tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56051504718889240172024-03-13T15:52:37.291+01:00Tits And a Scream“Indeed, ‘tits and a scream’ are all that is required of actresses auditioning for the role of victim in [a fictional slasher film] […] It is worth noting that none of the actresses auditioning has both in the desired amount and that the director must resort to the use of doubles: one for the tits, one for the screams.”Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-19358513105534926972014-01-03T08:17:00.000+01:002014-01-03T08:17:07.766+01:00Women in Horror Month – An InterviewLuckily, I am far, <i>far</i> from the only person preoccupied with the gender dynamics of the horror genre. I constantly discover new and different approaches that people are taking to this, in my obvious opinion, endlessly fascinating and diverse subject.<br />
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And thankfully, not all of those approaches are as abstract and theoretical as mine.<br />
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A while back, I discovered a page on Facebook called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WomenInHorrorMonth?fref=ts" target="_blank">Women in Horror Recognition Month</a>. I immidiately followed it and noticed that they were posting a lot of cool links, but I didn't really know anything about the people behind it or if there was anything more than a Facebook page (granted, I could have easily figured that last one out on my own if I hadn't been so lazy). So when the team over at the Norwegian site I write for, Filmamasoner, were putting together a series of articles, reviews and interviews for Halloween about feminist approaches to horror, Women in Horror... was one of the first things to pop into mind.<br />
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Below is the full and (practically!) unedited interview with the lovely Hannah Neurotica, the wonderful brain behind the initiative. You can tell by some of the questions (and their answers) that this was meant for an audience who might necessarily not be hugely into horror, and that it was meant to be published pre-Halloween, but everything that Hannah says is still relevant and pretty damn interesting.<br />
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Enjoy!<br />
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<b>First of all, what is WiHM?</b></h3>
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Women in Horror Month (WiHM) is an initiative to recognize women in all facets of the horror industry (film, visual art, writing, theatre, etc) from around the world. WiHM wouldn't exist without those who create film festivals, podcasts, blogs, donating blood, and other creative mediums to showcase women's contributions to the dark arts. Our organization helps foster and promote events, it's so exciting to what DIY events (online and on land) people develop each year in there own communities. Our goal as an organization is to assist underrepresented female genre artists in gaining opportunities, exposure, and education through altruistic events, printed material, articles, interviews, and online support. Anyone, anywhere, can take part in this celebration.<div>
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How did it all start, how did you get the idea for this project?</h3>
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The idea came to me while sitting on my couch feeling frustrated and exhausted by the outcome of an interview I'd done that week with CBC radio. It was just the tipping point for me & my anger about the horror industry (well, the entertainment industry in general) continually ignoring women's contributions and treating female horror fans as an anomaly. I was upset by lack of visibility, lack of opportunities, and rampant assumptions about the relationship between women and the horror genre both as artists and consumers.<div>
<br />I'd been making <a href="http://axwoundzine.com/" target="_blank">Ax Wound: Gender & The Horror genre</a> for years at that point and it felt like a natural progression. As they say: if you are not happy with something going on in the world, then do something, don't just complain. You don't have to lead a revolution or part the sea – just start a conversation with someone. That is a huge step. Right now is an amazing time: there are endless platforms for innovative social change. Get creative. Don't be afraid. If you are sick of being marginalized I guarantee you are not alone – you don't have to be. They key is community and supporting each other. Reach out to people. Drop your ego. Focus on the cause with genuine determination and passion – that is something others will want to be part of too.</div>
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What are your feelings about the Final Girl concept? Who is your favourite (or least favourite!) Final Girl?</h3>
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Carol Clover</b>'s book "Men, Women, and Chainsaws" was pivotal to film/gender studies discourse. Her observations inspired academics, film buffs, and eventually lead to the genre being more self-aware (mainstreaming the concept) with films like <i>Scream</i>, <i>The Rise of Leslie Vernon</i>, <i>Cabin in the Woods</i>, etc. So, on its own the concept/book is something I respect deeply and should be respected as a serious contribution to film theory. I even have a tattoo that says <i>Final Grrrl</i> on my wrists because to me, it represents overcoming odds and survival. Does that mean I think that her book was a perfect reading of slasher films with no room for further exploration? Of course not. The book is very Freudian and she openly states in the introduction that the book was written with the male spectator in mind. I would love to see her write an updated version considering the self-awareness that exists right now as well as the changes in what the Final Girl is allowed to partake in, yet still reign supreme.</div>
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I guess what I am saying is I don't get how the concept can be something one "likes" or "dislikes." It's an observation that had huge impact on the way we look at and study horror films. I think people who are turned off when they hear the word are probably just assuming that a final girl can't evolve or don't view it for what it is. She has gone from virgin to druggie – but she still remains "final." Again, all interesting things left to explore. Nancy from <i>Nightmare on Elm Street</i> is my favorite always. I view the Final Girl concept as an entry point of study with much more to build on. </div>
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There are genre critics who claim that the horror genre is inherently misogynist. What is your message for them?</h3>
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It depends if we are talking about the horror film industry or the film characters themselves. The genre is no more misogynist then any other genre. Romantic comedies.... Need I say more? I do think horror actually has the capacity to explore social issues in a way no other genre can. As for Hollywood – there is this rumor going around that vaginas behind cameras will bring on the apocalypse. I think we can prove them wrong, and we are making small advances, but we have a long fucking way to go. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nancy setting MacGyver style traps for Freddy</td></tr>
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Do you think there is a difference in how women in general and men in general watch and enjoy horror films?</h3>
Yes, in the sense that human beings view everything in life from subjective experience; that which would be influenced by gender, sexuality, culture, socioeconomic status, life experiences. From my observations the biggest point of disconnect between genders when viewing a horror film involve the usage of graphic rape scenes. This is something one could assume would be a subject that women will have a different reaction to based on the sick statistics of violence against women being such an insidious and rampant reality. Of course this is a very general response. <br /></div>
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Aside from viewing – I think an exciting aspect of seeing horror films that are made by women is that fresh perspective of fear that men wouldn't think to explore in certain ways because its not part of their daily reality. <br /><br /><h3>
Who is your favourite Woman in Horror?</h3>
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I suck at pinpointing a favorite film/book/anything so a person is off the charts impossible. One of the aspects I love about WiHM is meeting so many amazing women working in a wide array of creative modalities - all with something unique to contribute that as a whole form this sense community.</div>
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So I can't say a favorite but I can say the type of women I love most are those who are not afraid to speak out, be creative, and who don't build their sense of self off unessasary competition or belittling of other women. We need to get rid of this fear that the success of one woman somehow translates to less success for us. It's quiet the opposite. There is room for all of us to reach our goals and the best way to make it happen is building each other up – something women generally speaking don't seem to be the best at in practice.</div>
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The paradigm we live in thrives on keeping women from getting along – imagine how crazy awesome shit would be if we flipped that? So a favorite woman in horror would be one who views other ladies success as a step in the right direction and not a personal attack to their own career. Off the top of my head some examples would be Jen & Sylvia Soska, Jovanka Vuckovic, Karen Lam, Jennifer Lynch....</div>
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Finally, if you could recommend three horror films for our readers, which would they be and why?</h3>
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Hmm... Oh man, I can only pick three? I suck at these questions too. Okay well, most recently I have been telling my friends to check out <i>The Bay</i>. It is one of the best examples of how to do a found footage and still make a high quality/watchable film. I think I have watched it five times on Netflix.<div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDeYq4TMHyf7SNiEQPWrCSCf4fD7hem2DZoyY40b2TQBnLlCsyzONYUz0zIqd8gbcMxd66mwoCzm9KP8926xYKGXifkt1RCt9hq3SuWY94Uxy0aBOT0CoWD63S2POV4rDTDoEiuUdBE8/s1600/American-Mary-trailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDeYq4TMHyf7SNiEQPWrCSCf4fD7hem2DZoyY40b2TQBnLlCsyzONYUz0zIqd8gbcMxd66mwoCzm9KP8926xYKGXifkt1RCt9hq3SuWY94Uxy0aBOT0CoWD63S2POV4rDTDoEiuUdBE8/s320/American-Mary-trailer.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just another day in the office for American Mary</td></tr>
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<br /><br /><i>American Mary</i> is a great one written and directed by <b>Jen and Sylvia Soska</b>. It's a beautifully shot dark film. <i>Carnival of Souls</i> (1962) – if you haven't seen that then you need to stop what your doing right now and put it on (no, actually, wait until Halloween) that would be perfect for Halloween. It's creepy as fuck. Also, if you want to watch short films, features, and trailers of films written and/or produced by women I have been working on this ongoing collection here: <a href="http://womenmakehorrorfilms.tumblr.com/">http://womenmakehorrorfilms.tumblr.com/</a><div>
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This is by no means a reflection of all that is out there. In fact, this is just a tiny miniscule example and there is more and more being added all the time. There are also some features directed by women coming out soon which I can't wait to see like <i>Evangeline</i> (dir. Karen Lam),<i> DYS</i> (dir. Maude Michaud) among many others.</div>
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<i>A Norwegian translation of this interview can be read <a href="http://www.filmamasoner.no/women-in-horror-recognition-month/" target="_blank">at Filmamasoner.no</a>.</i></div>
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Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-65867023653048939642013-10-26T18:27:00.001+02:002013-10-26T18:27:40.743+02:00Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) and the rareness of tangible horror<div class="MsoNormal">
The official opener of
this year’s edition of <b>Ramaskrik</b>,
the prime Norwegian horror film festival, was <b>James Wan’s</b> sequel to his 2010 hit screamer, <i>Insidious</i>. I have not actually seen the first movie, but I did not
at any point feel that my lack of knowledge of the first film left me in the
dark. I definitely want to see <i>Insidious</i>
at some point too, to see if it makes me think of its sequel any differently.
Anyway – please just have in mind when you’re reading this that I haven’t seen
the first one, and also please don’t spoil it for me in any comments.</div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ok. So. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Insidious: Chapter 2</i> is a take on the
classic haunted house story we all know and love. This is one of the first
types of scary stories we become acquainted with as children, as we lie awake
wondering what’s hiding in the closet, or trying to scare our friends into a
similar predicament. So there’s no surprise that there are so many horror movie
riffs on this theme, one of the most well known being the classic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Amityville Horror</i> (1979, remade in
2005). One of the strengths of this sub-genre is the mere fact that it’s such a
well-known theme, and one that everyone can relate to. Being afraid of those
eerie sounds your house makes when you’re home alone on a dark night, not to
mention the shadows creeping across the hallway, is something that everyone who
has ever lived in a house can relate to. First, there were monsters in the
woods; now, there are monsters in our houses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In order for a haunted
house-horror to actually work as a scary movie, it needs at least these two
things: 1) an awareness of how many times you can have someone suddenly appear
behind a closing door or in a mirror before it gets old, and 2) a mysterious or
complex enough monster/source of horror to keep the viewer interested in one
single location for the duration of a feature film. I am a big advocate for the
subtleties of horror, of the ever-fading art of not making everything so god
damned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in your face</i> and obvious in
every single horror flick. Sure, you need the jumps and goose bump moments in
movies like these, but to the human mind, the unknown is the very scariest
thing there is. Which is why horror films that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hint</i> at the source of horror and leaves the rest to your terrified
and paranoid mind to work out in gruesome detail, are normally the ones that
can properly get under your skin. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Insidious
2</i> handles the hinting and the mystery fairly well for a while; however,
this is one of those rare movies that left me scared and at the edge of my seat
even once the source of horror was fully revealed and we got a good, clear look
at it. That, to me, is no small feat. Most movie monsters lose a lot of their
power to scare you once you get a good look at them. Creepy woman ghost in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Insidious 2</i>? Only gets scarier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I will give away a lot
of spoilers, like details of the source of horror and who and what and why, so
if you don’t want to know those things, you should come back after having seen
the film. Otherwise:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">We meet Mrs. Lambert
and her son Josh in the early 1980s. They obviously live alone in a huge, old
house. On the night that we first meet them, they receive a visit from one Elise
Rainier, an expert in communicating with spirits and that sort of thing. Young
Josh has been having a lot of bad dreams since they moved to this gigantic,
dark house (imagine!), and his mother has noticed something weird in pictures
of him: there seems to be some sort of dark figure following him around, moving
in closer and closer on the young boy. Elise hypnotises Josh to tap into his
mind and figure out what is going on and how much he actually knows about
what’s happening to him. Josh tells Elise that the dark figure is a woman, who
claims to be a friend. Elise goes searching around the house and finally finds
something in the closet in Josh’s room, and as she tells Mrs. Lambert: “it is
not a friend”. The thing, spirit or whatever it is, is apparently a parasite
that wants to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i> Josh. It has come
into contact with him because Josh possesses some kind of special power that
allows him to see the dead in his dreams; trouble is, now one of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i> has seen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him</i>. And it doesn’t want to play nice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Mrs. Lambert begs
Elise for help, and they decide that Elise will try to remove (or at least
reduce) Josh’s creepy ability and try to make him forget what he’s been
through. Really, an incredibly malicious ghost is hunting your schoolboy son
and you just want to make him forget that it’s there!? Oh well, we wouldn’t
have many horror movies without people making a lot of rash and stupid
decisions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Apparently, this
scheme turned out surprisingly well, until one day when Josh is a grown man
with a family of his own, and one of his sons has drifted into a coma where he
hangs out with dead people or something, and Elise has helped Josh go into the
spirit world to get his son back. From what I gather, this was the main plot of
the first film? Anyway, when Josh comes back from the dark side, Elise is dead,
and what his wife Renai describes as “weird things happening around the house”
just keep on happening. They go back do Josh’s childhood home to stay with his
mother while the police investigate Elise’s death. Meanwhile, it soon becomes
clear that whatever is haunting the Lambert family is not confined to a single,
physical location – as some ghosts are. Before long, the weird shit gets out of
control, and Renai and Lorraine (the older Mrs. Lambert) become aware of
certain changes in their beloved Josh. Lorraine suspects that it might
literally be old ghosts come back to haunt them, but because of Elise’s memory
erasing all those years before, it’s difficult to tell for sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Elise’s assistant
through many years, as well as a pair of newcomers to the whole spirit
communication business, take it upon themselves to figure out what is going on.
