Theatricality in the Horror Film: A Brief Study on the Dark Pleasures of Screen Artifice

By André Loiselle

The horror film generally presents a situation where normality is threatened by a monster. From this premise, Theatricality in the Horror Film argues that scary movies often create their terrifying effects stylistically and structurally through a radical break with the realism of normality in the form of monstrous theatricality. Theatricality in the horror fi lm expresses itself in many ways. For example, it comes across in the physical performance of monstrosity: the overthe-top performance of a chainsaw-wielding serial killer whose nefarious gestures terrify both his victims within the film and the audience in the cinema. Theatrical artifice can also appear as a stagy cemetery with broken-down tombstones and twisted, gnarly trees, or through the use of violently aberrant filmic techniques, or in the oppressive claustrophobia of a single-room setting reminiscent of classical drama. Any performative element of a film that flaunts its difference from what is deemed realistic or normal on screen might qualify as an instance of theatrical artifice, creating an intense affect in the audience. This book argues that the artificiality of the frightening spectacle is at the heart of the dark pleasures of horror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Oct 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785271304

Book preview

Theatricality in the Horror Film

Theatricality in the Horror Film

A Brief Study on the Dark Pleasures of Screen Artifice

André Loiselle

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2020

by ANTHEM PRESS

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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

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Copyright © André Loiselle 2020

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949651

ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-128-1 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78527-128-8 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

1.Introduction: Of Monsters and Monstration

2.Horror, Realism and Theatricality

3.The Theatricality of Monstrous Villainy in Film Adaptations of Horror Plays

4.The Theater as Locus Horribilis: Staging the Paradox of Tragic Horror

5.The Theatricality of Horror: Characters, Unities and Styles

6.Conclusion: The Theatricality of Horror Spectatorship

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates dressed up as Mother in Psycho

2.1The stills that close Night of the Living Dead evoke actual horrors outside the parameters of the scary movie

2.2Michael Rooker as a Brandoesque rebel in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

3.1Robert Englund as Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

3.2The Villain in full theatrical view compared to the victim’s close-up in Murder in the Red Barn

3.3Juxtaposed shots of outdoors normality and indoors satanical madness in Brimstone and Treacle

3.4Rhoda’s abnormal doll-like plastic perfection in The Bad Seed

4.1The gory spectacle of murder staged by the Golem in The Limehouse Golem

4.2The final shot of The Gallows

5.1Theatrical crucifixion in The Silence of the Lambs

5.2The righteously vengeful Punch in Dolls (1987)

5.3From normality to horror in Event Horizon (1997)

5.4The influential stylistic artifice of The House of Usher (1960)

5.5The theatricality of torture in Torture Chamber (2013)

5.6Montage and viral gossip create the monster in Cry_Wolf (2005)

6.1The terrified audience of Paranormal Activity

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: OF MONSTERS AND MONSTRATION

Let us begin this brief study on theatricality in the horror film with a question on etymology and syntagmatics,¹ however pedantic it might seem. If, as Robin Wood has famously suggested, the horror film can be summarized as normality is threatened by the monster (Wood 1979, 14), then how does the syntagma monster signify its threatening difference from the syntagma normality? While there are many definitions of what a monster is, including Jacques Derrida’s statement that a monster is a species for which we do not yet have a name (Derrida & Weber 1995, 386), etymologically the term is specifically related to the notion of being put on display. Derived from the Latin monstrare, the word monster connotes the state of being shown. The term is also associated to monere, to warn: the monster is a warning sign of impending disaster (Huet 2000, 87). The term monster therefore is recognizable as a signifier of threatening ostentation that brazenly challenges normality, which, by definition, is unremarkable, banal and commonplace. As Ernest Mathijs puts it, ostentation certainly characterizes every monster role (Mathijs 2012, 139). The monster stands out in all its spectacular abnormality before the appalled gaze of the normal observer who sees it as an omen of terrible things to come. The monster is often a weird creature from some strange land. But it does not have to be. It might be an ordinary person, an everyday object or merely a vague impression. Whatever it is, however, the monster ostentatiously appears at some critical point in the film as an aberrant display that threatens mundane reality. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) might look perfectly normal through most of Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock). But at the climatic moment of horror, he emerges as the grotesquely bewigged embodiment of abnormality, shocking everyone on screen and in the cinema (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates dressed up as Mother in Psycho.

