Post Script - Essays in Film and the Humanities Go to Journal Record
19:2 (Winter 1999-Spring 2000) Go to Journal Issue, p. 73-87
*Steven Jay Schneider*
There has been no widespread resurgence of newly made stalker films,
nor a significant revival of the old films.... these films were very
much a product of their time and also a comment on it. (Dika
<#DIKA1987> 97)
*Q:* You've been called the man who saved the horror genre. Is that
true?
*KW:* (Pauses) I don't think I saved it. I think it just came back
for a few days and it'll be gone again.... I don't know. It came
back for a year, and these horror movies are going to go away again,
and then they'll come back again in ten years. Everything's a cycle.
It was bound to happen. If I didn't do it, somebody else was going
to do it. (Martin <#MARTIN> )
SECTION I. The Williamson Phenomenon
Just when it started to seem that the nineties would leave us bereft of
any horror film blockbusters (the mainstream thriller /Silence of the
Lambs/ notwithstanding), along came /Scream/ in December 1996--a $14
million-budgeted sleeper that took in $103 million at U.S. box offices
alone. Not since William Friedkin's /The Exorcist/ in 1973 had the genre
produced such a hit. The numerous and explicit references to modern
horror conventions, the witty dialogue performed by hip young actors,
and the creative killings ''performed'' by a pair of horror-savvy
psychopaths all worked to revitalize the sagging directorial career of
/A Nightmare On Elm Street/ creator Wes Craven <#CRAVEN> . They also
made an overnight sensation of thirty-something screenwriter Kevin
Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> , who promptly signed a $20 million
contract with Miramax for future work. Following quickly on the heels of
/Scream/ came /I Know What You Did Last Summer/ (1997) and /Scream 2/
(1997), both of which topped the $100 million mark worldwide. In 1998,
Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> added a treatment of /Halloween H20/ to his
rapidly growing resume, the latest and most successful attempt at
cashing in on the popularity of his own all-time favorite horror flick.
Considering the disappointing box office takes by pre-/Scream/
productions such as /Lord of Illusions/ (1995), /In the Mouth of
Madness/ (1995), and /The Frighteners/ (1996), and by post-/Scream/
productions such as /An American Werewolf in Paris/ (1997), /The Relic/
(1997), and /Phantoms/ (1998), the prosperity of Williamson-scripted
horror films has been nothing short of astonishing.
What could possibly account for this success? Identifying the four
above-named horror movies--/Scream, Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last
Summer/, and /Halloween H20/--as members of a new horror film subgenre,
one that reacts against even while it depends upon what Vera Dika
<#DIKA1987> in an influential
p.73
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1987 essay labeled the ''stalker cycle,'' I shall attempt to answer this
question first through a formal, and then through a cultural analysis.
Individual differences aside, the basic formula of the ''neo-stalker''
can be summarized as follows: /humorous self-referentiality gives way to
serious self-reflexivity/. The protagonists of these films--mostly
desensitized, media-saturated adolescents--grow (up) to attain sober
recognition of their plight; there is a movement from '/Wow! This is
like one of those stalker movies!/' to '/Shit! We are/ in /one of those
stalker movies!/' Those who mature the fastest have the best chance of
surviving; those who refuse to ''get reflexive,'' or who do so too late,
die horribly. Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> gift (reminiscent of that
possessed by 80s teen movie director-/extraordinaire/ John Hughes) lies
in his ability to counterbalance the sophistication of contemporary
horror film audience members with the depiction of sophisticated
victims, heroes, and sometimes even killers. In the postmodern universe
of the neo-stalker, insider knowledge by itself is not enough to ensure
one's survival; one must be able to /use/ that knowledge to break free
of horror film conventions.
Section Two of this paper will review Dika's <#DIKA1987> analysis of the
stalker cycle, a body of American horror movies released between 1978
and 1981 that are strikingly similar in plot, characterization, and
style. The terms ''slasher'' and ''stalker'' are often used
interchangeably in discussions of horror cinema, which is unfortunate
considering that the former is little more than a catch-all lacking the
formal and historical specificity of the latter. The position to be
defended here is that the stalker is a species of which the
slasher--loosely defined as a horror film in which isolated psychotic
individuals (usually males) are pitted against one or more young people
(usually females) whose looks, personalities, and/or promiscuities serve
to trigger recollections of some past trauma in the killer's mind--is
genus. Section Three will examine what, if anything, makes Williamson's
<#WILLIAMSON1997> pictures not simply /new/ stalkers, but
/neo/-stalkers--what makes them variations on, rather than repetitions
of, the stalker theme. Section Four will elaborate the neo-stalker
formula by effecting a difference between self-referentiality and
self-reflexivity in horror cinema, and by delineating the various kinds
of self-reflexivity at work in Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> films. And
Section Five will locate the efficacy of the neo-stalker formula in
Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> ability to create characters who appeal
to Gen-X audience members at least as much as teens.