They team up with Lorraine and they end up at an old, abandoned hospital where
Lorraine used to work back when Josh was an innocent, but oh so troubled kid.
She recalls one patient she had, Parker Crane, who had been submitted to the
ICU after trying to castrate himself. Freud ahoy, people! They continue to his
old home and surprise, surprise: something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bad</i>
is there. Turns out the bad thing is, <b>SPOILER SPOILER</b>, Parker’s completely
fucking psychotic mother, who could never accept the fact that she had given
birth to a useless son instead of an adorable little girl to dress up and have
play with dolls and all that. So she just pretends that little Parker is a
girl, calls him Marilyn and threatens him to accept the role, slaps him around
for no good reason and is generally just a creepy as fuck bad bitch.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Believe it or not,
Parker Crane did not turn out a normal person. Instead, he ended up killing a
lot of young women (because his mummy told him to), and then lined up their
corpses neatly in the basement of the house. He wore a black bridal dress while
committing the murders, as a kind of disguise – and obviously very in line with
the inherent gender confusion theme. Years after his death, Parker came back as
a parasitic spirit who wanted to take over young Josh’s body to experience a
childhood he never had. When that didn’t work out, he waited in the dark, and
came back for grown-up Josh after he crossed into the spirit world to find his
son (stay with me, now). He wants to be alive and part of a normal family.
Trouble is, mummy dearest is still very much in control of him, and tells him
that if he wants to stay alive he has to kill everyone around him. He doesn’t
want to, but then teeth start falling out and Josh’s health generally
deteriorating; and on top of it all, Elise’s assistant and his apprentices come
after him. Let the killing begin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In this way, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Insidious 2</i> combines two age-old horror themes:
the haunted house, and the unhealthy mother/son relationship. Luckily, the
filmmakers have been clever enough to not rely too heavily on too many special
effects when creating their ghosts, so that they remain scary even up close.
Mrs. Crane is the scariest of all, with her white skin, black eyes and not even
one tiny redeeming feature. We are shown flashbacks to her so called parenting
methods when raising Parker, and it becomes very clear that this woman was not
only made evil after her death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Gender confusion is,
as mentioned, a classic horror theme. Look no further than to Mr. Ed Gein,
inspiration for a huge variety of classic horror movies including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The
Silence of the Lambs</i> and many more. Little boys with dominant mothers
apparently have little other choice than to turn out mentally disturbed serial
killers – especially when they stay with their mothers as grown-ups, in the
mothers’ twisted, isolated fantasy worlds. This is not so much Oedipal as it is
an expression of fear of generally dominant women, which is a recurring motif
in a broad range of popular culture. And in many ways, this represents what I
base my objections upon when it comes to female (and some male) horror film
critics and theorists who call out for more female horror villains. We already
have the Final Girl, which is way more awesome, so do we really need to portray
more women as monsters in the name of equality on screen?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7z9aK9vATkgU5vPRvxRpihE5XdjMu348aMKDjaArIhmtR_ebHli_uZjB_JLDTK4v7X1rPybxQk5nZvnTesECW2grsuImrmeGoIohln8mRz0WY8lq8CpNlgruV5lYH_ZvZxQ-5VnrZteA/s1600/insidious-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7z9aK9vATkgU5vPRvxRpihE5XdjMu348aMKDjaArIhmtR_ebHli_uZjB_JLDTK4v7X1rPybxQk5nZvnTesECW2grsuImrmeGoIohln8mRz0WY8lq8CpNlgruV5lYH_ZvZxQ-5VnrZteA/s400/insidious-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">However, subversive
gender roles is mostly a good thing if done well, and often calls for a more
interesting movie experience. And even though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Insidious 2 </i>isn’t really huge on conscious gender politics and
symbolism, other than using gender confusion as an explanation for the source
of horror (let’s leave <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> one for
someone else to handle), its evil characters are really well done. They manage
to be pretty in your face without being over the top – and that is a difficult
balance in horror films. It’s pretty rare these days that I get genuinely
creeped out by a scary movie, but throughout this one I was jumping in my seat,
getting goose bumps up and down my arms and legs, and felt my heart race more
than once.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">If you’re looking for
something new to watch this Halloween, in other words: look no further. Prepare
to get scared.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-56656845225948797492012-10-19T12:58:00.000+02:002012-10-19T12:58:21.618+02:00Wither (2012)<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-align: justify;">
I don't know why, but Sweden appear to have been less keen on straight out horror films than us Norwegians for some time. <i>Wither</i>, a classic hiking trip gone bad tale, might well change some of that.</div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: justify;">
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<i>Wither</i> follows a pretty traditional formula; seven young, good looking friends who are ready to party non-stop for a couple of days, seek out an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. But the gang aren't the only ones partying, there's also some zombie-esque creatures in the basement that are about to have some fun. I say zombie-esque because, like so many other films in the zombie sub-genre, they're not traditional zombies who are a bit braindead and want to eat your brrrraaaaaaiiiins. These motherbitches won't even die from a shot to the head!</div>
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It's an entertaining film, but the story will be so well known to most of you that I'm not going to go into great detail. There is one pretty unusual twist here, though: rather than a final girl there's a final boy! That was about time, wasn't it? It looked for a while as if his girlfriend was going to step up to the part, but umm, she couldn't.</div>
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I realise that the final girls have been one of the major selling points for people like myself who are interested in both horror films <i>and</i> feminism or at least gender theory. But because the role of the final girl is so established by now, it's cool to see someone mixing it up a bit. It's funny too that there's an implication that it's all because he's completely pussy whipped. Classy.</div>
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Unfortunately, where <a href="http://titsandascream.blogspot.no/2012/10/dunderland-2012-witch-hunts-meet-female.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Dunderland</a> might have had one too many sub-plots to follow, in <i>Wither</i> it's almost the opposite. The characters are shallow and underdeveloped, the main story too well known, and any sub-plots are, well, not really there. For a movie of nearly an hour and 40 minutes it does get a bit boring after a while – not because it's not a well made zombie flick, but let's face it: there's quite a few of those by now. And when you don't have a story, even a Final Boy can't help you.</div>
Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0Oppdal, Norge62.594312 9.691199962.587003 9.6714589000000011 62.601621 9.7109409tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-71615492523338210512012-10-19T12:06:00.000+02:002012-10-21T14:21:33.619+02:00Dunderland (2012) – Witch hunt meets female Jack Torrance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Dunderland</i> is the first Norwegian horror movie to take on the witch hunts which in this country took place mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries. I was pretty excited about this, thinking it's about time that this shit hit the big screens. This film doesn't really engage with the witch hunt stories much though, other than as a backdrop. As a deep, male voice informs us in the intro; in the year 1695, 16 year old local girl Johanne Nilsdotter was accused of witchery and thrown in the lake. Her body was never found, but the community in Dunderlandsdalen keep falling victim to strange, bizarre and tragic incidents. Eventually it gets so bad that the locals proclaim the village a cursed place, and abandons it.</div>
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Fast forward to the 21st century, and stage director Laura brings her troup of actors to Dunderlandsdalen, meaning to create a stage play about the witch hunts – making reference to one of Norway's most well known "witches", <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Pedersdotter" target="_blank">Anne Pedersdotter</a>. Needless to say, however, things do not go according to plan and weird shit starts happening. We soon understand that the house they've settled in is exactly where most of the bad things have happened over the years. A local farmer killed his wife and daughter with an axe before hanging himself in the barn; it was later used as a scout's camping place before one young girl went missing and the place is abandoned once again.</div>
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Obviously the theatre folks want to produce their play in the very same barn where the axe farmer went berserk, and before long, director Laura becomes even more eccentric than you would expect of someone in the theatre business. Then the crew start disappearing, and the mood amongst the remaining actors is less than good.</div>
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Meanwhile, the snobbiest of the crew (Paul) refuses to sleep in a cabin in the woods and leaves every evening on a snow scooter to go into town and a proper hotel. He wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a nazi party from WW2 in the living room. This all happens after he's talked to the creepy bartender who, as far as we know, is <i>not</i> a ghost. Paul also pays a visit to the town library where he finds heaps of articles about people who have gone missing in Dunderlandsdalen, bizarre accidents, and weirder than anything; an article in an older paper about the director Laura and her five actors gone missing.</div>
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All very creepy and thrilling, sure, but what does it mean, where does it take us? Where does the story go from here?</div>
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Turns out, Paul's entire business in the village is little more than a sidetrack for the story. He heads back to find the others and well, he won't get to make another trip into town for some time.</div>
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Herein lies my issue with <i>Dunderland</i>; it can't quite decide on which of the many possible plots and twists and turns it presents, that it wants to stick with. There are enough ideas here for at least two or three seperate films, but when they're all thrown together in one 78 minutes long movie, it's simply too much. Or too little about whatever should have been the main story.</div>
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That said, I still like the film. The character Laura (Miriam Prestøy Lie) in particular. It's a welcome change to see that someone who isn't a middle aged man can play the weird eccentric lone wolf type person, and Prestøy Lie balances her character perfectly between misunderstood creative genius and a female Jack Torrance. The changes that her character go through in those 78 minutes is very impressive – and my initial fears that she might be a bit of a boring characters are put duly to rest.</div>
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And although the film doesn't use the material of the witch hunts as much as it could, at least it does bring it to the big screen. In my view, this has proven again and again to be one of the (many!) strengths of genre film; bring unpopular or controversial stories and motifs to the big screen, so it gets just enough attention for others to want to follow.</div>
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I do hope, however, that the next time we see Norwegian "witches" (can't use that word without quote marks in this setting, really) in a movie, they will make her less <i>witchy</i> looking. The girl we are presented with in the opening sequence looks like she's lived her whole life in the woods, dirty and in tattered clothes and with hair that's never had a date with a bar of soap or a hairbrush. This is not what most women accused of being witches looked like. On the contrary, they were quite normal women who might have got in a quarrel with the neigbours or become the focus of someone's disliking in some other, normally quite innocent, way. Or, like Anne Pedersdotter as mentioned above; she became a widow not too long after she was first accused of witchery. By both inheriting her husband's wealth, living in isolation and growing more and more aggressive towards her fellow townspeople who, in her defence, were all convinced she was banging Satan or something of the sort. This combination of characteristic qualities didn't do much for her case however, and in 1590, fifteen years after she was first accused, she went on trial and ended up being burned alive at the stake.</div>
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It's not that there might never have been anything weird about any of the women accused of witchery, in fact I'm sure most of them were a right bunch of weirdos, much like their accusators and pretty much anyone else, ever. But playing up to that idea of these women as wild creatures, somehow more connected with nature than the rest of us, and with a truly mystical personality – it doesn't do any favours for anybody. The very essence of the cruelty and atrocity of the witch hunts lies in that <i>they were quite normal people</i>. Anyone could be suspected and accused, it was often simply coincidence that decided who was the witch this week.</div>
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With all of this in mind, we can only imagine how difficult, near on impossible, it must be to make a movie even just touching upon this historical material, without coming across as slightly, well, misogynist. Because even though it was innocent people getting burned alive and drowned and whatnot, it was that <i>idea</i> that they had some unnatural (!) connection to forces of nature or the supernatural that became their doom. In <i>Dunderland</i>, the lurking evil resides in nature itself, which then takes posession of normal people. How can you present that story without making it look like certain people are being attacked or posessed for a reason? A reason that might live deep inside them? It's interesting at least to think about how this might make us share the perspective of the accusators of the "witches" for a moment; that moment when we might think "ahh, of course it was <i>she</i> who got posessed or who did that weird thing". Because the truth is that these accusations and suspicions were mostly as random as anything, and that's the most important thing to remember about these stories.</div>
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Should you want to read more about my thoughts on women with a supernatural connection to nature and why portrayals of this aren't always necessarily misogynist, I suggest you read this: <a href="http://titsandascream.blogspot.no/2010/11/antichrist-and-nature-of-horror.html" target="_blank">Antichrist and the nature of horror</a>.</div>
