directors associated with the horror genre crop up regularly throughout the film, these are for reasons of sel
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Crises of Identification in the Supernatural Slasher: The Resurrection of the Supernatural Slasher V |
Jessica Balanzategui |
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As has been indicated earlier in this book, it is commonly accepted that the slasher subgenre is constituted of a triad of relatively distinct cycles — the classic period following the release of formative slasher . (1978; dir John Carpenter); a period of rampant sequelization and repetition during the mid to late 1980s; and a resurgence in the late 1990s following the release of the extremely self-aware, semi-parodic . (1996; dir Wes Craven). However, another influential cycle is largely overlooked in these tripartite historical trajectories of the subgenre. At the turn of the millennium, soon after the popularity of the slasher was renewed by ., an assemblage of films emerged which reconfigured the syntactic mechanics of the classic slasher through positioning the supernatural as a central narrative feature. Self-consciously situated as a sincere alternative to the cycle of playfully nostalgic slashers ignited by ., these films employ the supernatural to embellish the ambivalent processes of identification embedded in the classic slasher: the tug-of-war for visual and narrative power between the killer and the Final Girl or Boy. Thus the supernatural slasher elaborates on the for
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‘Come on, Boy, Bring It!’: Embracing Queer Erotic Aesthetics in Marcus Nispel’s , (2003) |
Darren Elliott-Smith |
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Abstract
Marcus Nispel’s 2003 aesthetically polished remake of Tobe Hooper’s iconic original . (1974) was essentially a box-office success, taking approximately $80 million during its US theatrical release period. Produced by the bombastic auteur Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes, the remake arguably stimulated a trend of horror remakes in the first decade of the 2000s, including . (2005; dir Jaume Collet-Serra), . (2006; dir Alexandre Aja) and . (2009; dir Patrick Lussier). Much has been written on the plethora of remade horror films from the implied ‘canon’ over the years, leading Steffen Hankte to conclude that the ‘the much-lamented glut of remakes [ … ] entrench the originals even more deeply within the canon of horror cinema’ (2007, 197). Conversely, Thomas Leitch (1990) argues that remakes often offer more of a ‘reboot’ to certain horror film franchises — particularly for new audience bases:
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Beyond Surveillance: Questions of the Real in the Neopostmodern Horror Film |
Dana Och |
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While discussions of postmodern horror films were well established by the late 1990s, two big moments in relation to postmodern horror occur in the second half of the decade. They are the highly self-conscious postmodern horror of the metaslasher franchises — such as . (1997; dir Jim Gillespie) and . (1996; dir Wes Craven) — and the mainstream emergence of the docu-horror into American cinema through the overwhelming success of the independent film . (1999; dirs Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick). The role of surveillance in these two types of film can help us to understand a larger shift regarding the vital role of technology and paranoia in the neopostmodern horror film. At the centre of this chapter is a consideration of how the neopostmodern horror film becomes the location to explore the discomfort that happens when surveillance, something that used to be terrifying, is now part and parcel of the status quo.
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The Slasher, the Final Girl and the Anti-Denouement |
Janet Staiger |
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Wes Craven’s 1994 film . presents a Bettelheimian thesis about why children desire to keep hearing horrible fairy tales. Telling the stories staves off their realization. A fantasy of anxiety prevents actual anxiety and its consequences. Moreover, the successful resolution of the tale reassures the child that he or she can securely progress through the surrounding violence.
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Back Matter |
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Abstract
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发表于 2025-3-21 17:05:05
