How late capitalism is the underrecognized monster lurking in modern American horror.
“有时候我想知道，到底是什么让我拉车 死亡地带 by Stephen King off of my parents’ bookshelf when I was in fourth grade,” says Jason 米德尔顿. “这是我读过的第一本‘成人’小说. There were certainly parts of it that I found kind of upsetting, but also magnetic. 我几乎感觉世界正在以一种新的方式开放.”
米德尔顿 是一名英语副教授 视觉与文化澳门威尼斯人网上赌场 在 澳门威尼斯人网上赌场. 他还执导了 电影和媒体澳门威尼斯人网上赌场课程. 他对金的小说的着迷使他一生都热爱恐怖电影. Although horror is just one of the film genres 米德尔顿 has immersed himself in—both as a fan and a scholar—it’s a genre whose appeal he thinks is especially durable.
在恐怖中，“正常受到了怪物的威胁，”他说. “What’s so wonderfully expansive about the horror genre is th在 monster keeps forming and reforming in relation to the fears and anxieties of its time. 另一方面, 正常, 以及对常态的描述, 并根据历史时期不断演变和变化.”
工作是美国人的噩梦
有一些明显的趋势. In the post-World War II era, the monster was often a stand-in for anxieties about the atomic bomb. 在20世纪70年代的女权运动中, 这个怪物经常暗示着对女性权力和女性身体的焦虑.
这种批评延伸到了一个新时代——晚期资本主义, 一个用来描述全球化商品化世界的短语 既令人不安又荒谬. 这些文章主要集中在21世纪的恐怖电影上. Those depict a world of economic precarity and a hollowed-out middle class that make up “a new ‘正常’” of survival, 或者只是得过且过. And even that bleak environment is vulnerable to new monsters that threaten what stability protagonists have been able to muster—or th在y are striving to attain in the first place.
In 恐惧的劳动:现代恐怖电影开始工作 (德克萨斯大学出版社, 2023), 米德尔顿与英杰华·布里菲尔公司合作, 他在鲍登学院教文学和电影, to make the case th在re’s been another kind of monster lurking in American horror films all along: the post-industrial world of work.
在论文集中, 他们共同编辑, 米德尔顿 and Briefel suggest that ambivalence about work is a theme that has roots 可以追溯到经典恐怖片当它通常以疯狂科学家的形式出现时. In modern horror films, starting roughly in the 1970s, ambivalence evolved into a fuller critique. 米德尔顿 and Briefel describe the critique as reflecting “social fears and anxieties that took root in the 1970s and 1980s in response to deindustrialization, 自动化, 全球化的劳动力, 工会破坏, 收入不平等加剧.”
一个简单的例子是 德州电锯杀人狂这是一部开创性的电影，今年已经上映50年了. 农村, unemployed slaughterhouse workers are never shown performing slaughterhouse labor, but are shown “repeating the trained motions of this labor upon their human victims,他们写道。.
新的无偿工作类别
米德尔顿对各种形式的无偿工作尤其感兴趣, which he argues fall disproportionately on groups that are already marginalized. He isn’t just talking about such uncompensated labor as housework or family caregiving. 在他自己的贡献中，“没有戏剧:情感工作。 Midsommar,米德尔顿在阿里·阿斯特执导的2019年电影中探索了“情感工作”.
他将情感工作描述为“压抑和修正”, and maybe not expressing one’s own feelings in order that a spouse or partner has the kind of optimal experience th在y themselves expect to have in the relationship.” It has a long history in the quest of women to get by but has proven resilient even as women have achieved greater economic independence.
Midsommar (2019)描绘了一个20多岁的女主人公的艰苦努力, 达尼, 为了维持她和疏远的男友的关系, 基督教. The couple attends a summer festival in Sweden that turns out to be an annual ritual of a murderous cult.
它的恐怖反映了达尼为了保持对克里斯蒂安的依恋而付出的努力. 但她也在邪教中获得了一定程度的权力, and the film’s 宣泄 ending shows 达尼 ending the relationship by sacrificing 基督教.
米德尔顿解释说，这实际上是一个分手的故事. 而是在展示缓慢, 艰苦的ness process in which 达尼 comes to recognize 基督教’s neglectfulness, 这与许多轻松的分手片截然相反. “这有点像恐怖电影版的分手片 吃、祈祷、爱 or 在托斯卡纳的阳光下他说。. “语义元素大多是相同的, 异国情调的位置, 认识不同的人, 食物, 所有这些. But whereas in those films, the work of a breakup is frictionless and fulfilling and idealized, Midsommar uses the horror genre to instead express the work of a breakup as just agonizing, 艰苦的, 而且是痛苦的——最终, 最后, 宣泄.”
对停滞和闲暇的恐惧
The essays in the collection also demonstrate how the experience of economic precarity can differ along racial lines. Briefel’s essay, for example, is subtitled “The Hard Work of Leisure in Jordan Peele’s Us.”
“In a 2019 interview for Vanity Fair, Jordan Peele explained that one of his objectives in the film Us 是代表黑人的悠闲，”布里费尔开始说道. 然而，放松是影片中恐怖的主要来源.” Us shows a Black family living with a constant threat of merely letting their guard down.
在另一篇文章中, 米盖恩斯, an assistant professor of English at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health 科学s, 创造了一个“布比恐怖”的亚类型,，改写了传统的家庭入侵惊悚片. 湖景镇的露台 (2008)是一个原型, 盖恩斯解释说, of a subgenre that “seems to say that entry into a rarified class status historically reserved for whites must be paid in blood.”
对于许多美国白人来说, 然而, the threat is losing wh在y have—or living with the dread of having already lost. 米德尔顿’s colleague at Rochester, Joel Burges, finds in David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 film 它遵循 描绘了“白人工人阶级身份的不稳定性”.” The film shows a group of young adult friends in a desolate and stagnant postindustrial Detroit. 这是对上世纪七八十年代跟踪狂电影的翻拍, Burges解释说, 像米德尔顿, 英语和视觉文化澳门威尼斯人网上赌场副教授. 它遵循 遵守惩罚性行为者的鞭刑惯例. 男女角色之间的性接触, 在这部电影中，用“它”感染角色,潜伏在他们身后的跟踪者, 并以不同的形式出现, 但总是被撕成碎片的中产阶级和工人阶级白人尸体.
在这些身体里, 然而, 伯吉斯发现了一些超越刀斧手传统的东西，在这种传统中，性等于死亡. In 它遵循, 勉强度日的工作大多发生在底层, 让年轻人充满恐惧的没有前途的服务职业. 有情绪方面的工作, 换句话说, 在“它”跟踪受害者的荒凉环境中生存. “恐惧是缓慢的，”伯吉斯写道. “Its menace bears down on you with steadily intensifying pressure that never relents.”
后covid时代的恐怖电影
When 米德尔顿 and Briefel got started on their project, COVID-19 was sweeping across the globe. No one knew 在 time just how much the pandemic would transform the world of work. 这些变化开始在恐怖电影中出现了吗? 如果有，怎么做呢?
Says 米德尔顿: “Something that I noticed during the last few years is that some really interesting horror movies take place not only entirely in a house, 或者完全在一个封闭的空间里, 但完全只是一个人和他们的笔记本电脑. 例如, 我们都要去世界博览会 (2021). The whole film is just from the perspective of an isolated teenage girl on her laptop, as she’s on it every night to do these internet challenges that grow increasingly dangerous and threatening as she does them.
“It’s just the horrific experience of being on the internet on your laptop all the time.”
