Horror Homeroom

Posted on June 16, 2020

The Function of Money in Hitchcock’s Psycho

When Psycho was released in 1960, it took audiences by storm, both because of its storyline as well as because of director Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful publicity plan. By refusing audiences entry into the picture after it had started, Hitchcock created a buzz around the film that made it much more than just a horror film. It made it an experience. Central to Psycho’s longevity is its ability to titillate and shock viewers in equal measure. From its infamous shower scene to Janet Leigh lounging provocatively in a negligee to Norman’s complicated gender performance, Psycho can be credited as a seminal moment in American film’s move away from Production Code prurient sensibilities and toward an explicitly adult form of storytelling where explorations of violence and deviant behavior weren’t just tolerated but actively encouraged. Film was ready to explore the darker side of a post WW2 America in the throes of homogeneity and Hitchcock was ready to capitalize on that desire.

Posted on June 12, 2020

The Constructed Masculinity of Evil Dead’s Ash

Sara McCartney

Even the squarest heterosexual knows about drag queens by now. They may even know how theorists like Judith Butler have used drag queens to talk about the constructedness and performativity of gender. Though drag kings receive less attention, their satiric power is even more pointed. As theorist Jack Halberstam argues, “kinging reads dominant male masculinity and explodes its effects through exaggeration, parody, and earnest mimicry.”[1] Drag kings use their craft and a healthy dose of humor to critique mainstream masculinity. Just as drag queens’ camp can be found outside of drag, so too do the motifs of drag king comedy show up in the mainstream. Halberstam points to the Austin Powers movies. In horror, where the usual performances of male heroism are futile at best, the male heroes who do appear come with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor. There’s no better example than Ash Williams from the Evil Dead franchise, with his boomstick, his chainsaw, and his groovy swagger.

Posted on June 7, 2020

Delivered: Misery Meets Slavery

Dawn Keetley

Released on May 8, 2020, Delivered is the Mother’s Day entry in Hulu’s ongoing Into the Dark anthology horror series from the television branch of Blumhouse Productions. It’s the eighth in the twelve-episode second season and is directed by Emma Tammi, director of The Wind (2018). Delivered has been compared, including by the director itself, to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Misery (1990). However, it also, I argue, evokes Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). And that makes it even more interesting.

Delivered follows a pregnant Valerie (Natalie Paul), a woman who is clearly ambivalent about her pregnancy. She also seems less than happy with her husband, Tom (Michael Cassidy), and it soon becomes clear that there is another man in her life, Riley (Micah Parker), to whom she refuses to talk. Valerie’s alienation from her life is effectively expressed by Natalie Paul and by director Tammi. She appears to be uninvolved in her life, detached from things and people around her, going through the motions of doctor’s appointments (which she doesn’t tell her husband about) and “Mamaste” childbirth classes. Read more

Posted on May 30, 2020

So, We’re Just Going to Ignore the Sunlight Then? Aesthetic Whiteness in Midsommar

Guest Post

When we look at the history of horror and the gothic, we see that the aesthetic investment in establishing darkness as an easy visual cue for badness is largely taken for granted. That the dark is the place where monsters dwell, unseen and always threatening, is perhaps the most deeply rooted cultural and linguistic paradigm propping up the interlocking systems of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy—that is, it is among the most banal gestures of anti-Blackness in which we all participate daily. As such, horror films historically have been, well, dark.

As much as aesthetic layers undoubtedly inform the genre, real-life occasions of horror rarely arrive with packaging so convenient. That is, horror tends to be experienced as a sort of absurdity or cognitive dissonance: the feeling of suspension, of lacking gravity, of time collapsing.

My point is that horror lives in the mind, as a way of seeing.

In Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul, a hybrid of memoir and cultural critique, writer Leila Taylor speaks to this point succinctly: “Darkness is everywhere, even in the oppressive glare of the noonday sun.”

Posted on May 20, 2020

Sea Fever and the Working-Class Weird

Guest Post

There is an unrecognized privilege at work in the experience of the weird or strange, or at least that is what Neasa Hardiman’s Sea Fever (2019), a claustrophobic sea horror, suggests as it follows the crew of the Niamh Cinn Óir in their encounter with a glowing and parasitic creature under the waves. When presented with the monstrosity in the ocean’s waters, the green goo seeping into the ship’s hull, or the eyeless dead of the vessel N-29, the blue-collar crew of the fishing trawler don’t hypothesize where or how this creature came to be—that is a job for the antisocial behaviorist. Instead, they are far more concerned with how the beast will affect their ability to turn a profit and keep the ship afloat.

While other critics are quick to place Sea Fever in the lineage of The Thing (1982) and Alien (1979) or cite how incredibly timely this horror film is given the events of a real-world pandemic, I want to make the case here for Sea Fever’s position on labor and the experience of horror along class lines. To be clear: the glowing nightmare terrifies everyone on board the trawler eventually—the raw fear the beast inspires applies as much to a fish hauler as it does to an academic. However, what is different and important is how these economically diverse characters interact with the weirdness of the monster. As in Alien, the regular crew of the Niamh Cinn Óir have one thing on their minds: making a proper share of profit.