Blog # 3 Safa Naibzada

Since the late 1960s the American bourgeois patriarchy has been experiencing disintegration and transfiguration. According to Vivian Sobchack in “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange” a man’s home in bourgeois patriarchal culture is no longer his castle. His home is influenced and effected by the outside world. It is no longer possible for Dad to shelter his family from the influences of the corrupted outside world. The nuclear family has found itself unable to from social upheavals, many of which have been initiated by the teenager and by women. From early to mid-1970s the child was portrayed as cannibalistic, monstrous, murderous, selfish and sexual in response to the youth movements and drug culture of the time (Sobchack, 144-150). Although in the movie Psycho Norman Bates is in his mid to late 20s his madness began during his teenage years when he murdered his mother and her lover in her bed. Norman’s mental development is that of a confused man-child who’s repressed sexual desires lead to murder. Yet throughout the movie the audience is convinced of “Mothers” guilt at either being the murder or being the cause of Norman’s madness.  Norman (as the child) is oppressed and at home and therefore threatens both his immediate family others that come across his path who have the freedom he does not.  

Killers being in the psychosexual grip of their mothers and fathers are often portrayed in horror films however starting in the late 1970s we begin to see a shift in the ascription of responsibility for the breakdown of traditional family relations. According to Sobchack the responsibility has been shifted from child to parent. One can see in both movies The Brood and The Shining that the child grows smaller, younger, and less adolescent. Yet the children, both Candy and Danny, still keep certain supernatural powers without making them uncanny or wicked. The parents instead become the primary negative force in the middle-class family (Sobchack, 152).

In The Shining the haunted middle-class family Dad who was economically, professionally and socially failing is possessed into attempting to kill his wife and son. Jack Torrance becomes the mad face of patriarchy. Jack was already feeling patriarchal hatred, fear, and self-loathing before he even moved into a possessed hotel. Therefore the movie is attempting to subconsciously hint that since patriarchy is challenged all men feel the rage of paternal responsibility while being denied the economic and political benefits of patriarchal power. In The Shining Jack is powerfully absenting himself but then returns to terrify the family. Throughout the movie Jack begins to abandons his paternal rights and desires. And yet even as Jack begins to lose grip with his sanity due to paranormal forces and his own inner demons audience members like me can’t help but to feel a sense of blame being put on Jacks wife, Wendy. She is portrayed as a meek, submissive, timid woman who although bows down to her husbands every whim still undermines him by being a better parent as well as completing his tasks as the caretaker of the hotel. In Jacks mind it is Wendy who is the root of all his problems, she is undermining him as a parent, is a constant reminder of all his failures and she is physically not good looking enough for him and therefore standing in his way of his entitlement.

One particular scene in which the audience can see the marital problems between Jack and Wendy is their confrontation in the lobby.  1:14:34 Wendy who has become suspicious of her husband’s mental state creeps into the lobby clutching a bat (a very masculine weapon) where she makes the ultimate mistake of looking at the story that Jack has been working on, to find that he has simply been typing the same sentence over and over again. Wendy begins to frantically search through the papers in the hopes of finding actual work. It is then that Jack approaches her from behind asking her “How do you like it?” in a condensing tone. One can sense the imbalance of their relationship as he begins to question her. He begins to approach her aggressively and corners her into the altercation. He asks her what she would like to talk about, and when she explains that she is worried about their son’s health he begins to verbally attack her, something that comes very naturally to him as if it occurs often in their marriage. Although throughout the verbal abuse his main argument is that Wendy is not taking into consideration his needs, desires or even his commitment to his employers the core of his rage (aside from the paranormal influences) seems to be the fact that Wendy realized his failure at writing. And as he malevolently stalks up the stairs towards her, he tells her “Wendy, darling, light of my life I am not going to hurt you, I just want to bash your skull in” and as the scene ends with a wonderful crunch as Wendy’s bat hits Jacks skull the audience is left with a guilty feeling because we all know that martial situations like theirs occur all over the world.   

