Essay Planning

Spectatorship: Popular Film and Emotional Response

“Emotional response to a popular film is dependent on the ways in which we are

made to identify with particular characters.” How far has this been your experience?

• We are encouraged to identify with Casey so that we care what happens to her:

– Pure, innocent, attractive young girl who is played by a famous actress and has an asexual name (Casey) so we might expect her to be the “final girl”

– Screen time devoted to her– POV shots (e.g. when we see her parents’ car coming we share her hope) –

share her fear– Spectator also made to feel fear because of certain horror movie conventions –

isolated house (Casey is vulnerable), night-time, we see knives in the foreground, orchestral music, we know it is a slasher movie because of intertextual references (e.g. Halloween)

– THEORY – Carol Clover – Spectator encouraged to identify with the female BUT from the start (whether it be Casey, Tatum or Sidney)

– Killer here makes very few appearances (contrast to Halloween where we have more time to develop a relationship with Mike Myers)

– We do not feel that Casey or Tatum deserves to die– Billy and Stu – we have no sympathy for them, they have no redeeming qualities

(we have no reason to forgive them or even to want them to live)– Do we think Sidney will survive? For its effect, the film must create seeds of

doubt about Sidney’s survival – as an audience, we have lived through her experiences so we care about her (think of her qualities as a character)

• You should refer to Psycho and Halloween:• Which characters are we encouraged to identify with

more? Relate this to Wood and Clover’s theory:

– Norman Bates and Marion Crane (“Final Girl” but killed relatively early):

• Robin Wood: He comments upon the "alienation effect" of killing off the "apparent center of the film" with which spectators had identified.

– Michael Myers and Laurie Strode:• Clover, “The viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer,

but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.”

Ideology

• Psychoanalysis – Is this where it all starts!? – Started with Sigmund Freud – study of the

mind’s subconscious desires– Oedipus complex - one of Freud’s theories:

• Part of childhood in which boy wants to kill his father and sexually possess his mother

• How does this relate to Norman Bates?

Psycho

• Film theorist Robin Wood also discusses how the shower washes "away her guilt". He comments upon the "alienation effect" of killing off the "apparent center of the film" with which spectators had identified.

• “Negotiated” response?

Freud and Psychoanalysis• Psychoanalysis

– Freudian theory exploring the subconscious mind – what is represses and what it might tell us about ourselves and our desires

– For example, the Oedipus Complex was a theory of Freud that said that a child has a time in their lives where they want to kill their father and sexually possess their mother.

Early ideology – Spectator in masculine position

• Repression theory - Robin Wood (late 1970’s) – “The true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for

recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses“

– He argued that the manner in which any given horror narrative resolves this conflict reveals its ideological orientation, and further, that most movies will be conservative, repressing desire within the self and projecting it outward as a monstrous Other

– Monster as return of repressed – applies especially to horror films and features premise of “beast within” like Wolfman (1941 and 2010)

Later ideology – Spectator in feminine position

• Carol Clover: “Men, Women, and Chainsaw” (1992)– Takes the classic Laura Mulvey male-centered identification process of

sadistic-voyeur – And flips it around to a masochistic-voyeur (by having the identification

process shift to the usually female victim/”Final Girl”) – horror as empowering for women

– The viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.

– The final girl is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, avoiding the vices of the victims (sex, narcotic usage, etc.). She sometimes has a unisex name (e.g., Teddy, Billie, Georgie, Sidney).

– Occasionally the Final Girl will have a shared history with the killer. The final girl is the "investigating consciousness" of the film, moving the narrative forward and as such, she exhibits intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance.

– However, it has been argued that Clover's image of supposedly progressive final girls are never entirely victorious at the end of a film nor do they manage to eschew the male order of things as Clover argues (e.g. if final girl rescued by a male – such as Dr Loomis in Halloween)

• Which characters are you encouraged to identify with?

Psycho

• Marion Crane

• Norman Bates

• Mrs Bates (!?)

Halloween

• Michael Myers

• Judith Myers (his murdered sister)

• Laurie Strode

• Dr. Sam Loomis (see Sam Loomis in Psycho)

Scream

• Sidney Prescott

• Billy Loomis (!)

• Stu Macher

• Deputy Dwight Riley

• Tatum Riley

• Gale Weathers

• Randy

• Final Girl

• Freud – Oedipus Complex

• Robin Wood – Spectator in male position

• Carol Clover – Spectator in female position