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The horror genre in film follows from the literary tradition established by Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, eliciting fearful responses through suspense, gore, the macabre and the supernatural, consistently transfixing audiences via suspension of disbelief.
The status of female characters in horror cinema is often ambivalent, ranging from victims of violence to perpetrators of dread. In The Question of Lay Analysis (1926), Sigmund Freud claimed that “the sexual life of adult women is a dark continent for psychology.” Even at the end of his life, Freud maintained his long-standing preoccupation, asking: “What do women want?” The mystery of female desire has persisted with the advancement of psychoanalytic thought; a dimension of ‘the unknown’ frequently drives the depiction of women in dark tales.
In this course, we will investigate the feminine discursive position in horror cinema through the framework of psychoanalytic theory. It is sometimes claimed that the portrayal of women in such films is misogynistic, but here the proposition is that the horror genre affords us an indispensable language for approaching complex elements of feminine subjectivity.
Content warning: graphic imagery will be presented, viewer discretion is advised.
Session 1
- Eyes Without A Face (1960) dir. Georges Franju
- The Exorcist (1973) dir. William Friedkin
- The Stepford Wives (1975) dir. Bryan Forbes
- The Entity (1982) dir. Sidney J. Furie
- Audition (1999) dir. Takashi Miike
Session 2
- The Ring (2002) dir. Gore Verbinski
- The Broken (2008) dir. Sean Ellis
- Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama
- American Mary (2012) dirs. Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska
- Hounds of Love (2016) dir. Ben Young
PROJECTIONS is psychoanalysis for film interpretation. PROJECTIONS empowers film spectators to express subjective associations they consider to be meaningful. Expertise in psychoanalytic theory is not necessary – the only prerequisite is the desire to enter and inhabit the imaginary world of film, which is itself a psychoanalytic act. MARY WILD (@psycstar), a Freudian cinephile from Montreal, is the creator of PROJECTIONS.
How to join
All registrants will receive their link to join via Zoom. All attendees will also receive access to the recording, available to watch back for 3 months.
Tickets
Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price.
