Revenge of the Phallic Woman (essay)

For almost thirty years now, critics and theorists alike have been baffled by the visceral attack on the senses provided by Cronenbergian cinema. Be they human flies, venereal zombies, killer dwarves or morphing typewriters, his creatures have always hinted at an underlying revolution(1) that needed blood to be shed and all sexual inhibitions to be annihilated. However, amidst a chaos of sexual promiscuity and metamorphosis of the flesh, there lies an authorial text, whose coherence within the lifelong work of the director is almost universally granted. Of course, detractors to this text have risen through the years and, among them, many feminist and more liberal critics (leader of which is Robin Wood) accused Cronenberg of being a reactionary misogynist. But the director also has many supporters, including William Beard, Pierre Véronneau and myself, whose chief concern is not so much to shut down this view altogether, but rather to open up discussion of other possible interpretations of such a complex bulk of work (no less than sixteen feature films to date, with two in the making: a pretty good overall number for a Canadian filmmaker…). I would like however to focus on one particular film: Rabid. Standing at the crossroads of feminist horror theory, it poses a specific problem to any Freudian reading of it: that of the woman possessing a phallus. This will be the basis of my reconstruction of feminist theory, away from psychoanalysis, and toward the study of Cronenbergian binaries and the subversive nature of disease in his films.    

In her article on classical horror cinema, Linda Williams stipulates a clear link between femininity and monstrosity (which would seem useful in an analysis of Rabid, wherein the monster is female), but only to fall in the trap set by Laura Mulvey. Indeed, she transposes Mulvey’s theory directly onto the horror genre, by associating the punished female of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” with the punished monster who stands for her within the genre: “The destruction of the monster that concludes so many horror films could therefore be interpreted as another way of disavowing and mastering the castration her body represents” (88). Now, it would seem such an interpretation is virtually useless to comment Rabid because the monstrosity is here specifically constructed around the possession of the phallus, and not its lack. Indeed, the presence of this phallic appendage is emphasized by its ability to spring out and retract from a vaginal opening in Rose’s armpit. That is, the vagina is also the phallus, so the very term “lack” is now totally meaningless. Even the very definition of Rose as female becomes problematic within the psychoanalytical framework.

However, Williams also goes on to discuss the question of vampirism, concerning which she stipulates that the vampire’s horror lies in “the power to mutilate and transform the vulnerable male. The vampire’s insatiable need for blood seems a particularly apt analogy for what must seem to the man to be an insatiable sexual appetite – yet another threat to his potency” (90) (that she specifically speaks of the male vampire is irrelevant, because she equates male monsters with female sexuality(2)). This idea of aggressive female sexuality then becomes the source of horror. This view is indeed consistent with that of Robin Wood: “We can nonetheless underline that the film [equates horror with] the expression of aggressive female sexuality” (1990: 205). Following in those footsteps, Bart Testa offers us this interpretation of the ending: “repression has won, and particularly it has won over a dead woman’s active sexuality” (42). Wood further ties this conception of female desire as the source of horror with the Freudian concept of the woman’s “masculinity”, “which our culture is swift in repressing” (205). What Wood and Testa fail to observe though, is the punitive nature of Rose’s attacks, not only upon some of the film’s characters, but also upon the audience.  “The attacks led by Rose can also be interpreted as assaults against the traditional male predator” (193), says Piers Handling. According to him, the counterattack by Rose upon the eyes of a drunken rapist is “a symbolic attack against the ‘look’ of the male, the male ‘gaze’(3)” while her stabbing of the hands of a lustful porno theater patron, an attack against “the unsolicited male fondling” (4)(193).

Unfortunately for Handling, he doesn’t expand on this last idea as to associate the reversal of predatory sexual roles within the film with the one created without. In fact, few people at the time, even fewer within the film’s audience, ignored Marilyn Chambers’ background as a porn star (she had starred in the recent Resurrection of Eve which the film references by naming the porno theater “Eve”). It is indeed strange that Handling would speak of the shattering of traditional institutions within the film, while ignoring this simple ambiguity in the process of identification. Indeed, Chambers breaks away from her role as passive sex object and aggressively engages in rape-like attacks, becoming an active perpetrator. Whether this instills fear of female sexuality within the viewer or simply deceives his expectations is debatable. At any rate, we can turn psychoanalytical reading against its advocates by stipulating a tear in the active/passive policies of the look and the masochist/sadist roles associated respectively with female and male under Mulvey. For her part, Andrea Dworkin specifically addresses the question of male power within pornography. She translates the active/passive axiom into hunter/hunted, stating that this power resides notably within the physical power of men over women, the power of terror and the funereal power of sex, all of which are challenged by Rose. More interestingly however, she discusses the penis as a weapon: “A saber penetrating a vagina is a weapon; so is the camera or pen that renders it; so is the penis for which it substitutes (vagina literally means ‘sheath’)” (49). In Rabid’s case, the vagina becomes the actual sheath, not that of a foreign weapon, but that of Rose’s weapon: the phallus, which she uses to overwhelm men. No longer is the knife the replacement phallus (that of Jamie Lee Curtis and countless others), it is now the female body itself. No longer will it be abused because it will stab back. Its initial revolt against patriarchal abuses (Keloid is, according to Piers Handling (p. 184), the quintessential Cronenbergian father figure), its transformation, has produced a permanent defense against further attacks.

In her analysis of feminist criticism of horror films, Cynthia Freeman rejects psychoanalytical and psychodynamic theories in favor of a more socially oriented, perhaps more fair and constructive interpretation of the genre. “It is limiting to translate a social critique into a depth-psychological thesis about how we all (allegedly) have deep ambivalences about our abjected mothers” (200), she says ironically. She then goes on to interpret Cronenberg’s The Brood as an allusion to mad scientist horror films, framing “the megalomaniac psychiatrist” Dr. Raglan as the film’s main villain, instead of the monstrous Nola Carveth (the villain according to Barbara Creed’s psychodynamic lecture of the film), herself a fruit of Raglan’s experimenting with psychoplasmics. In further reacting to Creed, Freeland states that “she also misrepresents [please note that she doesn’t use the term ‘misinterprets’] the structure of the film’s plot, which depicts an appropriate punishment that Dr. Raglan suffers for his hubris – as he is destroyed by the monstrous children he has so freakishly ‘fathered’” (200). Similarly, Rabid’s Dan Keloid is killed by the creature he has unjustly brought into the world, namely the newly vampiric Rose.  Of course, the demise of the mad scientist at the hands of his creation is reminiscent of Frankenstein. Now, recent theorists of the James Whale film overwhelmingly play the monster as victim of the selfishness of his bourgeois master. Interestingly enough, Robin Wood is among them. His inscription of the monster as standing for the repressed proletariat in his introduction to The American Nightmare (page 11) suggests an exploitative relation between the creator and his creation(5). Why is he so diligent then, in overlooking Keloid’s responsibility within Rabid?

Seemingly, Wood does not consider the relation between Rose and Keloid to be exploitative. However, an analysis of Cronenbergian binaries might prove him wrong. For one, the opposition between mind and body permeates his work. Now, his association of female with the body (nature) and of male with the mind (reason) apparently supports a normative conception of the sexes. In the case one adheres to such a conviction, my analysis of the director becomes a simple matter of pointing out the contradictions within patriarchy, as suggested by Judith Mayne in “Feminist Film Theory and Criticism”. Indeed, it is always nature that is misunderstood and selfishly modified by reason within Cronenberg’s films. Dan Keloid’s decision to utilize experimental surgery on an unconscious Rose is a good example of those excesses of reason, which lead to a bloody revolt of the abused human body. In this case, it is the abused female who strikes back against patriarchy with all the strength she’s been infused with, exactly as did the Frankenstein monster (whom I consider fully human, even more so than his creator). Moreover, there is something Cronenberg recently said, which I think is crucial in understanding him and his opinion of women (in relation to nature): “the idea that the most basic human is a female and then the perversion, the late development, is a male […] does make some kind of sense” (Simon: 55). This, not only justifies the binary, but also assigns perversion to the male, and reason.

The inadequacy of the male toward the female within the film seemingly stems from this fact. Rapists aside, Hart’s relation with Rose is spiked by the shortcomings of his rational mind. It is indeed his obsession with rebuilding the motorcycle that has crushed Rose which isolates his helpless girlfriend from his positive influence (she calls him in a moment of panic, but he doesn’t answer because he is too busy listening to a woman’s voice on the radio and piecing back together his hunk of scrapped metal, instead of listening to his girlfriend’s voice and piecing her back together). Ultimately, he also causes her death. By reacting to her disease as he does (he gets angry and violent, nastily accuses her of being a monster), he denies her the loving care she deserves after being altered against her will. In the end, as she talks to him on the phone, she insists on the fact that she is afraid. When she gets attacked, though, Hart helplessly breaks the phone, illustrating the film’s emphasis on their lack of communication, the result of a selfish and fiendish masculinity, more interested in the coldness of metal than the warmth of a lover. In fact, hasn’t it ever occurred to anyone that Rose’s monstrosity directly comes (no pun intended) with the phallus?

Surely, the female body is ill and eventually dies in Rabid, seemingly marking a disgust for disease and death, that of the natural body, of nature. Now, I’d like to consider both from a novel point of view, that of (r)evolution. Antonin Artaud once said that the plague and theater are alike. “Theater, like plague, is a crisis solved by death or healing. And the plague is a superior ill because it is a complete crisis after which there is only death or an extreme purification. […] The theatrical action like that of the plague, is beneficial, because it pushes men to see themselves as they are, […] revealing to collectivities their dark power, their hidden strength, inviting them to face destiny with an heroic and superior attitude which they would never have had without it” (46). Likewise in Cronenberg’s films, disease inevitably reveals to men their own repressed humanity and it also invariably topples the status quo, be it sexual repression (in Shivers), male supremacy (in Rabid), the family nexus (in The Brood), or simply science(6) (in all those previous instances). Such a revolutionary power, considering its corrosive impact on bourgeoisie as well as its empowering patriarchy’s victims(7), is not unlike a form of pathological communism. And although Cronenberg addresses the question of revolutionary diseases(1), he also discusses evolutionary diseases. “Darwin’s theory of evolution by mutation had a serious flaw, because he never considered the possibility of evolution by disease. […] In my films, there is an attempt by some of the characters to see their diseases as metamorphoses” (56) Now, the abolition of gender is just around the corner, with Cronenberg’s idea of “omnisexuality” as the omen of a world wherein sexism is abolished. The new humanity is hermaphroditic, free of the prejudices stemming from gender. It further redefines the sexual act itself, bringing about a universal solution: mutual penetration, subverting the cult of the phallus into a cult of humanity. Who knows, perhaps mutual childbearing is the next phase of this disease…

Controlling nature and controlling women are two primordial capitalist principles. Under Cronenberg, the two are one and the same, against which the revolution of nature (in this case, the female body) operates. Now, the weapons of the revolution are the weapons of the oppressor, turned against him. Namely, it is the phallus, turned against itself, faced with the terror it instills and the injustices it creates. Likewise, psychoanalysis is a weapon used against itself through feminist theory. However, when it becomes as overdetermined as the social norms it is supposed to attack, it is no longer an extension of the revolution, but rather that of the institution. In short, waging war against Cronenberg on gender issues might also mean forgetting that he lets us glimpse at the solution to this very war.

Notes:

1-     In an interview to Adam Simon, Cronenberg and him discuss a line from The Brood, wherein Hartog (one of the patients of Dr. Raglan), refers to a tumor his mental desires have created as a “small revolution”. Cronenberg goes on to say not only that “rather than actually dealing with the political revolution, I deal with the metaphorical political revolution of the body”, but also that “we all know there are societies that we felt were better off changed, even though there were civil wars and bloody battles that were required to achieve that”. Whether he talks of the communist revolutions of the Cubans, Bolsheviks and Chinese or the anti-colonialist (Algerian, Congolese, South African…) wars for freedom is shadowy. I believe he talks of the former, however.

2-     “The vampiric act of sucking blood, sapping the life fluid of a victim that in turn becomes a vampire, is similar to the female role of milking the sperm of the male during intercourse”. Interestingly enough, there is a footnote for this line, which states that, according to Stan Brakhage (!), the word “nosferatu” means, “splashed with milk”…

3-     In targeting Mulvey’s concept of the “male gaze”, Handling seems to specifically imply the shortcomings of psychoanalysis in film. The rape scene itself (in the barn) is strictly a play on conventions. The would-be rapist is the quintessential drunken, horny bum, while his female victim is the quintessential victim,, lying on the floor, arms stretched in front of her to protect her body from the dark masculine figure. That is, until she counterattacks and gets him at his own game (through unwanted penetration).

4-     The guy, who looks strangely like a bald Ashton Kutcher, spots her as she comes into the theater and decides to move in for the kill. To approach the lovely young woman, he decides the best course of action is to stroke her hair from behind and pass it as an accident, in order to get her attention. At that point, she complains that “men always bother her”, as if prompting the guy to leave her be, which he doesn’t. Instead, he decides to make his fantasies come true and play her boyfriend, insisting he is only after “a handful of popcorn”. He snakes his way to the seat next to her, upon which he is offered popcorn, as a test to prove his good faith. Emphasizing his own lie, he picks up some of it and drops it back, taking a handful of her instead. He then starts grabbing her breasts, unaware of the sting to come. In this sequence, Cronenberg makes very clear who the harasser is. In fact, just as Dr. Keloid thought he had the right to experiment on the female body, this guy also believes he has rights over it, that he can deceive women into giving it to him. The same is true for the guy in the mall, who seemingly believes that if Rose accepts to have him sit next to her, she will necessarily accept his inept seduction tactics.

5-     “In time, I could have trained him to do my will” says the baron Frankenstein while lying in bed at the beginning of The Bride of Frankenstein, leisurely discussing the monster’s fate (as a potential slave, a human robot).

6-     I have a theory, according to which all men in Cronenberg’s films are mad scientists. In Dr. St-Luc’s waiting room in Shivers, there is an old man giving a speech to Janine Tudor. He brags about the hypothetic reversal of the ageing process, and the words he uses clearly remind us of the scientific mumbo-jumbo used by Rollo Linsky in a previous scene. Moreover, recent films by Cronenberg bring the mad scientist character from the background to the foreground. For example, Seth Brundle is the protagonist of The Fly and the mad scientist. The same is true for Beverley and Elliott Mantle. In Crash, Vaughan is interested in the melding of the human body and the machine. In eXistenZ, Gas claims to have, through Allegra Geller’s games, Godly powers, those of “God the mechanic”. Of course, this theory is only in its embryonic stage. Still, it shows promise as a further explanation of the Cronenbergian binaries.

7-     There is a particularly revealing scene wherein health official Claude Lapointe and some city official leisurely discuss the epidemic while being driven to Montreal. There are then attacked by rabid construction workers who literally penetrate their car with a drop hammer. This is a clear role reversal, with the blue collars taking action against disinterested bourgeois. Also, the simple fact that a reactionary British health official is likened to P.E. Trudeau is highly subversive. What of the diseased, then? Can they be likened to the revolutionary separatists of 1970? Surely, they can.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARTAUD, Antonin. Le Théâtre et Son Double, Éditions Gallimard, Saint-Amand (Fr.), 1964, 220 p.

BEARD, William. “L’Esprit Viscéral” from L’Horreur Intérieure: les films de David Cronenberg (French version of The Shape of Rage) (ed. Piers Handling and Pierre Véronneau), La Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, 1990, pp. 57-135

DWORKIN, Andrea. “Power”, from The Problem of Pornography (ed. Susan Dwyer), Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont (CA), 1995, pp. 48-52

FREELAND, Cynthia A. “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films” from Post-theory : reconstructing film studies (ed. David Bordwell, Noel Carroll), University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996, pp. 195-218

HANDLING, Piers. “Un Cronenberg Canadien” from L’Horreur Intérieure: les films de David Cronenberg (French version of The Shape of Rage) (ed. Piers Handling and Pierre Véronneau), La Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, 1990, pp. 179-196

HURLEY, Kelly. « Reading Like an Alien : Posthuman Identity in Ridley Scott’s Alien and David Cronenberg’s Rabid », from Posthuman Bodies (ed. Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston), Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995, pp. 203-221

LENNE, Gérard. “Monster and Victim: Women in the horror film” from Sexual Stratagems: the world of women in film (ed. Patricia Erens), Horizon Press, New York, 1979, pp. 31-40

PARKER, Andrew. “Grafting David Cronenberg: Monstrosity, AIDS Media, National/Sexual Difference” from Media Spectacles (ed. Marjorie Garber, Jann Matlock & Rebecca L. Walkowitz) , Routledge, New York, 1993, pp. 209-227

SANJEK, David. “Dr.Hobbes’s Parasites: Victims, Victimization, and Gender in David Cronenberg’s Shivers”, published in Cinema Journal 36, #1 (Fall 1996) pp. 55- 74

SIMON, Adam. “The Existential Deal: An interview with David Cronenberg” published in Critical Quarterly vol. 43, #3 (Autumn 2001)  pp. 34-56

STANBROOK, Alan. “Cronenberg’s Creative Cancers” published in Sight & Sound, v.58, #1 (Winter 1988), pp. 54-56

WILLIAMS, Linda. « When the Woman Looks » from Re-vision : essays, in feminist film criticism  (ed. Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams), University of America Publications, 1984, pp. 83-99

WOOD, Robin. « Un point de vue dissident sur Cronenberg » from L’Horreur Intérieure: les films de David Cronenberg (French version of The Shape of Rage) (ed. Piers Handling and Pierre Véronneau), La Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, 1990, pp. 197-214

WOOD, Robin. “An introduction to the American Horror Film” from The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film, Festival of Festivals, Toronto, 1979, pp. 7-29

Elusive Terrors - Horror Films and the Moving Frame (essay)

Here's another relevant essay in regards to horror film analysis. This one discusses the moving camera aesthetics in Suspiria (1977), The Evil Dead II (1987) and Predator (1987). Please feel free to use its contents to improve your own papers, but be sure to quote me accordingly.

ELUSIVE TERRORS

Horror Films and the Moving Frame

The moving frame enables two crucial tenets of the horror genre: concealment of a presence (by using the “stalker shot”), and gradual revelation (which allows narrative economy, and creates tension prior to the moment of discovery). By making use of the subjective shot, the camera becomes a monster hidden behind the bushes, quietly observing and following his victims. It is an ethereal presence to which we can ascribe no definite identity, but rather, only a nefarious intentionality. Moreover, by using the mobile frame in an emulation of the monstrous POV (point of view), each specific “stalker shot” selectively forwards only certain characteristics of the monster behind the camera, often the most unnerving ones. When loose, on the other hand, the camera becomes revelatory. It will draw attention to the slightest manifestation of evil in order to imbue the viewer with a sense of impending doom, or it will shock him with the sudden apparition of a dismembered corpse. By drawing examples from Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977), Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead II (1987) and John McTiernan’s Predator (1987) (1), I shall uncover the workings of the mobile frame, with regards to both the “stalker shot” and the revelatory camera movement and thus appraise the moving frame’s ability to mask the visible and unmask the invisible.

If truly, the horror genre is a “cinema of affect”, like it is proposed by Anna Powell, drawing from the Bergsonian/Deleuzian model, then narrative economy is crucial in exalting the experiential/visceral, rather than intellectual (expository) quality of the filmic text. The opening sequence of Suspiria, where Suzy Banion (Jessica Harper) exits the airport, introduces Argento’s concise style of storytelling (through his use of the mobile frame), and thus, his preference for affect over narration. The very first shot is a rightward tracking shot starting from the board of arrivals (which informs us of the present time and of the protagonist’s origin) and going down and to the right to include the gate through which Suzy emerges. The gate is flanked by two windows with a poster glued on each one. The first depicts “The Black Forest”, setting of the film and obvious geographical landmark of Germany. The second, although cropped by the rightmost side of the frame, shows a bucolic landscape with a house by the mountainside and bears the caption “Allgäu…”. In a single shot, with the combined information gathered from the board of arrivals and the posters flanking the gate, Argento situates the action in nighttime Germany and introduces the American protagonist of the film. From a purely narrative standpoint, there was then no need to show Suzy’s progression through the airport hallway. After all, narrative exposition would only resume once she hailed a cab outside the building and progressed toward the dance academy. The remainder of the sequence thus merely showcases Suzy’s “embodied thought process”(2), allowing the director to evade “representational” tactics (disseminating facts through representational devices such as the board of arrivals and posters) and indulge in “affective” practices. By using the mobile frame in the remainder of the sequence, Argento insures that “the movement-image in process replaces language-like symbolic representations at the crux of the filmic event. Beauty is located not in formal balance, but in the kinesthetics of perpetual motion”(3). The alternation of the following five tracking shots, although bearing obvious Eisensteinian implications, rather elaborates a dialectical relationship between the action of looking and the subjective look, which is crucial in creating affect. The following five shots are as follows: 

1. Frontal back-tracking shot of Suzy moving forward in the hallway with a group of people in the background;
2. Frontal tracking shot from Suzy’s point of view as she advances toward the doors to the exterior (it is stormy outside, past the doors in the background)- the theme song is heard;

3. Frontal back-tracking shot of Suzy, scrutinizing the distance while walking forward (she has spotted something we haven’t)- the theme song starts scant moments before the cut, as Suzy gazes forward;

4. Frontal tracking shot from Suzy’s POV, she closes in on the door to the outside- the theme song is heard throughout;
5. Frontal back-tracking shot on Suzy advancing toward the doors. 

The next five shots, although they are mostly static, are crucial to our overall understanding of the scene. They are as follows: 

6. Long shot from behind Suzy as she closes in on the doors;
7. Close-up of the opening mechanism of the door as they slide open horizontally, much like the two sole teeth of a beast – the theme song starts and lasts until the end of the scene;
8. (as 6), LS from behind Suzy as she exits the airport;

9. (as 7) CU of the opening mechanism closing;
10. Lateral tracking on Suzy from the door to the street, under the rainy skies of Germany. 

Now, the Deleuzian concept of the “perception-image” is similar to Mitry’s idea concerning the necessary objective association fueling the subjective framing(4): “ The perception-image has two poles, subjective and objective perception. Subjective perception is the point-of-view of a character within the diegesis [and] objective camera consciousness by which the camera appears to gain independence from the human viewpoint and moves by an agenda of its own”(5). In other words, we could say that this sequence consists of either the strict application of Mitryan principles or the formation of the “perception-image” created by the alternation of the subjective (shots 3 and 5) and objective (shots 2, 4, 6) poles of perception. By using the Deleuzian model, however, with the importance it puts on both aural and visual elements in creating affect, one discovers the importance of the soundtrack in affecting perception. As Powell puts it: “Sound techniques with an exaggerated, hyper-real echo are deployed as affective devices. […] Voices and music are ultra-clear, with a hollow tonal quality, and stand out in isolation from the broader sound mix. The electronic chords and discords of the rock band Goblin create a rich sound texture. Whirrings, whisperings and tweeterings without any diegetic source grate on the spectator’s aural nerves and stimulate anxiety”(6). Here, the presence of music only in the subjective shots or once Suzy has crossed the door to the outside (she has been metaphorically swallowed by the exterior through the chewing-like motion of the door in shots 8 through 10, creates a discrepancy between the “safe” world Suzy previously inhabited and the “dark” world of the film. Now, the concept of the fringe world lying past the edge of civilization is crucial to the horror genre and, herein, the soundtrack represents the alien (evil) nature of this world. The metric juxtaposition of both worlds also prompts a Deleuzian interpretation of the sequence. As Powell puts if: “aesthetic techniques of repetition [as with music] are hypnotic and open us to suggestion. They lull resistance and ‘bring us into a state of perfect responsiveness, in which we realize the idea that is suggested to us and sympathize with the feeling that is expressed”(7). Here, it is the alternating appearance of the “safe” world (full of people, closer to home, luminous, silent) and the “evil” world (devoid of people, rainy, dark, full of unnerving sounds) that creates the “feeling” of alienation and fright associated with the “idea” of leaving the safe world. The glass door before Suzy thus serves as a valve between normal life and the underlying chaos thereof, as discussed by Maitland McDonagh(8). However, unlike the dual glass doors of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage that allow the film protagonist to merely gaze into the monstrous abyss of murder, this one opens the path as well. There is even a later tracking shot that conveys the idea of a split between normal life and the primordial chaos repelled by civilization. It happens not long after this opening sequence, when Suzy rides a cab from the city (civilization) to the dance academy (the dark world). It is a leftward tracking shot taken from a moving vehicle entering a tunnel. The resulting shot shows some buildings at street level gradually disappearing as the cab descends into the bowels of the earth. The shot ends on the dim-lit cement of the tunnel’s wall. Literally a descent to hell, this shot allows the shift from the formal metaphor of the monstrous outside to that of the dark underbelly. Beneath the respectable surface of the city, the film suggests, there lies a dark underground.

Although it can be understood as an actualization of Suzy’s venture beyond the safe frontiers of the everyday, this opening sequence could also be said to depict an exchange of glances between Suzy and an invisible entity (Helena Markos). As Nietzsche once said: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee”(9). In this particular case, the abyss could be said to, indeed, gaze back. Starting from the premise that one acknowledges the fact that Suzy has spotted something (shots 4 and 6) that we haven’t (sharing her POV in shots 3 and 5), one can propose that the frame contains an element invisible to us, but visible to the protagonist. Using the theory of affect, Powell acknowledges Suzy’s clear-sightedness: “the witches emanate an aura of supernatural evil, which only the pianist’s dog and Suzy are able to see. Suzy has very wide staring eyes that allow, or compel, her to witness and observe much more than she is meant to.”(10) Whether he calls it the latent content of the image or the “image-secret”, there is a quality to such framings, according to Thoret, that is both visible and invisible. “This image isn’t totally invisible, since something, perceptible by the viewer’s eye, is happening within it, nor totally visible because this thing possesses no form, nor contour or body”(11). Using the discrepancy between the action of looking enacted by the protagonist (Jessica Harper gazes off-frame) and the actual content of this protagonist’s viewpoint (the subjective shot itself), Argento successfully implements Thoret’s theory. That is, we know, as a viewer that there is a distinctive element in this latter frame, but cannot pinpoint what it is. Argento has found, according to Thoret, “how to postpone [the horrific element’s] apparition while fully taking profit of its effect”(12).  Here, the matter is successfully handled using the atmospheric score and alternation of subjective tracking shots suggesting two moving presences, which, combined, vie to hide the bodily incarnation of evil, but hint at its presence in the form of the witch’s ethereal influence.

What Thoret’s theory entails is thus the postponement of what Mitry calls “the objective association” of the subjective shot, wherein the viewer can ascribe shot subjectivity through its association with a protagonist framed objectively(4). Indeed, what the rest of the film will demonstrate is that Helena Markos is invisble and omniscient. Had she been in the frame, we couldn’t have noticed her: this is what the climactic revelation of Markos to Suzy proves. Delimited onscreen only by a silhouette of light, her body is invisible without the aid of the convenient lightning bolts typical of the genre. Her all-seeing eyes, depicted during the murder of Pat Hingle (see below), can also selectively appear and vanish from sight. The postponement of objective association through the use of the “image-secret” is in fact crucial to the overall effectiveness of the “stalker shot”. The use of the subjective mobile frame in those “stalker shots” is ideal to sustain the suspenseful mood required by the genre because it only grants partial information about the nature of the onlooker, thus hinting only at its nastiest features. In effect, suspense is thus not drawn only through the depiction of a presence, but through the specifically supernatural qualities of the hidden beast. In turn, the suggested abilities of the monster will warp our perception of it (usually an actor with makeup) once it has appeared onscreen. In Suspiria, soon after Suzy’s arrival to the dance academy, we meet Pat Hingle, running away scared and taking refuge in an apartment building. The uneasy feeling that she has been followed fills the screen. Soon after, the window to her bedroom (situated in the upper floors of the building) swings open. As the tenant comes and closes the window, we are treated to what appears to be a subjective shot from outside taken from the viewpoint of an entity that the tenant has failed to notice (despite her extreme proximity to it). Indeed, as she turns her back to the camera after closing the window, there is a slight track backward (the monstrous recoil) as if an invisible flying entity had landed on the rooftop by the window and was observing them, toying with the window so that Pat will be drawn to it. The subsequent zoom-in on Pat at the window from the adjacent rooftop further conveys the idea of a perched enemy, quietly awaiting the moment to strike at her. The specificity of the framing suggests the presence of the legendary witch, which possesses both the flying capacities necessary to reach the rooftop and the power of clairvoyance. Indeed, the actual revelation of the witch and of her murderous avatar, is done succinctly soon after. As Pat points a lamp at the window, a pair of feline eyes flashes onscreen (those of the witch), followed by an hairy arm (either hers or that of a remotely-controlled henchman), which breaks the leftmost glass of the window, grabs Pat by the hair and pushes her head against the rightmost glass, eventually breaking it. Using a framing similar to that of the “monstrous recoil” shot, Argento conveys the witch’s viewpoint as she crushes Pat’s face against the glass. The presence of the hairy arm, extruding from an unseen entity in this shot suggests that it is actually tied to the onlooker, making this a subjective shot by association, a technique obviously reminiscent of Lady in the Lake (1947) wherein the disembodied arm of Marlowe extruding onscreen confirms his offscreen presence. By thus confirming the spatial position of Markos and revealing her metamorphic nature (her eyes appear, then disappear), we can retroactively ascribe her the rooftop subjective shots, as well as the airport subjective shots. In fact, since the objective presentation of her total, invisible body is relegated to the climax, we can propose that she is the source of all un-ascribable subjective tracking shots in the film: the airport back-tracking shots, the tracking shot forward from a balcony overlooking the pool where Suzy and Sara are bathing, the aerial tracking shot from above the plaza where Daniel is murdered…

This fragmentation of her viewpoint is consistent with the helpful Foucauldian lecture of the film proposed by Thoret. By drawing from the concept of panopticism, he likewise describes Argento’s cinema: “one enters an Argento film like one enters the gaze of someone. This permanent sensation of being scrutinized, of feeling upon oneself a menacing gaze, is one of the distinctive features of his cinema: being framed is being scrutinized. But, as we know, there is no possible dialogue with a voyeur. His gaze is irreversible. And trying to gaze through the surface to see what lies beneath is to expose oneself to the worst […] The absence of exteriority, the suspicion of a general complicity between the elements, situations and individuals, transforms each shot in a prison-space cut from the world by a one-way mirror: opacity on one side, transparency on the other. […] The dance academy [from Suspiria] evokes the Panopticon described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish”(13). Now, the idea of the one-way mirror is crucial to our understanding of this opening sequence from Suspiria, wherein one looks at Suzy (Helena Markos, the spectator) without being seen (this presence is invisible in the frame). The major effect of the Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham’s architectural model wherein an inmate in his individual cell is open to the look of a guard in a central observation tower, is likewise described by Foucault: “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power”(14), i.e. the functioning of the disciplinary apparatus that regiments rebellious bodies. Suzy, as suggested by Powell, can feel the weight of the witches’ gaze at any moment, secretly knowing that the backlash to her defiance of power (her looking back at the monster) is impending.  Indeed, “exceptions to her omniscience occur when she is given drugged wine and when she is temporarily dazzled by a shard of mirror in a maid’s hand. Magnified light is harnessed by evil forces to blind Suzy’s clear-sighted investigations”(15). In fact, the mirror shard incident likewise described by Powell occurs during a dialectic of subjective tracking shots similar to that in the opening sequence, and wherein it is Albert and the East-European maid who “borrow” Markos’ panoptic look. 

The waltz-like exchange of gazes between Suzy and Miss Tanner in the following scene (where the moving frame conveys subjectivity, as well as the excruciating dance moves she is forced to execute while “dazzled”) is another example of how the panoptic look is “shared” by the members of the convent. Indeed, the universality of the Panopticon is as follows: “It does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director [Markos], his family, his friends [Miss Tanner], his visitors, even his servants [the East-European maid]. Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet [the spectator], the malice of a child [Albert], the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit the museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing [Markos again]. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power”(16). Using this theory in the context of a concerted scheme elaborated by the witches, Thoret depicts the convent as a minutely organized hierarchal structure with far-reaching disciplinary devices. Sharon Russell’s contention that the witch’s power in film is generally lessened in favor of that of a male deity(17) is thus challenged: the matriarchal organization of the convent (there are two males therein: the frail child Albert and the dumb manservant Pavlo, whom Miss Tanner ridicules in an early scene) using the panoptic model, reinstates tremendous power within femininity. The convent, as a societal model, is a remnant of the matriarchal religions predating the Middle Ages, and which “masculine” Christianity had vowed to destroy. Its radical effectiveness offers a refreshing twist on the generalized patriarchal model of witchcraft.

The panoptic look is in fact, almost synonymous to the “stalker shot”, wherein the act of looking is done under the veil of secrecy. In Predator as in Suspiria, the monster is initially invisible to the naked eye. Only later, as his cloaking device experiences failings, will he be objectively presented. Early in the film, the military squadron led by Dutch (governor Schwarzenegger) comes across a group of U.S. soldiers, skinned and hung from a tree. They immediately ascribe this dirty deed to the ragtag band of Communists, which they’ve come to annihilate. Blain (governor Ventura) thus cocks his mini-gun and claims: “Payback time!” He is ready to make Communist mince meat, despite the fact that the skinning job is the work of the titular extraterrestrial hunter, to whom we’re introduced in the shots following that of Blain and his mini-gun. The objective/subjective poles of Mitryan representation are combined in a shot/counter-shot alternation soon after. There is a combined panning/zooming shot from a fern at ground level toward the treetops. The following shot is a subjective “thermal visor” shot from the predator perched in the trees. There are numerous other sequences wherein an “empty” frame complements the subjective “stalker” shots taken from the predator’s viewpoint. While walking in the jungle toward the Communist camp, Dutch seemingly notices a presence in the trees:

1. Subjective shot of Dutch from the predator’s viewpoint atop the trees; 

2. Medium shot of Dutch stopping, turning around and looking offscreen left; 

3. Subjective shot of the treetops from Dutch’s viewpoint (we see nothing); 

4. Subjective shot of Dutch from the predator’s viewpoint (he is there!);

5. Medium shot of Dutch turning around, then pursuing his progression across the jungle. 

Dutch has failed to notice the presence of the monster because the content of shot 3 is deceitful. The cut between shots 3 and 4 is much like the one-way mirror of police investigation or the Panopticon, allowing only one gaze to see through. Later, Dutch and Billy scrutinize the jungle: 

1. Subjective zoom-in on the depths of the jungle (emulating the protagonists’ close scrutiny of the area); 

2. Subjective “thermal visor” shot of the predator looking at them from beside the treetops;

3-11. 9 shots of unrelated action (Anna engineers her escape), 

12. Closer (medium shot) subjective “thermal visor” shot of the protagonists; 

13. Closer (close-up) subjective “thermal visor” shot of the protagonists;

14. Lateral close-up of the protagonists avowing “seeing nothing”. 

This provides yet another example of the “invisible objective presence” (shot 1) that nonetheless enables a subjective shot (shots 2, 12 and 13): although we see nothing in the trees, we understand that a creature is hidden there only through retroactive association of the POV (when the monster is finally revealed) and the specificity of the subjective framing. There is a voyeur in the trees whom is able to move among the foliage and possesses either restricted military gear or alien technology enabling the appearance of heat signatures within the frame. In other words, it is not a general, authorist point of view, but one specific to the onlooker. There are further indicators of monstrosity comprised in later subjective shots: alien symbols appear in the left side of the frame as if it was data being displayed; the beastly hand of the hunter appears onscreen and grasps the discarded carcass of a scorpion, as if vowing revenge on the humans who have killed his insect brethren.

In Evil Dead II, the “stalker shot” completely evades the need for objective association, with great results. Once the dreaded words from the Necronomicon have been uttered, there is an evil presence in the woods that is freed. This force is represented by an objectively unattached subjective tracking shot rushing through the woods at breakneck speed. In other words, the tension therein created is not tied to the objective revelation of the beast, but with the unnerving specificity of the subjective framing. The loud humming noise associated with these shots produces similar affective effects as the soundtrack from Suspiria. Yet, it is the sheer speed (it closely matches that of Ash’s car as the latter tries to escape past nightfall) and strength (it breaks windows, doors, splits tree trunks apart in pursuit of the protagonists) of the hinted presence that induces fear and a feeling of helplessness in the viewer. The fact that we never actually ascribe these subjective shots to a definite entity helps sustain an illusion of great power that is never compromised by the appearance of a man in makeup. Moreover, it allows “free association”. In the Evil Dead series, it is in turn an evil possessive force (Ash becomes possessed by it early in Evil Dead II) after being pushed by it for several meters), a witch (in Army of Darkness (1993)) or a powerful demon (at the end of Evil Dead II). In fact, if one believes the tape at the beginning of Evil Dead II, these subjective shots simply represent “ a spiritual presence, a thing of evil that roams the forests and the dark bowers of man’s domain”. The very indeterminacy of those shots, although it is also due to budget limitations, stems mostly from the indeterminacy of the monster itself, which in turn, stimulates the viewer’s imagination more than it tries to shock him.

Although concealment is crucial to the genre, revelation constitutes its necessary counterpart. That said, the moving camera is a perfect device to convey the feeling of a shocking revelation. “The Americans call ‘revelation pan’ the figure that consists in panning […] toward a revelatory object hidden offscreen, which is the goal of its movement: in general, a horror, a corpse, a clue, a picture that reveals everything”(18). This device allows the spectatorial shock to build from the expectative mood created by the carefully delayed moment of revelation. In Predator, the corpse of Hawkins (first onscreen victim of the predator) is revealed through a lengthy (47 seconds) upward tracking shot alongside a tree trunk. Initially, this shot focuses on a detail unseen by Dutch, looking for the corpse in the background: there is liquid continually dripping on a branch in the foreground. The camera starts tracking upward, pushing Dutch offscreen and quickly shows a bloodied leaf dripping as drumbeats are heard on the soundtrack. The camera pursues its progression upward, following the trail of blood on the leaf, on the trunk, all the way to the bloody, naked corpse of Hawkins, hung upside down near the top of the tree. This shot is articulated around the importance of expectation, rather than shock, as well as the dramatic implications of the predator’s modus operandi. Given the narrative information disseminated prior to this killing (we have seen skinned corpses likewise hung from trees, we have seen some of the bloody remnants of Hawkins and witnessed his bloody slaying…), we would have expected to see a badly battered corpse. Thus, it is those prior images that imprint our mind during the tracking motion and the uneasy expectation of unbearable horror that sets in. The revelatory moment does not create shock (as the corpse itself is not irremediably butchered); rather, it confirms suspicions regarding the nature of the predator: he is the killer of Jim Hopper (as Dillon had just suggested), whom we had seen hung to a tree early in the film and whose murder was pinned on the Communists. Alas, the ritualistic killer, slayer of Hopper, is still on the loose, and his total kill count is rising. Moreover, the sheer height at which Hawkins is hung (and which is emphasized by the slow tracking upward) demonstrates the predator’s acrobatic proficiency and strength (for having dragged the corpse up there), and his ritualistic/fetishistic habit of gathering trophies of his foes and making them unavailable for pickup. In Suspiria, the opening double murder sequence likewise uses the revelation pan to postpone one’s awareness of both the radical efficiency of the killer and the narrative implications of the crime. The shock value of the moment of revelation, however, is therein tremendous, as it reveals a crucial information unknown to the viewer. The murder of Pat Hingle is shown in graphic details (close-up of her heart being stabbed, close-up of her head smashed through glass…) as she is killed, then thrown through a glass ceiling lying between the rooftop (where the murder is perpetrated) and the main hall of the building (from where the screaming landlady witnesses the killing) and hung by a cable fastened around her neck. Soon after, the camera tracks on the physical aftermath of the murder: it tracks down from the bloodied legs and shredded dress of Pat (hanging a few feet above ground) to a pool of blood composed of the thick drops falling from her naked feet. Then (within the same shot), it starts tracking rightward toward glass shards lying on the ground and the lifeless body of the landlady (revealing her arm first, the glass shard wound therein, then various lethal wounds: a steel girder pierces her lap and chest, a large glass shard is stuck deeply in her face). The death of the landlady, likewise revealed, is both shocking (the surprise of her death is only subservient to the suddenness and rawness of the imagery revealed by the camera) and narratively crucial: the double murder is perfectly orchestrated by the killer (who offs both women with a single action) so as to leave no witness of the events, save for Suzy, who thus becomes the last person to have seen Pat Hingle alive. Her importance in the investigation becomes crucial from this point on, because the witches’ convent has a radical tendency of eliminating everyone who could eventually come in its way.

What I call the “revelation zoom” is a further device used in horror when the proximity of the camera to an horrendous element disables the slow process of revelation through tracking. The zoom effectively becomes “a substitution of the tracking shot”(19) in order to reveal a shocking element swiftly, before the viewer has decoded the image onscreen. In Suspiria, this device is used to convey the shocking origin of the falling maggots. While brushing her hair, Suzy feels maggots falling on her head, then realizes that her comb is full of squirming white worms. She looks up as the camera swiftly tracks upward. Instead of pursuing this camera movement and thus revealing the content of the ceiling, Argento cuts to a quick zoom-in (2 seconds) on some of the hundreds of maggots covering the wooden ceiling. Although this cut is prompted mostly by the gravitational limitations of his enterprise (he probably shot a floor full of maggots and passed it off, through the prior tracking upward, as a ceiling), this nonetheless demonstrates the utility of the zoom in creating instantaneous shock, where a tracking shot would have been ineffective. In other words, it is not the expectative nervousness tied to the “revelation pan” that Argento aims to create, but the instantaneous spectatorial shock before the sheer number of maggots covering the ceiling, instantly squirming in glorious close-up. In Predator, McTiernan likewise draws from the inadequacy of the tracking shot to justify the use of the “revelation zoom”. When Billy initially discovers the skinned corpses of his American compatriots, the zoom becomes the privileged medium to convey his own state of shock because he (along with the camera) is uncomfortably close to the horrendous element that is revealed (the corpses themselves). The shot wherein the zoom is used has Billy framed in close-up from behind his shoulder as he pushes vegetation aside with his left hand. In the upper left corner of the frame, there is a red element, which will turn out to be the skinned head of a soldier. The camera slowly zooms-in on this red element, which will thus appear clearer to the viewer. Once the ideal framing is achieved, the disembodied hand of Billy brushes leaves aside to reveal the top half of a bloody corpse hanging upside down. By allowing the cameraman to focus on a specific element in the frame, while at the same time conveying the close scrutiny exercised by Billy, the zoom is herein ideal for the depiction of discovery in this particular scene. Moreover, the zoom allows Billy to disappear from the frame despite his close proximity to the camera: the camera effectively singles out the horrendous element as in the “revelation pan”.

The moving frame, insofar as it emulates human perception, is crucial to the horror genre. The effectiveness of the genre is indeed conventionally measured by its ability to stimulate the perceptual apparatus of the viewer (inducing fear and shock through purely visual and aural elements). The expository quality of the moving frame, on the other hand, allows quicker narrative exposition, which itself does not contribute to the stimulation of sense organs. The moving frame is thus a device permitting the erosion of the narrative in favor of the visceral shock provided by horrendous elements within the narrative. Truly, thus, horror cinema becomes “affective” and not “representational”, transforming the intellectual experience of “film watching” into the visceral “film experience”, subsequently situating the spectator within the grasp of the monster, and away from the psychoanalyst’s chair that the theater seat has become under the academic appraisal of horror.

Notes

1.   Predator, although some neophytes will describe it as a science-fiction film, is in fact an action/horror film (not unlike James Cameron’s Aliens (1986)) drawing from both the traditions of the war film (unrestrained machismo, gunfights, pursuits, nuclear explosions…) and the slasher film (the “stalker shot”, the monster, skinned corpses, folkloric tales surrounding the beast…). The alien label applied to the monster has no mythological, nor sociological implications in the narrative: it is purely a signifier of monstrosity. Pathetically perhaps, the closer the Alien or Predator series have gotten to the science-fiction genre is with AVP: Alien Vs. Predator (2004), wherein one actually learns about some of the cultural practices of the aliens and witnesses intelligible exchanges between humans and aliens (offering of the spear at the end).

2.   Anna POWELL, Deleuze and Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 2

3.   Ibid, p. 10. By “language-like symbolic representations”, Powell refers to the psychoanalytical theories embedded in academic discourse surrounding the horror genre, wherein the monster is likened to a sexual, national or otherwise ideological “Other”. Personally, I prefer to use the distinction between purely narrative elements (“representational devices”) and visceral elements (“affective devices”), such as the use of the moving frame in an emulation of the protagonist’s perceptual organs.

4.   Jean MITRY, “La Caméra Subjective”

See also: Christian METZ, “On Jean Mitry’s ‘L’Esthétique et Psychologie du Cinéma’”

5.   Anna POWELL, Deleuze and Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 117

6.   Ibid, p. 144

7.   Ibid, p. 112

8.   Maitland McDONAGH, “An introduction to the dark dreams of Dario Argento” from Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds- The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1994), pp. 7-38

9.   Friedrich NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil

10. Anna POWELL, Deleuze and Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 143

11. Jean-Baptiste THORET, Dario Argento – Magicien de la Peur (Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2002), p. 58

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid, p. 140

14. Michel FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish – The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 201

15. Anna POWELL, Deleuze and Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 143

16. Michel FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish – The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 202

17. Sharon RUSSELL, “The Witch in Film: Myth and Reality” from Planks of Reason, edited by Barry Grant and Christopher Sharrett (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2004), pp. 63-71

18. Michel CHION, “La Maison où il Pleut” from Les Cahiers du Cinéma, #358, p. 39

19. Stuart KAMINSKY, “The Use and Abuse of the Zoom Lens”