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Overall, <i>Dunderland</i> scores points for effort, but lacks some depth due to wanting to tell too many stories at once. I'd still recommend it though, it's pleasant viewing and an introduction to something we haven't seen to much about on the big screen, at least in recent times. And I for one will be very excited to see what lies down the road for both writers/directors, and star Miriam Prestøy Lie.</div>
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Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com1Oppdal, Norge62.594312 9.691199962.587003 9.6714589000000011 62.601621 9.7109409tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-38798139919980230392012-07-29T17:03:00.000+02:002012-07-29T17:05:13.286+02:00Whedon's Lesbians<br />
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Yes, it's cool that an American, more or less mainstream, tv show for teenagers featured a lesbian couple. But what does Joss Whedon's <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i> really tell us about lesbians?</div>
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The main lesbian couple in the series is regular character Willow, and Tara who's on the show for a couple of seasons. By the time they meet, we have followed Willow since early high school, and seen her very long lasting crush on her best friend Xander, and after that her relationship with Oz. Both pretty "safe", traditional and straight relationships. Well, apart from Oz being a werewolf, but you know. In other words, we have come to know Willow as a <i>normal</i> young girl with <i>normal</i> drives. That is, until Oz breaks her straight little heart in pieces and she feels sure that she can never love again.</div>
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Enter Tara, the shy, weirdo outcast from the college (so called) Wicca group. She is quick to realise that she and Willow share their interest in actual magics (rather than just bake sales and scented candles like the rest of the group), and she first comes to Willow for help in some supernatural matter. We know straight away (no pun intended) that there is something a bit <i>off </i>about Tara. She even has a stutter, for crying out loud!</div>
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So social misfit Tara comforts heartbroken Willow, until they at one point realise that there might be something more than just straight girl friendship between them. The first time this is directly addressed, rather than just hinted at through shy looks passed between the girls, is when Oz briefly returns and shouts at Tara, <i>IS SHE IN LOVE WITH YOU!?</i> The ordeal of processing this is enough to turn the newly "fixed" or "healed" werewolf back into a furry ball of rage. Tara assumes that Willow will go back to Oz rather than be with a freak like herself. But Willow comes back to Tara, and promises to make up for everything. Starting right now. They blow out the candle and they disappear in the darkness.</div>
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Maybe romantic, yes, but also symptomatic of something. It's like Whedon has to ease the viewers into the idea of an actual lesbian romance. I don't remember exactly the specific episode in which we first see Willow and Tara kiss, but it seems like an aweful long time after they become an item. Sure, the show as a whole is more innocent or easy on all the sexual stuff in the first couple of seasons while the Scooby gang are still in high school, but this is different. We've already seen Buffy get it on with at least two, if not three men; we've seen Willow and Xander get their smooch on which ends Xander's relationship with Cordelia; Willow has even been deflowered by Oz. And isn't it around the same time that Buffy and Rilley nearly get a lot of people killed by a possessed house, on account of all the hot and steamy sex they're constantly having? Yet it takes ages before we see just the smallest, most innocent kiss from Willow and Tara. Firmly established as a couple by then, most of their early kisses are securely grounded in the safety of casual, everyday moments. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, perhaps – or perhaps because it isn't safe to make an equally big deal out of the romance and lust of a pair of lesbians as what is done with their straight friends.</div>
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I guess that what bugs me most about the whole setup, though, is the fundamental connection with magic. As I have mentioned above, magic is what brings the two girls together. Which is fair enough, it's not as if they're the only ones on the show to have interests or hobbies of the somewhat supernatural kind. But just as straight sexuality is more than once in the series recognised by brutal, animal behaviour (vampires, werewolves, etc), lesbian romance and sexuality seems something that can only really exist in inscence-smelling, candle-lit rooms by girls clad in earthy tones, who communicate with godesses and do cute magic tricks with sparkly powders and so on. The magic, the fact that Tara and Willow have the power to communicate with powers outside of themselves which can allow them to bend the laws of nature at their will, makes sure that their lesbian relationship is thoroughly, unforgettably marked as <i>unnatural</i>. It's something for witches, not for normal people.</div>
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Of course, this changes in the final season after Tara is out of the picture and another girl takes interest in Willow. But that girl is so clearly only interested in sex, and in being socially controlling, that I'm not sure how much better that works out.</div>
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Anyway.</div>
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The magic does get too much for Tara as well, eventually. Willow starts using magic for every little thing that she could have just as easily taken care of otherwise – like searching through books or on the computer for information, or pulling the curtains shut. When Willow clearly can't go even a week without using magic, Tara leaves her. I'm unsure if this fits into the whole symbolic thing. One way of looking at it could be, if we think of magic as one of the biggest markers of their lesbianism, that Tara wishes Willow wouldn't <i>flaunt it</i> so much. She might feel that it's more of a private thing, and resents Willow for making it extremely public, without taking her girlfriend's feelings into consideration. Which would basically tell us that public lesbianism is <i>bad, mmkay?</i></div>
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After some time apart, Willow manages to get her powers under control again, and the couple find their way back to each other. Their relationship is more explicit onscreen now, but mainly within the confines of their own bedroom.</div>
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Then, the tragedy. Tara dies, from a gunshot that was meant for Buffy. Whatever kind of control Willow had got back, that and much more is instantly lost. She becomes an evil Super Witch and tries to end the world. She did for a moment turn to magic when things ended with her and Oz as well, but never anything like this. After all, she was a straight little girl back then, and her Magic Lesbian Superpowers weren't fully developed. But now we see what a long-term lesbian relationship has done to Willow, once the tiny geeky cutiepie. A lot happens, but the highlights include her fighting, both physically and psychologically, all of her best friends; she kills a man (Tara's killer) in a pretty gruesome way; and she does try to end the entire world, before good old Xander, her first crush and life-long best friend, comes along and sweet talks her out of it. Basically. But narrated in a more dramatic way than that, as I'm sure you can imagine.</div>
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When Kennedy, the other girl that I mentioned above, who takes an interest in Willow, first gets her to play along with her flirting, Bad Willow seems to reappear. She suddenly inhabits the body of Warren, Tara's killer, and gradually turns into him mentally as well. (S)he goes right out and buys a gun and plans to kill the evil lesbian that made her do the smoochies with her. Which was the exact moment that Willow physically turned into a man, by the way – when they first kissed. But no one is killed this time around (although Willow blames herself for "killing" Tara by letting her go), as Kennedy manages to remind Willow that she is her, a woman, not a crazy blood-thirsty man. Several make-out sessions ensue, in front of people and everything, so at least that's a good thing.</div>
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It's not as if Whedon's lesbians are made out to be horrible people, and I don't think that Whedon especially dislikes lesbians. But maybe this can serve as an example of how easy it is to misrepresent something with pretty comically bad consequences. In this case though, no one, no matter what sexual orientation or gender, gets off pretty easy. Too many demons in Sunnydale for that.</div>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-46792804860034494892012-05-20T17:42:00.000+02:002012-05-20T17:44:27.178+02:00Harpoon – The Reykjavík Whale Watching Massacre (2009)Before you read this post you should probably be aware that <i>The Texas Chain Saw Massacre </i>(1974) is my favourite movie of all time.<br />
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As you can see from even the namedropping in the trailer (<i>In the tradition of The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre!</i>), it's not only in its name that <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1075749/" target="_blank">Harpoon: The Reykjavík Whale Watching Massacre</a> </i>tries to live up to Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic. Does it pull it off, you ask? Well, my introductory disclaimer might give you a hint...<br />
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Of course, I knew that there was a very, very tiny chance for this movie to actually live up to the film that still gives me goose bumps every time I watch it (not because of the scares, just because I love it so much). I still wanted to watch it, because who doesn't like a bit of trashy fun every now and again? Besides, when's the last time you saw an Icelandic slasher film? Wouldn't want to miss it.<br />
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The parallells to <i>TCSM</i> and all the other films that it in turn referenced or has since been referenced by, start early. The hopeful group of whale watchers have hardly left shore before we the viewers are introduced to a highly dysnfunctional family sitting around a table for a meal. The family consists of Mamma (mum), Tryggvi and Siggi. The latter is what you might call a bit simple, and also fairly effeminate – at least when compared to the rough, manly man Tryggvi. Siggi even has one hand with long, painted fingernails and rings on his fingers, which instantly made me think of Buffalo Bill, who might be referred to as a younger (and sexualised) cousin of Leatherface.<br />
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This family, just like Leatherface and his family, have been robbed of their livelihood as "professional killers" in the meat industry, only here it's whales instead of cows. Change doesn't appear to come easily to either family, and they start killing people instead. While the Sawyers (as we learn is the name of the <i>TCSM</i> in the sequel) seem to be murdering for cannibalistic purposes, in that they turn their victims into tasty barbeque, it remains unclear what their distant Icelandic relatives want to achieve by murdering people. Other than for their idea of fun, I mean.<br />
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The mother figure in <i>Harpoon</i> doesn't appear to be a whole lot older than her "sons". This might hint at some sort of incestuous relations, or a "family" whose bonds consist more of their unability to function in the real world than of the bonds of genetics and blood that most families are made up of. In any case, this type of familial ambiguity is fairly common within the slasher genre. Throughout the original <i>TCSM</i> movie it remains unclear what the relationship is between Leatherface, Hitchhiker and the character only credited as "Old Man"; in the sequel he is revealed to be their uncle, and is referred to as The Cook. Going even further back, there is always a sense of unease surrounding the familial ties in the Bates family in the classic proto-slasher. (If you're interested in finding out more about the role of the dysfunctional family in horror films, you might want to look up Tony William's essay <i>Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror.</i>)<br />
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Another similarity can be seen in scenes where the victims of this freaky family think that they have reached safety and let their guards down a little bit, before discovering how fatally wrong they were. The first time this happens is when Tryggvi apparently comes to their aid in his fishing boat after the captain on the whale watching cruise has died (in an accident). Of course, we know that Tryggvi should not be trusted as we have already been introduced to him, however briefly; but the passengers on the boat and his soon to be victims, have little more than a weird feeling that there is something just a bit <i>off</i> about this man. They begin to realise what is happening once they're brought aboard the family's ship and home, and witness a noteworthy first kill by all round weirdo Siggi:<br />
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The second time this kind of scenario is employed is much later in the film, and made me instantly think of <i>TCSM</i> and Sally's escape to the nearby gas station and the following realisation that she has not escaped at all. This is when Endo, granddaughter of a "real kamikaze" and spectacular final girl material, escapes off the ship of horror in a smaller boat with the drunken French on board. They make it to a nearby lighthouse and are invited in for tea (!). Endo sees pictures on the wall of the family from which she has just escaped, and realises how wrong she was to relax. By way of superb manipulative skills, Endo makes it out of there and back home safe and sound, but she is the only one out of the three.<br />
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As with Sally, there is a certain sense of confusion regarding what Siggi wants to <i>do</i> with his new plaything, Annette (seen singing in the youtube trailer above). At first I assumed he wanted to keep her as a mate; but after he has her tied up by the hands and drenched in something that might well be blood, he mutters to Tryggvi something about a sacrifice of some sort. Although Siggi is repeatedly referred to as "the ladies' man", he, like Leatherface, seems devoid of any sort of sexual interest in his victim.<br />
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Whether the casting of a black man as the sole male protagonist is a conscious pointer to <i>Night of the Living Dead</i> or not is unclear, but it certainly is enough of a rarity in this genre that it is not entirely unlikely. Fitting, then, that Leon seems to inhabit much of the same overbearing or outright patronising attitude towards women ("Make yourself useful!") that you might have expected more from someone in the 1960s. If could be as a comment to this that the filmmakers have decided that he is gay – then again, it could just as well be to see the disgusted look on Marie-Anne's face when she realises Leon actually has no romantic interest in her after all. Interesing how a man's lack of interest in a woman seems to be represented as such an unspeakable horror that it is a regular feature in so many slasher films...<br />
