COP: Japanese Horror Remakes

Part of my research is looking into different kinds of horror, there's lots of ways to split it up. A crucial one is originals vs remakes. A majority of horror films echo the same recipe for scaring its audience, jump scares, foreshadowing and pathetic fallacy. So why are these films remade? 

J - HORROR 

Some films start out in their original country and go on to be a mainstream film. Often American film directors see the fresh fear and decide to jump on it and pump it up with some famous actors, more blood and more scares.

Onryo is a Japanese word used to describe the vengeance in a female ghost who was wronged in life by a man. 

Yurei is a Japanese term used to describe a vengeful spirit (male or female) who was murdered before their time or felt a strong emotion during/ just before their death. 

Onryo/Yurei's are often potrayed with long black unkept hair, in white clothing with white faces. 

RING (1998) vs THE RING (2002) 

Ring 1998 is a Japanese psychological thriller directed by Hideo Nakata. It follows the idea of a cursed tape that kills its viewers after a set amount of time. The villain is a Onryo/Yurei named Sadako, a japanese spirit that was prevented from the afterlife (from a premature murder or from possessing strong emotions). They are the only kind in Japanese Folklore that can physically hurt the living. In this version, there is no depiction of the ghost until the end. The noises heard on the tape are just noises and the imagery is just a mixture of disturbing pictures. The phonecall too is just the noises from the tape. It is only in the last murder in the film that the audience see's it's monster in action (although we do see her corpse it is not the spirit there). 

The Ring 2002 is the western remake. It has all the same elements as its Japanese predecessor but with added embellishments. We are shown how the people are killed in this version, in this one the girls name is Samara and she is a malevolent spirit who in life had the power to burn images into peoples minds. The western version takes from the last murder shown in the japanese version (a girl crawling out of a well scaring a man to death) and adds it into the back story of Samara. Both girl spirits were tortured in both versions, in the japanese version Sadaku is killed by her father, in the american version Samara is killed by her adopted mother (and thrown down a well.. for 7 days.. explaining the whole 7 day reasoning from the Japanese film). The tape is followed up by a voice call in this version. 

Overall the 2002 version seeks to give the Audience more fulfilment, in the 1998 version no attempt to calm the girls spirit is made, no real explanation behind why the tape was made and the viewers are held in suspense much more (the tape has no human voices in the 1998 version).   This is probably because Japanese audiences don't require a backstory for a revengeful spirit, whereas American audiences need reasoning behind everything. WHY was she doing it, HOW can we help her, HOW do we stop her coming after us, WHERE does she come from. 

THE GRUDGE 

After the success of the westernisation of The Ring, remaking Japanese films got it's own name. "J-Horror". The Grudge is another example of this. 

JU-ON: The Grudge (2002) is a Japanese supernatural horror film. It is another film jumping on the fears of Japanese folklore, again with a Onryo/Yurei seeking vengeance for her wrongful murder (at the hands of her husband who also murdered the family). It plays heavily on that Japanese Archetype of a Onryo/Yurei, being unrelenting and unstoppable. In this version everyone who enters the house of the murdered family is eventually murdered by the Yurei of the mother. 

The Grudge (2004) is the western version of the film. It has the same director as the JU-ON version. Unlike some J-Horror films, The Grudge is set in the same country as the original (Tokyo, Japan) and still makes some cultural reference to what kind of ghost it is (rather than in average american horrors it just being a poltergeist). It's plotline is very similar to it's original, leaving one woman at the end to be the final girl in this (Karen) as opposed to the 2002 version where Rika (the Japanese version of Karen) is brutally murdered by the Yurei mother whilst watched by her ghost friends.

The difference between the two again is the 2004 version seeking to give the audience some sense of redemption for the deaths, gifting them the chance to stop the curse (Karen sets the haunted house on fire.. but it survives.. of course). She gets to be the final girl and watch all her friends die, but in the end we know that she too will be killed. 

 CONCLUSIVE THOUGHTS. 

At this point a conclusion can be drawn that American audiences love a hero, they love shreds of hope to hold onto and they need every option to be explored before their final girl can be killed. The Ring 2002 shows us this as Samara's whole backstory is explored and the woman makes an attempt to put her soul to rest before resulting to passing the curse on, unlike the 1998 version where they just figure out how to pass the curse on and thats kind of it.  The Grudge shows us this too, rather than straight out killing the final girl character as the 2002 version does (With Rita.. who experiences lots of violent and horrific encounters before slowly being hunted down by her ghost friends and the murdering Yurei) Karen gets the chance to try and stop the curse by burning the house down, because come on thats what we would all try and do in that situation. The American Audience can then be satisfied that everything to stop this curse has been attempted and when we see that the Yurei mother has come for Karen, we accept it. 

