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Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Gayle OBrien
Declaration
1
___________________________________
Date:
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Abstract:
The aim of this investigation was to analyse the horror genre from a psychoanalytical
perspective with the intention of broadening the readers understanding the connection
between horror films and psychoanalysis. Theories of key analytical thinkers Jacques Lacan
and Sigmund Freud were utilized, and applied to examples from modern and postmodern
horror films. For the sake of clarity, this study was limited mainly to US horror cinema.
Spectatorship patterns were was also analytically studied. Strong links were found to exist
between the psychoanalysis and horror.
3
Table of Contents
Introduction
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
7
7
10
12
14
17
18
Jacques Lacan
Lacans Mirror Stage
Symbolic Gaze: Lacans Anamorphic Skull
Spectatorship and the Gaze
Desire is desire for the Other
Fundamental Fantasy
Abjection
2.
Sigmund Freud
1.7 Freuds Uncanny Horror
1.8 Death Instinct
1.9 Dreams as the Royal Road to the Unconscious
Conclusion
21
21
25
26
Bibliography
31
29
Introduction:
Nothing is what it seems in horror cinema. Because of this horror films assert that not
everything can, or should be dealt with in rational terms. We go to the movies to be scared.
The genre plays on the emotions of their viewers. People do not search for real forms of
horror in their lives, so why is it that so many people find pleasure in fictionalized horror?
The aim of this dissertation was to examine representation and effect of the horror genre. I
wish to accessibly and convincingly demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalytical theory for
an analysis of the horror genre. Freudian and Lacanian theory will be critiqued, with close
reference to a number of horror films and genres. The dissertation will begin with an insight
into the theories of Jacques Lacan. Lacan separates the unconscious into a triad consisting of
the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, aspects of each will be explored. The imaginary
order manifests in the mirror stage. Symbolic order is in conjunction with language and
culture. The Real is the impossible space outside language, that which resists all endeavours
of symbolization, beyond the Symbolic and Imaginary, beyond our constructed reality. The
Horror of the Mirror Stage is one of Lacans greatest tributes to psychoanalysis. Lacans
concept of the gaze is also examined. In light of this examination of the imaginary and
symbolic gaze, viewer spectatorship of horror films will be observed. This will be followed
by desire, fundamental fantasy, and abjection.
The second section will deal with linking the modern horror genre with the work of Sigmund
Freud. Key ideas from three primary texts of Freud will be examined, namely The Uncanny,
Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Interpretation of Dreams. Sigmund Freud posited that
5
horror comes from the uncanny an emergence of images and thoughts from the primitive id
that were suppressed by the civilised ego. The Uncanny never announces itself with a bang.
It may be seen, but is first and foremost felt. The death instinct is also an extremely
interesting aspect of Freud's ideas regarding horror movies, particularly people's desire to
watch horror movies. People are attracted to images, experiences and stories that bring them
closer to death. This was Freud's theory of the death instinct. Sigmund Freud revolutionized
his theory of dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams. One feature that unites both horror film
and psychoanalysis is unsettling images and meanings behind dreamscapes. . Under the ideas
of Freud, watching horror comes to be a reminder of the rule of the id, and the determining
influence of unconscious drives.
Jacques Lacan
Lacans Mirror Stage:
If you look in the mirror and say his name five times, hell appear behind you breathing
down your neck1
What is so frightening about mirror scenes in horror movies? In a Lacanian sense they
cause doubt about the solidity of our own image. Every subject is developed in the discourse
of the Other. In order to gain access to the Other the child must pass through the mirror stage,
during which the child is alienated from itself by its identification with its mirror image.
Lacan wrote in his essay Le Stade du Mirror Formateur de la Fonction du Je: At some time
between the ages of six and eighteen months, the child, when confronted with his image in
the mirror, moves from an initial confusion of reflection and reality to self-recognition and
registration of movements of a body which, in the process of self-recognition, he begins to
understand as his own.2
scattered fragmented body into a unified totality, the representation of his own body.4 It is
this imaginary recognition that founds the ego.
