Film and Media Studies: The Horror Film

The reading for the week discussed the idea that the audience derives pleasure from horror movies and that they analyze how the monsters that exist within horror films can be "successfully confronted" (Carroll 36). In both of the movies, this idea is presented. In Nosferatu, it is shown with Jonathan not heeding the warning of the villagers and continuing on to talk to Dracula; Deathgasm exemplifies this with Brodie deciding to summon a demon after his cousin humiliates him. Within both of these movies, the audience is left to wonder if they could successfully take on either the vampire or the demon. The readings also discussed the idea of women in horror films as a means to offset the monstrous elements. In Nosferatu, it is Lucy's beauty that is able to render Dracula dead, but it comes at the cost of her own life. This may be due to a "strange sympathy and affinity that often develops between the monster and the girl may thus be less an expression of sexual desire... and more a flash of sympathetic identification" (Williams 63). For Dracula, Lucy may have represented the loss of innocence that he had when he turned into a vampire and yearned for the mortality that she was able to enjoy. In Deathgasm, Medina is treated as a sexual object. At the start of the movie, David, Brodie's cousin, is interested in having sex with her, and then Zakk hooks up with her as a means to satisfy his own boredom and as a way to apparently one-up Brodie. The readings also brought up the idea of temptation, and at the center of horror movies is this theme. In order for a story to occur, some kind of latent temptation is what inspires the inciting event. The temptation for money is what convinces Jonathan to sell the property to Dracula. The temptation for revenge and power is what ultimately releases the demon when Brodie plays the black hymn. However, women often are the embodiment of temptation in these sorts of films. Without Lucy, Dracula would not have been infatuated and without Medina then there would be no reason for Brode to feel inferior towards Zakk and no reason for David to be jealous about Medina's obvious attraction towards Brodie. Additionally, horror allows the viewers to feed their fascination and this "fascination can be savored, because the distress in question is not behaviorally pressing; it is a response to the thought of a monster, not the actual presence of a disgusting or fearsome thing" (Carroll 40). This much is true as there are no vampires living in Transvlyvania and there is no such thing as a demon that can be summed by playing a tune on a guitar. Both of these monsters only exist to entice the viewer and keep them watching. If the monsters in these types of movies didn't present a clear and terrifying threat to the movie's characters then the audience would become bored and disinterested; therefore it is clear that these monsters are the key to fascination.