Analysis of the Horror, Noir and Road Genres

Below is a essay written around exploring the critical theories that could be applied to films in the Horror, Noir or Road Genres. This essay was a part of the Film Genre subsection of Film Studies and Film Production, and I was awarded a 65/100 for it.

Horror

Released in 1968, Night of the Living Dead (Romero) follows a group of survivors who must work together to survive when zombies begin walking the earth. This film can be analysed through the application of J.J. Cohen’s Monster theory (1996), where the monster featured in the film, the zombie, can be analysed through their meaning. Arguments made through this theory can also be enhanced using Robin Wood’s the return of the repressed (1984), a theory which sees when a horror film exposes what is repressed in the society, which is clearly prevalent in this film through its cultural and political themes.

Monster Theory analyses the horror film to see if it fits into many specific categories, each category that Night of the Living Dead clearly fits into. Firstly, the film can be analysed in the terms of, ‘The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body’ (Cohen 1996:4), with the zombie being classified as a clear metaphor for domestic racism in America. The lead survivor of the film, Ben (Duane Jones), is of African American descent and is the only survivor after the zombies are wiped out, only to be mistaken for a zombie and shot in the closing scene by a hunting mob. There is a sense that, ‘since Ben is mistaken for one of them at the end they could be also seen as representatives of a racial other that threatens white America’. (Cherry 2009: 179) This then also ties into how the film fits into another category, with how, ‘The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference’ (Cohen 1996:7), with the zombies being portrayed in the role of other. The zombie is an unclassifiable being, being both human and not human with how they are dead but somehow still living, and so it gets classed as not human by the mob. The fact that Ben gets classed as one of the zombies as well gives off the sense that he is being othered, that the threat of zombies is almost the same as the threat of racial diversity in white America. The movie represents the zombies as a threat to American society, and as a threat to the nuclear household, leaving the nuclear family dead and only the African American man alive from the zombie’s attacks. There is a sense that American society is not able to change or become inclusive when it sees things as what they view as other as a threat. The zombies almost act like a forced reset of American society as they, ‘destroy all the main characters but one, simply because they are incapable of change and will merely repeat the repressive patterns of the past.'(Schneider, Rothman and Andrew 2004: XVI)

The film also fits into the category of, ‘The Monster Always Escapes’ (Cohen 1996:5), with this film representing the mob as the true villains that get away in the end, murdering what they see as the monsters in the zombies. As Barry Keith Grant discusses, ‘who the living dead really are- not the lurching zombies but average folk like Harry Cooper, the sheriff and his men, and, ultimately, myself’. (Grant 2012: 144) American society is the true villains of the film, with the film using the zombies as clear victims of the unwelcoming American masses, they are attacked and seen as threat because they are different to the commonly accepted views of America, just as how Ben is different because of his race. This then ties into the film also fitting into the category of the, ‘Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire’ (Cohen 1996:17), there is a sense of taboo to the way the zombie acts, they eat human flesh and seek to infect everyone else to become one with them. This part of how the zombie acts is what really reflects how unwilling to change America is, they fear anyone who is different and who may cause a spread in changing beliefs to change the entire population into becoming something that the society does not accept. The film represents this even more when the nuclear family’s daughter is infected and kills her own mother, disrupting the normality of society when, ‘family members literally consume each other’. (Williams and Hammond 2006: 31)

This disruption of society can be explored more through Wood’s the return of the repressed, a critical theory that explores the otherness personified in horror cinema, with that otherness being a personification for what is repressed. The film fits into the narrative structure shown in this theory, with the film beginning with a repressed culture, a society that is thought as safe and normal because America has repressed any sort of difference. However, the repressed returns through the zombie who brings out commonly disregarded actions in violence and cannibalism, but also enacts the repressed culture and ideologies that Ben signifies by being the film’s protagonist. The film ends however with the repressive state of society being restored, with the mob wiping out the zombies and wiping out Ben, so the white society can no longer be threatened. The movie can even be seen as a reaction to America’s role in the Cold War, with the threat of the zombie as a metaphor for the threat of communism. The film takes a clear anti-patriotic viewpoint, exposing the way that American society views anything that goes against their established beliefs as villains, and then results to violence to wipe it out.