However the mirror is far from being a straightforward confirmation of the ego. When
a baby sees himself in mirror, he both recognizes and misrecognizes himself. The image in
the mirror is fundamentally alienating because the child identifies with something outside the
self that is, with the image in the mirror. The Other the subject sees in the mirror is not
himself; it is something separate from him. In the mirror stage, the other self in the mirror is
simultaneously me and someone else. There is on the one hand a captivation by the
mirror image, on the other an aggressive tension. It is for this reason that the mirror stage is
fundamentally alienating because the child identifies with something outside itself, with the
image in the mirror.
J. Dor. The Mirror Stage and the Oedipus Complex Introduction to the Reading of Lacan. Ed. J FeherGuhrwich, Other Press, New York, 1998, P. 96.
5
Lacan Some Reflections on the Ego, International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 1953, Vol. 34, P. 11-13.
it hangs over the abyss of a dizzy ascent in which one can perhaps see the very essence of
Anxiety.6
The ego is an imaginary construct, which is subject to slippage. Horror movies take
anxieties about such imaginary slippages and enhance them, shifting them onto the register of
the horrific. A fear of loss between the self and the image is a recurrent theme in horror films
such as Candyman, Poltergeist, and The Shining to name but a few. Alexandre Ajas Mirrors
contains numerous scenes which present horrific moments of agency claimed by mirrors,
manifested in the suppression and murder of subjects by their own image.7 One of these
scenes concern the main protagonists sister, Angela. Angela looks in the mirror before
preparing a bath. However when she turns away, her image in mirror remains, intently
watching as Angela gets into the tub. Then image tears off her face and the character dies of
bleeding.
6
7
Lacan Some Reflections on the Ego, International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 1953, Vol. 34, P. 11-13.
Mirrors. Director A. Aja. 2008. 20th Century Fox.
The human subject looks into the mirror and sees an image. The fictional vampire,
on the other hand cast no mirror reflections. They look into the mirror and see not an image,
but arguably nothing but themselves. The vampire is cast as inhuman because having a
reflection is fundamental to the subject. Dracula defies the mirror, he beats it away, abjects
and denies it. This may also suggest the impossibility of being a self without a semblance.
Perhaps when devoid of the moment of Lacans imago identification, the prospect of
becoming a symbolic and imaginary self-governing subject is foreclosed.
J. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacquees Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis Book XI, Ed. J.
Miller, Trans. A. Sheridan, Norton, London, 1998.
14
Hans Holbeing, The Ambassadors, 1533.
10
Real, in the scopic field, comes into being when vision is split between conscious visual
perception and what is thrust out. The eye would then overtake as the sovereign of all it
looked on, if it were not for the gaze, a void left behind by this splitting. This spot is said to
look back at me because it is an intimate part of myself, a part object, projected outside.
iek terms the Hitchcockian 'blot' that interpretive instant in which a spectator
becomes aware of something that phallically stands out from the ordinary composition of a
scene.15 An example of the blot would be the drain that forms a vortex down with the blood
flows from Marion's corpse in Psycho.16 The 'blot' is the point of anamorphosis. An
apparently 'natural' and 'familiar' setting has the ability to become uncanny, laden with horror,
if one includes a detail which is inappropriate. Precipitously the viewer enters the domain of
double meaning. Every article gives the impression of encompassing some hidden
significance. The horror is internalized, it rests on the gaze of he who knows too much.
What we actually see becomes nothing but a deceptive surface beneath which swarms an
undergrowth of perverse and obscene implications, the domain of what is prohibited. The
more we find ourselves in total ambiguity, not knowing where 'reality' ends and
'hallucination' begins, the more menacing this domain appears.17 This hallucination iek
mentions is consistent with the desire of the subject.
The blot represents what the viewer refuses to acknowledge we are all going to
die. The Ambassadors is a stark reminder to the viewer that all of the worlds subjects are
marked for death. The blot is reminiscent of the infamous videotape in The Ring, which is
akin to an impersonal interpellation to die, an unexpected reminder of ones own mortality.
15
S. Zizek, The Hitchcockian Blot, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular
Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998.
16
A. Hitchcock, Psycho, Paramount Pictures, 1960.
17
Ibid, p. 90.
