Horror Movies As A Part Of American Popculture

Author : Sarah Rehberg
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638626857
Total Pages : 18 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Horror movies as a part of American Popculture written by Sarah Rehberg and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institut für Angelistik und Amerikanistik), course: American Beliefs and Popular Culture, language: English, abstract: “Fear is the most powerful emotion in the human race and fear of the unknown is probably the most ancient. You are dealing with stuff everybody has felt...If you are making a horror film, you get to play with the audiences feelings.” John Carpenter Horror movies originate from fictional work that portrays the dark side of life with the primary aim of frightening and terrifying its audience. By presenting horrifying images, of several incorporating sub-genres and repeated themes, such as vampires and werewolves, demonic possessions, evil children, cannibals and zombies, alien invasion and mindcontrol, film makers like John Carpenter create a world where the worst nightmares become true. According to the adolescents who are providing the genre’s target group, monster movies always deal with the irresistible temptation of the unknown and forbidden, and therefore shock with a horrific impact of terrifying elements. (...) Since horror and monster movies stand for an important part of the American film industry and with it of its popular culture throughout the last eight decades, it is useful to look at the development of the horror genre in its historical and cultural context, and thus to focus again on the question of interpretive perspective. As horror movies, despite all obscurity, still deal with real fears of a society or the urge to break with social conventions, concentrating on the change of themes, styles and characters of the genre, means to learn more about the American collective consciousness and what was bothering a whole society during the 20th century.

Author : Emilia Wendykowska
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3656228582
Total Pages : 12 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American culture and perception of women in horror movies written by Emilia Wendykowska and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-07-02 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: A, University of Malta, language: English, abstract: Horror genre has its origins in the gothic 19th century novels like Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or John Polidori’s The Vampire (1819). Even though horror movie is a typical European genre, it has a long history in American cinema dating back to 1915 silent movie Les Vampires by Freuillade and to one of the first sound movies from 1931, Tod Browning’s famous Dracula. Horror movies may be put into three categories: ones that contain the supernatural elements, in which vampires, ghosts, witchcraft appears; psychological horror, which relies on characters’ fears, their guilt or beliefs; and massacre movies, with scenes of slaughter, brutality and rough treatment (Cinema Studies 184). Although horror movies, as an element of mass culture, may be perceived as simplistic, predictable, lacking depth and simply being an unworthy for analysis, there is a great deal of films that in its content reflect the contemporary problems that occurred in the American society. While many critics consider horror genre as a “low culture,” one must not fail to notice that its significance is enormous. One can sense an inextricable link between film and social concerns, since the role of the film is to project certain fears and concerns of contemporary society as well as to help people to resolve them. As Prawer observed: "If the terror film is thus connected to our social concerns, it also, paradoxically, helps us to cope with our ordinary life by jolting us out of it" (60). A popular opinion has it that the popularity of horror movies increases along with the disturbance experienced by the society. Since the 20th century is perceived as the era of the constant social upheaval, the history of the horror movie equals the history of the anxiety (Wells 3); hence, the time the cultural chaos erupts, the audience turns to horror movies as a means that liberates them from their anxiety. As Phillips asserts, “anxiety tends to promote a sense of helplessness; fear, on the other hand, provides an impetus for change” (9). Thus, the fear evoked by the slasher film, one is forced to invent new ways of coping with his or her difficulties, since a typical way of thinking will occur not only problematic but also troublesome.

Author : Kendall R. Phillips
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313017964
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Projected Fears written by Kendall R. Phillips and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-04-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Movie audiences seem drawn, almost compelled, toward tales of the horrific and the repulsive. Partly because horror continues to evolve radically—every time the genre is deemed dead, it seems to come up with another twist—it has been one of the most often-dissected genres. Here, author Kendall Phillips selects ten of the most popular and influential horror films—including Dracula, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, The Silence of the Lambs, and Scream, each of which has become a film landmark and spawned countless imitators, and all having implications that transcend their cinematic influence and achievement. By tracing the production history, contemporary audience response, and lasting cultural influence of each picture, Phillips offers a unique new approach to thinking about the popular attraction to horror films, and the ways in which they reflect both cultural and individual fears. Though stylistically and thematically very different, all of these movies have scared millions of eager moviegoers. This book tries to figure out why.

