A recap- the emotional power of horror

• Why do you watch horror movies?

• E.g. For a “masochistic” pleasure…Any other reasons?• A sense of escape/fantasy.• Because they are often simple in narrative and characterisation.

Because they are often formulaic and we as audiences don’t always want to be challenged - predictable pleasures.

• Because they remind us of our childhood in a psychoanalytical way!

• What fears did we say horror movies play on?

• Fear of the dark, the extraordinary, of strange sounds, • Of God, of other man and the mind (the power of suggestion)!• Consider Freud, Clover and Wood theories of repression and

childhood.

• What micro aspects do filmmakers use to create this sense of fear?

• The technical aspects- cinematography, mise-en-scene, sound and editing.• Horror directors will manipulate audience emotions with the micro aspects-

the power of suggestion….

• How are the macro aspects repeated?

• Again audience genre and narrative expectations- predictable pleasures.• Stock characters- the blond victim, the demon or psychotic murderer.• Recurring ideas and themes- the extraordinary invading the ordinary.

The demonic/supernatural horror

• Task: read the plot summary of ‘Drag me to Hell’. What aspects of the horror genre are obvious from that plot?

• What is demonic/supernatural horror? How can it be defined?

• Films that feature possession and/or the presence of evil spirits.

• Name some examples?

• ‘The Exorcist’- demonic possession• ‘The Omen’- demonic possession• ‘The Ring’- evil spirits• ‘Poltergeist’- haunted house• ‘The Haunting’ – haunted house• ‘Paranormal Activity’- haunted house

Demonic/supernatural- the conventions

• What are some of the conventions of the genre?

• Witchcraft and ‘the occult’.• Ghosts and evil spirits.• Religious paraphernalia- such as a crucifix, holy water, Hindu gods etc.• A curse or possession.• The devil/demons.• A witch or holy man.• Paranoia and fear.• A hapless and confused hero/heroine.• Set in ‘normal’ small towns- ‘the extraordinary invading the ordinary’.

• The demonic/supernatural film is not to be confused with the zombie film or the vampire film which although have similar traits are not about demonic possession or the supernatural.

Demonic/supernatural- the conventions• Narrative:• The exposition is an equilibrium• A narrative enigma- murderer/demon appears.• The enigma will set of a chain of events.• The resolution/denouement- final girl/saved from demon.• Binary opposites within the narrative- good v evil.• Narrative time frame- supernatural films flashback to give you more context.

• Themes:• Religion v science• Loss of innocence/purity• Divine retribution• Invasion of the extraordinary/foreign• Renouncing the devil• Demonic possession• The occult/paganism and withcraft

• Iconography:• A possessed object and other religious iconography

• Suburban small town America.• Affluent middle class setting

Spectatorship and Physiological reactions.

• How do filmmakers illicit ‘powerful sensory and emotional responses’ in the spectator?

• Task: Non-participant observation.

• Record a spectator’s reactions to a film sequence.

• Watch their reactions and make notes.

LO: to micro analyse how emotion is manipulated

through the demonic/supernatural

film.

Issues of Spectatorship• “What inspires the cinematic spectator is that

very loss of control….and subversion of self-identity”.

• Make notes: How can this quote about spectatorship be applied to Drag Me to Hell? What micro aspects does Raimi use to take away that sense of control?

• “The Freudian reference, which assumes inside us a constant, ever-present yearning for the fantastic, for the darkly mysterious, for the choked terror of the dark”

• Make notes: How can you apply Freud’s psychoanalytical theories to the film?

• Does the film identify with Clover or Wood’s theories of repression and subconscious fears and desires.

• Are these childhood fears or adult fears? Fear of what?

How does the film use the micro aspects?

• Key scene 1: ‘The curse of Mrs Ganush’. • Watch and discuss your notes on these

technical areas.

• Use of sound:• How is the music used?• What about sound effects?• Use of dialogue/voice.

• Mise-en-scene:• Costume, hair and make up.• Setting and props.• Lighting.

Key scene 1- use of sound• Key scene 1: ‘The curse of Mrs Ganush’.