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I mentioned above how Endo is great final girl <i>material</i>. I still don't feel that she ever quite reaches that status – despite being the sole survivor of the massacre, after Marie-Anne is finally done in by one of the "fascinating" and "majestic" whales she and everyone else had set out to get a glimpse of in the first place. (Should you ever end up in a liferaft, take a minute to acquaint yourself with its most basic features before trying to do tricks with it, ok?) Maybe it is because Endo herself is never directly involved in any of the terrors and physical abuse. What makes a final girl a Final Girl, is that she has been through those horrible things, put on a fight and lived to tell the tale, right? Endo is the first one to put up a fight though, so that she never even gets in a position like Sally or Laurie or Nancy. So maybe, with <a href="http://titsandascream.blogspot.com/2010/10/death-of-final-girl.html" target="_blank">the evolution of the final girl</a> in mind, cunning little Endo is the next generation? She gets a sweet payback on her hopeless employers as well, stealing their identity and money once she has escaped the massacre. You go, girl.Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-75125945122310794242012-03-14T18:51:00.001+01:002012-03-14T21:23:44.013+01:00Corman's World – Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185371/"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-decoration: none;"><i>Corman's
World</i></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: lime;"> </span>(2011) highlights
the amazing story of Roger Corman, King of the B's: a man who has always valued
and known how to put to good use the power of a woman in a bikini. Especially
if her bottom half is chopped off. In the words of Martin Scorsese: there's no need
for taste in these movies. This film is a touching tribute to the man who
brouht us some of the best men (Jack Nicholson, Rob DeNiro) and women (Pam
Grier amongst others) of modern cinema; the man who, at 85, has four hundred
exploitation movies with his name on them. So far...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I don't
quite understand how it happened, but this movie had completely escaped my
attention until a couple of weeks ago, when I practically stumbled across it at
the new Oslo film festival, appropriately named<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: lime;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.filmfestoslo.no/"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Filmfest Oslo</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">. I had put something completely different down
in my schedule, but thankfully someone persuaded me that my time was better
spent watching<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Corman's World<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span><span lang="EN-US">(thanks, Joachim & Andrea). And so this
went from being something I hadn't even heard of, to becoming one of my
absolute highlights of the entire festival. I don't know how it is at your
various local cinemas, but the cinemas in Oslo would normally never show this
kind of thing – it's all about the big buck potential Oscar nominees and bland
blockbusters. And even at a film festival, this definitely stood out: although
this one was not the most pretentious of festivals, it seems there's inevitably
a high level of very<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>serious</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> films, for lack of a better
word. And as this was the fourth day of the festival, this was indeed a very
welcome change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Roger
Corman is an extremely endearing man, and to think that he has made all of
these films (all of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>these</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> films) is just fantastic. This
is like the punk movement of movie making, which is reflected in Jack
Nicholson's comment that 'nobody really tried to make them [the films] good'.
Furthermore, Corman talks about how until the 1950s, the idea of teenagers
didn't really exist, and he recognised a need for the young audience to have
something to identify with; he was of the opinion that they needed to be able
to identify with some sort of rebellion on screen. This notion was further
developed when the exploitation king took it upon himself to make a film like<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: lime;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055019/"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The Intruder</span></a></i></span><span lang="EN-US">. Yet another testament to the very punk spirit
of Corman and his work was the feeling that this documentary left in me and my
fellow cinema goers that we just wanted to go out, grab a camera and start
filming something, almost anything. Just like with the guitars and the three
chords.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">We also get
to meet some of Corman's very biggest fans in this film, in the people who have
worked with him on numerous occasions. One of these is Jack Nicholson, and I
must warn you for this is heavy stuff: in this movie, you witness Jack
Nicholson<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>cry</i></span><span lang="EN-US">, completely genuinely, because he
is so touched when he speaks about Roger Corman and all that he has done for
Nicholson. Big Jack is a regular quote machine in this movie. One of my
favourite parts is when he talks about the making of<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: lime;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057569/"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The Terror</span></a></i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>,</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> and he claims that to this day, there is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>no-one</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> who knows what that movie was ever about.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. Nicholson pretty much gives Corman full credit
for his acting career, repeating over and over again how Corman was the only
one who would hire him for about 15 years. Other huge fans who are interviewed
include Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Pam Grier, William Shatner, Ron
Howard and Eli Roth. Not a bad bunch as far as fan clubs go!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Despite his
sweetly innocent appearance, one of the things that Corman recieves the most
praise for is his instinct or ability to just<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>know</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> what will work in a film. Or,
in the words of<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: lime;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Arkush"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Allan Arkush</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">: 'Roger's exploitation movies don't need
plots. They need outrageous things... Like girls shooting Filipinos out of
trees. That works'. And Corman always<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>made</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> it work, despite little to no
budget and very limited time. He didn't bother so much with getting permits
from local authorities and other such trivialities: he knew what would make his
film work, and he made sure he got that thing. This is true guerilla filmmaking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I'll save
for another time some more in depth analyses of Corman's rape revenge films and
films like <i>Bloody Mama</i></span><span lang="EN-US">, in which he was brave enough to present proper female villains; for
now I will just tell you that you must watch this film. I implore you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><i>PS: Be
sure to check out the official<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://www.totalfanhub.com/cormans-world/"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Corman's World Fan Hubsite</span></a></i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>, powered by my excellent friends
over at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://www.cult-labs.com/forums/"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Cult Labs</span></a></i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>!</i></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><i>PPS: If
you still want more Corman, you should get your hands on a copy of his book '</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Made-Hundred-Movies-Hollywood-Never/dp/0306808749/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331747040&sr=1-1"><span style="color: lime; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">How I Made a Hundred
Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">'</span></a></i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>! I went straight home and
ordered my copy after the movie.</i></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-49162543138287391682011-12-06T00:08:00.000+01:002011-12-06T00:12:12.240+01:00"From Deep Space, The Seed Is Planted"Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake of the sci-fi flick<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077745/" target="_blank"> <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i></a>, the original being from 1956, is a big favourite of mine. Not only has it got a young Goldblum and Donald Sutherland with a ridiculous perm and moustache, but it achieves what perhaps more scary movies, sci-fi or otherwise, should aim for; chills and horror without blood and gore.<br />
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To paraphrase my old buddy Sigmund Freud, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny" target="_blank">Uncanny</a> is that which ought to have remain hidden, but which has come to light. Freud being who he was and more importantly interested in the things he was, this is obviously going to end up being about genitals in some way (who says critical theory is boring!?). One of man's biggest fears (if we ignore for a moment the castration and all that – we'll get to that soon enough), according to Sigmund, and the ultimate in uncanniness is being buried alive. But not for any of the obvious reasons, such as suffocating and suffering a slow and painful and claustrophobic death. That would be silly. The reason why this scenario appears to men to be one of the most horrific and uncanny scenarios possible, is because it would remind the victim of the experience of being in his mother's womb before being born. It's been too long since I've actually read this stuff for me to go into any greater depth at this moment, but my point is this: pre-birth, and birth, and maternal insides and genitals, are pretty creepy! Theoretically speaking of course, but I'm <i>always</i> speaking in theoretical terms.<br />
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So what could be creepier and more uncanny than seeing yourself, as a grown-up, being born from an alien pod which represents your mother's uterus? Probably not a lot. The alienness of said uterus, and vagina (oh yes, they are quite visual) would of course symbolise woman's Otherness because in case horror films have taught you NOTHING, women are like, well icky.<br />
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As <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Creed" target="_blank">Barbara Creed</a> (amongst many, many others) points out (specifically in her essay on psychoanalytical views on horror films, Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection (1986)), there is a significant tradition across various academic fields for pointing at the ways in which a woman is different from a man in order to explain why she is "shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject". To illustrate this, Creed brings up examples which should be well known to anyone with a slight interest in the topic of psychoanalysis (extremely simplified here by yours truly):<br />
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<li> Fear of castration, caused in the ever so fragile mind of a man upon seeing a woman's genitals. (Freud 1927) The man, poor thing, is unable to fathom that there are actually <i>different sexes</i> and that everyone isn't exactly like himself, so assumes that the woman is in fact a castrated man. He then fears, in his unconscious at least, that the same will happen to him, which leads us neatly onto the next example:</li>
<li> " 'The toothed vagina' - the vagina that castrates". (Freud) Also known as <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_dentata" target="_blank">vagina dentata</a></i>, this phenomenon has finally even had an entire horror film dedicated to the topic; <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780622/" target="_blank">Teeth</a></i> (2007). Basically; vaginas, and thus women, are really scary and if you (the universal "you", ie. male) don't watch out these scary women will steal your manhood.</li>
<li> The phallic mother, according to Sigmund "a motif [which is] perfectly illustrated in the long fingernails and nose of the witch". I take this to be a representation of a controlling and authoritative woman who is percieved as threatening because she might "take over" the masculine qualities of men. A less gory version of the vagina dentata, then.</li>
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In light of this, what can be said about the uncanny terror of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Well, for a start, it could be argued that the whole scheme with the alien pods which produce clones of human beings is merely an extension of Freud's three horror scenarios as outlined above. What they all have in common is an immense fear in the man of losing his masculine authority – more or less physically or symbolically, depending on which theory you pick as your favourite. In Invasion…, we see what could happen if these fears were to come true; repoduction without any male input (he he). Sure, the alien plants send out those weird, furry feeler things to get a "blueprint" as it were from both men and women. But the men are not required to take any active part in the process. It is the alien pods, which as I have mentioned are pretty obvious representations of female reproductive parts, that do all the work and take all the initiative – it all happens outside of the control of the man. As if that wasn't bad enough, the clones claim to have it better than their fully human, half male predecessors! What on earth would Freud say? Actually, he probably wouldn't say much, as he would have been busy having a heart attack (I love you, Sigmund).<br />
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Furthermore, one of Creed's central themes is the role of the abject in horror. If I might be so bold as to quote <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjection" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>, seeing as no one's going to mark this, the abject is "exists in between the concept of an object and the concept of the subject, <i>something alive yet not</i>". [my italics] Creed mentions traditional monster figures such as vampires, ghouls, zombies, and witches as examples of "bodies without souls", and even werewolves as an example of a "collapse of the boundaries between human and animal". In <i>Invasion…</i>, the thing threatening to collapse the boundaries of safety is not animal, but alien. Thus, we can say that there is a collapse of the boundaries between, or the very categories of, human subject and Other. The problem here of course, lies in the customary definition of the "universal" (a term which loses even more of its meaning in confrontation with aliens) human subject, which again and again turns out to be a very small part of the human population. Women, for example, traditionally speaking have no place within the definition of subject. So once again, what we are dealing with is a male ("universal") fear of losing control; women, aliens, Others are threatening to take over authority. The boundaries that are collapsing might as well be between the genders.<br />
