Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 6 No. 6, April 2002
Joan Hawkins
Revisiting the Philosophy of Horror
Special Edition on Horror,
2000 Edited by Daniel
Shaw ISSN 1073-0427 142 pp. When Laura Mulvey published
'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in 1975 she both
inaugurated feminist film theory and seemed to stop it in
its tracks. The essay was so good, so powerful, that for
years, it seemed, scholars could only adopt its terms and
apply them to other films. There were small correctives here
and there, of course. Mary Ann Doane attempted to account
for female spectatorship; E. Ann Kaplan began important work
on women directors working within the narrative tradition.
[1] For the most part, however, feminist film
scholarship done in the immediate wake of Mulvey's essay
simply extended her analysis. Even the essays which
attempted to address the problematic areas in Mulvey's text
(the issue of female spectators, for example), did so from
the standpoint of friendly critique. That is, they sought to
augment the work that Mulvey had done; they did not
challenge the basic premises of the essay.
[2] Noel Carroll's 1990 work
_The Philosophy of Horror; or, Paradoxes of the Heart_ has
had a similar effect on the discussion of philosophy and
horror. The first major work to appear on the subject, the
book simultaneously set the terms of the horror-philosophy
discussion and ended the debate. Carroll's work was so good
and so definitive that it seemed to leave little room for
further investigation. The unfortunate result is that not
much work has been done on horror and philosophy since 1990.
As Daniel Shaw notes in 'Power, Horror, and Ambivalence',
since the 90s, 'the most discussed solution to the
ambivalence problem [we like horror, but it also
terrifies and appalls us] in philosophic circles has
been Noel Carroll's' (5). _Film and Philosophy_'s
special edition on horror, therefore, constitutes something
of an event. Promising to re-open the discussion of
philosophy's relationship to horror, the volume includes
essays on both classic horror films covered in Carroll's
work (the most notable being _The Bride of Frankenstein_),
and films which have appeared in the decade since Carroll
first published his now-seminal text. As one might expect
from such a volume, the collection often reads like
something of a homage. It is a rare essay which does not
cite Carroll's work on ambivalence, and the majority of the
essays position themselves as augmenting or extending
Carroll's scholarship. That said, the volume does a
remarkable job (especially for so slim a text) of covering
new ground. Comprising essays on technology (sound and
special effects) as well as narrative, on uncanny art cinema
(Kieslowski's _The Double Life of Veronique_ and David
Lynch's _Lost Highway_) as well as horror films, the volume
goes a long way in opening up the generic category of horror
and expanding the range of topics we can discuss. In
addition, Daniel Shaw's essay, 'Power, Horror, and
Ambivalence', provides a good overview of the existing
scholarship in the field and lays out many of the issues and
problems which we have yet to address. For all these
reasons, the special edition would work well as an
introductory text and I hope the editors plan to release it
as a book. For me, the most interesting
essays are those which depart somewhat from discussions of
Carroll's work. One of the best essays in the collection,
for example, is Anat Pick's '_Third Man_, Fourth World: The
Fantastic Imagination of Orson Welles in Peter Jackson's
_Heavenly Creatures_'. _Heavenly Creatures_, Peter Jackson's
third feature, is about a famous New Zealand murder case. In
1954 two teenage girls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme (the
New Zealand mystery writer Anne Perry), battered Pauline's
mother, Honora Parker, to death using a brick wrapped in a
stocking. The girls had become
*obsessively* close and had increasingly retreated into a
kind of fantasy world, and Mrs Parker planned to separate
them by sending Pauline away. The girls stood trial and were
found guilty, but because of their young age they were
spared the death penalty. Both spent time in prison and were
later released on condition that they never see each other
again. As Pick notes, 'the affair was particularly
scandalous due to the insinuation that the girls were
romantically involved' (24). There's plenty in this film
to write about: the *obsessive* friendship of the girls and
the way in which their physical intimacy is portrayed, the
depiction of female violence, matricide, and even the
relationship of image to written and spoken text (Pauline's
diaries). What Pick chooses to focus on, however, is the
element of fantasy in the girls' relationship, particularly
the role which Orson Welles plays in that fantasy world. Not
only does the film include actual scenes from Carol Reed's
_The Third Man_ (1949), in which Welles plays the compelling
if unscrupulous character of Harry Lime, but it also depicts
the figure of Welles taking over the girls' fantasy world.