The Brood has certain plot themes that mirror The Shining, once again we have a dysfunctional family where the parents are having marital issues and it is effecting the child. However in The Brood the mother in the family is hard, selfish, strong and mad and she is tearing the family apart. Once again there is an innocent child involved and is suffering due to the destruction of the nuclear family. Just like Wendy, Nora is subconsciously sabotaging her husband, Frank, by being mentally ill and breaking up their family (Creed, 45). By being away Nora is forcing Frank to complete all the tasks that a mother would. Giving Candy a bath, taking her to school even changing her clothes. Frank resents this and yet in order to be a good father cannot truly complain. The movie attempts to cast Frank as the protagonist and Nora and the antagonist and is hoping that a cross-gender identification occurs where the female audience identifies with Frank.  In order to this the movie portrays Nora’s character as alien to our societal beliefs as they can.  This is evident in the first and final encounter between Nora and Frank that the audience witness 1:18:17.

In the scene Frank is portrayed as a loving father who is doing whatever he can to get his daughter back, even trying to trick his mentally ill wife into believing that he still loves her. Nora on the other hand is portrayed as something alien, although she looks lovely in her white gown she is hiding the monster that she has become.  Her body has morphed to be able to produce children on its own no longer needing a man to produce. Not only does her parthenogenetic body disgust her husband but her obvious comfort with it does as well, he nearly gags as she licks the blood off her new broodling. As it becomes clear to Frank that Nora will do anything to keep her daughter away from him he leaps on her and strangles her to death while she still holds the bloody body of her brood. It makes one wonder why he could not simply knock her unconscious? Why did the Frank have to turn into a killer himself? The implication of the movie is that without a man, woman can only give birth to a race of mutants and that woman’s destructive emotions must be kept in check (Creed, 45).

Family dynamics and social changes often effect the plot and underlying messages of movies. The role of each family member is constantly changing in horror films but the role of each family member is under equal transformation in our society today. It will be interesting to see how our societies new changes will translate into horror movies since we now have different family lifestyles emerging, such as the single mother, single father, same sex parents, and polygamous parents.   

Work Cited 

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1993.

Waller, Gregory A. "Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange." American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film. Urbana: U of Illinois, 1987.

Red Herrings and Profondo Rosso

                Robin Wood emphasizes in The American Nightmare the importance of the concepts of repression and the Other in generating horror within film. He explains that “Otherness represents that which bourgeois ideology cannot recognize or accept but must deal with … in one of two ways: either by rejecting and if possible annihilating it, or by rendering it safe and assimilating it, converting it as far as possible into a replica of itself.” (27) In classical Western society, the “bourgeois ideology” he refers to generally implies that the power resides of those who traditionally fit the ideal bourgeois image; Caucasian, male, heterosexual, capitalist, fairly upper-class people. Horror is generated when the social order is disturbed by the Otherness; when the dominant ideology can’t reject or assimilate it. This principle manifests concretely whenever the horror comes from a single killer, particularly in murder-mysteries and slasher films, in which case the killer generally violates one or more aspects of the bourgeois ideology described earlier. Dario Argento’s “Deep Red” however, both uses and violates the same principles to create a different kind of suspense and intrigue.

