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Concurrent Session 9a: Slashers, Unite!
Chair: Katherine Angell

Sweet, Bloody Vengeance: Class, Social Stigma, and Servitude in the Slasher Genre
Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin

In this paper I intend to explore the complex nature of the rise of the slasher genre in relation to Reaganism and Reaganomics in the 1980s. Known for prowess and effective killing methods, the slasher sub-genre in horror was a movement in film, which grew out of the turbulent political period in the 1970s under Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. At first, the films generated a shock response from the American public due to the slasher film’s intent on focusing on the destruction of the body, and by extension, the body politic. As the horror movement and particularly this sub-genre grew, an increasing critique of the incumbent president, Ronald Reagan, came to light, particularly in relation to the situation of property, rightful ownership and social displacement. The slasher, whose history and reason for killing is usually configured as revenge for a social wrong committed against him or his family, is revealed to be the victim of Reaganomics; he is usually depicted as sidelined due to issues of social class and Reagan’s abandonment of necessary social policies.
A similarity has been established in the horror genre, according to Carol Clover, in the divide between city and country under Reagan; the country is that wild boundary that lies unchecked beyond the city limits – a place beyond civil liberties, social and moral order, particularly when intermixing with locals. Within this boundary set-up, we see the divide of economics and class come to the fore, and usually the beginning of the bloodbath between the victorious and the victims under the film star President. The films included in this study of the slasher - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Friday the 13th (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Candyman (1992) (as a post-Reaganite reflection) - are among the most telling films on the failure of social responsibility. It is interesting to reflect that in this period of excess, overindulgence and increasing greed among the middle and upper classes, the victims of the slasher in these violent, visceral films, are construed as the intended inheritors of Reaganomics.  

Masks and Machine Ethos: Traces of Techno-Horror in the Slasher Film
Kirsten Miller
Auburn University, USA

Because slasher films have been read almost exclusively as being about gender (Clover, Wood), the few explanations of why killers like Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers wear masks have also been explained in terms of gender, such as Tony Magistrale’s description of them as allowing us “to view these serial murderers as random males – as men who are defined not by their individuality or uniqueness, but instead by their identical acts of unexplained violence and an emptiness of spirit reflected in their expressionless faces” (Abject Terrors 160).  However, an alternative to this explanation that still adheres to Kristeva’s notion of the abject is to explain the use of masks as giving these killers a sort of “machine ethos,” emphasizing how they, in the words of Kyle in The Terminator (which could itself be seen as a slasher film with a science fiction premise), can’t be “bargained with” or “reasoned with.”  They, like machines, will not stop, and like machines, are incapable of sympathy, and denying the audience the ability to see their human faces emphasizes this aspect of the characters.  Considering that slasher films descend from a film genre that was only years earlier obsessed with machines and technology as the monstrous (an argument can be made for viewing machines as the abject), it makes sense that at least some elements of slasher films would reflect that same source of fear.  This paper argues not that slasher films should be read as about technology fear instead of being read as about gender, but that the masks worn by the killers are traces of the technology fear that was once so central to horror films and still remains fearful to human beings despite our horror films having moved on to deal with other fears and issues.  

Monstrosity of the Beautiful and the Dark Side of Consumption and Consumerism in the Melodrama/Horror Film Dumplings
Sarah Arnold
National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

In Dumplings desire for ‘youth and beauty’ manifests itself in women’s consumption of dumplings made from aborted foetuses. In the film both producer, as well as consumer, of the dumplings engage in cannibalism in order to prolong youth and remain desirable to both themselves and men. The two women involved come from opposite ends of the social spectrum yet seek the same goal. The film relates capitalist preoccupations with image and status to the monstrous mechanisms involved in the production of status symbols. The monstrosity of these women does not lie in their bodies, but in how they refigure and utilise both their own and other bodies in order to gain value and currency within the capitalist system in Hong Kong. This works in opposition to many Western horrors that cite the female/maternal figure as the source of horror and abjection.
In order to gain an ideal and flawless body, free from ‘horror’ of age, the women reject motherhood and reproduction in favour of consumption of the unborn child/youth. The manufactured and simulated female body produces the ‘monstrous beautiful’. The film continually contrasts the picturesque and idealised façade (of the women) with the horrific happenings that enable their illusion to succeed. Stylised and sensual scenes of eating are coupled with visceral sound effects, signalling the grotesque nature of the events taking place.
Drawing on both Julia Kristeva’s concept of the ‘abject’ and Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulacrum, I propose to discuss the monstrous in relation to the maternal body and reproduction as well as modes of consumption in Late Capitalist economy.

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