Prelims

Half Title Page

GENDER AND CONTEMPORARY HORROR IN FILM

Series Page

EMERALD STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE AND GENDER

Series Editor: Samantha Holland, Leeds Beckett University, UK

As we re-imagine and re-boot at an ever faster pace, this series explores the different strands of contemporary culture and gender. Looking across cinema, television, graphic novels, fashion studies and reality TV, the series asks: what has changed for gender? And, perhaps more seriously, what has not? Have representations of genders changed? How much does the concept of ‘gender’ in popular culture define and limit us?

We not only consume cultural texts, but share them more than ever before; meanings and messages reach more people and perpetuate more understandings (and misunderstandings) than at any time in history. This new series interrogates whether feminism has challenged or change misogynist attitudes in popular culture.

Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender provides a focus for writers and researchers interested in sociological and cultural research that expands our understanding of the ontological status of gender, popular culture and related discourses, objects and practices.

Titles in this series

Samantha Holland, Robert Shail and Steven Gerrard (eds.), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film

Steven Gerrard, Samantha Holland and Robert Shail (eds.), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Robert Shail, Steven Gerrard and Samantha Holland (eds.), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games and Transmedia

Samantha Holland, Screen Heroines, Superheroines, Feminism and Popular Culture

Title Page

GENDER AND CONTEMPORARY HORROR IN FILM

EDITED BY

SAMANTHA HOLLAND

Leeds Beckett University, UK

ROBERT SHAIL

Leeds Beckett University, UK

STEVEN GERRARD

Leeds Beckett University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2019

Editorial matter and selection © the volume editors; individual chapters © their respective authors, 2019.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78769-898-7 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-897-0 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-899-4 (Epub)

List of Contributors

Emilio Audissino (University of Southampton), a film scholar and a film musicologist, holds one PhD in History of Visual and Performing Arts from the University of Pisa, Italy, and one PhD in Film Studies from the University of Southampton, UK. He specialises in Hollywood and Italian cinema, and his interests are film analysis, screenwriting, film style and technique, comedy, horror, and film sound and music. He has published journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries on the history and analysis of films from the silent era to contemporary cinema. He has taught film history, technique and theory at the Universities of Genoa, Southampton, West London, and UNINT Rome. He is the author of the monograph John Williams’s Film Music: ‘Jaws’, ‘Star Wars’, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), the first book-length study in English on the composer, and the editor of the collection of essays John Williams. Music for Films, Television and the Concert Stage (Brepols, 2018). His book Film/Music Analysis. A Film Studies Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) concerns a method to analyse music in films that blends Neoformalism and Gestalt Psychology.

Irene Baena-Cuder graduated in Media and Communication from the University of Extremadura, Spain, in 2008, and after gaining some professional experience in this field, she achieved an MA in Gender Studies at the University of Huelva, Spain. She has recently completed her PhD in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK, where she explored contemporary Spanish horror film from a gender perspective. Her research contributions include academic chapters and published articles studying issues of historical memory and Spanish Gothic, Spanish fascist identities, masculinity, representation of women as possessed monsters in contemporary Spanish horror film or the wider problematic representation of strong, independent women as monsters within this genre. She has worked as a Guest Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, and she currently teaches Film and Media studies at the University of East Anglia.

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns works at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) – Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina), as Professor in ‘Literatura de las Artes Combinadas II’. He teaches seminars on international horror film. He is director of the research group on horror cinema ‘Grite’ and has published articles on Argentinian and international cinema and drama in the following publications: Imagofagia, Vita e Pensiero: Comunicazioni Sociali, Anagnórisis, Lindes and UpStage Journal among others. He has published chapters in the books Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield, edited by Cynthia Miller, To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post 9/11 Horror, edited by John Wallis, For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond, edited by Lisa Funnell, Dreamscapes in Italian Cinema, edited by Francesco Pascuzzi, Reading Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey, edited by Cheyenne Mathews, Time-Travel Television, edited by Sherry Ginn, James Bond and Popular Culture, edited by Michele Brittany, and Deconstructing Dads: Changing Images of Fathers in Popular Culture, edited by Laura Tropp, among others. Currently, he is writing a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir.

Hannah Bonner is in the PhD program in Film Studies at the University of Iowa, USA. She has an MA in Film Studies from The University of Iowa and a BA in English and Honors in Creative Writing from UNC-Chapel Hill. Finally, her chapter on the HBO show Girls in the anthology HBO’s Original Voices: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Power from the publisher Routledge was published in 2018.

Joseph Brennan is an Independent Scholar working in Sydney, Australia. He writes on male sexuality in the fields of porn, fan, and celebrity studies, and his work has been published in leading scholarly journals. Joseph is currently editing a special issue on ‘queerbaiting’, to appear in the Journal of Fandom Studies in 2018, and is also assembling a book collection on the topic for a university press. He has worked previously as Lecturer of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, where he received his PhD. He is editorial board member on the Routledge journal Psychology & Sexuality. Selected journals in which his work has appeared include: International Journal of Cultural Studies, Porn Studies, Sexualities, Psychology & Sexuality, Sexuality & Culture, Disability & Society, Continuum, Celebrity Studies, Popular Communication, Discourse, Context & Media, Media International Australia, Journal of Fandom Studies and M/C Journal.