COP: Polish Poster Palooza (NEEDS TO BE EDITED))

Since the beginning of COP 3, I knew I wanted it to relate to films in some way or another, as my essay question developed the natural progression of my practical did too. In my initial statement I talk about wanting to create movie posters. As the weeks of my practical have progressed I've moved further away from trying to draw the characters in my own style, and closer to collage to create a scene as I did in my About The Author Brief last year. The movies I've been looking into are all very atmospheric and I think collage might be the way forward for it to create a feeling. When I spoke to Pete about this he suggested talking to Ben, so that rather than going straight into making collages I could look into collage relating to movie and learn about the background. 

POLISH POSTERS 
So I went to speak to him and he showed me a lot of different practitioners and explained why Polish posters are so different to western ones. During ww2 Polish culture was suppressed to the extreme by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the point where thousands of artists and scholars were executed. The polish people were only allowed to display posters that had been approved by the invaders, and during the war they didn't want any american propaganda so posters were not allowed to contain the faces or bodies of actors within them. Polish people created underground networks to develop their art in secret but a mass of works were destroyed and any creative outputs were monitored closely. As a result of this when the war was over and they were no longer occupied by Germans or the Soviet, the Polish art community had a lot of catching up to do. They had missed out on key art periods during their long suppression so Polish art development is very different to the rest of the world so it's only natural that their posters developed differently too. 

Polish posters focus more on the themes and atmosphere of the film, rather than taglines or promoting actors, the posters promote the narrative itself. 

ANDRZEJ KLIMOWSKI 

Andrzej Klimowski is a English Illustrator born to Polish emigre parents but is a well known name in Poland. After being raised among british culture Klimowski moved to Warsaw Poland where he became a well known poster artist. 

His work is very conceptual, often using angels, demons and collage to bring together posters that communicate the theme without revealling too much. Here is his poster for The Omen, a young boy with a demon sat upon his shoulders. In many ways this illustration is far more effective than it's west counterpart as seen below by American Illustrator Tom Jung (seen below it). Although both posters favour the black and white format, Jung's poster has more text to draw the eye from the illustration, I guess everyone has their own opinion on what makes a great poster but for me, I prefer a sense of mystery about a poster. The westernised Jung The Omen poster already tells you what you are in for, through the text and the image of concerned parents onlooking to a young boy. Where in contrast Klimowski's poster reveals nothing other than an unnerving child's body and demonic symbology sat on it's shoulders. It tells us the same (perhaps more) than Jung's version but it is less crowded.. more precise. 

COP: JAKUB EROL

Whilst looking into Polish Poster artists I stumbled across Jakub Erol. This was mostly because I wanted to see if any polish or Czech artists had covered the texts I'm looking at (Silence of The Lambs, Alien, Carrie, It Follows.) Erol had created a poster for Alien although looking at it that's not what you'd initially assume it was for. 

From this we can see the use of Freudian eyes in the image, but also how the ribcage is incorporated into the illustration so the viewer could also see it as a head as well. This poster is a prime example for why Polish posters are influencing my current work, i love how nothing about the movie's actors or narrative are given away. This poster makes more sense to those who have seen the film but it's still intriguing enough to get public to watch it. It picks up on themes strongly, Freud's Uncanny theory (the fear of castration) is strong within Alien 1979. As the male crew member is impregnated/ robbed of his masculinity. The ribcage being displayed, hints at the nature of the monster. Alien bursts out of his physical chest, but also is fear of the mind/ the unknown.   This poster says more about the movie and it's motives than it's westernised counterpart (pictured below). 

Some of Erol's work is slightly westernised, his poster for terminator does show Arnold's face, but again theres no real hint at him being a robot here. Just a clever use of red and yellow circles which after viewing the movie, we associate with the terminators eyes. 

Erol uses Freudian iconography a lot in his work (aware or not). Pictured below are his posters for Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which is a soft thriller (at a push) family movie yet Erol brings the Uncanny into it again with the loss of eyes and a red rope intertwining the sockets. Nothing about this poster suggests its for the family but it does suggest that there will be frights involved.  

The next image,  is a poster created for Weekend At Bernie's. This film is a comedy film but with dark undertones, this use of hands and eyes hints at this too. The eyes inside glasses hint at the funny but also slightly morbid (Bernie gets involved with the mob.. is killed and then his friend's keep his corpse around so they can party at his house.. weird). The black and white brings a sinister tone to the poster. This is amplified even more so when you look at the western poster comparison (also pictured below) which uses bright colours and also dates the whole thing by the attire worn by the men. 

