Blake, Linnie. The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema,
Historical Trauma and National Identity. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2008.
Introduction:
Linnie Blake immediately addresses the theoretical scholarship that is Trauma Studies and discusses its development and its definition. She states that Trauma studies analyzes cultural memory and reflects on the ramifications of traumatically cultural events on the present. She then proceeds to champion the horror genre's importance to this kind of approach because the genre directly deals in trauma, horrific events, destroying identities and rebuilding them. She states that horror is thus ideally positioned to expose psychological, cultural and social wombs of a nation and by doing so "bind up the nation's wounds" (2) to propagate healing.
Blake draws from Dominik LaCapra's and Freud's definition of traumatic events and positions the genre as a prime vehicle to deal with the "anxiety engendered by trauma" (2) and the nationalist ideologies that are frayed due to traumatic nationalist events. She states that this book reflects on the ways, "Which the generic and sub-generic conventions of horror allow for a decoding of traumatic memories already encoded within the cultural, social, psychic and political life of the nation's inhabitants by shocking historical events" (5). To validate this statement she defines both genre and nationalism and proceeds to state that the two are very similar in their non-definitive nature both being 'imagined communities' that are ever changing. She states that, "horror film...is uniquely situated to engage with the insecurities that underpin such conceptions of the nation; to expose the terrors underlying everyday national life and the ideological agendas..." (9).
She breaks her study into five parts. The first addresses German and Japanese horror and the trauma of the nations in the wake of World War Two, assigning each a chapter. She specifically focuses on the films Nekromantik (1988), Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002) respectively within this particular section. The next section, and the most relevant to the focus of this site, is titled "The traumatised 1970s and the threat of apocalypse now" and reflects on George A. Romero's 'Living Dead' series and America in the wake of the Vietnam War. Blake then devotes a chapter to the fetishisation of the serial killer with a focus on Silence of The Lambs (1990). The following section then deals with the poverty in America and the rise and resurgence of 'hillbilly horror' after 9/11. This section draws on both The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and their remakes to demonstrate that these films explore "the terrors of urban-industrial capitalist militarism and its cultural products..." (12). The final section reflects on the trauma of British horror cinema in the wake of Thatcherism and the distinct militarism present in British horror cinema. The author first introduces each section by giving a historical survey of the root of the national trauma and then proceeds with a textual analysis of the film or films in the following chapters. This methodical approach is both a useful and succinct way to give essential context and divide each section appropriately. The sections that deal directly with the topics associated with this site will thereby be reflected upon.
Section Two: The traumatized 1970s and the threat of the apocalypse now.
Introduction:
"Functioning as allegories of American involvement in Vietnam, as prophesises of doom for a socially irresponsible and sybaritic population and as enactments of mutually contradictory ideologies of national identity that were contemporaneously deployed in an attempt to conceal the nation's ongoing trauma, US horror of the 1970s and beyond was often shocking in its viscerality and despairing in its vision of mankind." (76)
The introduction to this section does not solely state the important dates and events that outline the trauma inherent in American national identity but also marks the rise of horror cinema visionaries such as Carpenter, Romero and Craven. Romero's allegorising of traumatic events was most poignantly articulated in Night of The Living Dead (1968), a film that revolutionized and would set the standard for horror cinema for years to come. Blake addresses this fact in more detail in chapter three and continues exploring the trauma of Reagan's America and how the serial killer films of this era were a reaction to the fractured American identity due to the loss of the Vietnam war and the attempt to overcompensate for the loss through a militaristic approach to politics that would be reflected in cinema.
Chapter 3: 'Consumed out of the good land': George A. Romero's horror of the 1970s.
Blake depicts the fractured identity of the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of the horrors of war and the failed cultural revolution of the 60s. The author states that Romero's canon unapologetically articulates the nihilism and trauma at the heart of 1970s American culture. Blake states that in Romero's films, "Americans are now forced to inhabit a United States in which faith in god, in government and in the institutions of advanced American capitalism as well as faith in one's fellow human beings has been perverted in service of class-class bound and economically-driven hegemonies" (82). She then reflects on The Crazies (1973), Martin (1976) and then Dawn of the Dead (1978) and points out how each of these films challenge the audience to face this hopeless and nihilistic view of the national identity thus exposing the trauma of the 1970s America.
Chapter 4: All hail to the serial killer: America's last frontier hero in the age of Reaganite eschatology and beyond.
The author firstly reflects on the box office success of the Silence of The Lambs series and states that the figure of Hannibal Lecture is so popular due to the fact that, "he allowed contemporary audiences to engage psychologically and socio-culturally with the historic traumas of the Reagan years while exposing the ideological mediation of that trauma by all aspects of the cultural industry" (102). The chapter then reflects on the lengthy history of America and the image of the serial killer in popular culture starting at crime fiction and then reflecting on its presence in cinema. This chapter also alludes to the coming chapter and its reflection on the similarities between the western genre and horror cinema. The author then breaks done Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002) comparing them to the original novels and thus demonstrating how the films articulate the "complicity of the American people with the nation's history of genocidal slaughter while retaining a certain aura of individual freedom existing putatively beyond the bounds of civilised life" (112). The films give an unapologetic vision of America that is corrupt and heterogeneous in nature, with little hope to change this fact.