                Throughout the course of “Deep Red”, Argento uses Wood’s idea to throw suspicion of the identity of the killer around until the very end. Near the beginning of the movie, when Marcus and Gianna, his female love interest, meet, the movie takes time to have Marco argues that women are weaker than men, and Gianna challenges him to an arm wrestle. This scene was put in to not only show that Gianna is a liberated woman, but also functions to place some suspicion on her as the killer. As a liberated female, she deviates from the societal status quo that women should know that they are weaker than men. Carlo is portrayed throughout the movie as not very masculine, especially in comparison to Marcus. In the second act of the film, Marcus attempts to visit Carlo, but meets his mother, Martha. She informs him that she was told of him by Marco. Martha however seems to be under the adamant impression that he is an engineer, which is widely regarded as a male-oriented profession. Carlo himself is revealed in the following scene that he is homosexual. These moments and character traits are used to implant Marco, and the audience, with the suspicion that Carlo is the murderer. However, at the very end, it's revealed that he is in fact a red herring, and the real murderer is his mother. A woman, yes, but heterosexual, white, seemingly well-off, judging by her home; it is not known until the very end that she violates the regular social order in any way.
               Argento used the concept of the Other not only as a way to generate horror, but to misdirect the audience into suspecting innocent people. As Adam Knee explains, "The emphasis of narratives of investigation puts further, often highly reflexive, focus on the image and, more generally, on the processes of perception, of seeing and hearing, and of memory, as well as on the ambiguity and fallibility of all of these." (223) By making this movie simultaneously a slasher flick and a mystery, the film utilizes the common uses of women (as plot devices) in horror movies and misdirects the viewers. The "bourgeois ideology" emphasizing male dominance and female vulnerability, as displayed with the Final Girl and other similar tropes, is actually used by Argento here to simultaneously frame the empowered female and non-heterosexual male, characters used to create tension with society, and draw suspicion away from the heteronormative female killer.

Works Cited

Knee, Adam. "Gender, Genre, Argento." The Dread of Difference: Gender & The Horror Film. Ed. Barry K. Grant. Austin: U of Texas, 1996. 213-30. Print.
Wood, Robin. "The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s." American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film. By Andrew Britton. Toronto: Festival of Festivals, 1979. 25-32. Print.
Deep Red. Dir. Dario Argento. Perf. Macha Meril and David Hemmings. Rizzoli Films & Seda Spettacoli, 1975. Film.

Blog # 3 - The Violence of Modern Patriarchy in the movie The Shining

Blog Post #3

Violence of Modern Patriarchy in the movie The Shining

Yoo Hyung Justina Lee

 When we think of an ‘ordinary family’, we often think of a household consisting of a breadwinning father, an obedient mother and adorable children. Although initially, the protagonist’s family in The Shining appears normal, a deeper look reveals the opposite. Jack, the protagonist who is supposed to be a competent father, turns out to be an impotent man under a great deal of pressure in hopes of making ends meet. His obedient wife Wendy starts to question his authority. Lastly, Jack’s son Danny who seems normal is troubled by having horrifying visions. What may have been an ordinary family is inevitably changed by patriarchal dominance.           

 Jack, himself is overwhelmed by patriarchal dominance. Jack who is depicted as a patriarchal figure seeks to exert control over his family, which is expressed by his aggression. As Sobchack mentions in his article, “… the horror film plays out the rage of paternal responsibility denied the economic and political benefits of patriarchal power.” (152) To support his family, Jack accepts a caretaker job of a seemingly harmless isolated hotel for about 6 months. Feeling insignificant in helping his family, Jack tries to reduce the dissonance by asserting himself as a dominant male. Whenever he feels his authority is being challenged, he acts violently as it is exemplified in the scene where he shows hostility when Wendy interrupts his writing. Jack ultimately succumbs to his fear of failing as a role model and as a result, Jack takes out his frustration on Wendy.

            

            Wendy is a direct victim of Jack’s patriarchy. In accepting the job as the caretaker, Jack does not consider Wendy’s opinions and does only what he wants. Throughout the movie, Wendy is shown to take the caretaker’s role due to Jack’s negligence. She seems to serve her husband and make sacrifices to keep the family peaceful and functional. In a rather dark turn of events, Wendy begins to suspects Jack for his questionable past. This results in Wendy resisting Jack’s authority. Jack’s violence does not end with Wendy, but is also transferred to Danny.

             Jack’s frustration leads him to abuse his own son. Danny who plays the figure of “the baby [that] has been culturally produced as a figure of poignant sweetness – helpless, vulnerable, and dependent not only because of its physical immaturity, but also because of its lack of the “corrupting” knowledge necessary for survival in the social world.” (Sobchack 148). In the end, it is Danny who takes the true role of a father figure to provide his family deliverance from his father’s downfall.

