The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror (review)
2003; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/hyp.2003.0037
ISSN1527-2001
Autores Tópico(s)Gothic Literature and Media Analysis
ResumoThe Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror (2000) by Cynthia Freeland gathers together a number of compelling readings of a set of films that we might loosely understand as belonging to the horror genre. These include Alien (Scott 1979), Bram Stoker's Dracula (Coppola 1992), The Brood (Cronenberg 1979), Peeping Tom (Powel 1960), Repulsion (Polanski 1965), Eraserhead (Lynch [End Page 215] 1978), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper 1974). The volume proposes to illustrate a cognitivist approach to film while discussing the way in which the films that the author categorizes as horror films address the problem of good and evil and its relations to the representation of gender (7). The author argues that these films illustrate society's fears about new gender roles and their evolution (274). The appeal of the volume lies in the clarity with which it presents the themes of good and evil and explains the relations of these themes to a wide variety of film (only some of which are cited above) while illustrating the centrality of concerns about gender in these same films. The lucidity with which the author articulates her readings of the films results in material that lends itself to use in the undergraduate classroom in which the instructor wishes to provoke discussion about good and evil. The film becomes a means of supporting and untangling these concerns, concerns that might be termed philosophical in nature, such as, in the author's words, "the larger themes of good and evil" (4). The vision that the author offers of what she terms the horror film does not correspond to something inherent in the films themselves but to the manner in which they illustrate, more or less coherently, a set of previously established concerns particular to this author.
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