This is something I really like about Polish and Czech posters.. they feel more like a piece of art than they do  promotion piece. They feel timeless and relevant to now, whereas westernised views of what posters should look like change every few years and look dated very fast (apart from staples in culture, such as the famed Pulp Fiction poster) and leave no lasting impression in the mind. Jakub Erol's thought provoking and disturbing images leave you thinking about the movie, whether that be thinking about going to see it or thinking about how relevant the poster is afterwards.  

COP: The Driller Killer.. Controversial Horror

VIDEO NASTIES 

Abel Ferrara is one of the directors that I was told about to look into, mostly after having a discussion about "snuff films" and their influence on horror.  There is also another term coined by the industry "video nasties". Abel Ferrara as he known distinctly for his horror film The Driller Killer which fell into this category. The film was released in the US without any problems but the UK was undergoing a protest to ban video nasties, The Driller Killer was released at the wrong time and only added fuel to the campaign. It came out in 1979 but was banned in the UK from 1983 until 2002. 

THE DRILLER KILLER 

The plot revolves around a depressed artist who goes on a killing spree, he sees an eyeless hallucination of his flatmate Carol (Which references back to what I was talking about earlier, Freudian Theory explains how the loss of eyes is part of the castration complex). This drives the character Reno into a frenzy where lots of graphic murder scenes ensue. 

This was the video cover which caused so much controversy. As far as covers go it is very explicit and I don't think that it's a particularly strong cover either, revealing less is sometimes more especially when it comes down to horror movies (and gory ones at that). 


HORROR TROPES 

The Driller Killer was one of Abel's first films, it was low budget and shot with an unknown cast but contained many themes that are echoed in his other works and which also display clear horror archetypes. One of these is the theme of Religion within horror films, particularly catholic icons which are seen inside DrillerKiller (such as the inverted cross). It also has themes of salvation and redemption which are seen as religious connotations by many (for obvious reasons).  Other tropes is that all the action happens at night, this is seen in Driller Killer but also many horror films choose to have the peak of action happen during the night. It also contains scenes of extreme violence, which is of course a main trope in horror films. 

ABEL FERRARA 
Abel is an independent film maker, which makes his movies even more interesting I think. He doesn't have to follow the horror tropes, but he does. Is this because horror can't exist without them? So many of his films feature explicit violence and he is heralded as a creative in the horror arena, as many of films have a cult following. Abel was raised as a catholic but has reported that for having a large effect within his films. This strongly suggests to me that religion and repression is something that is crucial to a horror move recipe.
He is known mostly for the neo-noir style (all of his films are set in the night) and religious themes within his films. Intentionally or not many of Ferrara's films are sexually charged and violent, Ms 45 (1981) was a rape revenge film (not so many of them around at this time period) where a woman took it into her own hands to seek revenge. 

COP: Olly Moss As An Influence

This is a video I watched on Olly Moss! He was suggested to me to have a look at as most of his work is very minimalist but captures the spirit of the film. For COP I want to do posters (i think) for the final piece so he's worth looking at for my practice.

I like his work but he hasn't done too many horror posters. He has done a lot popular/recognised movies which is something that interests me personally because i like to see a twist put on the posters and I think he manages that. As far as his process goes, he creates the posters in photoshop before and a lot of them are screenprinted (mostly because his work works well screenprinted, and also because he is often comissioned to do limited edition runs of posters for comic cons or special movie premiers).

Let Me In (pictured) is a western version of the european horror movie "let the right one in". Although not a stunning poster, it does capture the main themes of the film without revealing too much about the plot. It does reveal two figures, morse code and two red dots placed near the neck, suggesting vampires are involved somehow and linked into this.

Watching the video about his work was good because he talks about how content is inseparable from the medium, so it's important to think about where your work belongs before you make it. He talks about how his earlier stuff wasn't made with Tee Shirts in mind, rather it was an idea he had that he just happened to submit to a TeeShirt company (threadless). He also talks about how a weak execution can ruin a good concept, some of his stuff he points out as having good ideas behind them but the design work is not considered enough to make the work good over all. "Every terrible thing you put on the internet stays there".

COP: Fear of eyes and Freud's The Uncanny

I've been looking into different fears within horror films, one of these being the fear of anything happening to eyes. There are some texts which really inspire this fear.

THE SANDMAN - DER SANDMANN 

The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffman published in 1817 is a story that shows the psychological effects of a scare to a young child. It echoes the Freudian theme of The Uncanny. It follows a man called Nathaniel, who as a child was visited by a man called Coppolla who he refered to as the Sandman. Someone who stole eyes to feed to his children. He is caught by this man and punished, Nathaniel's father stepping in to protect him (and his eyes). Nathaniel is then haunted by the fear of this man and the fear of him stealing eyes for the rest of his life. Eventually being admitted to an asylum when the woman he falls in love with turns out to be an automaton (and her eyes are on the floor in front of him).

FREUDIAN THEORY 

This story is a main text Freud refers to when talking about The uncanny. The loss of eyes/ eyesight as a main theme in the texts, represents symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from the social norms (Nathaniel's screams of horror at the start, his spying on the elders, the punishment was Coppolla attempting to blind him)

By contrasting the German adjective unheimlich with its base word heimlich ("concealed, hidden, in secret"), he proposes that social taboo often yields an aura not only of pious reverence but even more so of horror and even disgust, as the taboo state of an item gives rise to the commonplace assumption that that which is hidden from public eye (cf. the eye or sight metaphor) must be a dangerous threat and even an abomination - especially if the concealed item is obviously or presumingly sexual in nature
(exert from wikipedia).

Freud's Uncanny theory suggests that the lost of an eye is simply a metaphor for castration and the fear of losing our sexuality. "Psychoanalytic experience reminds us that some children have a terrible fear of damaging or losing their eyes. Many retain this anxiety into adult life and fear no physical injury so much as one to the eye. And there is a common saying that one will “guard something like the apple of one’s eye. The study of dreams, fantasies and myths has taught us also that anxiety abut one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is quite often a substitute for the fear of castration." (The Uncanny, page 139)

APPLIED TO HORROR 

His theory can be applied to horror films, as it would be regarded distasteful to have actual genital  castration on screen during horror films (although it has been done, it hasn't been shown explicitly) Many directors opt for eyes to take their place, as they are something equally important to us. It also relates to childhood fears which remain with us as adults.

Un Chien Andalou is one film I looked into that is a heavily surrealist film, aimed to unnerve the bourgeoisie  Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali fused their dreams/nightmares into a film. Un Chien Andalou could be regarded as a early horror film as there are things within it that were unnerving (such as a man slicing a woman's eyeball open.. lots of Freudian theory could be applied to it and feminist critics response about that). It was well received by the audience, perhaps one of the first signifiers that people responded to horror well when it was contained on screen.

COP : A Bleeding Shame

B L O O D  F E A R 

Blood in horror films is always very prominent, referred to by film critics as "gore porn" when there is an excessive use of blood within murder scenes but why is it a fear? Blood has strong connotations to the 'monstrous feminine' as they relate to periods and the mood swings that females encounter which have over the years been made into a joke and a shaming method by the other sex. It is also a fear though, fear of talking about nature. They are a taboo subject within society as they have classically been something girls kept to themselves so it only serves that they reflected in horror as a fear and that fear being blood. 

This fear is reflected in Carrie as she gains telekinesis alongside her first period, it was something that is a running theme (the fear of sexuality) throughout the movie so i wanted to research more into where the fear and the taboo of sexuality came from. 

R A D I O  4 P O D C A S T : A BLEEDING SHAME 

I listened to the podcast and then heard about how Walt Disney created a animated short about girls periods but completely side stepped the notion of having sex. This film aired in the 1940s in schools to educate, but in some ways did not address how sex relates to  a women' s cycle. This echoes the tone of the time, they did not talk about sex and everything to do with it was shamed. 

It does address about mood swings but also paints that as something you can "pick yourself up from". 

BRANDING FEAR 

I learnt that period pads came from rebranding bandages from WW1. 
In 1926 Kotex pads were branded as a savior from fear,  "women spend about a sixth of their life in embarrassment and terror". Branding it towards fear, the fear of people knowing and judging you for now reaching that point in puberty. it was also mentioned in the advert that pads were for "better walks of life" ladies, so it was advertised as a luxury product. 

ADVERTS AVOIDANCE 

One of the reasons that blood is seen as such a horror thing is that it is only ever shown within horror films and talked about then. It only has negative connotations in society. Some adverts for menstruation products in 2016 advertised boosting confidence and trying to combat the shame in countries. However TV ad's don't actually address what they are actually for. During the interview in the podcast they ask a leading marketter for a brand about why there is blue ink shown on the pads instead of red and why noone talks about what the product is actually for. 
Head Of Marketing:  tv advertising is still viewed by people together, things you dont want your brothers and fathers hearing 
Interviewer: why not tell men them? Why not highlight that its blood? 
H.O.M: It's something we feel our customers don't want blared out, it gives them the chance to visit our website and find out more. We don't highlight the blood, you have to have approval to air since the 1980s (to show pads). We couldn't talk about the products, we are only just being allowed to show them, but even that is restricted. We cant show them on certain channel, or at a certain time. 
I: So they're not actually banned from showing red ink or using the menstrual period?
H.O.M: No but our adverts can't be seen as causing offence morally or socially and I don't think we're at that place yet. 
I: But you do think that its a possibility? to ditch the blue ink, to diffuse the taboo. 
H.O.M: I wouldn't rule it out, our audience is very progressive, it could happen. 



FEAR THE UNKNOWN. 