SECTION II. The Stalker Cycle
Shot in only three weeks for a mere $320,000, John Carpenter's
/Halloween/ (1978) shocked industry experts by grossing over $80 million
worldwide, making it the most profitable independent film of all time
(that is until /The Blair Witch Project/ [1999]). The basic slasher
movie elements--voyeurism, psychosexual fury, naturalistic
violence--though still operative here, are finally overshadowed by an
intense, life-or-death game of terror waged between a masked, seemingly
superhuman psychopath and the film's only surviving female. Dika
<#DIKA1987> places /Halloween/ at the beginning of the stalker cycle.
Although this is more than a little unfair to such pre-/Halloween/
teenie kill pics as /Black Christmas/ (1975), /The Town that Dreaded
Sundown/ (1977), and Mario Bava's /A Bay of Blood/ (aka /Twitch of the
Death Nerve/, 1971), the revolutionary impact of Carpenter's film can
hardly be denied (Tudor <#TUDOR1989> 198-99).^1 <#1> After picking their
jaws up off the ground, executives at Paramount outbid their competitors
for the rights to Sean Cunningham's /Friday the 13^th , Halloween/'s
campier, bloodier counterpart. Propelled by a $4 million ad campaign,
the $500,000 film opened in 1980 to critical contempt and packed movie
houses. For seven consecutive weeks, it occupied the second-place spot
behind /The Empire Strikes Back/, and eventually took in more than $60
million. /Friday the 13^th / was only the first of many
low-budget/high-return horror productions to use Carpenter's film as a
template.
^*1* It should be noted that /The Town That Dreaded Sundown/ receives a
mention in /Scream/.
p.74
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Between 1978 and 1981, no fewer than nine movies sharing /Halloween/'s
distinctive combination of narrative and cinematic elements were
financed and distributed by major Hollywood studios.
At the narrative level, these films follow the killing spree of a male
(or so it seems) psychopath who hunts down and murders a group of young
people in some rural or suburban locale. One member of the group--nearly
always female--manages to survive the killer's initial rampage, and,
after a prolonged struggle, finally vanquishes him ... at least until
the sequel. The heroine is the only member of her peer group to take
seriously the killer's threat early on; it is this potential for
awareness and action that makes her, in contrast to her female friends,
''less extensively held as the sexual object of the killer's gaze''
(Dika <#DIKA1987> 91). She is typically portrayed as a virgin, or, at
the very least, as a prude in comparison to her friends. Less likely to
strip in front of the camera, she is also less likely to engage in
sexual activity on-screen. As if to linguistically confirm her
non-objectified (read ''masculine'') status, it is common for the
heroine to go by a boy's name, e.g., Chris, Bobby, Danny, and Marty
(Clover <#CLOVER1992> 40).
The great difference in value assigned to the heroine as opposed to her
peer group gets reflected in the way films of the stalker cycle were
cast. While the victims of these films were mostly portrayed by unknown,
inexperienced actors,^2 <#2> the role of heroine was typically reserved
for a young woman with established acting ability and/or nascent star
quality. In particular, she would have to appeal, in spite of her sexual
reserve, to the predominantly male, predominantly adolescent stalker
audience. Considering the fact that the heroine gets more screen time,
and more closeups, than anyone else in the picture, it comes as little
surprise to find that star quality was prized even more than acting
ability. The most popular ''Final Girl'' (Clover's <#CLOVER1992> phrase)
of the stalker cycle was, without a doubt, Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred
in three pictures in three years (/Halloween, Terror Train/, and /Prom
Night/), thereby securing for herself the title, ''Scream Queen of the
80s.''