It is clear that George A.Romero’s film, Night of The Living Dead, can be analysed using the Monster Theory and the return of the repressed theory. Using these two theories, it can be exposed how the zombie has cultural and political symbolism as the role of the other, exposing the way America views anything that is thought of as different as a threat to society. The zombie can also be seen as being symbolic for the racial divisions in America, with the character of Ben being grouped in as a victim of the mob that kills the zombies, showing how America even views anything that is not white as a threat to normal society, a society that keeps anything different repressed.

Bibliography:

Cherry, B. 2009, Horror, London; New York: Routledge

Cohen, J.J.1996, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press

Grant, B.K. 2012, Film Genre Reader IV, Austin: University of Texas Press

Schneider, J.S, Rothman W and Andrew, D. 2004, Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press

Williams, L. and Hammond, M. 2004, Contemporary American Cinema, Maidenhead: Open University Press

Wood, R.2004, Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, Oxford: Scarecrow Press (might be wrong this reference)

Filmography:

Night of the Living Dead, [film] 1968 GEORGE A.ROMERO dir. USA Continental Distributing

Film Noir

The 2021 film Nightmare Alley (del Toro) follows conman Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) as he attempts to make money alongside psychiatrist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), who is more dangerous and manipulative than she seems. This film can be analysed through its use of the film noir convention of the femme fatale character, a character role that is usually characterised as an alluring and sexual woman who is dangerous to the male lead. The femme fatale character is commonly split between two different stock versions of the character, the alluring spider woman, represented by Lilith in the film, and the typical good girl, represented by the character of Mary (Rooney Mara). Alongside this, the film can also be analysed through its use of Freud’s Oedipus Complex (1910) in its character of Stan, a psychological study that analyses, ‘the wish of the adolescent to separate from the parents and the simultaneous struggle with the incestuous attraction’. (Gee 1991:193)

The spider woman character is commonly seen as a threat of sexual transgression for the male lead, and that’s true for the character of Lilith because of how easily she can manipulate Stan, he puts his marriage on the line for their work and gets left with nothing when Lilith betrays him. Femme fatales are commonly shown to, ‘control camera movement, seeming to direct the camera (and the hero’s gaze, with our own) irresistibility with them as they move’. (Kaplan 1998:56) This is true for Lilith, the camera is contained to her in her first scene when she outsmarts Stan in his own mind reading show, showing the sense of power she has by taking the camera focus from Stan. This is shown further through the evolution of her directional focus across the film, with her originally being viewed as a small speck in her meeting room, her and Stan are on the same level as they both stand. However, by the end of the film, she has overpowered him in the frame when her deception is revealed, their relationship has become unbalanced, clearly represented through how much of the frame she takes up and how only she stands now while Stan sits. This is all because the character falls into, ‘the typical femme fatale strategy that offers the performance of innocence by a woman that is finally undermined with the revelation that she is a duplicitous spider woman’. (Spicer and Hanson 2013:328) Lilith feigns innocence by the start of the film, exploiting Stan’s want for money and power to trap him in her web and removing his intelligence slowly across the film, common concepts that make up the spider woman character. Stan is shown to be an incredibly smart person, able to con so many people in high positions of power but the desire for, ‘the femme fatale figure muddies his thinking and threatens his investigative agency’. (Hanson 2007:29)

On the other hand, though, ‘femme fatales require a foil, not just the males they deceive, but a prim and proper good girl, less mysterious and erotic, but morally superior’, (Park 2011:102) and that’s the role that Mary plays in the film. The good girl character is usually signified as a threat of domesticity to the male character, with Mary playing into this by being a threat to the end of the conman work that Stan enjoys so much. Mary and Lilith are shown as complete opposites of each other, with Mary wanting Stan to leave the conman work all together but Lilith represents the chance to go further into the work, fuelling his desire for wealth and the rejection of domesticity. The power dynamic between Mary and Stan is also the opposite of his dynamic with Lilith, Stan is always shown at a higher stance to her, when they both work in the circus, Mary sits her for acts while Stan stands for his. Stan can even be read in the role of femme fatale in their relationship, he exploits Mary throughout the film and removes her smarts from her by convincing her to leave her family in the circus to be a con artist with him. Ultimately however, by the end of the film she leaves Stan when one specific con goes too far and shows that she has a level of intelligence to walk away from who is essentially her femme fatale partner. Mary and Lilith both leave him in the same state by the end of the film, his greed for more money and power leaves him with neither of the two women, putting them both in the end as both having more investigative agency than Stan.