11
Anyone who watches this video must recognize its call to die in seven days. Kristen Lacefield
maintains that the blot offers a possible explanation for those inexplicable horror in movies
such as the origins of Samaras evil.18 These horrors are terrible precisely because they are
inexplicable. They are fears the viewer cannot verbalize or recognize. Samara is at her most
terrifying when she is silent and the viewer cannot see inside her, past the black wall of hair
that hangs over her face. The silence and the accompanying black veil are the same effects
that offer Samara an uncanny resemblance to the blot from Holbeins Ambassadors. They
also reveal the route of her horror, similar to the cassette tape, shrouded, covered in black,
containing who knows or what knows inside.
K. Lacefield, The Scary Screen: Media Anxiety in The Ring, Ashgate, Farham, 2010.
J. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 1: Freuds Papers on Technique 1953-54, trans J. Forester,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, P. 215.
19
12
suturing techniques. Suture is the condition which develops when the perceived control held
by the Absent One disperses, and the audience regard the films content as if they themselves
had power over the films visual field and had the capacity to move around freely in it. The
audience disavows the loss of its visual powers and unconsciously subscribes to the fantasy
of the all-seeing gaze.
The subject must identify with a character on the screen for the mirror-stage
mechanism to be correspondent to the process of viewing film. Slasher films in particular
epitomize the ways in which the gaze of cinematic horror is constructed and the potential this
has to manage responses to the film. This genre is renowned for their point-of-view shot, one
which encloses the protagonist as if the predator is surveying them voyeuristically. Roger
Ebert asserted that the very absence of the killer on screen that comes through these point of
view shots and camera movements encourage the spectator identifies with the camera in
objectifying the slashed female body.20 Film and spectator relations are constantly under
threat as fiction threatens to give way to reality. Like the child in the mirror, we can
misrecognize ourselves, and experience pleasure, alienation and trauma. In terms of
cinematic gaze, our lack can be filled by the images of the Other on the screen because they
are seen as whole and unfragmented, they represent the unified self we have lost.
Todd McGowan focuses on the gaze as the site of a traumatic encounter with the
Real, with the utter failure of the spectator's seemingly safe distance and assumed mastery.21
Not only is this foundering of mastery realizable in the cinema, but it is what spectators
desire when they go to the movies. This Lacanian gaze, not by ones choice, requires the
spectator in the cinematic image and bestows submission as opposed to mastery. Creed posits
20
R. Ebert, Why Movie Audiences arent safe Anymore American Film, P. 56.
T. McGowan, Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and its Vicissitudes Cinema Journal, Vol. 42,
No. 3, P. 29
21
13
that the horror film puts the subjects sense of a unified self into crisis, in moments when the
image on screen becomes too horrific to watch. She argues for the act of looking away to
be considered as a fifth look that distinguishes screen-spectator relationship.22 By not
looking, the spectator is able to momentarily withdraw identification from the image on the
screen in order to reconstruct the boundary between self and screen and reconstitute the self
which is threatened with disintegration.
Creed maintains that the horror film does not work to encourage the spectator to identify
continually the narrative action. Spectorial identification becomes momentarily undermined
as horrific images on the screen challenge the viewer to run the risk of continuing to look.
Pleasure is transformed into pain as the spectator is punished for his/her voyeuristic desires.23
Movies such as the Final Destination franchise, Braindead and Hellraiser thrive on shock
and disgust as their gory scenes challenge the viewer to look away with their gory death
scenes. Creed gives the example of Alien where creature gnaws its way out of stomach of one
of the astronauts. She argues that this scene is designed to command our attention while
simultaneously punishing us for looking. Such scenes satisfy a morbid desire to see as much
as possible of the unimaginable.
B. Creed. Horror and the Archaic Mother The Monstrous Feminine. Routledge, New York, 2007, P. 29.
B. Creed, Horror and the Archaic Mother The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis,
Routledge, New York, 2007, P. 28-29.