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Creed says:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"the concept of a border is central to the construction of the monstrous in the horror film; that which crosses or threatens to cross the "border" is abject. Although the specific nature of the border changes from film to film, the function of the monstrous remains the same: to bring about an encounter between the symbolic order and that which threatens its stability".</blockquote>
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She goes on to list different kinds of films with different kinds of borders to be crossed; human/inhuman in one category, genders in another (and even "normal and abnormal sexual desire" as a third category). What I'm suggesting here is that in seperating the categories in such a way, Creed is missing a vital point. The same threat could easily be represented in an infinity of different ways, without changing the fact that the threat itself does not change because what is being threatened remains the same. The "symbolic order" which is so loved by several psychoanalysts is unflexible at best, yet it continues to inhabit one of the most dominant roles of all in popular culture.<br />
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Meanwhile, the way I see it, one important question remains. Creed touches upon it, though she formulates it in a different way from what I would prefer: "Is it possible to intervene in the social construction of woman as abject?" Luckily, seeing as this is my blog, I get the last word: once we have identified the problem as being not necessarily the representations of women as abject, but of the never changing symbolic order which is being forever threatened, what can we do to turn this insight to our advantage?<br />
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But ahh, had it only been that easy – because I just outlined an "us" which would necessarily define a "them" and thus construct even more borders and boundaries to be threatened and defended. Such is life, perhaps?Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-19906425776559093522011-07-30T01:58:00.000+02:002011-07-30T01:58:26.538+02:00When slashers become reality.Dear readers,<br />
<br />
although this blog is (as you'll know) irregularly updated at best, there is a reason why it's not being updated currently.<br />
<br />
As most of you will know, things have been all but normal and peaceful in Norway for the past week.<br />
<br />
For those of you who <i>don't</i> know, I am a Norwegian who's lived most of my life in Oslo. I returned here about a year and a half ago after having studied abroad, and had the pleasure of falling in love all over again with the city of Oslo.<br />
<br />
After the massacre which took place last Friday, I've had absolutely no urge to watch slasher films, most of which obviously include innocent teenagers being slaughtered.<br />
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I'm always the one to insist, when friends call me a weirdo for finding pleasure in watching these types of films, that they have nothing to do with reality and are only shallow entertainment. At the moment though, that kind of shallow entertainment seems to have come a bit too close to reality.<br />
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I just need a brief break from all of this, and I will return to the world of horror/slasher films soon, as they can almost be described as one of the big loves of my life – and I will return to update this blog as sporadically as ever. But I ask for your understanding in that I cannot bring myself to watch, or write about, slasher films in this specific situation.<br />
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Thanks,<br />
H xHelene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-73855242402821153722011-06-17T16:36:00.003+02:002011-06-17T19:35:49.820+02:00Black Christmas and the Dread of Difference<title></title> <style type="text/css">
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<div class="p1">In a previous post on this blog, <i><a href="http://titsandascream.blogspot.com/2010/09/looking-through-gary-gilmores-eyes.html">Looking through Gary Gilmore's Eyes</a></i>, I discussed the fairly widespread use of what has been called the I-camera; that is, when a scene is being filmed as if through the eyes of one character, to let the audience see just what that specific character is seeing. In horror films, it is inevitably the villain's eyes through which we are invited to look. I argued against the idea of I-camera as <i>forced identification</i> and linked it rather with the Derridean idea of horror in <i>seeing yourself seen</i>.</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Upon watching <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071222/">Black Christmas</a></i> (1974) for the first time quite recently, it struck me how much more meaning there lies in the act of watching, and the knowledge that you are being watched, in horror films.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/black-christmas-the-eye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/black-christmas-the-eye.jpg" /></a></div><div class="p1"><br />
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</div><div class="p1">The use of I-camera or "forced identification" probably goes further than just pointing out how essentially different the "evil" character is to normal people. The fact that it is always someone watching from the outside as seemingly normal people engage in completely normal, everyday activities – before this character ends up killing them all, or at least trying to – is a way of demonising difference. Once the quality of "difference" is marked as truly monstrous, it is not a terribly long way away to judge <i>those who are different</i> as equally horrible.</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">In the excellent collection of essays on horror films and gender, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dread-Difference-Gender-Horror-Studies/dp/0292727941/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308321279&sr=8-1">The Dread of Difference</a>,</i> editor Barry Keith Grant writes in his introduction:</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><blockquote><i>In 1986 Constance Penley wrote that "science fiction film as a genre –– along with its evil twin, the horror film –– is now more hyperbolically concerned than ever with the question of difference". Certainly she is correct in her observation about the genre's concerns, although her use of the temporal qualifier ("now") is perhaps somewhat misleading, for such treatment has tended to characterize the genre throughout its history.</i></blockquote><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">I think that this goes further than just being limited to gender issues, although that is what Grant (and normally myself) is preoccupied with. If that's where it stopped, <i>Black Christmas</i> would simply be about a group of sorority girls who are afraid of one man. While it would be useless to claim that that outline is not part of what is happening (plot: a group of sorority girls are being stalked and slashed, one by one, by an unknown man), it is a lot more interesting to think in broader terms with this one. It is the fact that someone is watching from the outside that is the source of the horror in this film, as in countless others. Someone who is not like "us" (that is, the sorority girls or whatever group of mostly average people we are meant to sympathise with in any given slasher film), and who can only ever hope to watch from the outside as we carry on with our normal, somewhat dull, activities.</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">I struggle to think of any kind of successful film plot in which some kind of irreconcilable difference does not play an essential part; and it's no wonder, because what conflicts would there be without difference? And could an interesting story ever be told without some kind of conflict in the core? Possibly not. That does not mean, however, that the kind of demonising of difference which takes place in so many horror films is unproblematic.</div>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-62431531213225487392011-05-07T23:23:00.013+02:002011-05-18T02:25:41.744+02:00From revenge to rape, and back again. Part 1<span style="font-family: inherit;">This post has been a long time coming. And not only because it's a long time since I've posted anything. I've been trying to make sense of the rape-revenge sub-genre ever since I was introduced to it (once again, credit goes to Carol Clover). Maybe not even so much the genre or the movies themselves but something to say about them. Can anything sensible be said, that isn't already said elsewhere?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For those not familiar with the phenomenon: a rape-revenge film is exactly what it sounds like. A person (typically a woman... I'm not aware of any examples where a man is the victim. If you know of any, please comment below) is raped brutally, seemingly unprovoked. She is then left for dead or at least assumed unwilling or unable to do anything about the situation. Her hatred builds up and drives her to perform hideous acts of revenge. Sometimes, the person executing the revenge is not the victim herself but rather someone close to her (especially, of course, in the cases where the victim is actually killed), such as a boyfriend or parents. The rapist(s) is often killed. There are variations, as you will soon enough see, but that is the standard outline.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not strictly speaking the first of its kind, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077713/"><i>I Spit On Your Grave</i></a> (1978) has certainly come to be the defining movie of this bizarre sub-genre.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZkCTSn8gcL4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
There was a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242432/">remake</a> of this film released last year. In 2009, there was a Norwegian rape-revenge film called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1501658/"><i>Hora</i></a> ('The Whore'), which made all sorts of claims about being the first Norwegian grindhouse film and other things besides, and as far as I am aware it never said anything about being a remake. It was, though. This made me think, again, about what this genre actually <i>is.</i> Can it even be said to be an actual genre, a type of film, or is it just basically one film and endless remakes and variations?<br />
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In this post I will try to provide you with a kind of history of the evolution of the rape-revenge film. In some cases, it will be debatable whether the films I'm talking about are actually rape-revenge films at all. Debate away! I've mainly just picked films that help to illustrate my point. Which is hinted at in the title of this post.<br />
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Ready? Let's go!<br />
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For many reasons, the brutal visual representations of rape have not been around for many decades. Censorship rules and standards of what might be socially acceptable have, as you might be aware, not always been the same as they are today. Movies have always included stories more or less about sex though, and women scorn, and bitter, hateful vengeance. Look, if you will, to the 1958 classic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051380/">Attack of the 50ft Woman</a>:<br />
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<blockquote><i>When an abused wife grows to giant size because of an alien encounter and an aborted murder attempt, she goes after cheating husband with revenge on her mind. </i></blockquote>Here, the theme of female revenge over a male object is brought into horror, and even sci-fi, terrain. Granted there is no hint at an actual rape, I'm sure you could <i>interpret</i> a rape into it if you really wanted: maybe the alien raped Mrs. Archer? Maybe it was a forced marriage that could on some level be likened to rape? Maybe it was just what is popularly referred to as "emotional rape"? Who knows. The revenge motif is clear, and we're talking a real physical type of revenge.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/F2cLmbCyzhE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
By 1972, things were naturally different. For a start, Wes Craven was in business. And in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068833/">The Last House on the Left</a></i>, he is introducing one of his favourite themes: teenagers rebelling against their parents. With added rapists.<br />
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Two girls get raped in this film, and the representation of the two rapes are quite different. The first rape is that of the tougher girl, Phyllis, and is not very graphic at all. You hear some noises and Phyllis telling them to 'stop it', but overall it almost seems as if it was a far worse experience for her when she was forced to 'piss her pants'. The rape of her more innocent friend Mari is far more exhausting on the viewer, and the experience of being raped is here pretty much likened to death. Mari is being stabbed in the chest almost while she is being raped (but I think the stabbing takes place just after the other kind of penetration), blood spurts out, she screams and cries and begs for her life. After being raped, Mari gets up, covers herself up and walks into a lake. She is then shot. It seems almost that death is the only possible consequence of being raped.<br />
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It is Mari's parents who punish the brutal gang for their crimes after they realise she has been killed. Maybe this is another "mother and father know best" kind of thing? Coming from Craven though, that would be a bit strange (see: <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/">A Nightmare on Elm Street</a></i> (1984), <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077681/">The Hills Have Eyes</a></i> (1977), <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105121/">The People Under the Stairs</a></i> (1991), the <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117571/">Scream</a></i> films, etc.). Interestingly (though a bit of an aside), one of the men repsonsible for Mari and Phyllis' rapes and deaths, dreams of Mari's parents taking out his teeth. Apparently this can represent <i>'<a href="http://www.dreammoods.com/cgibin/teethdreams.pl?method=exact&header=dreamid&search=teethintro">a fear of rejection [or] sexual impotence</a>',</i> or a loss of <i>'<a href="http://www.dreamsleep.net/commondreams/meaning-of-teeth-dream.html">childhood innocence</a>'.</i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.n-form.com/woodshed/images/posters/lasthouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="http://www.n-form.com/woodshed/images/posters/lasthouse.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Although Jennifer in <i>ISOYG</i> is the victim of that film as well as the avenger, she certainly has common traits with Mari's mother. As opposed to Mari, they are both fully adult women, who do not hesitate to use sex as a way of getting back at the ones who have somehow hurt them. In both films, the men do not seem to have any doubts about the legitimacy of the women's approaches – maybe believing themselves to be that irresistable, or in Jennifer's case that they have somehow changed her mind about them; that deep down, she must have enjoyed the rape(s).<br />
