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GENRE AND ENUNCIATION: THE CASE OF HORROR
EDWARD LOWRY
The horror film, more than perhaps any of the golem. Clearly, there are points of
other genre so readily identifiedby both contact between many of the sub
audiences and producers, has largely categories (castles, graveyards, labora
eluded scholars in theirattempts to define tories), but generalizations of this sort do
its specificities. As a category, it remains more to demonstrate the superficiality of
inclusive enough, and its component films iconographic definitions than to define
diverse enough, to present significant horror as a genre.
according to iconography, and 2) accord the narrative level seem to reveal a bit
ing to the structurationof conflict. more: horror films relate the genesis and
the threatof someone or somethingwhich
Unlike such genres as thewestern and the is monstrous, be it a vampire, a psycho or
gangster film,which remain fairly specific a creature from the Black Lagoon. Robin
in their settings, horror movies are set in a Wood put itmost concisely when he ob
variety of times and places, from medieval served that, in the horror film, "normality
castles to modem motels, from the clut is threatened by theMonster."1 Keeping
tered labs of demented scientists to the in mind Wood's insistence that "normal
implying the positioning of the viewer in film likeBlood Feast to the grotesqueness
relation to the narrative, as inscribed in of actresses in Whatever
decaying Hap
the text. "Each genre," Neale continues, pened to Baby Jane? the
Frequently,
"has, at least to some extent, its own spectacle of horror is the monster itself,
mode of address, its own version of the whose appearance is withheld (The Cat
articulation of the balance" between pro People) or revealed (the unmasking of The
cess and position.5 Therefore, if we are Phantom of the Opera) according to codes
spectacle. Burch outlines a common aspects to the extent that the viewer is
enunciative strategy in the presentation of placed ina position where the spectacle of
horrific scenes: the spectator "is titillated horror is presented as the pleasurable
at first by the suggestion of horror and fulfillmentof a desire, paid for at the box
thinks he (sic) has gotten off easily with a office. On the other hand, the narcissistic
little shiver runningup his spine, but then aspect of the conventional construction of
absolutely everything is revealed to the viewer's look, which according to
him."7 This clearly involves an aggressive Mulvey "demands identificationof the ego
structuration, Burch argues, "whose very with the object on the screen," places the
substance is horror ...
invariably per spectator of the horror film in a simulta
ceived (except by persons of extremely neously masochistic position shared with
perverse sensibility) through a cloud of the victim of the horror.9 The seeming
pain," since "each of us is vulnerable to contradictions of this duality adhere to a
these brutal assaults on bodies that after psychoanalytic logic described by Freud
all, are terrifyingly similar to our own."8 in the dynamic relationship between
sadism and masochism, based on the sub
It is useful here to examine the sado ject's tendency to shiftpositions infantasy
masochism of the spectator position in a between the active and passive roles.
bitmore detail. Following Laura Mulvey's
definition of the "two contradictory as On a textual level, this duality is charac
pects of the pleasurable structures of terized by a variety of conventional strate
looking in the conventional cinematic situ gies in the horror film, though for our pur
ation," we may observe that, in the horror poses the case of the moving point-of-view
film, the scopophilic impulse, which camera position associated with themon
"arises from the pleasure inusing another ster or killer is exemplary. Elaborated
person as an object of sexual stimulation most fully in the horror films of Dario
through sight," takes on overtly sadistic Argento and thoroughly conventionalized
plete scopic identificationwith the sadistic psychic energy called forthwhen it is pre
position of the perpetrator of horror. The sented. This recalls the observations of
sadistic pleasure derived by looking Freud on a closely related subject, the
through the killer's eyes is further en "uncanny." He writes,
hanced by a scopophilic prelude to the
violence which involves the voyeuristic ... if psychoanalytic theory is cor
intrusion on the victim, frequently rect inmaintaining that every affect
eroticized by her/hisnudity and/or overtly belonging to an emotional impulse,
sexual activity. At the same time, how whatever its kind, is transformed, if it
ever, the killer's point of view does not is repressed, into anxiety, then among
lationship between the horror filmand its difficult to remain rational.13 Here we
viewer which Noel Carroll has described should note that a central conflict inmany
as "the conflict between attraction and re horror narratives revolves around the dif
pulsion."10 The genre presents the specta ficulties experienced by the rational (the
cle of horror as a kind of forbidden scene, educated and scientific) in recognizing and
simultaneously desired and dreaded-a dealing with the irrational (vampirism,
Elr
"In Halloween, the camera places the spectator in complete scopic identification with the
