Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film

Samantha Holland
Leeds Beckett University, UK

Robert Shail
Leeds Beckett University, UK

Steven Gerrard
Leeds Beckett University, UK


Product Details
Format:
Hardback
ISBN:
9781787698987
Published:
Publisher:
Emerald Publishing Limited
Dimensions:
272 pages - 152 x 229mm
Series:
Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender
List price £72.99 List price €89.99 List price $111.99

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Categories:
The horror genre will always remain current because it reflects our anxieties, shining a light onto our worst fears whilst creating worlds defined by darkness. Horror as a genre has always engaged with era-specific societal mores and moral panics, often about isolation or abandonment, changing family values and the role of women. It is often specifically about how gender is constructed in everyday life. Women are commonly defined in horror by their passivity, or monstrosity/sexuality or victimhood - or a mix of the three. At the same time women in horror are forced into psychological and physical torture ending in violent showdowns in which they emerge damaged but triumphant. 
Bringing together research from a wide range of established and emerging scholars this edited collection provides an insight into how modern horror films portray femininities, sexualities, masculinities, ageing, and other current issues, exploring the use of vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts in films made internationally. This volume, one of three by the same editorial team examining the horror genre, focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, asking questions about how and if representations of gender in horror have changed. In these readings and re-readings, the authors examine developments in films about vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts, in films made internationally.

Introduction; Samantha Holland
Section One: Bodies 
1. La Fille Final - The Final Girl in Contemporary French Horror Cinema; Maddison McGilivray 
2. The Aged Male Hero: Masculinity in Bubba Ho-Tep and Late Phases; Fernando G.P. Berns & Diego Foronda 
3. Game of Werewolves - XXI Century Spanish Werewolves and Conflicts of Masculinity; Irene Baena-Cuder 
4. Navigating the mind/body divide: The Female Cannibal in French Films; Kath Dooley 
5. Gendering the Cannibal in the Post-Feminist Age; Louise Flockhart
Section Two: Boundaries 
6. Technology, Social Media and (Self) Surveillance in Horror Films; Hannah Bonner 
7. Gay Porn Horror Parodies; Joseph Brennan 
8. "In Celebration of her Wickedness?" - Critical Intertextuality and the Female Vampire in Byzantium; Matthew Denny 
9. "There's a ghost in my house." The Female Gothic and Supernatural Horror in Twenty First Century Cinema; Frances A. Kamm 
10. The Monstrous-feminine and Masculinity as Abjection in Turkish Horror Cinema: An Analysis of Haunted (Musallat, Alper Mestçi, 2007); Zeynep Koçer  
Section Three: Captivity 
11. Gender Ideology, New Social Realities and New Technologies in recent Latin America 'Abduction' horror films; Niall Brennan 
12. Misogyny or Commentary: Gendered Violence Outside and Inside Captivity; Shellie McMurdo & Wickham Clayton 
13.  "That homicidal bitch may be our only way out of here." Milla Jovovich and Alice in the Resident Evil Films; Steven Gerrard 
14. The Final Girls (2015) as a Video Essay: A Metalinguistic Play with Genre and Gender Conventions; Emilio Audissino 
15. Dissecting Depictions of Black Masculinities in Twenty First Century Horror; Frances Sobande
Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her publications include Pole Dancing, Empowerment & Embodiment and Modern Vintage Homes & Leisure Lives: Ghosts & Glamour. She is currently writing a book on Wonder Woman. 
Robert Shail is Professor of Film and Director of Research in the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is widely published on postwar British cinema, masculinity in film, and more recently on children's media. He has been awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for his study of the Children's Film Foundation. 
Steven Gerrard is Reader of Film at Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University, UK. He has written two monographs: one celebrating all things naughty but nice in the Carry On films and another investigating the Modern British Horror Film.

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