             Patriarchal dominance is what destroys Jack’s family. Jack’s ambition to be a good role model eventually results in his insanity. Initially obedient, Wendy is forced to fight back and destroy what remains of her marriage. Danny, a weak child eventually takes leadership and saves the family. Though at first glance it may seem possible for a family to appear flawless, a greater analysis shows that behind the façade even “ordinary” families have something more to them.

Work Cited

Vivian Sobchack. “Bringing it All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Barry Keith Grant, Ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 143-163.

Post #3 The Battle of Gender Domination

Carl Jason Tondo

Shining Upon the Dominance of Patriarchy

     Male characters usually dominate the theaters, the genre to be specific. This is due to the fact that the audience and film corporations subconsciously endow the male character with the dominant role. Why do we always make man superior? As patriarchy, within a nuclear family, limits the opportunity for women to have the position of power. Shouldn't we, the film community, give woman a chance? Nope, instead films are motivated to place women in victimized roles. "The newly revitalized family melodrama" (Sobchack 144) provides clear evidence that men and women attempt to fight each other for the position of power within the family. In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the audience watches the family go through dispute due to the father's gradual transition into a mad man. As Jack, the father, turns mad, he starts to victimize his wife, Wendy. With this, the film presents the audience with a case of an abusive relationship.

    Instead of using just one scene, multiple scenes will be used in order to support the theory that victimization and extreme patriarchy exists within the family. A scene that best represents these two ideas is when Wendy is holding a baseball bat while Jack threatens her by presenting evidences that preserve his dominant role within the family. Wendy's actor performs the feeling of being a vulnerable person so well that she is able to have the audience empathize with her fear and feeling of vulnerability. A couple of shots from scene should aid in seeing the abuse and victimization between a husband and a wife.

  

 Jack eerily smiling at Wendy

 Wendy clearly shows that she being victimized

 This is when Jack says, "I'll bash your brains right in."

    An interesting discovery during this scene is that the lighting is different for Wendy and Jack. The lighting for Wendy is very bright and blinding. It's as if that the light either resembles her purity or the fact that she is terrified by Jack. At one of the frames within the scene, the window lets in the blinding sunlight and shines it upon Wendy's face. Rest assured, Wendy looks so pale and ghostly when she is being threatened by Jack. On the other hand, the sunlight isn't really directed on Jack's face in the whole scene. The sunlight only shines behind Jack's head, which in turn creates a contrast the darkens the lighting in front of Jack's face. An example of this would be the first picture used above. Through a series of shot/reverse-shots, the scene illustrates Jack as the monster within the family and Wendy as the 'damsel in distress.' 

    Jack and Danny Discussing about the Family's Relationship

    The costumes within the Mise en Scéne of this scene work really well as they add supporting detail of the characters' position in the story. In this particular shot of the Danny and Jack scene, the audience sees that Jack is clothed in all blue. This gives the idea that the color blue is phallic symbol, which means that the clothes enhance the thought that Jack is the most masculine within the family. Danny is dressed in a kid's outfit, which also includes the sweater being blue and a picture of Mickey Mouse on the sweater. This scene really emphasizes that the color blue is masculine, and therefore encouraging the idea that Danny and Jack are the masculine parts of the family.

    As the audience view Wendy being victimized by Jack, we also have the opportunity of seeing Danny fill the role of the terrorized child in the later-evolved horror genre. Most scenes of abuse, with the exception of the ending, only include Jack and Wendy. Danny usually explores the hotel on his own and would be susceptible to victimization by terrifying hallucinations. It's particularly interesting that Clover mentions,“Within the film text itself, men gaze at women, who become objects of the gaze; the spectator, in turn, is made to identify with this male gaze, and to objectify the women on the screen; and the camera’s original ‘gaze’ comes into play in the very act of filming, ” because of the perspective that we take when viewing the film (Clover). We are presented with the evidence that we have the male gaze and we often put characters affected by the gaze to be feminine.