Niall Brennan received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, where he focused on representations of national culture, values and identity in the Brazilian television mini-series. His research continues to focus on Latin American television and film, as well as on representations of gender and sexuality in fiction and reality TV globally. Niall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Fairfield University, USA.

Wickham Clayton is a Lecturer in Film History and Theory at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, UK. He is an editor of Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film (2015) and a co-editor of Screening Twilight: Critical Approaches to a Cinematic Phenomenon (2014). Wickham’s work focuses on film form and aesthetics, film genre (with some specialization in horror), the Biblical Epic and auteurist perspectives on the historical poetics of the films of Woody Allen.

Matthew Denny is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He has recently completed a PhD on theories of authorship and postmodernism, and has previously conducted research on Hammer Horror.

Kath Dooley is a filmmaker and academic in the School of Media, Creative Arts & Social Inquiry at Curtin University, Australia. She completed a creative PhD exploring portrayals of the body in the work of contemporary French directors Claire Denis, Catherine Breillat and Marina de Van at Flinders University, South Australia, in 2014. Kath has written a number of short and feature length screenplays and has directed several award-winning short films and music videos. Her research interests include French cinema, screen production methodology, screenwriting and screen education.

Louise Flockhart graduated from the University of Dundee, UK, with an MA(Hons) in English Literature in 2013, and then with an MLitt in Gender, Culture and Society in 2014. She was awarded the Mary Ann Baxter award for excellence in the GCS MLitt. She was then awarded AHRC DTP funding to carry out her PhD at the University of Stirling, UK. Louise is currently in the middle of her doctoral studies, writing her thesis on representations of female cannibals in contemporary literature and film.

Diego Foronda is MA in Literature graduated at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) – Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina)-. He has published in Representations of the Mother-in-Law in Literature, Film, Drama, and Television, edited by Jo Parnell and Critical Essays on Arthur Machen, edited by Antonio Sanna.

Steven Gerrard is Senior Lecturer at The Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University, UK. A firm fan of all things Low Culture, Steven has written two monographs entitled The Carry On Films (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Modern British Horror Film (Rutgers University Press). He is a co-editor of Crank it up! Jason Statham – Star and a series of books for Emerald Publishing on gender in horror.

Samantha Holland is a Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her research interests include gender, leisure, subcultures and popular culture. Her publications include Alternative Femininities (Berg, 2004); Body, Age & Identity; Pole Dancing, Empowerment & Embodiment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and Modern Vintage Homes & Leisure Lives: Ghosts & Glamour (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

Frances A. Kamm is the Co-founder and Organizer of the Gothic Feminism project at the University of Kent, UK, and the co-editor of the forthcoming Gothic Heroines on Screen. Frances completed her PhD last year with her thesis entitled: ‘The Technological Uncanny and the Representation of the Body in Early and Digital Cinema’. Her research interests include theories of the uncanny, the filmic body and visual effects technologies.

Zeynep Koçer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Design at Istanbul Kültür University, Turkey. She teaches visual culture, film history and cultural studies. Koçer received her PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from I.D. Bilkent University. Her research areas are Turkish modernization and politics, cultural studies, reception studies and gender.

Maddi McGillvray is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at York University, where she writes extensively on the horror genre. Maddi’s other research interests include feminist film theory, transmedia studies, and exploitation cinema. Continuing her interest in gender and horror, Maddi is completing her doctoral dissertation on contemporary female horror filmmakers. In addition to her current research, Maddi is also writing a chapter titled “‘Softness Have You Seen My Film?’: The Women of the New French Extremity” for the edited collection Women Make Horror. She is also the Editorial Assistant at Rue Morgue, the world's leading horror in culture and entertainment magazine.

Shellie McMurdo is currently in the third year of doctoral research at the University of Roehampton, UK. Her thesis, titled ‘Blood on the Lens: Found Footage Horror and the Terror of the Real’ uses close critical analysis influenced by trauma theory to examine the rise in popularity of the found footage horror subgenre. In addition to her current research, Shellie has a forthcoming chapter in an edited collection on American Horror Story and is currently working on the proposal for a co-authored book on the mediation of the West Memphis Three case. Her wider research interests are trauma theory, torture horror, fandoms and transmedia.

Francesca Sobande is a Lecturer in Marketing and Advertising at Edge Hill University, UK, and is interested in the manifestation of intersecting issues concerning race and gender in popular culture. Her research foregrounds digital diasporic dynamics amidst the media marketplace experiences of Black women in Britain. Francesca has been involved in the organization of symposia, including Examining Normativity in Consumer Culture and Labour Markets (University of St Andrews) and is on the editorial team behind the forthcoming collection To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe.