TOPICS: HORROR in Spring 2024 (FM2091A)

Despite its dubious, disreputable, perhaps even scandalous history, horror has been one of the popular and enduring film genres of all time. Deeply rooted in mythology, fairy tales, folk rituals and other vernacular traditions, horror cinema continues to captivate and distress audiences through chronicling tales of ghosts, vampires, witches, serial killers, zombies and other icons of monstrosity. And yet its main affective function—eliciting unsettling emotions of fear, shock, anxiety and disgust—has placed the genre as an easy target of censorship and a scapegoat for moral panic. The controversies around the critical and journalistic reception of horror cinema alone speak volumes about the ways in which the films negotiate cultural tensions around social identity, project anxieties about difference/Otherness, and probe deep-seated fears of technology. This course explores the key features and prominent themes of horror cinema from a variety of critical perspectives, while navigating through its foremost subgenres. Students will investigate horror’s allegorical potential by discussing major classic and contemporary films and by considering the films’ cultural, industrial and aesthetic contexts.