                                             Danny filling the role of the terrorized child

The bloody, terrifying hallucinations of Danny

  Adding up the use of costume, lighting, and gaze, we can assume that the nuclear family within films subconsciously encourages the idea of extreme patriarchy. We can clearly see that the terrorized child is also affected by patriarchy and the male gaze. To shine some light on a new idea, since most film directors are male and we often believe that the camera's eye is the director eye, then we are led to believe the theory behind the male gaze. With this gaze, it supports the dominance of patriarchy within the film and victimizes characters that resemble feminine traits.

Work Cited

Clover, Carol J.  "Her Body, Himself:  Gender in the Slasher Film."  Representations, No. 20, 1987

Sobchack, Vivian. Bringing it all back home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange. Print

   
    

Blog #3 – Gender &/or Family

Blog #3 – Gender &/or Family

Stanley Kubrick’s horror film released in 1980, The Shining, is a film that clearly shows gender roles and family relations. The main characters are members of nuclear family who are Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) and Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd). Jack Torrance is a father of the family and his job is a writer. He is also a recovering alcoholic who establishes dominance over the other family members. His character represents patriarchy which is a system in which men have all or most of the power and importance in a society or a group. His character is seen when he strikes with an ax to break the bathroom door and inserts his head in the opening and growls “Here’s Johnny!” Even though it is an extreme example, the audiences can notice male dominance over the family when Wendy and Danny try to escape from Jack.

As Robin Wood wrote in “American Nightmare,” in a male-dominated culture, power, money, law, and social institutions are controlled by past, present, and future patriarchs as Jack has the most power in the family. Then, the dominant images of women are entirely male created and male controlled. In the film, Wendy lives a life for dedication and sacrifice for her family, especially for her husband, Jack Torrance. She makes breakfast for Jack when he is sleeping in the morning and she tries to cheer him up while he is typing. However, Jack is cold towards him and he tells her not to hinder his work.

Also, as Wood wrote that children were the most oppressed section of the population, Danny is the most oppressed character. He has supernatural ability which is also called as “shining” ability that he can see things from the past and the future. However, he cannot tell other people about his ability except Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) who has same abilities. So, he suffers in silence and he is tormented by the supernatural ability. He has a stronger emotional band with his mother, Wendy, than with his father, Jack and his fear of father is seen when he is listening to his father’s words in the Room 237. His eyes are full of fear while listening and he also trembles with fear when Jack tries to kill him and his mother with an axe.

Even though Wendy and Danny escape from the hotel and Jack suffers from frostbite, the events occurred at the Overlook Hotel within the family tell much about gender roles and family relations. By watching The Shining, I found out the male dominance over women and patriarchy among the family from Jack Torrance’s character.

Works Cited

Wood, Robin and. “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 1970s.”

Horror: The Film Reader.

Ed. Mark Jancovich. Routledge, 2001. 25-32.

Gender of Monster/Protagonist/StatusQuo in The Brood

Blog Post #3: Gender and/or Family

The Brood (1979)

Maureen O’Donnell

            Gender and its representation are often times important aspects when it comes to the horror genre. Gender roles define plot lines, characters, and overall themes in horror movies. In David Cronenberg’s 1979 film The Brood, gender has a huge significance when it comes to elements such as the protagonist, the monster, and the status quo that is being threatened in the film.

            The protagonist is Frank Carveth who is a white, heterosexual male trying to maintain order that has been disrupted by his wife Nola who has gained too much power through her unnatural asexual reproductive abilities and threatens the power of the males in the movie. The main message that The Brood conveys is that patriarchy must be preserved as it warns of the monstrous possibilities if that status quo is ever destroyed.