The term monster is also a close relative of the narratological term monstration, used primarily by historians of early cinema, such as André Gaudreault, to explain cinema’s relationship to the theater, and its departure from it. In his book Du littéraire au filmique: Système du récit (1988), Gaudreault argues that film creates its meaning through a combination of two broad techniques: monstration, or showing in a continuous shot, and narration, or the juxtaposition of shots through editing. Monstration is the aspect of cinema that links it most directly to theater. In fact, what Gaudreault calls profilmic monstration is the equivalent on film of the monstrative work performed on stage (Gaudreault 1988, 121).² Although certain types of filmographic monstration, like variable framing, differ from traditional theatrical staging, monstration on stage and in film share the notion of the unity of time and space. But, unlike the theater, Gaudreault continues, film can escape the limits of monstration through narration or montage, which allows it to move freely across time and space. Gaudreault writes,

Although filmographic monstration […] can detach itself from profilmic monstration, although it can become autonomous and add a discursive layer to the profilmic, it is still nailed to the hic et nunc of the enunciation […] It is impossible for filmographic monstration to achieve what is so simple for the filmographic narrator: namely, to move instantaneously (time) from one place (space) to another. (123, emphasis in the original)

Monstration, therefore, is the aspect of film that can most readily be labeled theatrical, for it is the aspect of the cinematic text that achieves its effects primarily through a straightforward showing within the unity of time and space of a scene. Given the close relation between monster and monstration, and given that monstration is an instance of the theatrical within the cinematic, it follows that the presence of the monster in the horror film is likely to operate as an instance of monstrative theatricality. In other words, the emergence of the monster in the horror film interrupts the narrative flow of the film as theatrical monstration disrupts the straightforward telling of the normal characters’ stories and imposes the terrifying regime of showing on the spectator, who is suddenly trapped in the here and now of the horrifying spectacle from which there is no easy narrative escape.

This moment of monstrous monstration on film corresponds to a process of stylistic transformation that dates back to at least the stage precursor of the horror film: the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. In their book Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (2002), Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson argue that horror plays performed at Paris’s Théâtre du Grand-Guignol from the late nineteenth century to the theater’s closure in the early 1960s generally oscillated in style between naturalism and melodrama. The former would prevail during most of the drama, as the normal story would unfold, until the moment of horror when the tone would switch drastically to melodramatic dread. It is at these moments that any pretense of naturalism is finally abandoned and the full force of stylized melodrama is brought to bear on the performance, say Hand and Wilson. The moment of horror represents, through stylistic shift, a journey which leads from bourgeois security to mortal danger, from the rational to the insane, from—in effect—Naturalism to Melodrama (Hand and Wilson 2002, 37–38). In this book, I will argue that a similar shift operates in the horror film. At moments of horror, the scary movie replicates the theatricality of stylized melodrama, breaking with the naturalism or realism of narrative normality. In Chapters 2 and 3, I will further discuss the ramifications of the term melodrama for the study of theatricality in the horror film.

Theatricality in the horror film expresses itself in many ways. First and foremost, it comes across in the physical performance of monstrosity, where its size and broad histrionics often stunningly clash with discreetly diminutive normality. But it also manifests itself through the depiction of the sites of horror—the locus horribilis. Several horror films actually use the theater as a creepy setting whose artifice is conducive to terror. But even in seemingly normal environments, at the moment of horror, space can become a monstrous theatrical spectacle. Similarly, radical stylistic departures through discontinuous editing or aberrant cinematography, as well as the ostentatious personification of the monster’s victims, and the oppressive spatiotemporal limitations of the scary situation function as shocking devices that contrast drastically with cinematic normality. In the following chapters, I propose to explore these various incarnations of theatricality within the cinematic world of the horror film to provide an alternative way of interpreting the effects of the audiovisual tale of terror.

I claim alternative because the reading of horror I propose here differs markedly from conventional approaches to the genre. Over the past 40 years, the critical discourse around the horror film has tended to focus on four general areas: (1) the subconscious appeal of the genre (Creed 1993; Wood 1979); (2) cognitive responses to monstrosity (Carroll 1990; Grodal 1997); (3) the effects of the genre’s gendered narrative on audiences, especially female spectators (Cherry 2002; Clover 1992; Linda Williams 1984; Pinedo 1997); and (4) the relationship between the monster and specific cultural, social and historical contexts (Benshoff 2002; Skal 1993; Wood 1979). But little work has been done on the way in which horror creates its effects stylistically through a radical break with the realism of normality in the form of monstrous theatricality. This book argues that theatricality is at the core of the cinematic tale of terror and is crucial in the creation of horror effects on screen.

