Robin Wood’s The
American Nightmare is an explanation of his beliefs about the outcasted
parts of society as they relate to films.
“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” (Wood 27). This theory is a representation of the way
that the film represents the group known as “the Other.” It takes all minority
groups and places them as the enemy. Robin Wood is telling us that we take this
group of individuals and try to either kill them or to change this enemy into
something that the middle class does not fear.
Wood talks about many things that the bourgeois does fear. They include,
but are not limited to, children, other cultures, woman, and the proletariat. The
proletariat is below the bourgeois in class structure. In other words, the
proletariat is the working class also known as the poor. It has been said that
the middle class is the opposition of change. The middle class wants everything
to remain the same because they lie comfortably and are generally happy with
their lives. The proletariat is a group that would want to push for change. This
leads to the middle class fear of the poor.
In the
movie The Bride of Frankenstein, the monster represents the Other. More
specifically, he represents the proletariat. The represents the change that the
bourgeois fears. The movie starts out with the middle class thinking that they
have successfully annihilated the monster following closely Robin Wood’s
theory.
When that fails, the movie turns to a different angle. The monster
encounters a blind man who tries to teach the monster how to be part of
society. The importance of sound in this society is stressed in this film. The
blind man relies solely on sound as his form of communication. It is also shown
that the sound of the music is the one thing that calms down the monster. This
raises an important question; how much of a monster is he really? When the
audience sees the monster acting like an integrated human being they see him as
less of a monster. The blind man feeds him bread, gives him wine to drink, and
then teaches him how to smoke a cigar.
These are all common stereotypes
attributed to the bourgeois class. It represents the move from a body when
eating the bread to a teenager when drinking the wine all the way up to manhood
when he is smoking the cigar. He is not portrayed as the proletariat when he is
with the blind man which further proves Wood’s theory. When the monster is seen assimilated into a
normal societal state he is no longer a threat and no longer something to fear.
This state only last for so long which is a reason to continue the film. If the
monster was accepted in this state then the film would be over because there
would be nothing scary about him. He would just be ugly and different, but he
would not be intimidating and frightening.
In a final
attempt to domesticate the monster into society, Dr. Frankenstein and Dr.
Pretorius try to build the monster a wife. The wife is what every bourgeois man
needs and is one thing associated with such a man. Inevitably this ends up
failing because he is the intrinsically the monster and the monster must be
killed to return to the status quo. Thus, furthermore proving the validity of
Robin Wood’s theory. “For a theory of the American horror film… should provide
us with a means of approaching the films seriously and responsibly” (Wood 28).
Work Cited
Wood, Robin. “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s.”
(1979): 25-32. Print.
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