In one particularly dizzying scene, Welles himself comes to
stand in for everything that seems forbidden and exciting to
the girls. As Pauline bends over to kiss Juliet, the shadow
she casts on the wall of her bedroom is that of Orson
Welles. When the girls finally do embrace, Pauline is
transformed before our eyes into Welles himself. As Pick
notes, 'this, surely is a *queer* moment all round'
(27). Pick explores the
representation of Orson Welles as a fantasmatic figure in
both the girls' diegetic imaginary world and in the
cinematic unconscious of the film itself. For Welles, as
Pick is well aware, 'has become a symbol of the demonic' in
cinema (26). All of those who worked with Welles have talked
of his 'magician's method' and his flamboyance. Scandals
dogged his _War of the Worlds_ broadcast and _Citizen Kane_.
And his final film project (in Brazil) so frightened the
studio bosses that they stopped production and put all the
film cans in storage (for more on this, see the documentary,
_It's All True_). _Heavenly Creatures_ exploits Welles's
demonic reputation throughout the film, and uses it to make
an interesting link between adolescent sexual fantasy and
intertextuality. In a very real way, intertextuality is
fantasy in this film, as Welles becomes a fantasmatic figure
which links the protagonists' diegetic imaginary world to
the repressed history of cinema itself. Moving gracefully
from Stanley Cavell's comparison of dreams to film, to
Freud's _Interpretations of Dreams_, and finally to
LaPlanche and Pontalis's reworking of Freud, Pick explores
the way in which _Heavenly Creatures_ uses intertextuality
(the scenes from _The Third Man_) as fantasy and thereby
establishes the screen itself as the 'site in which the
cinematic explores its own pathology' (28), through the
wunderkind/monster figure of Welles. It's a beautifully
written and beautifully argued essay, one of the best I've
read on Jackson's marvellous film. _Heavenly Creatures_ is an
interesting film to include here, since the film blurs the
lines between the types of horror which Daniel Shaw
delineates in 'Power, Horror, and Ambivalence': 1, a sort of
'power-driven' horror, in which the audience derives
pleasure from the sheer power and control of the monster or
serial killer, and 2, 'nihilistic horror', in which the
monster or serial killer seems to be out of control, and
therefore powerless. In speaking of 'nihilistic horror',
Shaw writes, 'deeply disturbing and hence
not as pleasurable as the bulk of horror films we have been
discussing, works of nihilistic horror provide the negative
to the positive image of monsters and serial killers that I
have been contending comes from their power. Our response to
nihilistic horror is different precisely because it denies
us the pleasure of identifying with truly powerful (human)
protagonists and superhuman antagonists. Like a deer caught
in the headlights on a pitch black night, we quiver at the
prospect of such an absurd and meaningless fate'
(11). _Heavenly Creatures_ muddies
this divide between a kind of pleasurable Nietzschean ('will
to power') horror and a distinctly unpleasurable nihilistic
horror by constantly shifting registers. For many
cinephiles, the figure of Welles -- demonized here --
certainly does lend a Nietzschean frisson of
pleasure-in-power to what is otherwise a story about the
hopelessness and helplessness of adolescent love (and the
general powerlessness of adolescents). I'm not sure,
however, that one could really call _Heavenly Creatures_
'nihilistic' -- that is, I'm not sure where the film would
fall on Shaw's continuum of pleasure/unpleasure. In part,
this is the inevitable problem with drawing binaries. The
drawing of the binary line invites readers to look for
examples which fall outside, or otherwise contaminate, the
categories. In part, however, it's a problem with the term
'nihilism' itself, a term which operates in such
contradictory registers that it needs far more unpacking
than Shaw is able to give it here. One article which does
attempt to unpack the term and explore nihilism in depth is
Kevin Stoehr's article 'Kubrick and Ricoeur on Nihilistic
Horror'. Stoehr begins his article with a discussion of Paul
Ricoeur's work on evil and defilement, but then moves beyond
Ricoeur to explore the full philosophical implications of