Dika <#DIKA1987> holds that the stalker's most distinctive
characteristic lies in its representation of the killer. Either masked
or kept off-screen for the majority of the film, details of his
appearance--in addition to his psyche--are hidden from the audience,
thereby discouraging the kind of harmful identification critics of the
genre complain about. What Dika <#DIKA1987> neglects to mention is that
such shyness on the part of the killer can also be a means of preventing
viewers from determining his (or her) identity straight away; a device
exploited, for example, by Italian horror director Dario Argento in his
bloody mystery-slashers. Three cinematic techniques are regularly
employed to indicate the killer's presence: a sinister and foreboding
musical /idée fixe/ (just think /Jaws/); subjective or ''point-of-view''
camerawork, often used to track the killer's visual field; and a
sequence of partially obstructed shots not followed (as is standard in
other genres) by a complimentary reverse shot, thereby leaving the
audience in some doubt as to their owner. Isabel Pinedo <#PINEDO1997> ,
in a recent book, adds another item to this list: a solitary shot of the
victim's terrified reaction which ''subverts rationality by reversing
cause and effect. We see the effect (the incredulous stare of the
victim) without seeing the cause (the monster)'' (52, 73).
At the formal level, Dika <#DIKA1987> adopts Will Wright's procedure in
/Six Guns and Society/ (1975), his pioneering study of the Western, by
identifying a number of conceptual oppositions which she claims are
basic to the stalker subgenre. Three of these in particular will prove
crucial to our own investigation. (1) The heroine is separated from the
rest of her peer group by the opposition /valued/devalued/, for the
reasons discussed above. (2) Members of the young community are
separated from those of the older community by an opposition best
described as /ingroup/outgroup/. Although young people may be the main
(even the sole) target of violence, they at least occupy a position
^*2* At least at the time; Kevin Bacon took a spear through the neck in
the first /Friday/.
p.75
------------------------------------------------------------------------
near the center of the narrative. To the extent that members of the
older community get a chance to help, they are shown (up) to be nearly
completely ineffectual. And (3) the whole of the young community is
separated from the killer by the opposition /normal/abnormal/.
By 1982, the stalker cycle was over; by 1989, the only stalkers being
made were increasingly self-parodic installments of /Halloween/ and
/Friday the 13^th /.^3 <#3> Thus Dika <#DIKA1987> , who published her
work on the subject around this time, had good reason for trying to
explain the stalker's popularity in terms of specific socio-historical
conditions. Citing post-Vietnam War anxiety, America's deteriorating
world position, and the return to conservative values culminating in
Ronald Reagan's overwhelming Presidential victory in 1980, Dika
<#DIKA1987> concludes that the stalker cycle illustrated the benefits of
neo-Puritanism to confused adolescents: ''To the stalker film's young
audiences, on the brink of adulthood and ready to formulate ideas on
careers, politics, and family, these films display the inefficacy of
sexual freedom, of casual, nongoal oriented activity, and of a
nonviolent attitude'' (Dika <#DIKA1987> 98-99). Does the return of the
stalker in the 90s, then, imply another shift towards conservatism in
America? Not if the '90s version differs in fundamental ways from its
predecessor.
SECTION III. The Neo-Stalker
Coinciding with the decline of the stalker film (and of the slasher film
generally) was a more widespread decline in the popularity/profitability
of the horror genre. With rare exception, horror movies in the first
half of the 90s proved neither interesting to critics, nor exciting to
fans, nor otherwise appealing to the rest of the moviegoing public.
Ironically, as America's pre-millennium fear of (desire for?) the
Apocalypse resulted in a slate of wildly and, for the most part
undeservedly, successful huge-budget action, natural disaster, and alien
invasion movies, the horror film industry failed to capitalize on this
seemingly insatiable thirst for violence, destruction, and mayhem
(Schneider <#SCHNEIDER1997> 417-18). What was even more frightening to
studio executives, a number of Hollywood's most bankable stars tried
their hand at horror in the 90s, only to meet with indifference, if not
outright scorn, from audiences. The list includes Robert De Niro as
Frankenstein's monster, Tom Cruise as a vampire, John Malkovich as Mr.
Hyde, and Jack Nicholson as the Wolfman.
All that changed with the arrival of /Scream/ in late December of 1996.
Though it boasted a number of well-known actors, such as Drew Barrymore
(of /E.T./ fame) and television personalities Courtney Cox (/Friends/),
Neve Campbell (/Party of Five/), and the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler,
the film took in only $6.4 million its opening weekend. Director Wes
Craven <#CRAVEN> later admitted that, ''everyone thought we were insane
to open during the Christmas 'family' season. Even in its first week,
one of the Hollywood trade papers called [/Scream/] 'dead in the
water''' (Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> vii-viii). But rave reviews and
exceptional word-of-mouth resulted in a $21 million one-week take, and
''must see'' status in the teen market. As late as June 1, 1997,
/Scream/ was grossing more than $1 million per week, and, by the time
/Scream 2/ hit the theatres in December of that year, the film had
totaled $162 million worldwide.
That /Scream/ was intended by its creator to fall somewhere within the
stalker tradition, even while poking fun at that tradition, there can be
little doubt. Superficially at least, the narrative is pure stalker: in
a nondescript California suburb, a masked, apparently male psychopath
with uncanny omniscience hunts down and kills in spectacular fashion a
group of high school students (plus the principal and a news cameraman),
one by one. The female lead--Campbell as a ''sexually anorexic''^4 <#4>
Sidney (note the male name) Prescott--is both more concerned and more
resourceful than her peers, and manages to stave off the killer's
murderous advances, even dishing out his final death blow. /Scream/'s
self-conscious
^*3* For insight into the compulsive sequelization of stalker films, see
Budra (1998) <#BUDRA1998> .
^*4* This is how she describes herself to her best friend.
p.76
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(some believe shameless) display of insider knowledge about the slasher
subgenre has sent countless critics and film theorists screaming
postmodernism. Allusions, quotations, and direct references to stalker
films and conventions abound, but homage is paid above all to
/Halloween/.^5 <#5>
With all this in mind, it comes as something of a shock to find that, of
the four Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> films under discussion, /Scream/
is the /least/ stalker-like of the bunch. /I Know What You Did Last
Summer/ [hereafter /IKWYDLS/], released in October of 1997, is an
acknowledged throwback to the less self-aware slasher movies of the
past. Based loosely on a Lois Duncan young adult novel, the film tells
the tale of four small-town high school graduates who suffer horrifying
retribution one year after trying to cover up an accidental
drunk-driving death.
Many critics complained that, after a strong opening, ''the picture
degenerates into a formula slasher'' (LaSalle <#LASALLE1998> 16). But a
talented young cast led by Jennifer Love Hewitt (Campbell's co-star on
/Party of Five/), an intelligent script, and high-energy direction
ensured another roaring success for Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> . Once
again we find such traditional stalker features as a male psychopath
endowed with supernatural resilience whose face is hidden from view, and
who kills his victims one by one--this time with a fish hook. Hewitt's
character, Julie (Jesse?) James, survives the killer's vicious attacks
and helps to finish him off, if only temporarily. And once again, it is
the heroine's purity that seems to give her the advantage over her
shallow, morally suspect friends.
A little more than two months after the
*a face in the crowd: sidney prescott (neve campbell) and her buddies
(l-r played by timothy olyphant, jamie kennedy, jerry o'connell, and
elise neal) try to find out what's going on in* */scream 2. ea/**ch of
these young actors gets a fair amount of screen time, and the
opportunity to develop their characters.* release of /IKWYDLS/, in
December of 1997, Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> (who apparently had a
/Scream/ trilogy in mind right from the start) teamed with Craven
<#CRAVEN> once again to present /Scream 2/. This time, a cell-phone
wielding copycat killer is going around stabbing co-eds at the quaint
liberal arts college Sidney is now attending. In the film's prologue, a
young woman gets murdered in a packed movie theatre where a sneak
preview of /Stab/--a fictionalized account of the (supposedly real-life)
events that took place in /Scream/--is playing to rabid fans. Although
the body count in /Scream 2/ is higher than in the original, and the
intertextual references less frequent, the two films are sufficiently
similar in terms of set-up, characterization, and plot development as to
warrant a place in this study. At least as far Miramax was concerned,
Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> was wise to play things safe. /Scream 2/
did $33 million its opening weekend, and has since grossed more than
$101 million in the U.S. alone.
Finally, we come to /Halloween H20/
^*5* For example: one of the killers is named Billy Loomis (an allusion
to /Halloween/'s Dr. Samuel Loomis, himself the namesake of Marion
Crane's lover in /Psycho/); another character misremembers the name of
well-known horror director ''Wes Carpenter''; the song ''Don't Fear the
Reaper'' can be heard on both films' soundtracks; the killer bursts out
of Sidney's closet much like Michael Myers does when going after one of
his victims; in both films, a young woman gets murdered in a garage; the
line ''Go down the street to the Mackenzie's house....'' is cannibalized
from Carpenter's movie; and Jamie Lee Curtis is a popular topic of
conversation.
p.77
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1998), released amidst much hype on the twentieth anniversary of the
original. Soon after signing his multimillion dollar contract,
Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> did the head of Miramax a personal favor by
writing a short treatment for what was then called /Halloween 7/. Jamie
Lee Curtis had expressed an interest in reprising her role as Laurie
Strode (Michael Myer's kid sister) and a plot was soon ironed out.
Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg were brought in to take over
screenwriting duties, and, after John Carpenter declined an offer to
direct, Steve Miner (/Friday the 13^th Parts 2/ and 3) came on board.
During shooting, Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> returned to do more work
on the script, thereby increasing his influence on the film.
Little need be said to justify the inclusion of /Halloween H20/ on our
list of contemporary stalkers, considering that it features one of the
most enduring psycho killers in horror movie history. This time round,
Michael tracks his long-lost sister to a posh, secluded private school
in Northern California, where she works as headmistress under an assumed
name. While the rest of the school is away on a trip, Laurie, her
boyfriend, and a small group of students are chased around by Michael in
the usual fashion. Only this time, Laurie decides she's had enough. Fear
of her brother's return has resulted in hallucinations, nightmares,
alcohol abuse, and problems with her son. Finally willing to face her
demon, she begins the process of ''recovery'' by doing battle with
Michael and eventually destroying him.^6 <#6> The isolated locale,
Laurie's aggressive retaliation, and, above all, the beheading of the
killer at film's end, makes /Halloween H20/ less reminiscent of its
namesake than of /Friday the 13th/ Part One. In any event, the multitude
of generic stalker elements present here (including the casting of
relative unknowns to play one-dimensional teenage victims) allows us to
rest our case.
It is a key thesis of this paper that Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997>
self-reflexive screenwriting is the common denominator grounding
classification of the four films under investigation as neo-stalkers. So
we should expect to find more evidence of the stalker formula in the
scripting and plots of these films than in their editing and directorial
styles. Although Craven <#CRAVEN> has been one of America's most
prolific horror directors over the past thirty years, prior to /Scream/
he had no true stalker movies to his credit. His closest foray into the
slasher genre was probably /A Nightmare on Elm Street/ (1984), a
brilliant, highly idiosyncratic film that breaks with convention in so
many ways (e.g., Freddy is in full view from the start, and is less
''seemingly superhuman psychopath'' than evil incarnate) that to
classify it as one thing rather than another would be both unhelpful and
something of an injustice.^7 <#7> Craven's <#CRAVEN> reluctance, whether
conscious or not, to associate /Scream/ with its historical predecessors
can be detected in his recollection that, ''from the beginning, /Scream/
was almost impossible to predict. We called it by turns a black comedy
or a contemporary thriller. Our detractors ... called it a 'slasher' at
best'' (quoted in Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> vii).
Nevertheless, /Scream/ bears close cinematic affinities with the stalker
tradition in its reliance on point-of-view camerawork, and in its
association of the killer's attacks with distinctive and discordant
music (his immediately recognizable voice also serves as a pre-visual
identifying characteristic). And although Craven <#CRAVEN> rarely
resorts to either obstructed vision or solitary reaction shots, his
tight close-ups of potential victims serve the same purpose of keeping
viewers in a state of epistemological anxiety. In /Scream 2/, Craven
<#CRAVEN> keeps the point-of-view camerawork to a minimum, but makes
effective use of all the other shot types discussed above.
/IKWYDLS/ director Jim Gillespie has been a great deal more candid than
Craven <#CRAVEN> in denying his film a place within the stalker
tradition: ''Horror's not really a genre I want to work in, at least not
in the sense of Jason. As soon as I got on this project, I made it clear
that this would not be a slasher film. It's more sophisticated, more a
throwback to the Hitchcock style'' (Sullivan <#SULLIVAN1997> 20).
^*6* The film plays up the redemption theme by having Laurie ask, during
a lecture on Mary Shelley's /Frankenstein/, whether Victor should have
''confronted his monster'' sooner.
^*7* Craven <#CRAVEN> /did/ do some uncredited editing on /Friday the
13th/, probably as a favor to Sean Cunningham. In 1972, Cunningham
produced Craven's <#CRAVEN> ultra-violent cult hit, /Last House on the
Left/. For more on this film, and its complicated relation to the
slasher genre, see my ''The Legacy of /Last House on the Left/'' in
/Drive-In Horrors/, ed. Gary Rhodes. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.,
forthcoming 2000.
p.78
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether or not Gillespie's picture actually lives up to such billing is
an open question; but the sensationalistic presentation of violence and
the regular use of point-of-view camerawork to keep viewers off-guard
certainly doesn't support his contention.^8 <#8> Steve Miner apparently
harbored none of Gillespie's cinematic pretensions. Besides
interspersing footage of the original /Halloween/ in the body of his
film, he adopts Carpenter's technique of shooting sequences in which the
killer can be seen by the audience but /not/ by the potential victim.
Point-of-view camerawork, though relatively scarce in /Halloween H20/,
does get used early on. But for the most part, Miner is content to
elicit startles from the audience by having characters explode onto the
screen from off-camera space. This cheap but effective scare tactic
occurs a multitude of times during the course of the film.
The films under investigation, all fall into the stalker subgenre,
primarily for narrative reasons, but also (to some extent) for cinematic
ones. On an individual level, they can be placed on a spectrum of
''stalkerness,'' with /IKWYDLS/ (the most traditional) at one end,
followed by /Halloween H20, Scream 2/, and, at the other end, /Scream/
(the most radical). But these movies are not simply /new/ stalkers--they
are /neo/-stalkers. Each of them diverges from their historical
predecessors in some fundamental way (or ways), and this divergence can
best be understood as an overturning of one (or more) of Dika's
<#DIKA1987> conceptual oppositions.
In /IKWYDLS/, there is a breakdown of the /valued/devalued/ opposition
separating the heroine from her peers. Although Julie (Hewitt) is the
moral center of the film, and although two of the four leads end up
dead, the time spent on character development for each of them makes it
apparent that the narrative is primarily concerned with showing how four
friends deal (in different ways) with the repurcussions of a terrible
group decision. Hewitt probably merits her top-billing status, but her
co-stars (including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy of /Buffy the Vampire
Slayer/) are just as experienced as she. It is their collective talent,
in fact, which bails out the film's predictable plot. As one reviewer
put it: ''the picture redeems itself somewhat by unexpectedly killing
off some
*breaking down the valued/devalued opposition: sarah michelle gellar,
ryan phillippe, and jennifer love hewitt share the lead in* */i know
what you did last summer./* *notice that hewitt, the film's ostensible
''star'' is not positioned in the center of the frame.* of the main
characters'' (LaSalle <#LASALLE1998> 16). If we didn't come to value
these characters as much as we do, there would be no such redemption.
In /Halloween H20/, there is a collapsing of the /ingroup/outgroup/
opposition. Laurie is no longer the innocent babysitter she was twenty
years ago; she is the mother of an angst-ridden teen, a compulsive
drinker, an authority figure in the midst of a personal breakdown. It is
hard to imagine a teacher ever surviving a direct confrontation with the
killer in the original stalker cycle. In this film, not only does
Headmistress Strode
^*8* The author of /I Know What You Did Last Summer/, for one, was quite
disturbed by the way the film version ''desensitizes kids to violence
and turn[s] murder into a game.... Since the movie came out, I've been
approached by several people who wanted to turn other stories I've
written into slasher films, and I've refused them all'' (Kurson
<#KURSON1997> 22).
p.79
------------------------------------------------------------------------
survive ... she /wins/. And even though the school security
guard--played by rapper LL Cool J for maximum hipness--makes some stupid
moves, he is portrayed sympathetically and is given a substantive role.
The /ingroup/outgroup/ opposition was an important way stalker films of
the past appealed to their adolescent target audience. An overturning of
this opposition must therefore be interpreted as an effort on
Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> part to appeal to a different
demographic; namely, those Gen-Xers who
*a teenage ''scream queen'' grows up: jamie lee curtis reprises her role
as laurie strode in halloween h20, and effectively collapses the
ingroup/outgroup opposition.* watched Laurie get terrorized by her
brother twenty years earlier.
/Scream/ and /Scream 2/ are the most radical of Williamson's
<#WILLIAMSON1997> neo-stalkers, insofar as they problematize /all/ of
the conceptual oppositions discussed above. Like /IKWYDLS/, both
/Screams/ break down the /valued/devalued/ opposition. Besides Campbell
and Barrymore (who has the first ten minutes of the film to herself),
/Scream/'s cast includes such rising stars as Matthew Lillard, Rose
McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich--all of whom get ample opportunity to display
their talents. Although Sidney gets the most screen time, Williamson
<#WILLIAMSON1997> fleshes out each of his young characters (pun
intended), giving them distinct and colorful personalities. Craven
<#CRAVEN> follows Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> lead, making sure to
provide everyone with a fair amount of close-ups. In /Scream 2/, the
breakdown of this opposition continues, as Sidney's boyfriend Derek
(Jerry O'Connell, star of the television show /Sliders/) gets to do his
very own song-and-dance routine. Jada Pinkett, Omar Epps, Sarah Michelle
Gellar (who Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> calls ''my Molly Ringwald''
[Sullivan <#SULLIVAN1997> 20]),^9 <#9> and Jamie Kennedy also get the
chance to shine.
Like /Halloween H20, Scream/ and /Scream 2/ also break down the
/ingroup/ outgroup/ opposition. Two of these films' main characters are
Gale Weathers (Cox), a dirt-seeking t.v. newswoman, and Dwight ''Dewey''
Riley (David Arquette), an earnest but dull police officer. Although
Deputy Riley is portrayed as bumbling and ineffectual, it should be
noted that he ends up pairing off with the highly competent Weathers,
and that, in both movies, he is the only cop to get anywhere near the
action. He also survives getting stabbed in the back near the end of the
first movie, and again (!) near the end of the second. Weathers actually
saves Sidney's life in /Scream/, and in /Scream 2/ her role is more that
of backup heroine than television reporter. This change in persona is
confirmed by the fact that, after her camera man quits, she exclaims to
Dewey: ''There are no cameras here! I just want to find this fucker! I
really do.''
^*9* Note the shades of John Hughes in this remark (Molly Ringwald was
Hughes' pet actress). It should also be pointed out in this context that
a clip of Gellar in /Scream 2/ is shown on a VCR in /Halloween H20/.
p.80
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additionally, and unlike either of the other films, /Scream/ and /Scream
2/ break down the /normal/abnormal/ opposition which serves to
distinguish the whole of the young community from the killer. Both
/Screams/ have a strong ''whodunnit'' subtext which gets reinforced by
the emphasis on clues, and by scenes in which hordes of young people are
shown running around wearing the killer's mask. In /Scream 2/, the
murder mystery theme is made even more obvious (perhaps /too/ obvious),
as a requisite amount of suspicion is thrown on each of the male
characters in turn. Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> has been given
much-deserved credit for ingeniously making the killer in /Scream/ two
people (and less credit for adopting the same ploy in the sequel). But
little attention has been paid to the fact that three of his four
killers are members of Sidney's peer group. In the first film, the main
baddie turns out to be Sidney's boyfriend of two years, a guy her best
friend calls ''perfect'' and to whom she has recently lost her
virginity. By
*with friends like these ...: billy loomis (skeet ulrich, left) and
stuart macher (matthew lillard) double team randy meeks (jamie kennedy)
in* */scream./* *as psychotic members of sidney's peer group, billy and
stu serve to break down the stalker film's traditional normal/abnormal
opposition.* collapsing the /normal/abnormal/ opposition, Sidney's (and
so the viewer's) sense of unease is both heightened and justified.
Taking the paranoia of previous stalker films to a whole new level,
/Scream/ sends audiences a message that the killer is not just /among/
us ... he is /one/ (or perhaps even /two/) of us. SECTION IV.
Self-Reflexivity in the Neo-Stalker
We still need to figure out what, if anything, enables us to classify
the films under discussion as a new horror /subgenre/, and not simply as
a new cycle of (neo-)stalkers. In other words, we need to see what, if
anything, these stalkers have /in common/ that distinguishes them from
stalkers of the past.
The suggestion here is that, in the neo-stalker, humorous
self-referentiality gives way to serious self-reflexivity. We can begin
explicating this formula by looking at how Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997>
got the idea for /Scream/:
One night, I sat in [my friend's] house in Westwood watching a
Barbara Walters special on the Gainseville murders. It was scary as
hell and was really spooking me. The idea that this man was stalking
and killing these college kids in this small, unsuspecting town was
very frightening. It reminded me of /Halloween/. Then, suddenly, I
heard a noise. It was coming from another room.... With a butcher
knife in one hand and a cordless phone in the other, I called my
buddy David.... David, of course, was being a dick. He kept trying
to scare me on the phone, saying things like ''Freddy's gonna get
you,'' and ''Michael's behind you,'' and ''Kill, kill, kill, ha, ha
ha ...'' Before you know it,
p.81
------------------------------------------------------------------------
we were arguing over which killer was scarier and what horror movie
worked best, mixing up all the movies together. The conversation
turned into a movie debate where we started quizzing each other with
our movie knowledge. Thus, [/Scream/] was born. (xii)
There is a lot going on in this quote, but most relevant for our
purposes is the way insider knowledge of the stalker subgenre gets used
to take the power out of an (in this case imagined) threat. It is a
truism that real-life events can remind us of the movies; here, watching
a program about the Gainseville murders brought scenes from /Halloween/
to Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> mind. In turn, movies can affect the
way we experience reality: what we see in a film may ''spill over'' into
our ordinary lives, coloring our expectations and inferences. In the
case of horror films such spill-over can be a bad thing, resulting in a
measure of paranoia. It can also be a good thing, encouraging increased
awareness of one's surroundings. But either way, a loss of security
results. How to get it back? The answer, Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997>
discovered that night at his friend's house, is obvious: /consult your
insider knowledge about those conventions governing the genre of which
the movie you now find yourself in is a member/. Such knowledge prepares
you for whatever may be hiding behind the corner, for whatever it is
making noises in the other room. There is less to fear, not because the
threat has gone away, but because you now have some idea of what the
threat /is/, how to protect yourself from it, maybe even how to defeat it.
In real life, consulting your insider knowledge about the stalker
subgenre in circumstances such as those described by Williamson
<#WILLIAMSON1997> offers /psychological/ security at best. But let us
say you really /are/ in the stalker movie you think you're in. In that
case, the security gained would be a great deal more efficacious;
unless, of course, the stalker movie you are in /breaks/ with those
conventions governing the genre of which it is a member. In /Scream/,
''real life'' events taking place in the characters' lives remind them
of horror movies they have seen, stalker movies in particular. (These
stalker movies just so happen to be the ones Gen-X audience members
would be most familiar with.) Because, unbeknownst to them, the
characters in /Scream/ are simply that--characters in a stalker
movie--their jocular references to /other/ stalker movies constitute
moments of /self/-referentiality.^10 <#10> As things progress, however,
they begin to suspect that what's happening to them is not just /like/ a
stalker movie; it /is/ a stalker movie. As Craven <#CRAVEN> puts it:
They find themselves, unwillingly sometimes, in those very same
cliché situations they sort of thought were so clever and fun to
watch when they were watching scary movies.... It goes from being
sort of funny as you recognize the classic film situations to
terrifying when you see that it's really happening. (/Scream/
interview)
Unfortunately for them, they're right--they /are/ in a stalker movie. So
what can they do to protect themselves? For starters, consult their
insider knowledge about the stalker subgenre. When that happens,
self-referentiality gives way to self-reflexivity: they stop conceiving
of themselves as real people, and begin viewing themselves as the
fictional characters they really are.^11 <#11>
But we are not quite finished yet. As Pinedo <#PINEDO1997> points out in
her discussion of /Scream/: ''The characters' running commentary on the
slasher film demonstrates ... the degree to which the conventions of the
subgenre have become domesticated through repetition. /Scream/ strives
to overcome this routinization by transgressing some conventions''
(134-35). For Sidney and her friends, consulting insider knowledge is
not enough--the killers /too/ have seen their share of stalkers, and are
out not to make the same mistakes as Michael, Jason, et. al. The very
fact that there are /two/ of them is proof of their resolve. Therefore,
/mere/ self-reflexivity won't do the trick. To survive, /Scream/'s
potential victims must get serious
^*10* I am here relying on Withalm's <#WITHALM1997> broad definition of
cinematic self-referentiality as ''the particular cinematic discourse of
referring to its own medium'' (255).
^*11* Again, this is in keeping with Withalm <#WITHALM1997> , who
characterizes self-reflexive films as ''films which focus in one moment
of the discourse on themselves'' (255).
p.82
------------------------------------------------------------------------
about using their insider knowledge to transgress some conventions
themselves. This becomes apparent when Tatum (McGowan) is confronted by
one of the killers in a garage. Not believing it is really him, she
jokes ''Oh, you wanna play psycho killer? Can I be the helpless victim?
Okay, let's see. 'No, please, don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface. I want to be
in the sequel.''' By the time Tatum figures out the truth, it is too
late--playing her part to perfection, she becomes the generic stalker
film victim she was intended to be all along. Sidney, on the other hand,
avoids Tatum's fate by breaking convention and joining forces with Gale
Weathers (another sexually active female) to double team the killers.
What follows are some examples of the turn from humorous
self-referentiality to serious self-reflexivity in each of Williamson's
<#WILLIAMSON1997> neo-stalkers:
/Scream/: This is the first and most fully realized neo-stalker. As
such, instances of the self-reflexive turn abound. Here, we shall
restrict ourselves to just one. After watching Billy Loomis get
blown away, horror film buff Randy (Jamie Kennedy) warns Sidney:
''Careful. This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer
springs back to life for one last scare.'' