The Spectacle of Isolation in Horror Films
Dark Parades
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The Spectacle of Isolation in Horror Films: Dark Parades by Carl Royer and Diana Royer
The Spectacle of Isolation in Horror Films
Dark Parades
Carl Royer, MA
Diana Royer, PhD
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2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover painting by Carl Royer.
Cover design by Marylouise E. Doyle.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Royer, Carl.
The spectacle of isolation in horror films : dark parades/Carl Royer, Diana Royer.
p. cm.
Filmography.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7890-2263-9 (hc.: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7890-2263-X (hc. : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7890-2264-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7890-2264-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Horror films History and criticism. 2. Horror filmsPsychological aspects. I. Royer,
Diana, 1959- II. Title.
PN1995.9.H6R69 2005
791.436164dc22
2004020146
Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
To Mary Lou Royer
and, as always, in memory of Carrie
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Carl Royer, MA, is a writer living in Hamilton, Ohio. He received his BA in English from Temple University in Philadelphia and his MA in Creative Writing from Miami (Ohio) University. His short stories and poetry have appeared in various journals, including Black Warrior Review, Ascent, and Allegheny Review, and he has written for Cairo Today. He regularly presents papers on horror films at the annual Popular Culture Association (PCA) conferences.
Diana Royer, PhD, is Professor of English at Miami (Ohio) University, where she teaches courses in American and British literature and composition. She is the author of A Critical Study of Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian Writer and Activist, and has co-edited volumes on American Indian cultures and regional writers. Her research interests also include death studies and horror films, subjects on which she has presented numerous conference papers.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Alone. Usually in a dark, unfamiliar place, somewhere at the border of civilization. Well, not quite alone. With you is someone or something that wants to kill you. This isolation is the essence of the horror genre. Characters in horror films confront the monsters in the border zone. Much the same can be said of horror filmmakers. They work within a genre outside of the comfortable mainstream, intentionally isolating themselves from popular taste (often perceived as sick or demented by genre skeptics) to dramatize in spectacular fashion the deepest fears of humankind. In this study, Diana and Carl Royer use the unifying theme of spectacular isolation to understand how horror cinema operates and, perhaps more important, why it speaks to us even as it disturbs us.
This is an ambitious task. Horror as a film genre traditionally defies easy definitions and neat categories. Perhaps this conceptual slippage is one reason why a growing number of academic studies of horror film have suffused the critical marketplace. These scholarly projects trot out their own theoretical agendas and corresponding close readings of examples taken from this most slippery of genres. Some horror cinema studies focus on general psychological approaches, such as Charles Derrys Dark Dreams (1977); the abject feminine body, Julia Kristevas Powers of Horror (1980); philosophy and aesthetics, Noel Carrolls The Philosophy of Horror (1990); psychoanalytic interpretations, Barbara Creeds The Monstrous-Feminine (1993); body images, Linda Badleys Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic (1995); Gothic horror, Judith Halberstams Skin Shows (1995); gender, Carol Clovers Men, Women, and Chain Saws (1992) and editor Barry Keith Grants collection The Dread of Difference (1996); and queer theory, Harry Benshoffs Monsters in the Closet (1997). Other studies zero in on specific variants or character types within the horror genre, such as Gregory Wallers The Living and the Undead: From Bram Stokers Dracula to Romeros Dawn of the Dead (1986); Andrew Tudors Monsters and Mad Scientists (1989); Vera Dikas Games of Terror: Friday the 13th and the Films of the Stalker Cycle (1990); Andrea Weisss Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in the Cinema (1992); Nina Auerbachs Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995); or my own Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction (2000). Among the spate of academic studies of cinematic horror, this book is refreshing in its approach. As the authors state in their Preface, they are interested in creating a more associative and imaginative approach to horror film studies than if we had been strictly theory-centric. The result is this free-ranging volume, which manages to pull off the enviable feat of being accessible and academic at the same time. As the title indicates, the Royers include a dark parade of films in this book, providing a variety one would normally associate with a collection of essays written by multiple authors. The Royers then exhibit enough intellectual confidence to let the works dictate the organization and scope of the various chapters, rather than forcing the films into a proscribed theoretical framework. Nevertheless, there is a thread that unites all of the disparate chaptersthe idea of isolation as a crucial component of the horror genre.