I found some examples of the adverts they talked about in the interview. This really is media avoidance of blood and nature. It probably is the fear of the unknown that powers the blood lust in horror because we have so little conversations about it in society.
 If we taught children younger would this allow less fear of blood? Less fear of women? The current advertising is pandering to old fashioned views in my opinion, maybe blood could be de sensationalised if given the chance?
Some recent adverts are relating pads to sexuality and I suppose that could be seen as progressive but I think blood would need to be shown more in the media in order for it to diffuse blood fear within horror films.
Looking into this definitely defined why Blood is so potent in horror films, because it's so so avoided by society today.

Looking into Alien Concept Work

 Whilst researching Alien I also looked into who did the concept art work as it was mentioned several times as being the driving force behind the project. 
The main bulk of concept work was done by H.R Giger, a swiss surealist painter. 

As you can tell from these images, they are extremely phallic and invasive. The Alien itself is sexless (until Aliens where there is a mention of a mother alien) but Giger interpreted fears into drawings. Rape for women has always been a fear, but for men when Aid's was still a largely unknown and uncontrollable condition at the time of Alien (1979)'s creation, there was undoubted fear among men about contracting the condition. 

 Giger adapted his work to this fear, he was quoted saying that his work came from real life 

“Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality.”

L I N K  - - https://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/original-alien-concept-art-h-r-giger?utm_term=.cyxyRN7w41#.iqNBkZxDL0

Watching the film Alien; My review and Notes

1979 Theatrical Release Alien, 
Directed By Ridley Scott 

Alien is a pivotal film in the horror genre, it was one of the last films made before the 80's boom of slasher horror so it feels more genuine and scary in it's attempts to captivate the audience. Sigourney Weaver plays Ellen Ripley, A warrant officer aboard the commercial ship Nostromo, She is joined by 6 other crew aboard the space ship. 

Ripley starts displaying "Final Girl" (clover) elements 10 minutes into Alien. "Its not our solar system" she claims as the crew is woken from their space sleep. She realises something is wrong from the outset (as do we) and her view is close to our own. This identifies her as our final girl. Other signifiers of her being our final girl is her name throughout the film, although formally she is Ellen Ripley, she is referred to as 'Ripley' throughout which has masculine undertones. Ripley is not the only female however, Lambert the navigator is also a key female in the film, however the camera view points throughout the film focus mostly on Ripley and as an audience we are given the impression that she is the Final Girl from the get go.  The space ship receives a distress signal from a nearby planet, here Ripley insists that they go back to their sleep but she is over ruled by her fellow crew to land the ship and investigate the planet, as instructed by the science ship officer (Ash). 
Aboard the ship Nostromo, the majority of the crew are males and although Ripley has a reasonable position of power, she is out numbered by males. The male audience viewing this film might have been identifying with other male crew mates at the start, but their roles are fleeting and as Carol Clover discusses "they tend to die early in the film". The crew discovers Alien eggs and one attatches itself to Kane. The two other crew mates Lambert and Dallas beg Ripley to let Kane onto the ship, Ripley insists that letting him on would be a breach of quarantine, however Ash overrules Ripley and opens the vent. 
Kane is the first to die, seemingly fine after the alien egg attack, they are all seated for a meal when his chest bursts open much to the disgust and horror of his crew mates. This is high quality horror as it is very unexpected in the calm scene (although foreshadowed at the start). The red blood against the ships metal and white background is a dramatic colour contrast and could be seen as a signifier of death for the seemingly innocent crew (white). 

As the film progresses the crew get smaller and smaller, this is where we can see Ripley kicking into action, her thought process is very rational and calm in comparison to the others who are in more of a flame thrower frenzy. Ripley tries to take her rightful command over Ash, much to his reluctance, and goes to 'mother' a supercomputer aboard the ship that has the mission and all the data inside it. Ripley then discovers that Ash has been lying to crew, and was instructed to bring the Alien back to earth to weaponise for their employers. Furthermore that he is an Artificial Intelligence. For many audience members this is just an added thrill to the horror film, the horror that one of your own see's you as expendable to the mission as well as the threat of A.I. This threat was felt very strongly in the early 80s as more and more factories set up and robots could replace human job roles. Although not a massive fear it was still a fear of the time. 
Ash upon learning Ripley knows, then moves to attacks Ripley with a newspaper, although not an outwardly phallic weapon he rolls it into a cylindrical shape and attempts to suffocate her with it with strong sexual connotations. This could be seen as an act of sexual violence of a man vs a woman in the horror film, but Ash is a robot so perhaps we could argue that is less so? 