Nola is the product of a matriarchal union that was between a headstrong, alcoholic woman who physically abused Nola and a neglectful husband who is seen as “weak” for not asserting his dominance over his wife. The status quo was disrupted in this marriage and resulted in a broken woman who becomes the “monster” by threatening to repeat this cycle by abusing her own daughter Candice and passing on her madness and abilities. The monstrous affliction that enables Nola’s power is specifically feminine as it involves reproduction and producing demonic broodlings that attack the masculine, dominating men in her life that try to keep their patriarchal power. As Barbara Creed states in her writings "... when woman is represented as monstrous it is almost always in relation to her mothering and reproductive functions" (Creed, 7).

In the beginning of the film, Dr. Hal Raglan is seen as an antagonist to Frank as Raglan is a very strong and manly father figure who threatens Frank’s masculinity. He mainly does this through his power and authority over Nola who is in Raglan’s care. By the end of the movie, however, Raglan switches from being Frank’s enemy to Frank’s ally as Nola becomes the singular monster of the story. Both Raglan and Frank embody the masculinity that Nola’s feminine power and authority seek to destroy. Even their clothing is gendered as the men dress similarly in dark, rustic colors and wear heavy clothing that completely cover their bodies. This is opposed to the light-colored clothing that Nola and Candice wear which are also flowing and frilly. The visual gender dynamic between these two pairs help illustrate the concept of the male protagonist and the female monster/antagonist. 

In the end, Nola and her broodlings are brutally killed by Frank as he saves his daughter Candice and life returns back to the status quo; Frank has destroyed the feminine power and restored his authority. But the film ends with signs that the status quo has not completely returned as Candice shows signs of also having this reproductive broodling power. The fact that Frank and Nola’s child is a girl is important as this affliction that creates the main conflict in the story is carried on through the female line, leaving females to be the monsters of the past, present, and future.

Work Cited

Creed, Barbara. "The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis." (1993): 1-15. Print. 

Blog Post #3: Gender and Family in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

    In Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the husband and wife, Jack and Wendy, each shows different problems with their gender roles that leads to their own ways rendered dysfunctional. Jack fails to be a traditional man who supports family members, while Wendy shows both a weak and strong woman. Jack loses his way to provide for his family; because he loses the teaching job so he is forced to move his family from their sweet home and eventually into the hotel.

On The Way To The Hotel

Wendy, while having her weak moments, overall is a strong character, determined to get her and her son out of the hotel alive. While she does not have the strength to leave her abusive husband, she stays as a way to protect her son. Her strength begins to show when she is actually in the hotel. She manages to knock Jack out and drag him into the freezer, locking him in. However, when she is being attacked, she hides behind the door and screams her lungs off, not actually using the knife she is holding. Throughout the film, Wendy is at the mercy of Jack and suffers emotional and physical abuse, the culmination of which occurs during the battle scene that Wendy survives.

 

“Often the truth that has proved so fascinating, yet so difficult to achieve, comes with a dramatic revelation of a sexually traumatic event in the killer’s past or the killer’s present gendered identity, or of his or her previously undetected utter lack of rationality” (Knee, 224). As Jack goes through a transformation into a sadistic killer who he believes is his duty to kill his wife and son, the film focuses on the effects of consumerism and the outcome of Jack’s inability to provide for his family. His violence and male dominance represents one of the messages of the movie.

The "Bat" Scene

   Danny’s family in the hotel represents typical family in American society. The society looks fine but each member suffers from his or her own problems. In the “bat” scene, Jack keeps pressing his wife and asking if she has ever cared about him and talks about his crucial responsibilities as a member of the community. However, on his paper, it is full of sentences saying, “All work and no play make jack a dull boy.” This may mean that each society member thinks that he or she actually works hard for the community but it is just a simple labor that falls to a part of machine. To sum up, people are proud of their efforts for family and society because they regard it as a creative work like writing. However, when you closely look inside, they repeatedly reorganizing themselves to seek for own private profits. In other words, they are not interested at all if there is no benefits for them. By describing such American family, the film may convey the message saying ‘we live in a sick society.’ This reaches a climax when Jack wanders in the maze like a beast and eventually freezes to death in the end of the film.

Jack's Death

Work Cited

Knee, Adam. "Gender, Genre, Argento." 213-30. Print.