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I realise I have not really paid much attention to the rape scenes themselves. If you have not seen these films you will just have to take my word for it: they are there, and they are quite graphic. Indeed,<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> 'the length of the rape sequence, the prolonged physical and mental anguish suffered by the victim' </span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">were among the reasons why <i>ISOYG</i> was originally <a href="http://www.refused-classification.com/Films_ISpitOnYourGrave.htm">refused classification</a>. (<a href="http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=15957">Here</a> is a link to the Video Nasties documentary.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In order to prevent this post from getting so long that no one will want to read the whole thing, I will pause here and get back to you with a part 2 within a couple of days. There will be quite a leap in time in terms of films being discussed as well, so this is a good place to take a break.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh, and while we're all here: it is now possible to be become a fan of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tits-and-a-Scream/178661808851517">Tits And a Scream on Facebook</a>! I set it up so that I can share funny links and film clips and stuff, and still keep this blog as "clean" as possible. See you there, guys n gals.</span><br />
<span id="goog_771850423"></span><span id="goog_771850424"></span>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-36579562997413760352011-03-25T18:34:00.002+01:002011-04-28T22:46:22.002+02:00Norwegian Ninja<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hello dear readers (or those of you who have randomly stumbled upon this site whilst searching for pictures of alien tits etc),</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1) I've written a thing about <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1528769/">Norwegian Ninja</a></i> for the <a href="http://www.cult-labs.com/norwegian-ninja/">hub site</a> over at Cult Labs. Not only should you read my post (obviously), but you should definitely have a look around the site and the forums as well, it's a cool place. Norwegian Ninja will be out on DVD on April 18.<br />
(PS: It took me a while to spot the pretty subtle scroller (is that an actual word?), but it is there, just on the right hand side of the top blog post – scroll down for plenty more, including the post signed by yours truly) </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2) I will actually update this blog soon as well – I've got a SMASHING post about the evolution of rape-revenge films up my, umm, sleeve. Until then, have a good weekend, and remember, kids: <i>It's only a movie.</i></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blog.epromos.com/images/pillow-invitation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blog.epromos.com/images/pillow-invitation.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-83152815855961956822011-01-04T18:28:00.001+01:002011-01-04T22:12:07.739+01:00Highlights from the search keywords sectionI absolutely love being able to see what people are actually searching for when they stumble upon my blog. Some people do actually search for relevant things, but here's a small selection of my personal favourites:<br />
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- looking through titts<br />
- alien tits<br />
- girl with three tits<br />
- charlotte gainsbourg castrates herself video<br />
- final girls tits<br />
- lovemaking<br />
- gary gilmore titties<br />
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Granted, none of these are very <i>surprising...</i> They all brought a smile to my face, though!<br />
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Keep up the good work, everyone.Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-8705933388346250342010-11-24T23:13:00.001+01:002010-11-25T14:27:53.692+01:00Antichrist and the Nature of Horror<blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><i>"the feminine is not a monstrous sign </i>per se<i>; rather, it is constructed as such within a patriarchal discourse"</i></b></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: center;">– <i>Barbara Creed</i> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">As you will no doubt be aware, Lars von Trier's 2009 flirt with horror, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/"><i>Antichrist</i></a>, found itself at the centre of quite a lot of <a href="http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/05/antichrist-gets-misogyny-anti-prize-at.html">controversy</a> upon its release. At the core of the debates surrounding the film has been the question of misogyny: is the film as <a href="http://www.google.com/search?client=flock&channel=fds&q=misogyny&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t#hl=en&expIds=17259,27642,27690,27744&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=antichrist+misogyny&cp=4&qe=YW50aW1pc29neW55&qesig=2MeljFsJuTspPpaLGq_FFg&pkc=AFgZ2tmaD0fpqTJIj2McjRWnPIGNiBDUANetfMaC1imPt4qIK47fhQeusMYxAplBqHfJAYBBxKm-eZyNyohFajlE8Ewx5Xn7Wg&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&source=hp&aq=0c&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=d0feeef2826e6bca">misogynistic</a> as many critics seemed to believe, or is it "actually" just one big <a href="http://www.google.com/search?client=flock&channel=fds&q=misogyny&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&q=antichrist+feminist&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=d0feeef2826e6bca">feminist</a> statement? The minds of the public will probably never be made up about this, and both sides seem to have little trouble arguing a strong case with proof taken exclusively from the movie itself. While I am normally all for a gender centric analysis of horror films, it seems to me that maybe this is missing the point a bit in the case of <i>Antichrist</i>: when it is so obviously quite possible to to make such strong arguments on both sides, couldn't this be a sign that the whole excercise might be just a bit pointless? By all means, I'm a big fan of using movies to make a point of some sort; but this is a film that can basically "mean" anything that you might want it to. However, there's no real getting around the fact that there is a lot of talk about <i>fear</i> in the film. The main topic of discussion is what makes the nameless female played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, afraid – or what makes people, in general, afraid. Nature is being named as one source of horror and to me, it deals quite explicitly with the very nature of horror.</div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/EW-AH348_horror_G_20090813173457.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/EW-AH348_horror_G_20090813173457.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div> The link between nature and horror is hardly something new. Linking <i>sex and nature</i> with horror likewise. One scene that popped to mind whilst watching <i>Antichrist</i> was from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083907/">The Evil Dead</a> (1981). You know the one, when the girl walks off into the forest at night and the forest itself literally rapes her. I won't pay any particular attention to potential rape motifs in <i>Antichrist</i> in this post (although I will return briefly to the Freudian aspects of it a bit later on), mainly because there are just too many and it would take up too much space in a post that is about something different. But I thought that specific scene was worth mentioning anyway. For example in relation to Charlotte Gainsbourg masturbating furiously in the forest, then being joined by her husband who gives her a good slapping.<br />
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With this film, Lars von Trier seems to bring the sex back into the world of horror. Because in recent years, it has become less and less essential to the horror genre, as far as I can tell. It is now mostly about the torture, as discussed in my previous post, and the focus has been removed almost entirely from the sex which was always a major source of horror in the past. Look at <i>Psycho</i>: you don't witness any sex acts actually taking place on screen, yet still the entire film is absolutely chock-full of it. Marion and Sam get dressed in the hotel room; you see Marion in her underwear several times and obviously naked in the shower; Norman was <i>aroused</i> by Marion (according to the psychiatrist in the final scene), etc etc etc. Now, even something like <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424136/">Hard Candy</a></i> (2005), which is in its own way all about sex, doesn't show any actual sex take place. In <i>Antichrist</i> though, there is LOTS of it, and it is very detailed. As anyone with even the vaguest interest in traditional horror films will know: <b>bad things happen to people who have sex.</b> Especially sex of the more irresponsible kind, and what could be more irresponsible than to let your child fall to his death while you are busy lovemaking?<br />
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When I was watching the film for the first time a couple of weeks ago, it took me a good half hour or more to try and figure out what on earth I was even watching (and I've been led to believe that a lot of people never do figure that one out). I had heard and read so much about how <i>Antichrist</i> was a horror film. For a while, I didn't see much to back up this statement. Sure, lots of psychological stuff, some of it quite creepy. But enough to make it a <i>horror film</i>?<br />
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After a while, though, I realised just how much of a horror film this is. Maybe even more so than most of the ones we like to call classics, or essential, or just traditional scary movies. Because here is a film that is <i>about</i> fear and <i>about</i> horror, rather than just trying to scare its audience with a man in a mask and making us jump when he appears out of nowhere and kills some people. (A film's <i>"quality as horror film"</i>, says Carol Clover, "<i>lies in the ways it delivers the cliché"</i>.) For me, some of the conversations that the nameless couple lead are sufficient "proof" of this. And I will now go on to provide you with some valuable quotes from said conversations:<br />
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<blockquote>Before leaving for Eden, He tries to find out what She is really afraid of:<br />
<i><b>H</b>: Let's make a list of things that you are afraid of.</i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: But I don't know what I'm afraid of … Can't I just be afraid without a definite object?</i><br />
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<i> </i>Later, one evening at Eden, they do a little "therapeutic" excercise, in the form of a role play (this is after He has placed "nature" at the top of She's "fear pyramid"):<br />
<i><b>H</b>: My role is all the things that provoke your fear. Yours is rational thinking. … I'm nature. All the things that you call nature.</i><br />
<b><i>S</i></b><i>: What do you want?</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: To hurt you as much as I can. </i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: How?</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: How do you think?</i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: By frightening me?</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: By killing you.</i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: Nature can't harm me. You're just all the greenery outside.</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: No... I'm more than that.</i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: I don't understand.</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: I'm outside, but also... within. I'm the nature of all human beings.</i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: Oh, that kind of nature. The kind of nature that causes people to do evil things against women?</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: That's exactly who I am.</i><br />
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And finally, about She's research for her thesis on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynocide">gynocide</a>:<br />
<i><b>S</b>: If human nature is evil, then that goes as well for the nature of...</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: ...of the women?</i><br />
<i><b>S</b>: The nature of all the sisters. Women do not control their own bodies. Nature does. I have it in writing in my books.</i><br />
<i><b>H</b>: The literature that you used in your research was about evil committed against women, but you read it as proof of the evil of women?</i></blockquote><i> </i><br />
<i> </i>It is difficult to even know where to begin with this. I have watched these scenes twice now and each time a hundred different thoughts have popped into my head, but I will try to make it as short and as relevant as possible. It is made clear from these excerpts that we are in fact dealing with the kind of irrational fear that most horror films do indeed play upon. Ie., we know fully well that Freddy isn't going to slice us open as we sleep, but we still fear it. Notice how it is made very clear that there is a mutually exclusive opposition between rationality and fear. I think it's also really interesting that they bring up the idea of being afraid, but not because of something specific. Most horror films will have a specific object of fear; however, they will inevitably depend upon the ability of the viewer to be genuinely afraid of something that is not in fact dangerous to them in any real way. Furthermore, there is, of course, talk of <i>women</i>. I'm not, after all, trying to deny that there are gender issues being somehow or other adressed, or at least pointed out, in this film. What I do think about it though, is that rather than von Trier trying to make some statement about these things, be it a misogynistic or a feminist one, he is simply pointing out that this is a major issue in horror tradition. The nature of women, and the nature of men (or, as She aptly puts it, <i>"people"</i>. Who are "people", historically speaking?).<br />
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There is at least <a href="http://gradstudentmadness.blogspot.com/2009/09/movie-notes-antichrist-2009.html">one other blogger</a> who somewhat agrees with me on this, saying that <i>"Ultimately, I think he's making a horror film that suggests misogyny is at the core of all horror films and religious parables. Actually, to go even further, I think his attack is on the misogynist underpinnings of western rationalism as such."</i><br />
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And let's not at any point forget that there is one<i> </i>person here to represent rationality and science, and another to represent wildness, raw nature, and even evil. That the former is male and the latter is female is not, I believe, because von Trier believes that this is a true and accurate representation of the genders as such: rather, he is only pointing out what traditional horror has been doing for decades, if not centuries.<br />
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Another thing that has been very present in many a modern horror film, and especially in the many theories and criticisms surrounding them, is of course Freudian theory. Barbara Creed's essay <i>Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine</i> is the place to start if you are interested in looking into this. In the essay, Creed quotes Freud as saying that the Uncanny is <i>"something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light".</i> There seem to be many things in <i>Antichrist</i> to which this description can easily be applied. Most of all, though, it seems to me to be certain elements of <i>human nature</i> that ought to have remained hidden, if you follow the logic of the film. Not only the evil <i>female</i> nature, which admittedly gets paid the most attention: even the big protector of rationality in the film ends up performing what can only be described as <i>unhumane</i> acts. For once though, I don't want to give away the ending. Anyway, Freud and that: again, so many things to choose from, and I'll settle for mentioning some of the most obvious things. There is a mother – father – son motif turned more or less on its head; there is the fox hole and the "thick" trunk right next to it; He tries to hide in the fox hole when She is chasing him, only to be <a href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/%7Eamtower/uncanny.html">buried alive</a> in it. This happens after She has practically castrated him, and before she "practically" castrates herself (who says women can't be castrated?). Earlier in the film, after her psychiatrist husband has told her about having some odd dreams, She tells him that dreams don't matter to modern psychology: <i>"Freud's dead, isn't he?"</i><br />
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I want to return to He's attempts to rationalise She's fear. He tells her in the early stages of the film that <i>"grief is natural"</i>. He tries to make her realise that the things that she fears are not actually dangerous, and he does this at first by seemingly hypnotising her and making her go into Eden, lying down on the grass and <i>"melting into the green"</i>. By doing this, he is almost forcing her to become part of the thing that she fears the most: nature. She is convinced that nature is evil, and when she is forced to be part of nature, she becomes "evil". She clearly believes in the ability of his words to become reality; this is illustrated through one of their discussions about her thesis, when She accuses him of finding her subject <i>"glib"</i>. She admits to never having finished her thesis, saying that <i>"all of a sudden, it </i>was<i> glib".</i> If this is the logic we are to follow, it might well be that He makes his biggest fatal mistake (other than claiming, in the role play mentioned above, to be all of the things that she is afraid of...) when he tells her that <i>"your thoughts distort reality. Not the other way around".</i> Her thoughts, her way of seeing the world, do indeed distort and change reality for both of them.<br />
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He believes that She is suffering from anxiety, and tries to persuade her that <i>"anxiety can't make you do something that's against your nature"</i>. In response, she certainly does her best to convince him of the true nature of, well, nature. And finally, in yet another attempt to rationalise, He tries to explain to her that "<i>obsessions never materialise. It's a scientific fact".</i> Ironic, then, that <i>her</i> obsession with gynocide influences <i>him</i> to put an end to it all in the specific way that he does.<br />
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(I have a feeling that I might return to this one.)Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-55434573215309111692010-11-10T22:16:00.005+01:002010-11-10T23:45:43.252+01:00Why I Hate Torture FlicksCredit given where credit is due: "I Know Who Killed Me" is an <i>excellent</i> title for a horror film. The rest of it isn't much to write home about – although obviously I still have some things to say about it, or I wouldn't have started a blog post talking about it. Anyway… I don't know enough about the <i>torture porn</i> subgenre to know if this properly counts as one of those films (yes, I've seen <i>Saw</i>, boring boring boring, will return to this below), but it certainly got me thinking about the phenomenon as a whole. So, even though <i>I Know Who Killed Me</i> (2007) has a great title, and could potentially have been a very traditional mad scientist/lunatic avenger crossover story, it never quite <i>hits the spot</i>. New use of traditional themes is hardly anything new for the horror genre, in fact (as I suspect you will be aware…) this is the foundation for the entire, excellent genre as a whole. HOWEVER (yes, capital letters, because this is a big one) – a traditional theme <i>can</i> still be presented in an original way. In fact, if you want anyone to take any interest in the story that you're trying to tell, that would probably be a good way of going about it. And no, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0897361/">Chris Sivertson and Jeff Hammond</a>, trying to tell a dozen different stories in one single hour-and-a-half flick does <i>not</i> necessarily count as "originality". Instead, it makes it a lot harder for the viewer to try and determine what the hell is actually going on, and what on earth you're trying to get at with your film.<br />
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I found <i>Saw</i> (2004) really boring. I mean, <i>really</i> boring. I've heard loads of people say that the find the "story" intriguing, and I genuinely just don't buy it. I don't even remember most of the story, apart from a desperate wife, insignificant kid, standard retiring police officer, regretful husband (OR HE MIGHT HAVE SEEMED REGRETFUL OR ANY OTHER KIND OF THING IF THE MAN HAD POSSESSED EVEN THE SLIGHTEST HINT OF ACTING SKILLS) and the very same deranged avenger kind of plot as mentioned above. What more do you really need to know? You're not watching <i>Saw</i> for a meaningful story or insightful psychological profiles, you're not even watching it for the hot girls because there aren't any. You're watching it because you want to see exactly how the characters will be tortured, you pervert. You want to see every blood-spattering, overly graphic detail of their bodies being ripped apart by a psychopath (sometimes indirectly, obviously). Either that, or you're covering your eyes and turning away every time something gross happens (which, with this subgenre, would mean everything "essential") but still want your friends to know that you're real tough because you sat through it without wetting your pants. I literally don't see any other possibilities. Pushing your limits, sure, I did that once when I was 16. I got over it.<br />
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The term "torture porn" is a strange one. Even though I'm fully aware of what it's meant to describe, every time I hear it I still kind of imagine it to be some kind of sick, super fetishistic and super exploitative porn. As in, still dealing with sex. Because that's what porn is meant to be about, unless I've got it all wrong (of course even this can still be debated and long live postmodernism for that, but this is neither the time nor the place for it). And while "torture porn" might possess those other, erm, qualities, it's not about sex. Not in any obvious way, anyhow. But as my imagination just proved, the term does carry some rather effective associations – and I think I've concluded that I think it means the following: the torture is to "torture porn" what sex is to plain porn. It is the essential element. And it's also making a statement about the interested viewer. You don't care about the story, be it a visit from the plumber or Lindsay Lohan's missing twin sister, and you don't care about the characters. You want to see some genitals, or alternatively some body parts being chopped off. Up close. You want to hear the woman scream.<br />
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Of course, horror films and porn have always (or "always" if you prefer) been linked, especially on academic levels. And it's hardly surprising: they are both <i>body genres</i> as the ever faithful Carol Clover put it. They are both concerned with the physical and both genres have undeniably touched upon aspects of gender politics throughout the history of their existence. And if you really want to think about, I'm sure you could make a very convincing argument that they're both inherently <i>disrespectful</i> (for lack of a better word) to the idea of human nature with which we normally like to associate ourselves. Yes, I'm speaking for everyone. Get your own damn blog. No, I won't read it.<br />
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I have a very genuine love for the horror genre as a whole. I love the overall geekiness of it, self-referencing and the in-jokes, I love the villains and I even love some of the vitims (for example, it's not that rare for me to think of Leatherface and Ripley as closer "friends" of mine than a lot of real life people that I know). I love that a horror film can bring a smile to my face no matter how bleak the story at hand might seem to be at first sight, or to the untrained eye. The films that I'm referring to in this post do none of those things. Imagine what <i>The Texas Chain Saw Massacre</i> (1974) would have been if it had been made in this tradition? (Don't even bother mentioning the remake, I'm not going to watch it.)<br />
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I struggle to see any creativity in the torture porn subgenre as a whole. I don't see how someone can defend spending their time making films if the only thing that they have to grab the audience's attention with, is what I like to call the car crash syndrome (you know you shouldn't watch, but you can't help yourself). It's not big and it ain't clever, and it isn't even entertaining. It's too much like certain infamous internet forums <i>but robbed of even that desperate level of humour</i>. (One example that I haven't yet watched but have higher hopes for is <i>The Human Centipede</i>. That looks fun!) I can watch gore, I can watch people being hacked apart and hopelessly pleading for their lives. But if that's all there is to it – what's the point?Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-12275418014916704792010-10-30T15:13:00.000+02:002010-10-30T15:13:39.527+02:00Link sharing time!<br />
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<a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/">The Thing fan fiction</a> – written from the perspective of the Thing. Thanks to whoever sent me this link, but I can't remember who that was just now. Oh well.<br />
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Another take on <a href="http://genremattersx.wordpress.com/jenni/">Death of the Final Girl</a> – really quite different to what I was saying in my previous post, definitely an interesting read too.<br />
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<a href="http://www.hellosidney.com/">Hello Sidney</a> – All things Scream, complete with live countdown to <i>Scream 4</i>.<br />
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Also, I highly recommend you pick up the November issue of <a href="http://www.totalfilm.com/">Total Film</a>. It has one of those "Top 25 Horror Films" things, but what makes this one great is that all the films in the list have been voted in by (in)famous horror directors and other horror personalities, so it's not just the geeky wankery film mag editors list. Although obviously those can be quite good as well. THE BEST FILM IN THE WORLD made it to number 1 as well, which nearly brought a tear to my eye (in all seriousness).<br />
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Finally, if you haven't been watching the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11565455">History of Horror</a> documentary series on BBC 4 you should be sure to search them up on t'internet (some clips are on youtube but I don't think the full episodes are there yet). The first episode covers all the really early stuff (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc), the second focuses mostly on Hammer films and some other British stuff from that era. The third one is bound to be the most popular one as it kicks off with <i>Psycho</i> and guides you through a very basic history of classic American slashers.<br />
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Oh, and... <i>Happy Halloween.</i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x250/Wings1295/Blog%20Pics/halloween-ghost-560.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x250/Wings1295/Blog%20Pics/halloween-ghost-560.jpg" /></a></div><i> </i>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-77504979281835905812010-10-20T17:09:00.002+02:002010-10-20T21:45:01.372+02:00Death of the Final GirlIn case you hadn't noticed, I'm really quite fond of Ellen Ripley, and the first Alien film in particular. Another thing that you might have noticed is that I love discussing the Final Girl concept. But one thing I haven't yet mentioned is my (relatively) newfound love for the Norwegian horror/slasher franchise<i> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808276/">Cold Prey</a></i>. And within the space of one week I have watched the last, and allegedly <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1464535/">final instalment</a> of the <i>Cold Prey</i> series <b>and</b> <i>Alien: Resurrection</i> (1997), so what could be more natural than to take some time to discuss the role of the Final Girl in these two films?<br />
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First of all though, a bit of background on the <i>Cold Prey</i> series. The first two films are traditional "make one film, then a sequel" stuff: the second film follows right where the first one left off, so it hasn't moved far in time or geographically speaking, and the Final Girl from the first film relives the nightmare in the sequel. But where the original is bleak and slightly Shining-esque (with more blood and screaming), the sequel is more purely slasher-action, and so many purists and occasional horror watchers uphold the original as the better of the two. I think they complete each other and I've only watched them in one go which works perfectly. The Final Girl in these two films, Jannicke, is what really makes them work so well. She is actually very sympathetic, as opposed to hordes of other Final Girls. She is clever (medical student), beautiful, caring, strong in every sense of the word, but most of all she is thoroughly <i>human</i>.<br />
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Jannicke always reminded me of Ripley, in more than one way. Maybe it is fitting, then, that in both <i>CP3</i> and <i>A:R</i> the Final Girls are changed. <i>CP3</i> is a prequel – different actress, different story, different character (even though it is a prequel, I will still treat it as what it is: the last of three films). Sure Sigourney Weaver still plays "Ripley" in <i>A:R</i>, but it isn't really Ripley. It is her clone. Her 8th clone, to be precise. How much needs to be said about the <a href="http://n64media.ign.com/n64/image/article/339/339954/amalgam3_1207358773.jpg">earlier clones</a>, in this context? Not necessarily much. If No. 8 is seen as embodiment of the ideal Final Girl (physically strong; maintaining a cool, ironic distance to what is happening around her; complex knowledge of her enemy, to which she is yet strangely drawn; much smarter than everyone surrounding her, etc.) then clones 1-7 are what have gone before her. Failed experiments; the clones are either too much like an alien and too little like a human, or too much like a little baby and not enough like a grown creature. The last of the previous clones even begs No. 8 to kill her. Clones 1-7 are outdated, imperfect representations of Final Girls. They are Sally, Nancy, Laurie, Stretch, Alice and all of the others.<br />
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The Final Girl in <i>CP3</i>, Hedda, is mostly just annoying. But she possesses some of the ideal Final Girl skills or characteristics as lined out by No. 8 in <i>A:R</i>: she understands more than anyone else, she can endure more and accomplish more, she can run for longer and hide better, she can keep others (barely) alive, she doesn't think twice about pulling the head of an arrow out through her boyfriend's shoulder when she is convinced that it will save him, or indeed about setting fire to a house in which she and her boyfriend are hiding from the killer as long as she is convinced that the fire will kill the Big Bad and they will be able to escape. She finds her kidnapped and tortured friends and attempts to save them. She's a bit like a female MacGyver, which in itself is not a bad thing, but not really something that belongs in a horror movie. It isn't something that brings the audience to the edge of their seats in the same way as a normal girl with more human characteristics might have. It has been said many times by several critics that the killers in these films are not (entirely) human, and it looks as if the Final Girls are trying to catch up. No. 8's very blood is of a superhuman nature, and it is stressed again and again how she is not like <i>us.</i> But where does that lead us? Two creatures with superhuman powers and a lack of human trademarks such as doubt, regret, empathy, forever locked in an impossible battle where no one can win and no one can die? Has the evolution of the Final Girl, which was praised by many when it moved on from Sally (passive resistance) to Laurie (active resistance) to Nancy (actively seeking the killer to set things right), been allowed to run on for too long, and spiral out of control? If she is not someone that we the audience can identify with and feel for and root for, is there any point to her at all?<br />