To carry out this argument, it is important to have a clear understanding of certain key concepts, in particular, horror and theatricality. Let’s start with horror. Although theorists like Noel Carroll (1990, 15) draw a distinction between horror stories and tales of terror (the former showing a supernatural monster, the latter featuring a human villain), I see both genres as belonging to a single mode typified by two basic elements. The first, as has already been discussed, is the presence of a threatening display. The threatening presence (supernatural monster or human villain) is not merely a character driven by greed, lust or anger (for mere greed, lust and anger are the stuff of crime thrillers, not horror). Rather, the character or object is perceived as a force that cannot be reasoned with. The victims cannot simply offer money or sex in exchange for their safety. For example, in an early scene from Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986, Tom McLoughlin), as Jason (C. J. Graham) prepares to impale two unfortunate camp counselors, Darren (Tony Goldwyn) and Lizbeth (Nancy McLoughlin), the latter offers the masked killer cash and her American Express card in exchange for her life. Jason ignores her plea and proceeds to drive a spear through her face. A shot of a few dollar bills and the credit card floating in a muddy puddle after Lizbeth’s gruesome murder underscores that the monster has no interest in such mundane objects. Even when sexual desire might seem to underlie the villain’s behavior, as in sadistic slashers like Maniac (1980, William Lustig) or psychological thrillers like Split (2016, M. Night Shyamalan), simple intercourse is never the fiend’s primary goal. There is always a more pressing urge to assert the singularity of a self-absorbed obsession, be it insatiable voracity, compulsive revenge, irrational envy, blind hatred or some other insane fixation. The monster’s motivations always transcend normal material or physical needs. As such, the monster evokes George Bataille’s notion of Evil, which exists for its own sake (Bataille 1973, 18). Even in the rare instances where the monster is eventually revealed to be benevolent and humane, monstrous actions defy normal justifications: as when Dr. Frankenstein’s forlorn creature (Boris Karloff) unwittingly drowns a little girl by throwing her in a pond the same way he had thrown flowers.

The other essential element of horror is best described by the Latin phrase David Cronenberg has cited as the source of all terror: Timor mortis conturbat mea—the fear of death disturbs me (Morris 1994, 58–59). The horror film and the tale of terror are characterized by an engagement with the fear of painful death at the hands of monsters and villains. This is what distinguishes the tale of terror and the horror film from other narrative forms that might also exhibit villains, but whose threatening function is seriously downplayed. Comedies often feature wicked characters (think of films ranging from The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming) to the Scary Movie series (2000–2013)). But in such works, the spectator never fears for the life of the protagonists. In the true horror film (no matter how schlocky and over-the-top), the audience is intended to vicariously experience the normal characters’ fear of painful death. So, for there to be terror and horror there must be an ostentatiously threatening display that causes deathly fear.

A simplistic understanding of my argument so far might lead one to mention titles like The Haunting (1963, Robert Wise) as a counterexample, since literal monsters and villains are never seen in that and other similar ghost films. Yet, anyone who pays attention to the techniques used in The Haunting will immediately notice that the threatening presence is displayed in a most ostentatious way through a frightening combination of extreme camera angles, expressionistic lights and shadows, material and visual special effects and menacing sounds. The fact that the threat might be imaginary is not irrelevant to my argument. In fact, this supports my contention that horror resides in the excessive display of aberrance that clashes audiovisually with the generic signs of normality that comprise most of the story. The danger might not be actual, but the theatrical moments of horror nevertheless materialize from the perception of an abnormal threat that causes unbearable dread.

Let us now examine the concept of theatricality, a term that has multiple connotations (see, for instance, Davis and Postlewait 2003). Patrice Pavis’s definition from his Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis (1998) offers a useful starting point: Theatricality is that which is specifically theatrical, in performance or in the dramatic text […] [where] theatrical means the specific form of theatre enunciation, the movement of the words, the dual nature of the enunciator (character/actor) and his utterances […] [and] the artificiality of performance (representation) (Pavis 1998, 395–97). This summary of theatricality contains two essential points: first, its reference