23
14
object of desire. iek defines Lacans Real as the irreducible kernel of jouissance that
resists all symbolization.24 He regards it as to a certain extent synonymous with the
unconscious and the subjects real desires. Clifford T. Manlove discusses the function of the
traumatic encounter with the Real in Alfred Hitchcocks film Vertigo at a scene in which the
film's protagonist Scottie hangs from the gutter of a roof of a building.25
What to a rational observer looks like an alleyway, Scottie comes face to face with a
deadly void, the incarnation of the Lacanian Real. Ordinarily, Scottie would not be
troubled by viewing great heights. An accident, however, causes Scottie to feel the
presence of something he has never seen in heights before. Scottie now sees death
where his eyes merely see the alley. This is a result of the split between the eye and
the gaze.26
Lacan relates the gaze to the real of desire in the subject. As the gaze is external to the
subject, so is the object of its desire. Lacanian psychoanalysis teaches that our desires are not
our own. Desire is essentially a desire for recognition from the Other. Separation, for Lacan
involves the alienated subjects confrontation with the Other, not as language this time, but
as desire.27 And what does the subject who is gazing and desiring desire? To be in the place
of the Other who is looking back at him. The Other is so attractive because he represents the
Ego-Ideal, which is what the subject himself ideally wishes to be. Lacan also referred to this
object as 'das Ding', the Thing, which is a vacuum which represents the Real.
24
iek, The Undergrowth of Enjoyment: How Popular Culture Can Serve as an Introduction to Lacan The
iek Reader, Ed. E. Wright, Blackwell, Oxford, 1999, P.14.
25
Vertigo, 1958, Director Alfred Hitchock, Paramount Pictres
26
C. T. Manlove, Visual Drive and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock and
Mulvey, Cinema Journal, Vol. 46, 2007, P. 92.
27
B. Fink, The Subject and the Others Desire The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. P.
50.
15
In the Freudian universe, there is no zero state of desire; there is always some desire,
even if it manifests itself as horror. This can be said of Freuds analysis of the Ratman.28 The
Ratman is haunted by a recurring thought concerning the woman he loved being subjected to
a particular torture. However Freud notes: At all the more important moments while he was
telling his story his face took on a very strange, composite expression. I could only interpret it
as one of horror at pleasure of his own of which he himself was unaware.29 Lacan interprets
that Rat-Man is terrorized by the sadistic jouissance that lives inside of him a pleasure that
terrifies or terror that is pleasurable.
This turmoil between conscious disgust and unconscious desire is one all too familiar
in the horror genre. Excessive film genres such as horror are cast the mind of the subject to an
identification with his or her subjectivity by a surplus of pleasure. In real life this is
prohibited by the law of the father. In gross cinema this prohibition is transgressed. Films
such as The Evil Dead use transgressive imagery, which is an imagery that produces the
fetishist attraction of the gaze while at the same time being abhorrent to the symbolic law.
Lacans imposition of the symbolic order breaks up the dyad of the mother and child, setting
in motion a desire for the lost unattainable object, and shattering the ideal narcissistic self of
the imaginary. There is a sense of anguish and desire that runs through Lacans sense of the
subjects relation to the symbolic order. iek argues that visual portrayals such as film
present the prospect of openly symbolizing the gaze in the manifestation of a stain or scowl in
the visual domain, staring back at the observer and challenging their self-satisfaction in an
approach that discloses the essence of disorder and chaos which extend beyond the calm facet
of appearances in the fictitious sphere.
28
S. Freud. A Case of Obsessional Neurosis, Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol.
X, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 155-320.
29
S. Freud. A Case of Obsessional Neurosis, Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol.
X, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 166.
16
John Carpenters The Thing examines Lacans concept of the sublimated object of
desire. 30 It is a film signifier of the lack of signifier. The Thing is resistant to signification
and is insolvable to mystery. The movie disrupts, in graphic and unsettling ways, whole
modes of scientific thought, producing terror and ultimately breaking down the Symbolic
consistency of identity and even bodies themselves. Carpenter not only rejects the desire of
the Other but also rejects the gaze of the Other with which it is fundamentally linked. Since
Carpenters The Thing takes the shape of a dog or man, its substance remains unfathomable,
beyond visual networks.