• Sound: Music, dialogue and sound fx.

• Eerie non-melodic synthesiser sounds. Off key picking of violin strings. The repetitive strings with a low tone.

• Metallic industrial sounds, scraping and grinding.• Amplified sounds of nails on desk.• The vulgarity of Mrs Ganush- false teeth, hankie.• The wind/handkerchief.• The periods of silence?• The slowed down sounds during the fight in the car.

• Eastern European accent of Mrs Ganush – ‘the other/extraordinary’ compared to the all American tones of Christine.

• Write: How effective is the use of sound in this scene in involving the audience.

The use of mise-en -scene• Mise-en-scene- sets, lighting, costume, props, hair and make-up.

• The American small town.The local branch of a bank- symbol of capitalism and greed.

• The white wooden picket fenced house in the suburbs.• The contrast between bright daylight sunshine and the grey/green darkness of the car

park.• Use of shadows/silhouettes in the car park.• The handkerchief! • The button as the cursed object- huge narrative significance

• Mrs Ganush’s- glass eye, false teeth, long grey hair, pallid wrinkled skin, dangling gold earrings, head scarf.

• The Eastern European gypsy stereotype. Incongruous with her surroundings, ‘the other’.

• Christine Brown- the ‘WASP’ from farming family. • Dresses formally for work, wants to succeed and prove her worth – the pursuit of the

American dream. Isn’t taken seriously by her male colleagues. • The all American blonde in a horror movie- always punished!

• Write: How effective is the use of technical aspects in a key scene from ‘Drag Me To Hell’.

‘Drag Me To Hell’ (2009)

• Directed by Sam Raimi

• ‘Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend, and a bright future. But in three days, she's going to hell’.

• What can you say about the film’s tagline?

Starter:Horror and sound

• Sound is one of the most significant technical aspects in the horror movie.

• Without sound most films lose a lot of their meaning. Good use of sound can manipulate the audience meaning.

• Task: listen to this horror music.

• Make notes on what might be happening visually to accompany this music.

• How does the music make you feel? Describe?• What instruments are being used?• What about the pattern/rhythm of the music?

• http://www.emusic.com/album/Various-Artists-Halloween-Scream-Themes-Horror-Movie-Music-With-MP3-Download/11101352.html

• Key scene 2 : ‘The Lamia visits’• Watch and make notes on:• Cinematography:• Track fwd to close up on her face, accompanied by slow monotone

electronic sound- builds suspense/foreboding.• Dutch tilt implies something bad is going to happen- disorientation.• Sound:• Discordant sounds to emphaise emotions of Chrsitine- uncomfortable.• Beast sound fx- Lamia, not human, malevolent/evil• High pitch dissonance (two notes clash) uncomfortable to ears- disorients

audience.• Moment of silence followed by the amplified mechanical screech of the gate.• Undertone of a bass hum.• MES:• Location- house on her own- suburban middle class home• The phone prop that loses battery- alone in her struggle/can’t escape the

devil-omnipotent• Christine’s bedroom- innocent and childlike décor-loss of innocence-

extraordinary invading the ordinary• The cat poster, cat is falling, in danger and so is she.• The book of sacrifice- iconography of the supernatural genre

Key scene 3- ‘returning the curse’

• Watch and make notes on:

• The narrative denouement. (ending)• The main themes/messages of the film as a whole.

• How does the film end?• A false happy ending? • Do we as an audience expect the hero/heroine to die or be punished at the end?• The notion of ‘predicatble pleasures’.• Who are our sympathies with at the end?

• What is the message of the film?• The Overt message - Don’t mess with the occult? • The Covert subtexts: • That western capitalist greed should be punished – anti corporate America?• Immigrant groups are continual threat to the American way of life- pro corporate

America?

What the WJEC board says• Topic D - Spectatorship: Popular Film and

Emotional Response

• This study is concerned with the ways in which popular film (whether deriving from Hollywood or elsewhere) produces powerful sensory and emotional responses in the spectator. It is possible to focus on a particular genre – such as horror and consider shock effects – or the melodrama as 'weepie'.

