FILM 3420D Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: It Follows, Night Of The Living Dead, Horror Film
4 Apr 2016
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Question: horror film monsters may be human just think of norman bates, Leatherface, or hannibal lecter but they are not real, in the sense of experientially real. (schneider). This is because they might not be monsters but they represent the monstrous. Does not come from intellectual uncertainty over something unfamiliar, confusing, or. Freud disagrees with the theory above and argues against it. Abandonment of infantile beliefs: dead can return to life, omnipotence of thought, existence of a double, etc. The night of the living dead dead can return to life. Paradigmatic horror narratives work by reconfirming for audiences infantile beliefs that were abandoned long ago. Horror film monsters are best understood as metaphorical embodiments of paradigmatic horror narratives, and as such, are capable of reconfirming surmounted beliefs by their very presence. Horror film monsters are conceptual, not merely cinematographic, metaphors. Although the metaphorical nature of horror film monsters is psychologically necessary, their surface heterogeneity is historically and culturally contingent.