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Of course, Hedda's status as a Final Girl could easily be up for discussion. She does after all die, which is more or less the one thing that a Final Girl just doesn't do. But you see, she isn't killed by <i>The Killer</i>, rather she is accidentally shot by a policeman who thinks she's trying to shoot him. Anyway, the point is she isn't one of the victims of the actual killer, strictly speaking; so in my book she still counts as Final Girl. Besides, Ripley dies as well, remember? She is not directly killed by one of the aliens, but kills herself and it in the process. So they both die <i>because of</i> their enemies, but not by their hand. It is far more human instincts that get them both killed in the end, and we're back to human vs. superhuman.<br />
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So I guess my main point is this: the Final Girl needs to be human. She can't be someone who is "better" than us, or the whole point of her disappears. The original Final Girls are completely <i>normal</i> (and maybe not even sympathetic or likeable, because many humans aren't) and that's why it is exciting to see what happens to them and how they make it through so many horrible incidents. It is why we can identify, and it is ultimately what makes a horror film into what it is: a scary movie.<br />
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<i>PS: I was going to discuss how in A:R they have a "Father" whereas in Alien they have a "Mother", but I couldn't really think of anything interesting to say that wouldn't have been horribly longwinded. Any thoughts on this, or anything else, feel free to leave a comment below.</i>Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-9722528533992180392010-09-26T12:59:00.001+02:002010-09-28T23:26:14.895+02:00John McClane – a Final Girl?Consider the following statement:<br />
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<b><i>"If you replace the lead of any horror movie, with a badass, it becomes an action movie"</i></b>.<br />
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It's an interesting thought that certainly opens up for some useful ways of looking at things, but I remain unconvinced that it's actually the case. And now I'm going to tell you why.<br />
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I'm assuming here that "the lead" means the Final Girl, the one who survives after seeing all of her friends being killed off one by one, and who (understandably) tends to end up a lot less sane at the end of it – having been tortured and chased for (what feels like) the better part of the film.<br />
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Firstly, there is the fact that the action hero, here represented by none other than John McClane, often doesn't seem to be as much trapped in the situation as the girls in the slasher films. Sure, they're very much involved in the situation and it's not as if McClane can just walk out of his skyscraper any time he wants, but he is granted the freedom to distance himself a bit from the actual core of the situation, he can retire into an air vent or something and consider his options. Not very glamourous perhaps, but I'm sure you'll agree it sounds better than being tied to a chair by Leatherface's dinner table, or being stuck in wardrobe waiting for Mike Myers to attack. The Final Girl is hurled right into the centre of the most absurd situations, which they rarely, if ever, really know the full extent of in the way that McClane does.<br />
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And what is it that gives McClane a lot of his relative freedom? He's trained. He's been in similar situations before, and has some idea of how to deal with it. He has the physical strength that is required, and of course, he has weapons (as easy as it would be to get all Freudian on this point, I'm going to resist, take note please). But wait, surely this sounds familiar even in a horror context? Of course it does, you've seen <i>Aliens</i> haven't you? If we pretend for a moment that it's possible to see past the things that I brought up in my previous post about <i>Aliens</i>, and the fact that it's full of aliens, then this describes the 1986 version of Ripley perfectly. Which makes <i>Aliens</i> more of an action flick than a horror film. Whaddayaknow.<br />
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Meanwhile, back in the skyscraper, McClane is busy not only hiding from/killing the European terrorists, he's cracking jokes while he's doing it! What a man. So his ability to distance himself from things is not only about the physical distance, but it's also the ironic distance. He is allowed to have some sense of <i>fun</i> in the midst of it all.<br />
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If we keep <a href="http://stumblingthroughtheology.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/derrida.jpg">Derrida</a> and his crazy theories in mind from the previous post, it can easily be argued that the action hero seems somehow aware that there is an audience. We are watching him, he's aware of it, he talks as if to himself in order to further entertain us. And this can create some sort of sense of being equal – John knows what's going on just as much as we do. This is never, <i>ever</i> the case with the Final Girl in the conventional slasher films. It is not <i>us</i> watching her and following her around, it's the killer. Again, she does not know the extent of the situation. If anything, the joke is on her.<br />
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Finally, there's the unavoidable fact that both the action film and the slasher traditionally belong to genres that are made for men and by men. Of course they'd like to see themselves as the big, strong, handsome and even funny guy who can take out entire international terror organistations on their own. This image will only be further enhanced if they can see the woman as someone who is completely weak and meek and entirely helpless without them.<br />
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Or was that helpless against them? Hmm.Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-10235219800315345292010-09-26T01:06:00.007+02:002011-05-08T00:01:06.614+02:00Looking Through Gary Gilmore's EyesI might as well introduce you properly to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Clover">Carol Clover</a> before we go any further. Her essay "Her Body, Himself" (originally published in her book <i>Men, Women and Chainsaws</i> [1992], and later in the excellent compilation edited by Barry Keith Grant: <i>The Dread of Difference </i>[1996]) is what got me into horror film theory in the first place and it is one of the most groundbreaking essays in the field. It is also one of the very first critical essays to pay any kind of (serious) attention to slasher films. Obviously some of it will be a bit dated by now, but it remains the origin of some of the most essential terms and ideas – especially for those of us interested in the slightly icky gender issues side of horror films and their theories. Perhaps most importantly, Clover coined the term <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl">Final Girl</a> – used to describe the girl who is typically left alive at the end of a slasher film. However, there is another issue which she spends just as much time discussing in the essay, namely that of audience identification in horror films. She makes lots of claims and arguments relating to that which I'm not going to go into detail about here (for now, anyhow), but what I will focus my attention on is her critique of the widespread use of <i>I-camera</i> in these films (pretty self explanatory: bits of the film are being shown as if you are watching through one character's own eyes):<br />
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<i>"Much is made of the use of the I-camera to represent the killer's point of view […] By such means we are forced, the argument goes, to identify with the killer"</i>, Clover says, and then of course she goes on to make some big and very long-winded points about the nature of <i>"the processes of viewer identification"</i>, and she only entertains this idea of forced identification through I-camera for so long, but she never really returns to this point to disprove (or even prove) it.<br />
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For me, there are two scenes from two films that first spring to mind when I-camera usage is being discussed. The opening scene to <i>Halloween </i>(1978) in which the young Michael Myers lurks around the house and eventually kills his sister; and very near the beginning of <i>Friday the 13th</i> (1980) where the killer walks through the camp, watching the careless youths as they sleep in their beds or whatever it is they are doing. (Of course, in this film you get a lot more I-camera being used because you're not supposed to know who the killer is...) The thing that strikes me about both of those instances, and any other that I can think of, is how all you see through the killer's eyes (as it were) are apparently normal people engaging in completely normal activities – whether that's having sex, sleeping, brushing their hair, taking a shower, whatever. So I'd argue that you're not really forced to identify with the killer at all even though you're seeing things from their perspective – because there is nothing in the scene that would make you (assuming you're a normal, well balanced person) think to yourself, <i>"what an arsehole, I would definitely kill them</i>". If anything, it only serves to make you more distanced from the killer, as there is no logical or recognisable reason presented to you for why you should want to kill the people you are watching. So this specific use of I-camera only really illustrates how completely alien the killer is.<br />
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Another thing that interests me with this is how well it works with everyone's favourite deconstructionist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrida">Jacques Derrida</a>'s musings on the feeling of horror upon <i>seeing yourself seen</i> (yes, I did just go there). JD initially talks about the feeling of bewilderment and unease when he caught his cat staring at him (he was also NAKED at the time, dear me). His theory is something about how thoroughly and deeply unsettling it is for a person to realise that they are being watched – ie. seeing themselves seen – by some Other being. Preferably not another human being, that wouldn't be as creepy, and that happens quite a lot as well. This was first explained to me in the context of <i>The Birds</i> (1963), and it is argued that a large portion of the feeling of unease and even horror in the film comes from the fact that we witness the birds actively <i>watching </i>people.<br />
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And I think that this can, and should, be applied to the discussion of I-camera and (forced?) identification in more conventional slasher films. Yes, the killers are human in form, but one of their absolutely essential trademarks is that they are not ever <i>entirely</i> human. Mike Myers, for example, is described as <i>"pure evil"</i>, with no human attributes left at all; Leatherface is another obvious example: he uses different masks to determine his "personality" and the way in which he behaves at any given time. Clover even backs me up on this one, claiming that the killer <i>"may be recognizably human, but only marginally so"</i>. Any more details about that specific aspect of it all will have to wait until some other time, though. I'm going get out of here while I've still got both Derrida <i>and </i>Clover behind me – but first, a summary:<br />
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So – even though it would be handy for a lot of feminist critique if it really were a case of "forced identification" where you identify <i>with</i> the killer and <i>against</i> his victim(s), that doesn't seem to me to be the case. The effect of the I-camera is a scary one, because you don't know who it is that's watching and you certainly see no reason why you should be on their side. It plays upon the spooky feeling you get when you think (or know) that you're being watched – even as you're participating in normal, everyday activities that shouldn't really work as motivation for anyone to gut you like a fish.Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5605150471888924017.post-60384872903344195452010-08-21T15:30:00.005+02:002013-01-18T19:33:19.252+01:00Stay away from her, you bitch!Having fallen instantly and absolutely in love with <i>Alien</i> (1979) upon first watching it about a year ago, I was pretty excited to move on to the sequels when I found them all in one handy little box set. Especially the first sequel, <i>Aliens</i> (1986), was something that had me quite excited as I had encountered so many people listing it as one of their favourite films, ranking it higher even than the first film.<br />
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Since actually having watched it and made some throwaway remarks about it online though, I've realised just how divided opinions really are on this. The people who prefer the 1986 sequel are, like the film itself, louder and more in your face. In a sense I think that <i>Aliens</i> follows more of the kind of self-referential slasher mentality or even tradition that I mostly love, despite it being seen as wankery by a lot of people. But its predecessor has that other thing that I generally value above most other things in a horror/slasher flick: some degree of subtlety. To me, Ripley calling the egg laying alien a "bitch" is too much like the<i> A-Team</i> remake of 2010 in which Face is suddenly a loud and crude character who goes around calling people motherfuckers. It's uncalled for, it adds nothing to the film (apart from the occasional giggle from someone or other in the audience) and more than anything, it seems a bit stupid. Granted none of this is as bad as the <i>Texas Chainsaw</i> sequel, but I'll have to get back to you on that one later.<br />
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The main issue with <i>Aliens</i> though is, not surprisingly, Ripley herself. In 1979 she was cool as fuck because she didn't live up to the final girl stereotype (although obviously still very much <span style="font-weight: bold;">filling</span> the role). I'm not going to go into here if I think that the reason for that, ie. that Ripley was written as a man originally, is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing but it certainly made things a bit more interesting. The Ripley of 1986 however tries her very best to make up for that. Sod the fucking cat, bring a real life kid in and force that maternal instinct out until there's not much else left of her, and just in case the point should still be lost on some, land her right in the middle of a good old bitch fight with that alien queen bee. WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN.<br />
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I'm betting that Carol Clover with her whole theory of fluid/shifting identifacations in horror audiences will have had something clever to say about this, but for now I have no fancy quotes to round this off. In fact I have nothing at all to round it off, apart from something like "sequels, eh? what a load of shit."Helene Aalborghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05466876454044622807noreply@blogger.com1