sadistic position of the perpetrator of horror." (similarly in Friday, the 13th)
This, of course, marks the genre as an In his pioneer work on enunciation and the
ideal site for the generation of the "un cinema, Raymond Bellour has carefully
canny." analyzed the patterns of editing in several
Hitchcock films in order to demonstrate
Shifting our attention back to the level of the links between viewer positioning (exe
enunciation, we may now begin to cuted according to established codes of
examine how the horror filmpositions the point-of-view) and the symbolic con
viewer in such a way that irrational fears structions of the text.His analysis of the
are played upon and the sensation of "un "crossing Bodega Bay" sequence from
canniness" is generated. Here we may cite The Birds especially focuses on themech
all the enunciative strategies by which anism of suspense (a subject quite perti
danger and horror are concealed prior to nent to the horror film) as it relates to
their "uncanny" appearance. Framing, of viewer identificationwith Melanie's (Tippi
course, is a key device in this respect, as is Hedren's) gaze, enunciated according to a
may appear. Here, Freud's observation connections between the operation of the
that "it is a matter of indifferencewhether enunciation and the aggression of the male
what is uncanny was itself originally gaze, manifested narratively at the end of
frighteningas the harbinger of death itself vation that enunciation in the classical
camera/narrator; and given the enuncia understand the genre as a privileged site
tive logic of the genre, the spectator may for the playing out of male castration
rightfullyassume that such direction holds anxieties in terms of horror, and at the ex
a potential threat. Such camera movement pense of the female body.'7
of course includes the stalking killer's
point-of-view; but the "stalking" camera Stephen Neale observes that"Mainstream
can be ominous even when it is not related narrative is a mode of significationwhich
18 OFFILM
JOURNAL AND
VIDEO 2(Spring
XXXVI, 1984)
"The shock to the narrative ismanifested on the eni inciative level by an incoherent explosion of
heterogeneity of the effects that it centers the ego of the viewer as the source
mobilizes and structures ";18 and there is of meaning and coherence, the horror film
certainly a coherence in the dualistic posi is that genre of classical narrative which
tion enunciated by the horror filmfor the promises spectators the occasional sensa
viewer. Yet, it seems that one of the most tion of temporary insanity.
characteristic enunciative strategies of the
horror film involves the wholesale, if only What I have attempted here is to outline
temporary, disruption of the viewer's po some of the ways inwhich the study of
sition of coherence. Witness the shock film enunciation, taken as a semiotic
techniques of the horror film: the shock method with psychoanalytic implications,
cut, the unexpected aural punctuation by a contributes to our understanding of the
scream or a burst of music, the in horror film. This approach involves the
stantaneous materialization of horror in an examination of specific textual usages of
otherwise classically coherent scene. the entire range of filmic codes, encom
Certainly, once the spectator has leapt all the elements of mise-en-scene,
passing
from the theater seat when the hand bursts of sound, of editing and of special effects.
from the grave at the end of Carrie, he/she Clearly the specific codes have chsnged
may place the event in the coherent diege significantly since Georges Melies em
tic context of a character's dream, moti ployed his technique of "trick editing" to
vated logically by the horrorswhich came awe and disorient the logical, perceptual
before; but at the moment of the shock, assumptions of an audience in the context
coherence gives way to panic. Similarly, of a magic show. It is therefore fruitless to
when Marion Crane is murdered in the attempt to compile a lexicon of enuncia
shower in Psycho, the shock to the narra tive codes with fixedmeanings, since the
tive is manifested and enhanced on the textual relationships between code and
enunciative levelby an incoherent explo viewer shift, according
constantly not only
sion of disorienting camera angles and to the type of narrative or genre, but also
Eisensteinian montage. according to the previous and current
usage of codes in a specific historical con
The classicism of most horror films re text. I can only note here the important
quires a quick restoration of coherence to historical work which remains to be done.
both the enunciation and the narrative; but
it is precisely the disruption of thatcoher Finally, it should be noted that the most
ence which the horror filmmarkets in its significantwork in the fieldof genre during
OFFILM
JOURNAL AND
VIDEO
XXXVI, 1984)
(Spring 19
the past several years has taken place in regard to the topic at hand, itmust be said
the study of the musical, precisely from that, while stories of monstrosity may
the perspective of address and the textual constitute a narrative formula, horror in
relations established between audience the cinema is a process which can best be
and spectacle.19 The musical has served as examined at the level of filmic enuncia
an ideal site for such analysis, since the tion.
