Gender and Family - Peter Ogunwale

Robin Wood in his paper titled The American nightmare: Horror in the 70s talks about bourgeois-capitalist ideology that define the social norms of masculinity and femininity. He also talks about how this leads to “systematic repression from infancy of the man’s femininity and the woman’s masculinity, in the interests of forming human beings for specific predetermined social roles”.(Wood 26) Marriage is an example of the social institution defined by the bourgeois-capitalist ideology and in marriage women are expected to be submissive toward to their husbands. All these social norms can create tension within the family between the father who represents patriarchy and the rest of the family including the mother and the children. Tensions created by social norms are formally called surplus repression and are commonly expressed in horrors movies like the shining.

Social norms have been set by the bourgeois and any deviation from this at least in horror films, results in the punishment of the violators. Horror films are mediums for “the return of repressed”(wood 29), and in Vivian Sobchack’s paper titled Bringing it all back home: family economy and Generic exchange , the author talks about some changes in the horror genres during the late 70s “as it begins to interrogate paternal commitment and its relations to patriarchal power. The repressed is patriarchal hatred, fear and self-loathing.” (Sobchack 152) In The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, patriarchy is challenged. After months of isolation without any outside human contact, Wendy Torrance stands up to her husband Jack, who keeps her and her child prisoners at an isolated hotel. Wendy expresses some level of masculinity which doesn’t correlate with societal expectations of women and she is punished for her act of defiance, when Jack decides to fight back for his power.

In this situation Vivian says “that the father is the synchronic repressed who first powerfully absenting himself, returns to terrify the family in the contemporary horror film...willingly yield his paternity and patriarchal rite to Satan”. (Sobchack 152) This simply means many movies showed irrational behavior from men when they lose their power and are willingly to do anything to regain it, no matter how despicable. This relates to Jack’s thirst for power which drove him into a mad man as he loses his mind and will do anything imaginable regardless of how horrifying or immoral it is in order to get back his phallus.The Shining depicts that Jack loves his family at least on some level and this was clearly shown in the awkward scene involving him and his son Danny. The boy knew his father was turning into a monster, he keeps saying the word “dad” repeatedly during the conversation with his father almost like he was trying to bring back the loving father he once knew. This means that even though Jack once cared for his family, his fear of losing the power he holds over the family changed him. In later scenes the audience witnesses the transformation of his disposition from loving father to horrible monster.

The aforementioned works provide a perfect depiction of the social standards predetermined for men and women in relation to power dynamics in marriage. Individuals who depart from this norm are severely punished. The idea of men having to always be the head of the family and women being subservient to their husbands’ results from bourgeois-capitalist ideology.





Works Cited

Wood, Robin. "The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s" (1979): 25-32. Print. Sobchack, Vivian “Bringing it all back home: family economy and Generic exchange” (1987): 143-162. Print.