Behind Open Doors: The Cinematic Spaces of the Slasher Film Open Access
Carlson, Marten Erik (2010)
Published
Abstract
For many years, the slasher genre has been largely unappreciated by film scholars. The two authors who have dealt most with these films, Carol Clover and Vera Dika, leave much room for additional research. Clover and Dika base their criticism on gender and narrative, respectively and, while their theories apply well to a select number of films, many slashers are left unaccounted for. With this thesis, I offer a model that supplements the work of Clover and Dika.
Historical context is very important for an understanding of the slasher. Though this genre exists today in the form of remakes such as Friday the 13th (Paramount, 2009) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (New Line, 2010), these films were never as popular as they were between 1978 and 1982. Following the release of Halloween (Compass) in 1978, variations of the slasher model filled American cinema screens. To understand the success of films such as The Prowler (Sandhurst, 1981), The Burning (Filmmways, 1981), and The Dorm that Dripped Blood (New Image, 1982) during a relatively short time period, I analyze the socio-cultural milieu of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Looking at this five year period in American history, the state of the American nuclear family is truly striking. As scholars such as Natasha Zaretsky and Christopher Lasch discuss, the family unit was in great disarray during this time period. Divorce rates were at a new high, teen drug use was rising, and new abortion laws came into effect during the latter 1970s. These changes along with many others contributed to a weakening of parental authority.
These shifts in family structures are represented in the cinematic spaces of the slahser. In order to link the cinematic spaces with the history of this time period, I draw on Mikhail Bakhtin's "chronotope." Film scholars like Vivian Sobchack employ the chronotope in order to draw connections between real, lived experience and cinematic representation. Like Sobchack, I consider the chronotopes or "time-spaces" of the slasher in order to comprehend the genre's pervasiveness during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Table of Contents
The "Slasher" Reconsidered...1
Historicizing the Slasher...13
A World without Privacy: The Spaces of the Slasher Film...30
The Spaces Between Us...57
Bibliography...59
Filmography...61
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