Part Three: From Vietnam to 9/11: the Orientalist other and the American poor white.
Introduction:
This chapter positions itself in the post 9/11 America context and reveals how a distinct Orientalism is present in the national identity. The 'us vs. them' mentality that was propagated by the Bush administration is best articulated in the resurgence of the hillbilly horror genre. This genre was first conceived in the wake of the Vietnam War and it resurgence marks the return to dispelling the oriental "other" and thus reaffirming the 'true' America image in all its glory. These films reflect the state of America in the post 9/11 world attempting to homogenise and justify itself.
Chapter 5: 'Squealing like a pig': the War on Terror and the resurgence of hillbilly horror after 9/11.
"Hillbilly horror, in the conceptual vocabulary of Trauma Theory, can thus be seen as part of a 'process of acting out, working over, and to some extent working through' recent events, 'giving voice to the past and comprehending an unsettling and disorienting present." (130)
Who is the backwoodsman? Why is he so essential to the American ethos? These are the initial questions put fourth by the author in this chapter as she explores the image of the first settler of the American frontier as a pivotal figure that continues to resurface in the cultural imagination and thus challenges the national identity and image. The author then makes a connection between the iconic main characters within Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider and sees them as representative of the backwoodsman in cinema and America's cultural obsession with this figure. Within the horror genre they are represented by the often disfigured horrific family who maim and brutalize the main characters. The author states, "the monstrous alterity of the historically embedded backwoodsman thus enabled film makers to address not only American foreign policy in South Asia but the ongoing desecration of American ecology, the paranoid militarism of American life, the degeneration of the frontier ethos at the hands of consumer culture and the ramifications for workers of the decay of America's industrial base" (130). By doing this the audience thus are freed from the trauma that was prodigious in post-Vietnam and post-9/11 America. The chapter outlines the similarities and differences between ‘hillbilly horror’ originals and remakes, citing one of the most profound difference being that the remakes are intertextual and self-aware. This genre has been similarly explored by Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws.
Conclusion:
The re-engagement of traumatic national issues are thus made possible through these different horror sub-genres. This productive re-engagement of trauma interestingly sets the horror genre apart from other more 'acceptable genres'. The author concludes by stating that filmmakers such as Romero use allegories to open up fresh debates on historical trauma and nationalism.
For further reading on the subject of wound culture in horror literature I recommend Adam Lowenstein, Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film.
Introduction:
Linnie Blake immediately addresses the theoretical scholarship that is Trauma Studies and discusses its development and its definition. She states that Trauma studies analyzes cultural memory and reflects on the ramifications of traumatically cultural events on the present. She then proceeds to champion the horror genre's importance to this kind of approach because the genre directly deals in trauma, horrific events, destroying identities and rebuilding them. She states that horror is thus ideally positioned to expose psychological, cultural and social wombs of a nation and by doing so "bind up the nation's wounds" (2) to propagate healing.
Blake draws from Dominik LaCapra's and Freud's definition of traumatic events and positions the genre as a prime vehicle to deal with the "anxiety engendered by trauma" (2) and the nationalist ideologies that are frayed due to traumatic nationalist events. She states that this book reflects on the ways, "Which the generic and sub-generic conventions of horror allow for a decoding of traumatic memories already encoded within the cultural, social, psychic and political life of the nation's inhabitants by shocking historical events" (5). To validate this statement she defines both genre and nationalism and proceeds to state that the two are very similar in their non-definitive nature both being 'imagined communities' that are ever changing. She states that, "horror film...is uniquely situated to engage with the insecurities that underpin such conceptions of the nation; to expose the terrors underlying everyday national life and the ideological agendas..." (9).
She breaks her study into five parts. The first addresses German and Japanese horror and the trauma of the nations in the wake of World War Two, assigning each a chapter. She specifically focuses on the films Nekromantik (1988), Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002) respectively within this particular section. The next section, and the most relevant to the focus of this site, is titled "The traumatised 1970s and the threat of apocalypse now" and reflects on George A. Romero's 'Living Dead' series and America in the wake of the Vietnam War. Blake then devotes a chapter to the fetishisation of the serial killer with a focus on Silence of The Lambs (1990). The following section then deals with the poverty in America and the rise and resurgence of 'hillbilly horror' after 9/11. This section draws on both The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and their remakes to demonstrate that these films explore "the terrors of urban-industrial capitalist militarism and its cultural products..." (12). The final section reflects on the trauma of British horror cinema in the wake of Thatcherism and the distinct militarism present in British horror cinema. The author first introduces each section by giving a historical survey of the root of the national trauma and then proceeds with a textual analysis of the film or films in the following chapters. This methodical approach is both a useful and succinct way to give essential context and divide each section appropriately. The sections that deal directly with the topics associated with this site will thereby be reflected upon.
Section Two: The traumatized 1970s and the threat of the apocalypse now.