• Alternatively, the focus may be on spectacle, whether relating to the body of the star or to the staging/choreography of action. This topic is not concerned specifically with either issues of representation or value judgements but rather with developing understanding about how films create the emotional responses they do. It is expected that a minimum of two feature-length filmswill be studied for this topic.

Micro techniques* The emotional intention of horror films is simple, to scare!

• How do they do it? What technical aspects do they use?

• Mise-en-scene• Cinematography• Editing • Sound

• Lots of the fear and anxieties audiences feel is done non-verbally through the technical aspects.

The macro aspects

• What are the macro aspects?

• Narrative• Genre conventions• Ideological themes• Characterisation and representation

With reference to a key scene in Sam Raimi’s ‘Drag Me To Hell’. How effective are the micro

and macro aspects in eliciting an emotional response.

Now read each others h/w essays on ‘Drag Me To Hell’ and use the mark scheme to give it a

level.

Possible essay title…..

• How do filmmakers illicit ‘powerful sensory and emotional responses’ in the spectator (across the two key scenes)?

• Task: Make notes to answer this question. You will present your analysis to the class.

• You will be given one of the micro aspects and a clip from ‘Drag Me To Hell’ to focus on.

• What do you need to consider when making your notes?

• How the micro links to the macro.

• How both can be supported by theory (use your theory recap sheet)

• LO: to apply understanding of exam board requirements to our close textual study, linking micro to macro.

• LLO: 1-3,7,10,13,22,25

Narrative

• How does the film start? The plot exposition.• An introduction to the ‘Lamia’ and its evil power? An introduction to

Christine and her lovely, normal aspirational American dream life.

• How is the narrative structured? Linear/non-linear, chronology.

• Flashback to begin. Why? How would you describe the structure of the narrative after the flashback?

• At what point does the narrative/atmosphere change? (Todorov’s theory).

• When Mrs Ganush curses Christine; is that when the plot of the film starts, the narrative enigma as Todorov would call it?

Horror sub-genres

• Slasher/stalker

• Zombie

• Psychological thriller

• Demonic possession/supernatural

• Monster

• Gothic

• Hybrid (e.g. Sci-Fi)

What kind of scares?

• This crosses over into the idea of Freudian Psychoanalysis and why we are scared when we watch horror movies.

• What types of fear to horror movies convey?

• Fear of the dark• Fear of the extraordinary• Fear of strange sounds• Fear of God• Fear of man• Fear of the mind!

Ideology

• Freud and Psychoanalysis – Is this where it all starts!? – Study of the mind’s subconscious desires…– Started with Freud (e.g. Oedipal masochistic impulse:

boy’s desire to kill father and sexually possess mother)

• Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology.

• Question: What are the main female protagonists fears in the two films? Is it just the Lamia or the masked killer?

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 disavowing it by 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)

The horror movie fanbase• http://www.horror-movies.ca/

• Horror is a genre that is much loved by some people. Like sci-fi and fantasy it has devotees (people who dress up like horror characters and go to conventions etc. There are also lots of dedicated magazines, film channels on TV and websites for fans.

• Why do horror movie devotees continue to fall for the filmmaking tricks of horror directors?

• Horror films are formulaic so why do so many people watch them? Why are sequels made for them?

Todorov

• Bulgarian – publishing influential work on narrative since the 1960’s

Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - Other events - New equilibrium

• Concentration on how this is set up

Make comparative links between films

• Case study films: • ‘Scream’ (Wes Craven)• ‘Drag Me to Hell’ ( Sam Raimi)

• Use the sheet provided and make notes of comparison between the two films and how they use issues of spectatorship together with the micro aspects to gain an emotional response.

Essay plan.

• How far is the emotional response to mainstream films triggered by specific techniques used by the filmmakers?

Performance• Characterisation.

• Mise-en-scene of the character.

• Character arc

• Archetype and stock types

• Performance style- naturalistic, non-naturalistic.

• Body language and no-verbal communication.

• The look of the actors.