Ripley defeats Ash with assistance from her crew mates and they learn more about the Alien. At this point you could argue that Lambert could have been a final girl, her innocence throughout the film is obvious and she becomes more unstable as the film goes on, hysterically suggesting they abandon the plan to kill the Alien and flee on the pod. Despite her character flaws, Lambert makes it into the final three. There is a certain hopefulness that the three of them might make it out alive, Lambert and Parker are not seen as dumb characters by the audience and we feel some empathy for them both, Lambert because of her frantic emotions and Parker because he has lost his best friend. They are sent to collect life supplies for the shuttle but are cornered by the Alien. Parker represents the last male character to identify with, he makes an attempt to save Lambert as she is paralyzed by fear "Indulging his vanity as protector of the helpless female" (2) however the Killer in this situation (Alien) eliminates his role as protector and pursues Lambert. Lambert's death is the final we are given, slow and suspenseful and hinted strongly that the Alien rape-killed Lambert although much of her death is off screen. It's tail creeping up her leg is the most we are given but it was enough to assume. Although an alien, we can still use this as an example of sexualised violence towards a female. It is a a hotly debated subject among critics but was confirmed when the game version of Alien was created and that scene was recreated. Director Ridley Scott then confirmed "was that some dreadful ending? Was that some terrible invasion of her body, a rape?"(1). Lambert's death was changed a significant amount of times during the filming, her nervous disposition and emotional fragility lead to one of the proposed deaths being that she climbed inside a cupboard and died of fright but it was decided in the end to leave her death as ambiguous as possible to allow the audience to let their imagination run wild. 
Ripley (and her beloved cat Jonesy) make it to the shuttle and the Nostromo is blown wide open. The audience feels a sense of relief, and Ripley is sexualised for the audience (for the first time) perhaps to give them the sense that it is safe. She strips down to a thin white tank and pants, covered in sweat. It's quite a powerful sexual image, that could be seen as fetishism for the male audience parts or a feminist victory for the females of the audience. Whilst all audience members are gaining something, we are suddenly guided by the camera angle to the danger that still lurks, the Alien has curled up into the shuttle. A quick minded Ripley gets into a space suit (a camera view point that certainly highlights her assets undoubtedly) and defeats the alien by releasing it into space. We watch with her as the Alien's corpse drifts away and we then know that the immediate horror is over. 








(1)  https://www.videogamer.com/features/lamberts-death-not-ripleys-survival-was-the-biggest-challenge-in-alien-isolations-dlc 

(2) Carol Clover, Her Body, Himself.

Gender In The Slasher Film - Carol Clover

L I N K :
  http://www.blue-sunshine.com/tl_files/images/Week4-Clover-HerBodyHimself.pdf

During my research I stumbled across Carol Clover's name numerous times, She is a feminist theorist who specialises in talking about Women's Representation in Horror Films - specifically Slasher Films. 

This article is important to what I'm writing about because it tackles Horror Film Directors attitudes to women as well as 

Q U O T E S from this article (unsorted) 

Where pornography (the argument goes) resolves that lack through a process of fetishization that allows a breast or leg or whole body to stand in for the missing member, the slasher film resolves it either through eliminating the woman (earlier victims) or reconstituting her as masculine (Final Girl)

Angry displays of force may belong to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging for mercy belong to the female

 "If the killer has over time been variously figured as shark, fog, gorilla, birds, and slime, the victim is eternally and prototypically the damsel"

As slasher director Dario Argento puts it, “I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or a man.”  - -         2 As quoted in William Schoell, Stay Out of the Shower (New York, 1985), 56.

 Q u o t e s   r e l e v a n t  t o   t e x t s 

 To applaud the Final Girl as a feminist development, as some reviews of Aliens have done with Ripley, is, in light of her figurative meaning, a particularly grotesque expression of wishful thinking.18 She is simply an agreed upon fiction, and the male viewer’s use of her as a vehicle for his own sadomasochistic fantasies an act of perhaps timeless dishonesty

Q u o t e s  a b o u t  F e m a l e  S t r e n g t h  i n  h o r r o r  f i l m s (within the article) 

 At the moment that the Final Girl becomes her own savior, she becomes a hero; and the moment that she becomes a hero is the moment that the male viewer gives up the last pretense of male identification


indeed, would-be rescuers are not infrequently blown away for their efforts, leaving the girl to fight her own fight. Policemen, fathers, and sheriffs appear only long enough to demonstrate risible incomprehension and incompetence

(about The Final Girl) We understand immediately from the attention paid it that hers is the main story line. She is intelligent, watchful, level-headed; the first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the patterns and extent of the threat; the only one, in other words, whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation

 It is the male killer’s tragedy that his incipient femininity is not reversed but completed (castration) and the Final Girl’s victory that her incipient masculinity is not thwarted but realized (phallicization).