Another way to analyse the characters of Lilith and Mary is through using Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex, a theory which is commonly focused around an adolescent teenager’s sexual development moving away from desiring the mother, however, ‘adolescence is not confined to teenagers’, (Gee 1991:193) and can therefore be used to analyse Stan’s sexual development. Both women in the film represent a motherly figure to Stan, with the child commonly desiring to replace the father role in the family, with Stan forcing Mary out of her circus family and therefore taking the father figure role for her. However, once Mary and Stan settle down, she threatens to castrate him from his phallic power through the threat of domestication and that’s how Lilith lures him in. Lilith forces Stan into Amour Fou, where he returns to a pre-Oedipal stage where he must depend on a mother figure to live, he is relying on Lilith now because of his sexual regression across the film. Stan lacks a motherly figure in his life, with him already killing his father in the past and replacing him in a sense, and the only way that he can fill the role of a mother is through repressing to a childish state in relationships.

In conclusion, the film Nightmare Alley can be analysed through its use of the femme fatale stock character and how it uses Freud’s Oedipus Complex. Through using these, it can be shown how both Lilith and Mary represent two sides of the femme fatale character, with them being the spider woman and good girl respectively, alongside how they both represent mother figures for Stan as he regresses to his pre-Oedipal stage. Through Mary as well, it can be seen how Stan represents a form of the femme fatale character for her, manipulating and removing peoples smarts himself, only to be defeated in the end by the threats of sexual transgression and domesticity.

Bibliography:

Gee H.1991, ‘The Oedipal complex in adolescence’: The Journal of Analytical Psychology v36 n2, London, Routledge

Hanson H.2007, Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film, London; New York: I.B. Tauris: In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan

Kaplan A, E.1998, Women in Film Noir, London: BFI Publishing

Park W.2011, What is Film Noir, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Group

Spicer, A and Hanson H.2013, A Companion to Film Noir, Chichester; West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell

Filmography:

Nightmare Alley, [film] 2021 GUILLERMO DEL TORO dir. USA Searchlight Pictures

The Road Movie

Released in 2009, Zombieland (Fleischer) follows four different individuals who are forced to come together as a new family when journeying in a zombie infested new world. The film can be analysed through Devin Oregon’s auteur study of David Lynch’s films (2002), with both Lynch’s Road movies and Zombieland both being part of the postmodern era of road movies. The road movies were commonly focused around the rejection of the American family and the act of self-discovery, while the postmodern films moved the genre to focusing instead on the American family and embracing a sense of togetherness. Alongside this, the postmodern road movies were more darkly comic, intertextually driven and reaffirming of patriarchal ideologies, postmodern tropes that this film challenges through its anti-masculine lead character and its more powerful female characters, but tropes the film also embraces through its intertextual references to films like Garfield (Hewitt).

Devin Oregon argues that postmodern road movies, mainly Lynch’s films provide, ‘protagonists with alternative families that, ultimately, bring them back to an appreciation of the traditional American family.’(Oregon 2002:32) This argument is challenged in ways by Zombieland, the film moves against the traditional American family and instead embraces the idea of found family, all four of the characters in the family serving roles that don’t confine themselves to the common idea of two children and two adults. However, the film still does confine itself to some forms of the American family, even if its not related by blood, the family still follows the typical ideal of having two male and two female members making up the family unit. Zombieland also challenges the typical expectations for a narrative in the postmodern era, by mixing both a classical road narrative with a postmodern one, the film’s main character Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has a journey of self-discovery as he becomes a more capable survivor, but he also develops alongside the family presented to him by the road, its both a film about connection through the postmodern era and a film about self-discovery more rooted in the classic road era. The film however also embraces the common trope of postmodern road movies through its use of intertextuality, constantly making jokes about Garfield and Bill Murray’s career. The narrative of Garfield, following a cat who must accept a dog into his family, mirrors Zombieland, where Garfield represents every character as they are forced to come together as found family, first rejecting each other only to embrace the ties by the end.

Zombieland follows a typical convention of the road film where, ‘whether in traditional exaltation of machismo, or as an exploration of masculine identity crisis, the bulk of the road movie genre seems to presuppose a focus on masculinity’. (Laderman 2002:21) The postmodern road movies are commonly rooted in patriarchal ideology, though this film has a clear challenge to the regular macho lead through the character of Columbus, a man who would rather run from the zombies than face them. He develops across the film to become a more skilled survivor, but starts the film completely opposite, using his brain to survive rather than his brawn. Through the character of Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) the film also explores the toxic masculinity side to the common macho lead, with him being a killer who is closed off to everyone else because of the death of his child. He is a more typical depiction of the male macho lead character found in the genre, exposing how unhealthy these expected character types are when they are closed off to be alone, as Tallahassee learns lessons to grow as a person from Columbus, the road allowing him to change into a more family-oriented hero.

It is argued commonly that women’s roles in the genre are as being, ‘simply left behind like dead weight, allowing the men to get on with being together, where it seems they are much happier’. (Archer 2016:35) However, this argument is clearly not true for the entire genre, Zombieland doesn’t only just challenge the postmodern patriarchal narrative but also challenges the common role of female characters in the road movie. Wichita (Emma Stone) is a clear showing of this challenge, she is the actual driving force of the narrative, rather than being left behind she is the one who leaves the male characters behind by stealing their car, forcing them to journey to try and catch up to her. She is shown to be more capable than both male characters, even more capable than the typical macho male character, being able to exploit their weaknesses to get what she wants from them. Within the road movie there is a clear link to the, ‘Western and the masculine ethos of the American frontier, with the open road symbolizing such notions as rugged individualism, freedom, weightlessness, mobility, equal access and self-transformation’. (Slethaug and Ford 2012:214) The Frontier narratives created the character of the westerner, a male protagonist who is individualistic and strong, with Columbus being a clear opposite of this character, with him requiring other people to help him survive when it comes to physical feats and with him being the clear nerdy character role rather than a typical hero. Wichita is the clear stand in for this Westerner role, she’s only out for herself and her sister, manipulating the people she meets to meet her own ends, with her going through a self-transformation to become more trusting. It is always argued that, ‘we know who the hero is because he is silent, gruff, masculine and a loner. There is little attempt to give them anything beyond these characteristics’. (Newton 2021:125) This argument really isn’t true in this film’s case, the lead hero is talkative and nerdy, what you wouldn’t expect from a typical hero and the two heroes who fill the typical role, Wichita, and Tallahassee, are examples of how this gruff and lonely hero is outdated, they are two characters that are forced to change across the film to be more like Columbus.

In conclusion, Zombieland can be analysed through Devin Storey’s study of David Lynch and through its use of postmodern road movie conventions. Analysing it through this way can show how it challenges and embraces the typical road movie story of self-exploration and family, and how it challenges the typical male hero found in the narrative through Columbus and its heroic qualities mainly been given to the female character, Wichita. Through its use of the genre convention of intertextuality as well, the film shows its themes of found family, with each member of the central family being comparable to the lead in Garfield.

Bibliography:

Archer N.2016, The Road Movie: In Search of Meaning, London: Wallflower

Laderman D.2002, Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press

Newton J.2021, The Mad Max Effort: Road Warriors in International Exploitation Cinema, New York: Bloomsbury Academic

Orgeron D.2002, ‘Revising the Postmodern American Road Movie’: David Lynch’s The Straight Story in Journal of Film and Video, vol.54, no.4 (Winter 2002)

Slethaug G, E and Ford S.2012, Hit the Road, Jack: Essays on the Culture of the American Road, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press

Filmography:

Garfield, [film] 2004 PETER HEWITT dir. USA 20th Century Fox

Zombieland, [film] 2009 RUBEN FLEISCHER dir. USA Sony Pictures Releasing