Author : Steffen Hantke
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 160473454X
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Horror Film written by Steffen Hantke and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creatively spent and politically irrelevant, the American horror film is a mere ghost of its former self—or so goes the old saw from fans and scholars alike. Taking on this undeserved reputation, the contributors to this collection provide a comprehensive look at a decade of cinematic production, covering a wide variety of material from the last ten years with a clear critical eye. Individual essays profile the work of up-and-coming director Alexandre Aja and reassess William Malone’s much-maligned Feardotcom in the light of the torture debate at the end of President George W. Bush’s administration. Other essays look at the economic, social, and formal aspects of the genre; the globalization of the US film industry; the alleged escalation of cinematic violence; and the massive commercial popularity of the remake. Some essays examine specific subgenres—from the teenage horror flick to the serial killer film and the spiritual horror film—as well as the continuing relevance of classic directors such as George A. Romero, David Cronenberg, John Landis, and Stuart Gordon. Essays deliberate on the marketing of nostalgia and its concomitant aesthetic and on the curiously schizophrenic perspective of fans who happen to be scholars as well. Taken together, the contributors to this collection make a compelling case that American horror cinema is as vital, creative, and thought-provoking as it ever was.

Author : Samantha Holland
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1787698971
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film written by Samantha Holland and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, examining how and if representations of gender in horror have changed.

Author : B. Murphy
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137353724
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture written by B. Murphy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture argues that complex and often negative initial responses of early European settlers continue to influence American horror and gothic narratives to this day. The book undertakes a detailed analysis of key literary and filmic texts situated within consideration of specific contexts.

Author : B. Murphy
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137353724
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture written by B. Murphy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture argues that complex and often negative initial responses of early European settlers continue to influence American horror and gothic narratives to this day. The book undertakes a detailed analysis of key literary and filmic texts situated within consideration of specific contexts.

Author : Karrȧ Shimabukuro
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1835532810
Total Pages : 149 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Horror That Haunts Us written by Karrȧ Shimabukuro and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-15 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror’s pleasures fundamentally hinge on looking backward, either on destabilising trauma, or as a period of comfort and happiness which is undermined by threat. However, this stretches beyond the scares on our screens to the consumption and criticism of the monsters of our past. The horror films of our youth can be locations of psychological and social trauma, or the happy place we go back to for comfort when our lives become unsettled. Horror That Haunts Us: Nostalgia, Revisionism, and Trauma in Contemporary American Horror is a collection of essays that brings together multiple theoretical and critical approaches to consider the way popular horror films from the last fifty years communicate, embody, and rework our view of the past. Whether we look at our current relationship to the scary movies of decades ago as personal or cultural memory, the way historical and sociopolitical events and frameworks – especially traumas – reframe the way we look at our pasts, or even the way recent horror films and video games look back at our past (and the past of the genre itself) through a filter of experience and history, this collection will show the close relationship between nostalgia and popular horror. These essays also demonstrate a range of unique and diverse points of view from both established and emerging scholars on the subject of horror and the past. Edited by seasoned horror experts Karrá Shimabukuro and Wickham Clayton, Horror That Haunts Us is a book with the aim of examining why we return again and again to certain popular horror films, either as remakes or reboots or as the basis for pastiche and homage.

Author : Cynthia Hendershot
Publisher : Popular Press
ISBN 13 : 9780879728502
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book I was a Cold War Monster written by Cynthia Hendershot and published by Popular Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror films provide a guide to many of the sociological fears of the Cold War era. In an age when warning audiences of impending death was the order of the day for popular nonfiction, horror films provided an area where this fear could be lived out to its ghastly conclusion. Because enemies and potential situations of fear lurked everywhere, within the home, the government, the family, and the very self, horror films could speak to the invasive fears of the cold war era. I Was a Cold War Monster examines cold war anxieties as they were reflected in British and American films from the fifties through the early sixties. This study examines how cold war horror films combined anxiety over social change with the erotic in such films as Psycho, The Tingler, The Horror of Dracula, and House of Wax.

Author : JR. Forasteros
Publisher : IVP Books
ISBN 13 : 9780830845149
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Empathy for the Devil written by JR. Forasteros and published by IVP Books. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we have anything in common with the bad guys of the Bible? In this fictionalized narrative, JR. Forasteros reintroduces us to some of the most villainous characters in Scripture, with figures such as Cain, Jezebel, King Herod, Sampson and Delilah, and even Satan serving as cautionary tales of sin and temptation. Take a fresh look at the scoundrels of Scripture with this vivid mix of story and biblical exposition.