Fundamental Fantasy
A form of horror recognized by iek is the ultimate horror of the Other who has
direct access to our (the subjects) fundamental fantasy.36 This fundamental fantasy is a
Lacanian concept explained by iek as the subjects innermost kernel, as the ultimate
proto-transcendental framework of my desiring which, precisely as such, remains
inaccessible to my subjective grasp.37 One is unable to know that which they most want to
learn about themselves. Moreover, they must not know because to know is to bereaved of all
sense of themselves, given that ones perception of self is determined by, and derives from,
their fundamental fantasy.
iek connects the Freudian unconscious to the fundamental fantasy, maintaining that
each subject, male or female, possesses a factor which regulates their desire. There is
nothing uplifting about our awareness of this factor: this awareness can never be
30
17
Abjection
Kristeva maintains abjection is initially undergone at the moment of ones separation
from the mother.40 Abjection illustrates an upheaval against that which provides the human
subject with their own presence. Upon confrontation with the abject as adults, it is both
feared and identified with. It evokes a memory of ones condition prior to the childs entrance
into the symbolic realm. The abject both appeals and repels. It recalls sentiments of revulsion,
anxiety and adrenaline, feelings reminiscent of what was experienced prior to separation from
the mother. Kristeva argues that the abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor
assumes prohibition, a rule, a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them; takes
advantage of them, the better to deny them.41 Consequently it is a manipulator.
Creed argues that the horror film is an illustration of the work of abjection in three
ways. Firstly the horror film abounds in images of abjection, such as corpses and bodily
waste.42 Examples of this type of abjection include Carrie and The Exorcist, which Creed
38
18
depicts as depicting menstruation. In both of these films, the characters are punished for their
abjection. Carrie is abjected at the end of the film as her world cannot contain her
monstrosity. Viewing the horror film signifies a desire not only for perverse pleasure, but also
a desire, once having been filled up with perversity, taken pleasure in perversity, to throw up,
throw out, eject the abject from the safety of the spectators seat.
Creeds second illustration of the work of abjection concerns the concept of a border.
That which crosses or threatens to cross that border is abject. Although the nature of the
border changes, the function of the monstrous remains the same, namely to bring about an
encounter between the symbolic order and that which threatens its stability.43 Kristevas
notion of the abject as a border conjures up a border identity. Crossing a threshold is a
central motif in vampire films since the vampire must be allowed in, must transgress a border
and the remainder of vampire movies is about closing up that border or managing that abject
threat in some way. Lost in its border status, the vampire offers an escape to a land of
dualities, as well as a defiance of definition. Here, the border appeal resonates. The vampire
defies a stagnant signifier & produces a multiplicity of identifiers. This helps to explain our
fascination with the vampire as an undead body, bordering between life and death.
Thirdly, Creed explores the construction of the maternal figure as abject. In the
childs attempts to break away from the mother, the mother becomes abject. Abjection
becomes a precondition of narcissism. This is apparent in Hitchcocks Psycho. Norman is
incapable of conceiving himself as a subject, a whole, separate from his mother. He goes to
extreme lengths, such as preserving her corpse, wearing her clothes, and allowing a space for
her within his own psyche. Norman characterises what we are horrified to acknowledge that
43
Ibid, P. 11.
19
we are fractured subjects, the I is an allusion, and we are bound to the Other. By refusing to
relinquish her hold on her child, Normans mother had prevented him from taking up his
proper place in relation to the symbolic.
20
Sigmund Freud
2.1 Freuds Uncanny Horror
Sigmund Freud posits that horror descends from the Uncanny. Freuds initial
definition of the uncanny is that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once
well known and had long been familiar. The core of Freuds account is ensnared in a
quotation he takes from Schelling vis--vis the meaning of the German word unheimlich.
According to Schelling, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and
hidden but has come to light.44 The uncanny is first and foremost felt profoundly within
oneself, rather than simply observed. The uncanny phenomenon, Freud suggests, stems from
the return of infantile material. It is in reality nothing new or alien but something which is
familiar and long established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only
through the process of repression.45 When something is repressed, its re-emergence is a
source of fear it ought to have remained hidden but is now revealed into consciousness.
With Freud, the effect of the Uncanny is explained through an inner, unconscious compulsion
to repeat. The subject is therefore formed not through conscious and rational thinking, but is
itself a complex site through which the unconscious represents itself. The uncanny, as the
moment of the release of the oppressed, is the moment of the unpresentable as well.
Freud introduces his theory of the uncanny with the E.T.A Hoffmans character of the
Sandman in Nachtstucken.46 As the tale goes, the young protagonist Nathaniel finds himself
relentlessly haunted by a dread that a wicked Sandman, in the form of menacing lawyer by
the name of Coppolius, who visits his fathers house, will snatch out his eyes. As a young
boy, although Nathaniel knows this is not true the dread of him became fixed in his heart.
