Blog #3 – Gender &/or Family

Patriarchy is commonly critiqued as a systemic network of oppression in which males maintain key positions of power within public and private domains. Oppression exists whenever this status quo is challenged by women, children, as well as marginal and minority groups. Since Horror films essentially dramatize the return of the repressed, it’s no surprise that male power is constantly seen as ‘under threat’ within men-women relations as well as the family. Robin Wood claims that the vanquishing of the monster signifies a return to the status quo, and reactionary films can be distinguished from progressive ones by the “way in in which the monster is presented and defined” (29). For example, the sympathetic representation of the monster in Bride of Frankenstein, as many of you have pointed out, makes his death tragic. Thus the film is a progressive critique of the ruling class (occupied by Dr. Praetorius and Henry Frankenstein) and its oppressive dominion over the working class (the proletariat Monster).  

And yet, other readings (including Dika, Clover, Creed, Williams, Knee, and Sobchack) have demonstrated how the representation of the protagonist is also important. Dika sees Mina as an empowered female, and Clover and Creed see the Final Girl as a step forward from the clichéd trope of female=passive victim. Likewise, the families under threat in Psycho, The Brood, and The Shining are each in their own ways rendered dysfunctional. Even when the monster is defeated, then, the return to the status quo isn’t necessarily always a good thing. With reference to one or two of the aforementioned readings, analyze how a scene, film, or group of films represents the three-way connection between ‘monster’-‘protagonist’-‘status quo’ through the lens of gender and/or the family.

Remember that this entry can potentially work together with your earlier entries to compose part of a rough draft for your final essay. This assignment may be an extension of your earlier analysis, while you introduce the analytical layer of gender &/or family. (You may even write about the same scene, film, or topic, or you can change your focus to something else entirely.) Your blog entry must be 400-500 words and posted by 6pm Oct. 30th. If you experience any technical difficulty, email the text to your T.A. (nicole.gartner@stonybrook.edu) by the deadline. Late assignments will not be accepted.

Works Cited

Wood, Robin and. "The American Nightmare: Horror in the 1970s." Horror: The Film Reader.     

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