The gender of the Final Girl is likewise compromised from the outset by her masculine interests, her inevitable sexual reluctance (penetration, it seems, constructs the female), her apartness from other girls, sometimes her name. At the level of the cinematic apparatus, her unfemininity is signaled clearly by her exercise of the “active investigating gaze” normally reserved for males and hideously punished in females when they assume it themselves; tentatively at first and then aggressively; the Final Girl looks for the killer, even tracking him to his forest hut or his underground labyrinth, and then at him, therewith bringing him, often for the first time, into our vision as well.14 When, in the final scene, she stops screaming, looks at the killer, and reaches for the knife (sledge hammer, scalpel, gun, machete, hanger, knitting needle, chainsaw), she addresses the killer on his own terms. To the critics’ objection that Halloween in effect punished female sexuality, director John Carpenter responded: They [the critics] completely missed the boat there, I think. Because if you turn it around, the one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She’s the most sexually frustrated. She’s the one that killed him. Not because she’s a virgin, but because all that repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy. . . . She and the killer have a certain link: sexual repression.

-- 14 “The woman’s exercise of an active investigating gaze can only be simultaneous with her own victimization. The place of her specularization is transformed into the locus of a process of seeing designed to unveil an aggression against itself”; Mary Ann Doane, “The ‘Woman’s Film,’” in Re-Vision, 72.

-- 15 John Carpenter interviewed by Todd McCarthy, “Trick and Treat,” Film Comment 16 (1980): 23–24



Q u o t e s   a b o u t   c a m e r a p o i n t s  w i t h i n  t h e  a r t i c l e 

E. Ann Kaplan sums it up: “Within the film text itself, men gaze at women, who become objects of the gaze; the spectator, in turn, is made to identify with this male gaze, and to objectify the women on the screen; and the camera’s original ‘gaze’ comes into play in the very act of filming
-- 6 E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (London, 1983), 15. The discussion of the gendered “gaze” is lively and extensive. See above all Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16 (1975): 6–18; reprinted in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, 3rd edn. (New York, 1985), 803–16; also Christine Gledhill, “Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies (1978); reprinted in Mast and Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism, 817–45.

Thus some critics have wondered whether the female viewer, faced with the screen image of a masochistic/narcissistic female, might not rather elect to “betray her sex and identify with the masculine point of view.”5
 -- 5 Silvia Bovenschen, “Is There a Feminine Aesthetic?” New German Critique 10 (1977): 114. See also Mary Ann Doane, “Misrecognition and Identity,” Cine-Tracts 11 (1980): 25–32.)

An analysis of the camerawork bears this out. Much is made of the use of the I-camera to represent the killer’s point of view.

let us for the moment accept the equation point of view = identification

 if, during the film’s course, we shifted our sympathies back and forth, and dealt them out to other characters along the way, we belong in the end to the Final Girl; there is no alternative

COP 10 Minute Presentation

C O P   P R E S E N T A T I O N  &  R E S P O N S E  


This is my cop presentation, it covered where my mind had travelled from before summer to now. As you can see it was quite a significant leap from looking at maverick creatives and their impact on society to looking at whether horror movies are angled at a particular genders fears.

The response to my presentation was good, my though process was documented well and people understood how it progressed to the point it was at. Comments received after the presentation only helped further my research along.

N O T E S  M A D E

• Whether I should look specifically at Women's representation in horror as this was something I had a lot of articles and books on. 
• Alien - Gieger Designed
• Eta Hoffman - The Sandman 
• Freud as a theorist - The Uncanny 
• Position of females within horror films 
• Radio 4 Documentary on menstruation (mens horror at it, taboo subject). 
• Benny Benassi Satisfaction video (and how weapons are phallic). 
• Macbeth "I unsex myself" Lady Macbeth is not powerful as female 
• Talked about how my research showed me that survivors aren't female, meaning they have no feminine qualities, having to adapt masculine traits to beat down the bad guy. 
• Remakes of movies, western movie adaptations far softer than european originals "girl with the dragon tattoo" "Let the right one in" 
• Japanese trope of scary girl 
• Matriarchy 

Planning the project (questions)

I scanned these in just to show how I defined my question before the COP presentation. I tried to think of the merits for each questions, why I found it interesting, if it was researchable and if there was a practical project that immediately jumped to mind for this? 

Summer COP Thoughts So Far!

I've had very limited access to computers over the summer so I'm just going to put all of my diary entries here.. 


6th July

Initial thoughts 

My first ideas for my COP proposal were born from a love of film, my first thoughts were whether a few individuals had the ability to mould and shape a culture - thinking about the big individuals here: Walt Disney, Hayoa Miyazaki, Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick. 
and thinking about whether these individuals had a social responsibility to challenge the norms of society through their work. The problem I'm having is relating it to the question I picked 'To What Extent does social responsibility impact the role and function of illustration" to the point where I'm now doubting whether this is the right route to go down. Does it relate enough to COP 2? 


10th July 

Have decided to continue ideas for the time being, it needs to be more of an extension rather than a separate investigation.  Should I extend my research into representation in cinema, as Artificial Intelligence and it's representation was my main focus in COP 2 and it might have more valuable texts focused on it. Should I look into Hollywood's white washing attitude and explore/analyse the white heterosexual male dominance in cinema, focusing on particular genre??? Where are the black actors at the Oscars? Where are the Gay/Trans actors? Where are the female leading roles?? 

Books I've taken out from the library: Xmen Philosophy (because the whole concept behind xmen is gay and racial supression) and 500 Cult Films. 


30th July 

Ive taken out more books from the library as the more I watch films the more I am beginning to see white males everywhere?! Ive delibrately taken out 2 that focus on black cinema and womens role in cinema? I feel like at this point I need to be thinking about a genre to focus on, for example, the representation of females and black actors in action movies. I've recently watched Jurrasic World where the female is nothing more than a romantic pawn for her male co star, prancing around in heels and only once really saving him. Why is she a damsel in distress and he isnt? 
It's probably too much to include gay rights within my analysis but as a side note, I did look into some films that my gay co-workers mentioned I look into when I mentioned what I was looking into. Films such as "The Imitation Game" where a straight white male was cast as Alan Turing who was one of the fore fathers of technology, yet the actor was not gay himself. Was this simply because coming out as gay in Hollywood is a massive no no? 
As well as this the film glazes over the fact his was castrated for his sexuality despite his outstanding contribution to society and how his sexuality often was the source of his sorrow in that time period. 
I also looked into Stonewall (the film) as that was something hollywood chose to whitewash, the person that started the rebellion was a famous black drag queen NOT a white male? so why did they make that decision? is there any sense behind these castings?

Summative Evaluation

Summative Evaluation – Katie Wade

Within this module my researching skills have been improved as I have learnt to navigate the library resources more accurately and taken advantage of the amount of books we are allowed to loan. It’s really helped being able to find academic resources and statistics from the library this time, as this is something I struggled with in 401. I have also learnt how to Harvard reference to a more accurate degree. My essay writing skills have also been improved upon as I feel like being part of the feedback sessions have really pushed me to think beyond my initial ideas, I have seen a real growth in my abilities to extend and research more into the field.

Image making for this module was quite interesting.  I started off considering making an all-digital publication because of the context of my essay however as my experimentations developed so did my feelings towards what kind of booklet needed to be made. I switched from acrylic paint (which helped display emotion from the hard strokes and amount I used) to more delicate ink. Ink is often my go to so I often try to stay away from using it too much, however for this project I found that continuous line drawing combined with ink was really a great combination and helped me portray the emotions and tone of voice I wanted for my booklet.

However I didn’t feel that I pushed myself in the image making as much as I did with the essay. More time and consideration went into the essay making sure the tone of voice was perfect and my arguments and exploration was thorough. I feel that this was really not the case with image making. I should have been making images constantly for this project but I found it really hard to produce work that I had any connection or interest in. It was only in the last few weeks where I realised that drawing robots didn’t have to be in my final work that I felt liberated. This definetly changed my attitude towards drawing but by this time it was too late to explore to the same extent as I should have done.

I wonder now whether if more time had been spent with image making, maybe I would have had something different and more impactful to say by the end of it.

 My strength in this module is probably the breadth of research I undertook. From watching a wide variety of movies to taking out a range of academic books from the library and looking occasionally on the internet (but less this year than last). I felt a real interest in the essay and my writing was not a problem throughout this whole module. I also think a strength was my contribution to this module during our seminars, I felt like I was able to get clear direction from my colleagues and also offer that same sense of direction back to them.

My main weakness is this module was organization. My time keeping has been a lot better this year but I think I placed Context of Practice on the back burner (so to speak) for too long and in the end had to spend extra time to catch up where I should have been. Blogging was also not fantastic in this module as I was really stunted for what I wanted to say in regards to the practical work I was producing. I think getting stuck in one place in the practical work did hold me back and that in the future I will have to ask more of my fellow illustrators in what is working and how to work past the problems I’m facing.

Overall I was pleased with what I have produced for this, the booklet came out to a fine quality and I am relatively pleased with the essay.  There are things I am taking away from this module for future modules. These are the importance of making timetables, as soon as I made a timetable for COP (a month before deadline) my work became much more focused. This is something I wish I had done earlier and is definitely something to do in the future. I also think that I will take away the importance of communication, with tutors and with students. For this module I was very wrapped up in the essay writing but allowed myself to fall behind image making. If I had communicated with my fellow illustrators and tutors I would have been able to push through the creative block I had with my practical.