The man disappears without trace following the mysterious death of Nathaniels father, with
which the boy cannot come to terms. The mysterious figure reappears later in Nathaniels life
in the form of a travelling optician. This inventor has used stolen eyes to adorn an automaton,
Olympia, with whom Nathaniel has fallen in love. In time, following an attack of insanity,
Nathanial endeavours to slaughter his former lover, before throwing himself to his death from
a high tower.
44
S. Freud. The Uncanny, (1919), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XVII. Ed. J.
Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 225.
45
S. Freud. The Uncanny, (1919), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XVII. Ed. J.
Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 241.
46
ETA Hoffman, Nachtstucken, 1816.
21
S. Freud. The Uncanny, (1919), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XVII. Ed. J.
Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 230.
48
B. Creed, Film and the Uncanny Gaze Phallic Panic. Melbourne, University Press, P. 34.
49
S. Freud. The Uncanny, (1919), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XVII. Ed. J.
Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 251.
50
S. Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud,
Vol. XVIII, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 20.
51
C. Freeland Explaining the Uncanny Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freuds Worst Nightmare. P. 90.
52
S. Freud. The Uncanny The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XVII. P. 249.
22
dolls can come to life.53 Olympia immediately calls to mind cult horror classic Childs Play
which introduces Chucky, a recently killed serial killer who has immortalized himself into a
childs doll.54
Freud reads Nathaniels obsession with stolen eyes as adolescent castration anxiety.
He argues that the arbitrary and meaningless elements in the story become intelligible as
soon as we replace the Sand-Man by the dreaded father at whose hands castration is
expected.55 The fear of castration takes us to the threatening figure of the patriarch. Freud
interprets Hoffmans story as elucidating tense fear of castration in light of the idea of losing
ones eyes. The uncanny also involves a repetition compulsion the youths need to repeat a
critical early trauma. Whatever reminds us of this inner compulsion to repeat is perceived as
uncanny.56 Nightmare on Elm Streets Freddy Krueger may be considered a postmodern reembodiment of E.T.A Hoffmans Sandman.57 Like Coppolius, Freddy was identified with his
castrating finger-knives his very touch turned ones body into a fountain of blood.
Furthermore, Hoffmans Sandman destroyed Nathaniels sanity, his ability to distinguish
reality from hallucination. In the same way, Freddy was a trickster, the master of special
optical and visceral effects.
Essential to both the threat of castration and compulsion to repeat is the theme of the
double. The double occurs when there is a doubling, dividing and interchanging of the
self.58 Freud interprets the double as a defence employed by an infant as a preservation
against extinction and has its counterpart in the language of dreams.59 The source of the
double is the primary narcissism of the child, an assurance of its immortality. But when
encountered later in life, after childhood narcissism has been overcome, the double invokes a
sensation of the uncanny a return to a primitive state. The double has become a thing of
terror, regarded as a harbinger of death.60
53
C. Bowman. Heidegger, The Uncanny, and Jacques Tourners Horror Films, Dark Thoughts: Philosophic
Reflections on Cinematic Horror, ed. S.J. Schneider & D. Shaw, Scarecrow Press, Maryland. 65-83. 68.
54
Childsplay (1988), Director Tom Holland, Universal Pictures.
55
S. Freud. The Uncanny, (1919), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XVII. Ed. J.
Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 232.
56
Ibid, P. 238.
57
Nightmare on Elm Street, Director Wes Craven, 1984.
58
S. Freud. The Uncanny, ibid, P. 234.
59
Ibid, P. 235.
60
Ibid, P. 235.
23
61
C. Freeland Explaining the Uncanny Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freuds Worst Nightmare.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, P. 91
62
Double Life of Veronique (1991), Director Krzysztof Kieslowski, Miramax.
63
Single White Female, Director Barbet Schroeder, Columbia Pictures, 1992.
64
Black Swan, Director Darren Aronofsky, Cross Creek Pictures, 2010.
65
V. Mishra. The Precursor Text The Gothic Sublime, State University Press, New York, 2001, P. 76.
24
66
S. Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol
XVIII, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 38.
67
Ibid, P. 38.
68
Ibid, P. 50.