the invocation of 'nihilistic horror' in the films of
Stanley Kubrick (all of his films, not just his 'horror'
title, _The Shining_). As Ricoeur defines it, defilement 'is
a primordial, pre-ethical, pre-conceptual level of
confession' (89), and one which Stoehr believes most
tellingly captures 'the genuine meaning of nihilistic horror
as the richest and most potent species of horror . . . with
defilement, we enter into the reign of Terror' (89). It is
this type of terror which Stoehr claims is usually
experienced in the modern world as an 'experience of fault
and limitation' (89) which characterizes so much of
Kubrick's work. Stoehr uses Nietzsche to
complicate the term 'nihilistic horrors'. As Stoehr reminds
us, Nietzsche makes a clear distinction between active and
passive nihilism: 'He tells us that passive or negative
('incomplete') nihilism is a rejection of seemingly fixed
values *without* the spiritedness which allows one to
transform himself into a self-creator.' (90) In other words,
for Nietzsche, only passive nihilism has the negative
connotations which Shaw ascribes to 'nihilistic horror'.
Active nihilism, on the other hand, 'is the process of
undergoing passive nihilism and rising above mere
resentment, thereby acquiring the principle of creative
life-affirmation in the face of existential and spiritual
crisis' (90). It is this latter form of nihilism which
Stoehr sees in Kubrick's work. (To put it another way, Shaw
sees 'nihilistic horror' as necessarily imbricated in
Nietzsche's regime of passive nihilism, whereas for Stoehr,
'nihilistic horror' can be informed by a Nietzschean active
nihilism). In discussing what,
precisely, he means by 'existential and spiritual crisis',
Stoehr departs from Nietzsche and Ricoeur, and complicates
their ideas with a discussion of Heidegger. He is
particularly interested in Heidegger's theories of primal
anxiety -- the dread 'which is not a fear of anything in
particular, but rather the experience of the threat of
*no-thing in particular*, of the world as such' (91) -- and
his elaboration of 'transformational terror'. In fact, one
of the strongest sections of the essay deals with
Heidegger's notion of 'transformational terror', a terror
which is produced by 'confrontation with the utterly
irrational and amoral, with the savage and otherworldly'
(92). It is this terror (the terror which many of us
experienced on September 11) which forces us into an
'absolute acknowledgment of sheer contingency' (92), the
necessary precondition and cause of existential
angst. The case which Stoehr makes
for a nihilistic horror grounded in existential angst is
compelling, and his use of Kubrick's films to illustrate his
points make for a highly interesting read -- from both a
theoretical/philosophical and film-crit standpoint. That is,
the readings of Kubrick's films are good, and would seem so,
I suspect, even to readers not particularly interested in
the theoretical and philosophical framework of the article.
For those of us who *are* interested in nihilistic horror
and existentialism, however, this approach to Kubrick's work
is dynamite. For Stoehr, 'nihilism arises
on the cultural, historical and political plane only *after*
the realities of ethical and religious life have been
formulated and evaluated. But the terrifying negativity of
nihilistic existence is anchored in primal experiences that
are pre-cultural, pre-theological and even pre-historical'
(91); it is a 'primordial encounter with the impure' (92).
Nihilistic horror, then, is both 'a unique mode of horror
that sometimes emerges in our pre-philosophical awareness of
contemporary life' (90) and the necessary result of the
post-philosophical awareness of contingency. It is a state
that is at once hypo- and hyper-philosophical. This is a
Heideggerian reading complicated with implied references to
both Freud and Levi-Strauss, and it is one that has
implications beyond the films of Kubrick or the horror genre
in general. I have discussed this essay
at length, not only because it is an elegantly complex piece
of work but because its inclusion here highlights one of the
strengths of the volume. Throughout this _Film and
Philosophy_ special issue we encounter pairs and groups of
essays which seem to enter into dialogue with each other.
Here Stoehr's essay seems to do a kind of double duty, as it
complicates both Shaw's earlier discussion of 'nihilistic
horror' (which Shaw, unlike Stoehr, finds unsatisfying) and
Tarja Laine's discussion of _The Shining_ (the essay which
immediately precedes Stoehr's in the volume). Tarja Laine's essay on
Kubrick, 'Empathy, Sympathy, and the Philosophy of Horror in
_The Shining_', is not as philosophically challenging as
Stoehr's piece, but her reading of the film, and
particularly her discussion of camera work (its visual
grammar), is excellent. The essay takes off from Noel
Carroll's assertion that a horror film may provoke a
sympathetic emotional response on the part of the viewer,
but 'this response is not based on identification', so 'an
empathic response seems impossible' (72). Linking empathy to
identification or emotional proximity, Carroll argues that
horror is frequently characterized by 'a distance, an
asymmetry, between the spectator's emotion and the
character's emotion' (72); it is this distance which renders
empathy impossible. Laine, on the other hand, argues that
empathy requires both identification and distance, and uses
Kubrick's _The Shining_ to make her point. In a way, this
seems like a slender thread on which to hang an entire
essay, but it permits her to explore the paradoxical
emotions which come into play in any good horror film,
particularly in _The Shining_. Again, it's her reading of
the film which is stunning here, most notably her discussion
of the terrifying end. As I mentioned above, the
way the volume pairs Laine and Stoehr's essays creates a
kind of dialogue on Kubrick, that has a certain
philosophical resonance in and of itself. A second pairing
of essays similarly opens a discussion (or, in this case, a
debate) on the use of the uncanny in Krzystof Kieslowski's
_The Double Life of Veronique_. By juxtaposing Cynthia
Freeland's cognitivist essay, 'Explaining the Uncanny in
_The Double Life of Veronique_', against Steven Schneider's
compelling psychoanalytic discussion (he uses Otto Rank's
work on the doppelganger), the editor highlights not only
what each approach can bring to a difficult film text, but
also the ways in which each theoretical 'take' either
complements or truly challenges the other. In explaining the
cognitivist approach, Cynthia Freeland states bluntly that
she rejects psychoanalysis 'as an outmoded theory of the
mind' (34), and that she plans to analyze the uncanny
elements in _The Double Life of Veronique_ 'without
resorting to unconscious motivations or repressed beliefs'
(35). I think I should state at the outset that I'm much
more sympathetic to Steven Schneider's view that 'Freud's
theory of the uncanny, including his account of the double,
is 'metaphysical' (because untestable) rather than genuinely
scientific in nature' (58). That is, I'm not convinced that
we need to jettison Freudian models of interpretation -- as
analytical tools for exploring meaningful and often
mythological allegories of experience -- just because it
falls scientifically short of cognitive theories of the
mind. But, while I don't agree with Freeland's *general*
statements about the usefulness or relevance of
psychoanalytic theory as an analytic tool, I do believe she
is correct in her assertion that psychoanalytic theories of
the uncanny are inadequate to providing a complete reading
of this film. It's Freeland's analysis of
the textual elements in _The Double Life of Veronique_ --
elements which, for her, fall outside the purview of Freud's
theories -- that makes the article so good. Freeland's
discussion of the number of scenes in the film which
juxtapose eroticism with grief, and art with contingency, is
excellent. And her observation that there are 'echoes of
Kant's theories of the sublime in Freud's theory of the
uncanny' (42) is beautifully made and supported. She
provides a compelling discussion of reflexivity in the film,
arguing that _The Double Life of Veronique_ 'presents a
puzzling breakdown of the medium of representation -- here,
of course, film' (43). Finally, she draws a nice contrast
between this self-conscious, reflexive, aesthetic aspect of
the film and the film's use of gender. As Freeland argues,
_The Double Life of Veronique_ is a 'film permeated by
sensibility and emotions' (44). In a way, it can be read as
a 'woman's film' -- not in the sense of melodrama, but
rather in the sense of being a film organized around certain
perceptual structures which it identifies as
feminine. Steven Schneider's
'Manifestations of the Literary Double in Modern Horror
Cinema' *looks* likes it going to be about David
Cronenberg's disturbing doppelganger tale, _Dead Ringers_ (a
still from the film 'introduces' the article). Instead,
however, it's about the larger theme of the double in
literature and film. In a sense the article opens with a
double quotation -- the still from _Dead Ringers_ and a
quote from Lawrence Rickel's marvelous book, _The Vampire
Lectures_: 'Literature which is where
the phantasm of the double used to be at home . . . in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during the opening era
of the uncanny, suddenly released the double and no longer
featured it. At the same time film and psychoanalysis were
the two new institutions that began attending to the double
feature' (51). As Schneider points out,
'neither film nor psychoanalysis attended to this double
feature in isolation from one another' (51). Using a 1914
paper by Otto Rank to make his transition, he asks 'by
virtue of what do doubles engender such [uncanny]
effects in viewers?' (51) And he announces his plans to
'present and defend a psychoanalytic answer to this
question' (51). Now, lest the reader think
this is going to be some stuffy traditional adumbration of
doppelganger motifs, we have the opening Rickels quotation
to set the tone. Where Schneider takes us in his exploration
of a 'distinctly doubling phenomenon' -- which he elsewhere
calls 'uncanny realism' (52) -- is all over the
psychological and philosophical map. Like much of
Schneider's work, this essay is a bravura theoretical
performance as much as it is a good solid *explication*.
Schneider directly engages Cynthia Freeland's article at the
end of his own piece, answering some of her objections to
the psychoanalytic approach (57-60). Not only is this
interesting to read, but it adds a level of discursivity
usually lacking in anthologies of this kind. By juxtaposing
certain essays and putting them into play with each other,
editor Daniel Shaw situates the volume within a larger
theoretical and methodological debate currently raging
within film studies. A final pairing of essays,
on art-horror, occurs at the end of the volume. Chris Meyers
and Sara Waller's 'Disenstorted Horror: Art Horror Without
Narrative' uses Noel Carroll's _The Philosophy of Horror_ to
discuss painting and other non-narrative forms of horrific
art. While many definitions of horror as a genre (most
notably Robin Wood's) rely on the presence of a monster or a
threat, Meyers and Waller argue that such definitions come
'from identifying horror too closely with *narrative*
horror' (122) and with narrative traditions. Turning their
attention to the graphic arts -- Gustave Moreau's
'Apparition', Edvard Munch's 'The Scream', Ivan Albright's
'The Picture of Dorian Gray', the paintings of Francis
Bacon, and Hans Bellmer's dolls, to cite a few examples --
they elaborate a definition of horror which relies more on
affect (the presence of anxiety or dread in both the
artwork's subject and in the viewer) than on simple cause
and effect narrative logic. I found myself wishing that this
essay had been longer and that Meyers and Waller had
complicated their use of Carroll with the work of other
theorists (Freud on the uncanny and Bataille on the
'informe', for example). But on the whole this is a graceful
piece that reopens a number of interesting questions
touching on both the aesthetics and epistemological
grounding of horror qua horror. Richard Gilmore's 'Horror
and Death at the Movies' follows nicely from Meyers and
Waller's essay. Like Schneider's earlier piece on the
double, 'Horror and Death at the Movies' opens with a still,
this time from David Lynch's _Lost Highway_, and a quote,
this time by Virgil: 'Death plucks my ear and says / Live --
I am coming.' This is the first of several places throughout
the essay where the postmodern is juxtaposed with the
'classical' (a later discussion of Adorno and the ancient
Greeks is introduced by a quote from Baudrillard, for
example), as though this essay were physically demonstrating
Meyers and Waller's assertion that an 'epistemological
defect' -- a certain failure of the classical model -- is
'essential to horror' (118). Certainly the still from _Lost
Highway_ resonates nicely with Meyers and Waller's key
points. Lynch's film demonstrates that even narrative films
may rely more on an atmosphere of anxiety and dread than on
any diegetic *representation* of a monster or
threat. Gilmore follows Meyer and
Waller's lead in engaging with Noel Carroll's work, but then
moves on to consider Freud, Plato, Nietzsche, and Adorno.
The key issue here is twofold (or perhaps threefold). On the
simplest level, Gilmore wants to reopen the 'ambivalence'
issue, asking 'what is it in us or about us that makes us
(or at least *some* of us) so responsive to horror movies?'
(128). But he also wants to revisit the two key paradoxes
which Noel Carroll identified in _The Philosophy of Horror_:
'1) how can anyone be frightened by what they know does not
exist, and 2) why would anyone be interested in horror,
since being horrified is so unpleasant' (128). While Gilmore's examination
of the paradox of pleasure (drawing on such diverse thinkers
as Konrad Lorenz, Ermano Bencivenga, and Freud) is
interesting, the heart of the essay is really his discussion
of movies and death. 'Death', as the epigram from
Baudrillard reminds us, 'is a rendez-vous', and Gilmore
shines when he describes just what a strange rendez-vous it
is. I particularly liked his discussion of Zizek's essay on
_Lost Highway_, a discussion which stands as essential
reading for anyone interested in either Zizek or
Lynch. Two essays in the collection
deal specifically with formal cinematic elements and
technology. James Wierzbicki's 'Wedding Bells for _The Bride
of Frankenstein_: Symbols and Signifiers in the Music for a
Classic Horror Film' discusses an egregiously undertheorized
aspect of cinema -- sound. Positing a semiotic theory, 'i.e.
that most horrific triggers in Western theatrical music are
signifiers contained within the music itself', Wierzbicki
argues: 'These signifiers exist as anomalies within the
so-called 'tonal' system upon which Western art music since
1600 has been based, and they owe their potency to the fact
that they are *recognized* as anomalous.' (104) While I'm not convinced by
Wierzbicki's argument that our response to the 'uh-oh' music
of horror isn't a learned response, I do find his analysis
of the music in _Bride of Frankenstein_ compelling. And his
parental interjections -- discussing the ways in which the
theme for the article came to him and the way in which he
had to work (with a toddler sitting on his lap) -- will
bring a chuckle of appreciative recognition to anyone who's
ever worked at home when the bambini are present. More successful, I think, is
Patrick Crogan's 'Things Analog and Digital' which uses the
writings of Vivian Sobchack and Samuel Weber to explore some
of the meanings created by special effects and computer
graphics imagery. For Sobchack, the world of special effects
is an uncanny realm. For Weber, it opens a space in which
the image itself can be theatricalized. Crogan elegantly
interweaves these two modes of viewing the 'altered' image
to assert that 'the special effect always shows us not only
the thing it represents, but the 'presence of
representation', as a medium through which we're shown
things' (13). That is, special effects are always about the
regime of representation itself and the status of the image
within that regime. The 'case studies' part of
the article considers special effects technology from two
significant 'effects' films: John Carpenter's _The Thing_
(1982) and James Cameron's _Terminator 2: Judgement Day_
(1991). These films 'represent the epitome of work that was
achievable through special effects at the time they were
made' (14); Carpenter's film utilized analog effects and
_T2_ used digital technology. Since both modes of special
effects (analog and digital) 'theatricalise the film's work
of imaging things in general . . . taken together they can
provide some insight into the shifts that are in train
between an analog and a digital space of cinematic
representation' (14). Unlike many essays which simply use a
theoretical frame to set the stage for what essentially
amounts to a close reading of a text, Crogan turns his test
cases into complex discussions of the ways in which
different forms of technology work to destabilize the
'positioning of the subject and the object' (19).
Specifically, Crogan argues, _T2_'s digitally produced
effects 'theatricalise a major transition in the cinematic
image' (16), a transition which made later changes in genre
itself (which Crogan dubs 'hypergenericity')
possible. Lastly, there's the question
of perversion and spectatorship. Michael Levine's 'Depraved
Spectators and Impossible Audiences', reopens the question
of ambivalence (the spectator who enjoys being scared) as it
is articulated by Berys Gaut, and gives it more of a
psychoanalytic twist. Interacting with both Laura Mulvey's
essay on visual pleasure and Carol Clover's writing on
horror, Levine attempts to complicate the discussion of the
'depraved spectator', one whose 'sadistic and masochistic
impulses may become mobilised transiently while watching
movies' (65). Similarly, Daniel Shaw's 'Power, Horror, and
Ambivalence' introduces the major theories that have
dominated discussions of viewer response to horror, and
examines some of the larger philosophical questions which
they've omitted. Tracing a horror trajectory which includes
such diverse thinkers as Robin Wood, Carol Clover, William
Paul, Isabel Christina Pinedo, Michael Ryan and Douglas
Kellner, and Noel Carroll, Shaw provides a splendid
introductory essay for anyone working in the
field. Two minor quibbles -- both
Daniel Shaw's 'Introduction' and his essay 'Power, Horror,
and Ambivalence' raised my hopes that the volume would
explore the relationship between horror and Nietzsche's will
to power (i.e. use Nietzschean ideas to explore significant
power tropes in horror). While 'Power, Horror, and
Ambivalence' and a number of other essays do provide some of
that exploration (as evidenced by my earlier account of the
debate over nihilist horror), the volume doesn't go nearly
far enough for my taste -- and the Nietzschean connection
remains an area which I hope subsequent volumes will mine
more fully. Secondly, many of the authors in the volume
appear to present 'pleasure' as a largely reified and
undifferentiated category -- that is pleasure appears to be
the same for all horror fans, regardless of their class,
gender, race, and personal histories. Some of the best
non-philosophical work in horror, in my opinion, is
currently being done by people like Jeffrey Sconce and Mark
Jancovitch, who have been heavily influenced by Pierre
Bourdieu's writings on the relationship between taste,
pleasure, and class. That is, some of the best work on
horror is being done by people who want to complicate the
discussion of 'pleasure' as a category. While some of the
essays in this volume (most notably Michael Levine's and
Richard Gilmore's) do challenge conventional notions of
pleasure, I hope that subsequent work in the field will
interact more with the sociologically-inflected studies
taking place within other branches of film studies, and
perhaps with some of the Deleuzian articulations explored by
Gaylyn Studlar. [3] As I said earlier, these are
areas which I hope *subsequent* horror-philosophy
anthologies will take up -- suggestions for future work. For
now, this volume remains an important contribution to an
area of investigation which has lain dormant too long, and
it should be of interest to students and professors of both
philosophy and film studies. Indiana University,
Bloomington, USA Footnotes 1. Mary Ann Doane, _The
Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s_
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1987). E. Ann Kaplan, _Women and Film: Both Sides of the
Camera_ (New York and London: Methuen, 1983). 2. This has changed. In
recent years a number of scholars have challenged Mulvey's
view that women can only be the object of a sadistic or
fetishistic gaze onscreen, and that *only* women can be the
object of such a gaze. For more on this see: Carol J.
Clover, _Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern
Horror Film_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992);
Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, eds, Screening the Male:
Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (London and New
York: Routledge, 1993); Gaylyn Studlar, 'Masochism and the
Perverse Pleasure of the Cinema', and Andrea Weiss, 'A Queer
Feeling When I Look at You', both in Gerald Mast, Marhsall
Cohen, and Leo Braudy, eds, _Film Theory and Criticism_
Fourth Edition (Oxford, Toronto et. al: Oxford University
Press, 1992). 3. Gaylyn Studlar,
'Masochism and the Perverse Pleasure of the
Cinema'. Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2002 Joan Hawkins, 'Revisiting
the Philosophy of Horror', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 6,
April 2002
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n6hawkins>.
Save as Plain Text Document...Print...Read...Recycle
Join the Film-Philosophy salon,
and receive the journal articles via email as they are published. here
Film-Philosophy (ISSN 1466-4615)
PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD, England
Contact: editor@film-philosophy.com
Back to the Film-Philosophy homepage
