Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (51 page)

50
This discussion of the symbolic reconstruction of American history in
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
borrows Tony William’s interpretation in
Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film
(Madison, Wisc.: Associated University Presses, 1996), 185–87. I do disagree with William’s conclusion that the Sawyers are “Puritanism’s worst fears” (187). The Sawyers represent the natural outgrowth of the Puritans’ violent “errand into the wilderness.”

51
For a close reading and analysis, see David A. Szulkin’s
Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic
(Guildford, UK.: FAB Press, 1997).

52
See Adam Lowenstein’s discussion of
Last House
in
Shocking Representations
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 111–43. This is a very insightful interpretation, though I disagree with the amount of emphasis Lowenstein puts on advertising copy of the film, as opposed to audience response within the historical context of the final stages of the Vietnam War.

53
See Carol J. Clover,
Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender and the Modern Horror Film
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 35–41. Sue Short makes a convincing argument for horror films’ relationship to fairy tale and, by extension, their role as portraying and replicating female initiation rituals. Horror films, particularly slashers, present “misfit sisters,” female heroes who discover resources within themselves and assert their independence from various forms of authority. See Short,
Misfit Sisters: Screen Horror as Female Rite of Passage
(New York: Palgrave, 2006). She notes that many of these films are still politically problematic in that they often raise questions about “sexual assertiveness.” See 161ff.

54
Alan Brinkley describes the suburbanization of the middle class as an attempt to “escape the diversity and abrasiveness of urban life.” See his discussion of uniformity in middle-class culture in “The Illusion of Unity in Cold War Culture,” in
Rethinking Cold War Culture
, ed. Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), esp. 68–70. See also Bernice M. Murphy,
The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture
(New York: Palgrave, 2009), 10–11 and 142–46. Murphy notes that Myers becomes “a blank slate upon which all the worst fears of the suburban parent can be projected.” He is both “the escaped mental patient” and “the boy next door gone terribly wrong.”

55
A full examination of the “white flight” phenomenon, and its political implications, appears in Kevin M. Cruse,
White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). See also Bruce Schulman’s
The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics
(New York: Free Press, 2001), 54–58.

56
An alternative reading of the slasher genre can be found in Jane Caputi,
Goddesses and Monsters
. Caputi sees the slasher genre as a kind of misogynistic fairy tale that has its origins in the sensationalistic tales of Jack the Ripper, whose latter-day incarnations are Jason and Freddy. Caputi ignores the complex question of audience identification and does not discuss Carol J. Clover’s interpretation of the film in relation to the importance of the final girl. Isabel Christina Pinedo, in
Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), argues for “contradictory dynamics” within the genre. Pinedo argues for the use of Judith Butler’s “gender trouble” concept in interpreting the genre. See esp. 71–87.

57
Criticisms of Carol Glover’s “final girl” thesis have tended to draw their examples from these inferior and much less influential sequels. For an example, see Tony Williams’ essay “Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror,” in
The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film
, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 164–80.

58
Schulman,
The Seventies
, 241–46.

59
Deborah Knight and George McKnight claim that Easton’s novel makes the monster its central character and thus “our primary means of access to the events of the fictional world and in fact our narrator.” See Knight and McKnight, “American Psycho: Horror, Satire, Aesthetics and Identification,” in
Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror
(Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003). Of course, Mary Shelley had given us a novel at least partially narrated by a monster and, in some sense, a more trustworthy narrator than Patrick Bateman.

60
Blake sees the “fetishization of the mass murderer” during the 1980s and 1990s as a product of the conservative Right’s insistence on the individual breaking the mechanisms of state control. See
Wounds of Nations
, 105–16. Mark Selzer makes a similar argument in
Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1998).

61
Philip Jenkins,
Using Murder
, 150.

62
Philip L. Simpson, in
Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2000), argues that Ellis’ basic theme is ”the self-cannibalizing aspects of 1980s capitalism” (149).

63
See
http://www.murderauction.com
(accessed April 15, 2010).

64
Philip L. Simpson argues that Stone’s points are far more obscure than I argue here, noting that the film becomes dominated by “thematic tangents,” including the introduction of religious themes of Original Sin and Millenarianism. I would argue that Stone’s aesthetic triumphs over the sometimes uncertain plot and murky dialogue to ask difficult question about our fascination with “natural born killers.” See Simpson,
Psycho Paths
, 185.

65
On the popular portrayal of the serial killer, see Tim McGirk, “The Monster Within,”
Time
, January 19, 2004; or “Murder: No Apparent Motive,” HBO documentary, April 24, 1984.

66
On audience identification with Dexter see David Schmid, “The Devil You Know: Dexter and the ‘Goodness’ of American Serial Killing,” in
Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television
,
ed. Douglas L. Howard (New York: I.B. Tauris Press, 2010).

67
It is noteworthy that, in the early episodes, Dexter and Rita are shown as having a sexually dysfunctional relationship, a conceit quickly dropped by the end of the first season as Dexter’s daytime existence became increasingly normalized in relation to his nighttime crimes.

68
The idea of the monster being shaped by historic conditions and economic structures borrows from Annalee Newitz’s idea that “humans turned to monsters through capitalism” as “one story that has haunted America.” See Newitz,
Pretend We’re
Dead
, 2, 7.

69
Schmid argues in “The Devil You Know” that in post-9/11 America, the terrorist has not replaced the serial killer but the serial killer has become a “sympathetic” figure, perhaps even a counterpoint to the terrorist.

1
  For the best scholarly reading of
The Exorcist
, see Carol J. Clover,
Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender and the Modern Horror Film
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 65–72 and 83–90.

2
  Audiences in 1973–74 tended to read the ending of the film
The Exorcist
as a triumph for Satan since both Merrin and Karras meet their end. Friedkin and Blatty have insisted that this is not the message of the film and that the priests’ deaths should be seen as sacrificial efforts to free Regan. In the director’s cut of the film released in 1998, the triumph of good over evil is more clearly delineated. See “Director’s Commentary,”
The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen
, directed by William Friedkin (Warner Home Video, 2002), DVD.

3
  Stephen King,
Danse Macabre
(New York: Berkley Books, 1981), 169; Andreas Killen,
1973 Nervous Breakdown:
Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 111.

4
  Michel Foucault sees the policing of moral and sexual boundaries as part of the general effort to discipline the social order. See a thorough discussion of this in Foucault,
The History of Sexuality
(New York: Vintage Books, 1990), and Ann Laura Stoler,
Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), esp. 137–49.

5
  Bruce Schulman,
The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics
(New York: Free Press, 2001), 159–89.

6
  A lively discussion and debate exists over the nature of the culture wars. A full examination of this debate appears in James Davison Hunter and Alana Wolfe, ed
.
,
Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life
(Washington D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2006).

7
  See Barbara Creed’s “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection,” in
The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film
, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 35–63. Creed argues that the feminine is constructed as monstrous within patriarchal discourses and that this sign of the monstrous feminine can be seen in films ranging from
The Exorcist
to
Alien
. She notes that this tells us nothing about women’s response to horror, although I think seeing such notions in a political context suggests that both men and women read these films as expositions of social and historical problems. See also Shelley Stamp Lindsey’s excellent essay on the film
Carrie
, “Horror Femininity and
Carrie’s
Monstrous Puberty,” in Grant,
Dread of Difference
, 279–95.

8
  See Mary E. Williams, “Sexual Revolution: An Overview,” in
The Sexual Revolution
, ed. Mary E. Williams (San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2002), 10–25.

9
  Morton Hunt,
Sexual Behavior in the 1970s
(Chicago: Playboy Press, 1973), 183–84; Phillip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz,
American Couples: Work, Money, Sex
(New York: William Morrow, 1983), 232, 236.

10
Blumstein and Schwartz,
American Couples
, 232–36.

11
Saturday Evening Post
, January 15, 1966.

12
Toni Grant,
Being a Woman: Fulfilling Your Femininity and Finding Love
(New York: Random House, 1988), 11, 49.

13
George Gilder,
Men and Marriage
(Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1986), 111, 149. Consider the 1983 slasher and cult favorite
Sleepaway Camp
in which we meet a monstrous mom who raises a boy as a girl and transforms him into a killer. The final shocking scene manages to combine fears of violence, monsters, and transgender people.

14
Gilder,
Men and Marriage
, 84; Joshua David Bellin,
Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 115.

15
A more complex, and certainly more friendly, reading of Cronenberg’s oeuvre appears in Lianne McLarty, “‘Beyond the Veil of the Flesh’: Cronenberg and the Disembodiment of Horror,” in
Dread of Difference
, 231–52. McLarty notes that in the film
The Brood
, women “both cause and are the monster.” See also Adam Lowenstein, who argues that Cronenberg, especially in his 1975
Shivers
, introduces the idea of a “non-heteronormative sexual community” that presents a revolutionary challenge to conservative images of marriage and family life.” See Adam Lowenstein,
Shocking Representations
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 145–75.

16
David J. Skal,
The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror
(New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1992), 298, 300.

17
There are a number of good discussions of the film
Alien
and feminism. See especially Tomas Doherty’s “Genre, Gender and the Aliens Trilogy,” in Grant,
Dread of Difference
, 181–99. See also the discussion of Ripley in Patricia Melzer,
Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 108–48. Melzer concludes that Ripley represents a boundary figure who plays with the intersection of the female, the monstrous, and the technical in ways that challenge certain aspects of the more conservative tradition of science fiction.

18
Leslie Woodcock Tentler,
Catholics and Contraception: An American History
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 204–64.

19
Mary E. Bendyna, RSM, John C. Green, Mark J. Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox argue that, while Catholics have joined with Christian conservatives on a number of issues, they approach the culture wars with their own set of values that give them nuanced positions on the death penalty and social welfare programs. See their article “Uneasy Alliance: Conservative Catholics and the Christian Right,”
Sociology of Religion
62, no. 1 (2001): 51–64. I would argue that, uneasy or not, a clear alliance exists, especially over what many religious conservatives view as core issues related to gender and sexuality.