Introduction:
"Functioning as allegories of American involvement in Vietnam, as prophesises of doom for a socially irresponsible and sybaritic population and as enactments of mutually contradictory ideologies of national identity that were contemporaneously deployed in an attempt to conceal the nation's ongoing trauma, US horror of the 1970s and beyond was often shocking in its viscerality and despairing in its vision of mankind." (76)
The introduction to this section does not solely state the important dates and events that outline the trauma inherent in American national identity but also marks the rise of horror cinema visionaries such as Carpenter, Romero and Craven. Romero's allegorising of traumatic events was most poignantly articulated in Night of The Living Dead (1968), a film that revolutionized and would set the standard for horror cinema for years to come. Blake addresses this fact in more detail in chapter three and continues exploring the trauma of Reagan's America and how the serial killer films of this era were a reaction to the fractured American identity due to the loss of the Vietnam war and the attempt to overcompensate for the loss through a militaristic approach to politics that would be reflected in cinema.
Chapter 3: 'Consumed out of the good land': George A. Romero's horror of the 1970s.
Blake depicts the fractured identity of the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of the horrors of war and the failed cultural revolution of the 60s. The author states that Romero's canon unapologetically articulates the nihilism and trauma at the heart of 1970s American culture. Blake states that in Romero's films, "Americans are now forced to inhabit a United States in which faith in god, in government and in the institutions of advanced American capitalism as well as faith in one's fellow human beings has been perverted in service of class-class bound and economically-driven hegemonies" (82). She then reflects on The Crazies (1973), Martin (1976) and then Dawn of the Dead (1978) and points out how each of these films challenge the audience to face this hopeless and nihilistic view of the national identity thus exposing the trauma of the 1970s America.
Chapter 4: All hail to the serial killer: America's last frontier hero in the age of Reaganite eschatology and beyond.
The author firstly reflects on the box office success of the Silence of The Lambs series and states that the figure of Hannibal Lecture is so popular due to the fact that, "he allowed contemporary audiences to engage psychologically and socio-culturally with the historic traumas of the Reagan years while exposing the ideological mediation of that trauma by all aspects of the cultural industry" (102). The chapter then reflects on the lengthy history of America and the image of the serial killer in popular culture starting at crime fiction and then reflecting on its presence in cinema. This chapter also alludes to the coming chapter and its reflection on the similarities between the western genre and horror cinema. The author then breaks done Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002) comparing them to the original novels and thus demonstrating how the films articulate the "complicity of the American people with the nation's history of genocidal slaughter while retaining a certain aura of individual freedom existing putatively beyond the bounds of civilised life" (112). The films give an unapologetic vision of America that is corrupt and heterogeneous in nature, with little hope to change this fact.
Part Three: From Vietnam to 9/11: the Orientalist other and the American poor white.
Introduction:
This chapter positions itself in the post 9/11 America context and reveals how a distinct Orientalism is present in the national identity. The 'us vs. them' mentality that was propagated by the Bush administration is best articulated in the resurgence of the hillbilly horror genre. This genre was first conceived in the wake of the Vietnam War and it resurgence marks the return to dispelling the oriental "other" and thus reaffirming the 'true' America image in all its glory. These films reflect the state of America in the post 9/11 world attempting to homogenise and justify itself.
Chapter 5: 'Squealing like a pig': the War on Terror and the resurgence of hillbilly horror after 9/11.
"Hillbilly horror, in the conceptual vocabulary of Trauma Theory, can thus be seen as part of a 'process of acting out, working over, and to some extent working through' recent events, 'giving voice to the past and comprehending an unsettling and disorienting present." (130)
Who is the backwoodsman? Why is he so essential to the American ethos? These are the initial questions put fourth by the author in this chapter as she explores the image of the first settler of the American frontier as a pivotal figure that continues to resurface in the cultural imagination and thus challenges the national identity and image. The author then makes a connection between the iconic main characters within Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider and sees them as representative of the backwoodsman in cinema and America's cultural obsession with this figure. Within the horror genre they are represented by the often disfigured horrific family who maim and brutalize the main characters. The author states, "the monstrous alterity of the historically embedded backwoodsman thus enabled film makers to address not only American foreign policy in South Asia but the ongoing desecration of American ecology, the paranoid militarism of American life, the degeneration of the frontier ethos at the hands of consumer culture and the ramifications for workers of the decay of America's industrial base" (130). By doing this the audience thus are freed from the trauma that was prodigious in post-Vietnam and post-9/11 America. The chapter outlines the similarities and differences between ‘hillbilly horror’ originals and remakes, citing one of the most profound difference being that the remakes are intertextual and self-aware. This genre has been similarly explored by Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws.
Conclusion:
The re-engagement of traumatic national issues are thus made possible through these different horror sub-genres. This productive re-engagement of trauma interestingly sets the horror genre apart from other more 'acceptable genres'. The author concludes by stating that filmmakers such as Romero use allegories to open up fresh debates on historical trauma and nationalism.
For further reading on the subject of wound culture in horror literature I recommend Adam Lowenstein, Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film.