The slasher genre has fascinated European audiences since 1897 when the Grand Guignol theature entranced and terrified audiences in Paris. Some of the best of the early silent films were what could be described as fitting into the slasher genre, including Bluebeard (1901) and the perpetually engrossing, the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) with its jagged angles and nonparallel lines. Of course, the slasher genre did not reach the New World until perhaps 1932's Thirteen Women in which a half-Javanese student enlists a swami to lure her tormenters into committing suicide. Interestingly enough, Peg Entwhistle, a star in Thirteen Women, is said to have committed suicide beneath the Hollywood sign shortly before the films release, adding an element of life (or death) imitating art.
In 1960 British director Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho captivated audiences enough to introduce the psychodramatic slasher concept. It is an intimate portrayal of a serial killer's mental processes, utilizing spacial relations and abnormal deceptions to represent Freudian concepts. Psycho became perhaps the most influential slasher psychodrama in American film making. Since then the slasher psychodrama has become an institution in film making exemplified by Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John Carpenter's Halloween, the Nightmare on Elm Street series and recently the 2012 film Maniac, directed by Franck Khalfoun.
Slasher psychodramas must be distinguished from the "who dunnit" sub-genre of slasher films exemplified by John Carpenter's Scream, Jim Gillespie's I Know What You Did Last Summer, Bob Clark's 1974 holiday classic, Black Christmas and Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp (1983). These films owe more to Agatha Christie than Alfred Hitchcock. Here the victims are slain before the motive is know.
In contrast, the slasher psychodrama examines the inner workings of the serial killer's abnormal mind. Additionally, the identity of the killer is known even before the first act of violence takes place. Thus, the audience anticipates the violence, without knowing when or where exactly it will come. These films rely heavily on Freudian theories regarding abnormal psychology. Generally, the killer's instincts result for an over emphasis on impulses arising from the Id and the Ego, while ignoring the super Ego.
One of the best examples of such Freudian cinema is the 1983, German film Angst. It is about a narcissistic and sociopathic serial killer who has just been released from prison and his recidivistic exploits that commence immediately upon his release. An almost constant narration by the monstrous, anti-heroic subject plays throughout the entirety of the film. The tone of the narration is something like a patient revealing his darkest impulses on the couch in a psychoanalyst's office until the very end when a psychologist offers his own expert opinion via voiceover. Strong allusions to an Oedipal complex, persecution complex and compulsive narcissism are consistent motifs.
Another excellent example of a film that centers on the Id and Ego while skipping over the Super Ego is the 1977 French film Baxter. The infantile, morally-bankrupt protagonist of this film is a dog; the title character. The film is organized around narration from Baxter's perspective as he reveals the inner workings of the canine psyche. He is given to an elderly woman whom he deems unfit to cater to his whims and thus concocts a plan to orchestrate her untimely demise. Baxter's infantile, narcissistic impulses are not kept in check by his super Ego as he is merely and literally a beast.
Unfortunately, the socio-ideological effect of slasher psychodramas is that they normalize sociopathic behavior. The serial killer ceases to be a monster and thus becomes human. This can be detrimental for the collective psyche of the greater society in two ways. First, an individual that is already inclined toward anti-social behavior may view these films as an understanding of their condition and thus provide grounds for justification of these impulses. This is, of course, somewhat of a conservative understanding of the role of entertainment in society, but valid nonetheless. Second, the gravitas of the pseudo-psychological character of these films may give the innocent viewer an idea that they now understand the so-called "warning signs" of sociopathic tendencies in an erroneously assumed empirical sense. The may result in the creating of profiling and straw-men or boogey-men. It could erode a collective trust in the essential goodness, or at least neutrality of strangers' intentions. The result of this is alienation, obsessive individualism and again, paradoxically, a justification of anti-social impulses.
It should be kept in mind that the narcissistic character of the slasher is a cultural motif unique to Europe and the USA. For example, in both the Japanese slasher film Ichi the Killer, directed by Takashi Miike and the South Korean love-letter to ultra-violence Fallen Angels, by director Wong Kar Wai, the serial murderers do not kill out of egotistic and infantile impulses, but out of a sense of duty, something that arises from the super Ego.
A critical, Marxian interpretation must be added the the Freudian character of the slasher psychodrama genre. Marx's concept of alienation, a contribution to the dialogues on what Hegel terms the geist, must here be brought into play. In the young Marx's 1844 philosophical manuscripts he describes the contradiction of alienation thusly:
In both respects, therefore, the worker becomes a servant of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labor, i.e., in that he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. This enables him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as a physical subject. The height of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physical subject and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker.
Mere survival here becomes a privilege that results only from subjugation of the worker to the commodity that is fetishized. Thus, a worker becomes the servant of the product of her/his own work. This contradiction creates cognitive dissonance that Freud did not necessarily account for. A resentment forms between the enslaved creator and the master created. Thus, the Oedipal complex is corroborated, but not validated. The product of labor (in the case of Oedipus, the labor of child birth) develops a libidinal desire to dominate the creator. Adam chooses Eve and the snake over God and is cast out of Eden. However, the resentment of the objectified product (the offspring or the commodity) is less justifiable than the resentment of the creator (the parent, the god, the worker) against the creation. Therefore, the Oedipus complex exemplified by the serial killers in slasher-psychodrama films is not to be coddled or pitied. Conversely, the victims are not to be pitied either as they are complacent in their victimization. The truly liberating cinema is that in which the victim murders the abuser. That will be the subject of the next chapter.
In 1960 British director Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho captivated audiences enough to introduce the psychodramatic slasher concept. It is an intimate portrayal of a serial killer's mental processes, utilizing spacial relations and abnormal deceptions to represent Freudian concepts. Psycho became perhaps the most influential slasher psychodrama in American film making. Since then the slasher psychodrama has become an institution in film making exemplified by Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John Carpenter's Halloween, the Nightmare on Elm Street series and recently the 2012 film Maniac, directed by Franck Khalfoun.
Slasher psychodramas must be distinguished from the "who dunnit" sub-genre of slasher films exemplified by John Carpenter's Scream, Jim Gillespie's I Know What You Did Last Summer, Bob Clark's 1974 holiday classic, Black Christmas and Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp (1983). These films owe more to Agatha Christie than Alfred Hitchcock. Here the victims are slain before the motive is know.
In contrast, the slasher psychodrama examines the inner workings of the serial killer's abnormal mind. Additionally, the identity of the killer is known even before the first act of violence takes place. Thus, the audience anticipates the violence, without knowing when or where exactly it will come. These films rely heavily on Freudian theories regarding abnormal psychology. Generally, the killer's instincts result for an over emphasis on impulses arising from the Id and the Ego, while ignoring the super Ego.
One of the best examples of such Freudian cinema is the 1983, German film Angst. It is about a narcissistic and sociopathic serial killer who has just been released from prison and his recidivistic exploits that commence immediately upon his release. An almost constant narration by the monstrous, anti-heroic subject plays throughout the entirety of the film. The tone of the narration is something like a patient revealing his darkest impulses on the couch in a psychoanalyst's office until the very end when a psychologist offers his own expert opinion via voiceover. Strong allusions to an Oedipal complex, persecution complex and compulsive narcissism are consistent motifs.
Another excellent example of a film that centers on the Id and Ego while skipping over the Super Ego is the 1977 French film Baxter. The infantile, morally-bankrupt protagonist of this film is a dog; the title character. The film is organized around narration from Baxter's perspective as he reveals the inner workings of the canine psyche. He is given to an elderly woman whom he deems unfit to cater to his whims and thus concocts a plan to orchestrate her untimely demise. Baxter's infantile, narcissistic impulses are not kept in check by his super Ego as he is merely and literally a beast.
Unfortunately, the socio-ideological effect of slasher psychodramas is that they normalize sociopathic behavior. The serial killer ceases to be a monster and thus becomes human. This can be detrimental for the collective psyche of the greater society in two ways. First, an individual that is already inclined toward anti-social behavior may view these films as an understanding of their condition and thus provide grounds for justification of these impulses. This is, of course, somewhat of a conservative understanding of the role of entertainment in society, but valid nonetheless. Second, the gravitas of the pseudo-psychological character of these films may give the innocent viewer an idea that they now understand the so-called "warning signs" of sociopathic tendencies in an erroneously assumed empirical sense. The may result in the creating of profiling and straw-men or boogey-men. It could erode a collective trust in the essential goodness, or at least neutrality of strangers' intentions. The result of this is alienation, obsessive individualism and again, paradoxically, a justification of anti-social impulses.
It should be kept in mind that the narcissistic character of the slasher is a cultural motif unique to Europe and the USA. For example, in both the Japanese slasher film Ichi the Killer, directed by Takashi Miike and the South Korean love-letter to ultra-violence Fallen Angels, by director Wong Kar Wai, the serial murderers do not kill out of egotistic and infantile impulses, but out of a sense of duty, something that arises from the super Ego.
A critical, Marxian interpretation must be added the the Freudian character of the slasher psychodrama genre. Marx's concept of alienation, a contribution to the dialogues on what Hegel terms the geist, must here be brought into play. In the young Marx's 1844 philosophical manuscripts he describes the contradiction of alienation thusly:
In both respects, therefore, the worker becomes a servant of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labor, i.e., in that he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. This enables him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as a physical subject. The height of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physical subject and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker.
Mere survival here becomes a privilege that results only from subjugation of the worker to the commodity that is fetishized. Thus, a worker becomes the servant of the product of her/his own work. This contradiction creates cognitive dissonance that Freud did not necessarily account for. A resentment forms between the enslaved creator and the master created. Thus, the Oedipal complex is corroborated, but not validated. The product of labor (in the case of Oedipus, the labor of child birth) develops a libidinal desire to dominate the creator. Adam chooses Eve and the snake over God and is cast out of Eden. However, the resentment of the objectified product (the offspring or the commodity) is less justifiable than the resentment of the creator (the parent, the god, the worker) against the creation. Therefore, the Oedipus complex exemplified by the serial killers in slasher-psychodrama films is not to be coddled or pitied. Conversely, the victims are not to be pitied either as they are complacent in their victimization. The truly liberating cinema is that in which the victim murders the abuser. That will be the subject of the next chapter.
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