69
E. Becker. The Denial of Death. Xviii. Free Press Paperbacks, New York, 1973, P. XVIII
25
Freud equates the death drive with the so-called compulsion to repeat an uncanny
urge to repeat painful past experiences which seem to outgrow the natural limitations of the
organism affected by it and to insist even beyond the organisms death. This is apparent in
The Ring which doesnt seem to suggest that the central character Samara Morgan will ever
come to terms with her trauma. The mystery of her death is successfully solved. Yet that does
not satisfy her vengeful spirit, the symptoms of which will forever be repeated. We see a
compulsion to repeat in often in slasher films; the monster continually reappears and carries
out his unspeakable acts until the film closes. The power of repetition in the horror genre is
extended to the afterlife in the case of the living dead, who after every annihilation,
recompose themselves and clumsily go on. The subject is made undead, depriving him of
the capacity to die.
S. Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams, (1900), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud,
Vol V, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 270.
71
S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, (1900), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud,
Vol V, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001, P. 242.
26
lack of clarity. Freddy Krueger, a surrealist ringmaster, known for his bladed fingers and
unlimited power to alter your dreams and inflict real physical damage, but only when you are
asleep. In a Lacanian sense, Freddy's nightmares destroyed boundaries between the imaginary
and the Real. Freddy was a child molester and former victim himself. Horror films'
uncovering of the repressed is analogous to the process of dream work described by Freud.
Parents of Elm Street are ultimately to blame for Freddy because they destroyed and
repressed what he represented, rather than encountering it. Freddys ghost stood for a
collective repression or taboo.
The characters become trapped in dreams from which they cannot escape. Nancy's
dreams are haunted and her dreams infiltrate her reality. She dreams she wakes up only to
find herself in another terrifying dreamscape. Freud comments in the Interpretation of
Dreams about a dream within a dream: If a particular event is inserted into a dream as a
dream by the dreamwork itself, this implies the most decided confirmation of the reality of
the event the strongest affirmation of it.72 Ultimately Nancy survives because she rejects
the rational belief that dreams are not real and puts her faith in an irrational premise that
collapses dreams and reality.
Freudian dream scenes regularly crop up in horror films, in order to project the
subjective view of reality which the characters nurture for themselves. The most crucial scene
of Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound uses a Freudian dream sequence, in an attempt to explain
the character's hidden unconscious fears, desires and impulses.73 Roman Polinski's horror
classic Rosemary's Baby in which Rosemary falls asleep and is impregnated by the devil.74
Rosemary's dream is woven into the Freudian day residue. Her recalling of the incident in the
form of a dream allows Polanski to manipulate his audiences sense of belief, maintaining
realism by suggesting it could all have been a dream.
Freud also argued for the presence of sexual symbolization in dreams. It is quite
true that symbolizations of the bodily organs and functions do occur in dreams: for example,
that water in a dream often signifies a desire to urinate, that the male genital organ may be
72
Ibid.
Spellbound, 1945, Director Alfred Hitchcock, National Telefilm Associates
74
Rosemarys Baby, 1968, Director Roman Polanski, Paramount Pictures.
73
27
represented by an upright staff, pillar, etc.75 Let us consider the prominence of slasher films.
Villians in this genre never use guns which don't offer a close-up, but kill with hands-on
violence, especially with long knives. In Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy's knives for fingers
represent a phallic symbol. This is especially evident in an infamous scene in which Nancy is
taking a bath and Krueger's blades emerge from the water between her legs in the saga's
ultimate phallic symbolism. Rosemary's Baby combines dreamy images of water with scenes
of death, motherhood and violence.
Kawin looks at the relationship between watching a film and having a dream.76 Both
the dreamer and audience are physically cushioned in a darkened room, watching a visual
process. In both cases the eyes move and the mind exercises creative attention. The dreamer
may be considered more creative since the dream manifests his own thought processes, but
the role of the film is also active since the viewer creates his/her own experience of the work.
Also, although film-makers are responsible for the movie, the viewer decides which film to
attend, and so chooses the general content of his experience. In this way going to a horror
movie may be a matter of unconscious wish fulfilment
75
S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, (1900), Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud,
Vol V, Ed. J. Strachey, Vintage, London, 2001.
76
B. Kawin The Mummys Pool Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, 2004, Scarecrow Press, USA,
P. 3-20.
28
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