"horror" and "musical" are in The Changeling, where the camera circles
respect,
one of the characters.
better understood as modes of address
than as genres to the same order 15
belonging Raymond Bellour, "Les Oiseaux: description
as the western, the gangster movie and the d'une s?quence," Cahiers du Cin?ma, 216
detective film. As such, they might be (Octobre 1969), pp. 24-38. Other works by Be
llour dealing with filmic enunciation include:
grouped with other modes of address such "Le Communications,
blocage symbolique,"
as the documentary, the comedic and the 23 (1975),pp. 235-350(onNorth byNorthwest);
pornographic, since all of these terms "Hitchcock: The Enunciator," Camera Obs
posit specific relationships between audi cura, 2 (Fall 1977), pp. 69-91 (mostly on Mar
20 OFFILM
JOURNAL AND
VIDEO 2(Spring
XXXVI, 1984)
(continued from page 20) (continued from page 42)
llour's work on film, and a discussion of its 19"The Brave New World of HDTV,"
usefulness to feminist theory.)
18 Broadcasting, February 1, 1982, p. 84.
Neale, p. 25. 20Takashi Fujio, "Future broadcasting and
19
See especially Rick Altman, ed. Genre: inHigh-Definition
high-definition television,"
The Musical (London: Routledge & Kegan Television. Tokyo: NHK Technical Monograph
Paul, 1981), and Jane Feuer, The Hollywood number 32, June, 1982. p. 7.
Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University 21Hollywood Reporter, July 20, 1983, p.
Press, 1982). 1,16.
22RCA Corporation Annual Report, f.y. 1982,
cited in BoxOffice, June 1983, p. 37. As an
additional confirmation of the theatrical vs. pay
frompage 30)
(continued video figures, consult MGM/UA's annual
report, f.y. 1983, pp. 28-9. Over the past five
spectator's field of view were used for assessing
years, revenue from theatrical distribution has
the viewing angle of the 35mm theatrical
and for conventional television
jumped from$63 million to $260 million; for
presentation home video and pay tv in the same period, the
viewing. Ben Schlanger, "Criteria for Motion
Picture Viewing and for a New 70mm System:
jumpwas from$3 million to $144 million.
23For example, see "Beam me up to the
Its Process and Viewing Arrangements,"
booth, Scotty," Gary Fisher, Box Office, March
SMPTE Journal 75 (1966):Figure 1,p. 162.The
1984, pp. 44-6, and "Onrush of satellite tech
30' field of view utilized for 35mm theatrical
nology occupies world television community,"
exhibition (the general target for HDTV) was
Broadcasting, March 14, 1983-see especially
used for determining the spectator's field of
the comments of Joseph Pelton, p. 166.
view encompassed in a home HDTV display.
24Variety, September 7, 1983, p. 3
"1Greg MacGillivary and Jim Freeman,
25"The Brave New World of HDTV," op cit,
"Producing the Imax Motion Picture: 'To Fly',"
p. 84.
American Cinematographer 57 (1976): 751-752,
26"Spectre of labor unrest looms in videotape
808; Englund, interview.
future: Aldrich," Hollywood Reporter, October
52While the wide-screen film formats such as
23, 1981, pp. 1,13.
Cinerama and CinemaScope do require (in 27"Francis Ford Coppola Interview," Jeffery
certain houses) horizontal head and eye
Wells, Film Journal, September 21, 1981, p.
movements in order to watch the drama on the
9.
screen, there is no required vertical movement
for the spectator as there is in viewing a
large-screen film and in normal, everyday
visual experience. frompage 49)
(continued
53Hatada, Sakata, and Kusaka, p. 568.
looks quite good when viewed on a tube,
54Bridge, interview.
"Ibid. but its video image in no sense compares
56Hooten, 1983 telephone interview. favorably with that of film.There are even
"Telephone interview with Saul Swimmer, some electronic engineers who argue,
President of MobileVision Technology Inc., 30
1983. privately, that electronic imaging will
August
58Alan Colins, "Letter from Toronto: IMAX
never compare favorably with that of
Five Years After," Take One, June 1975, pp. 36, photochemical systems. We will see.
37; Bridge, interview. Whatever the system which ultimately
interview.
"Englund,
emerges, itwill most likely be one which
60Hooten, 1983 telephone interview.
has benefited from the pioneering work of
61Harrington, p. 87.
62Telephone interview with Donald Weed, 30 Coppola and his associates at Zoetrope
August 1983. Studios.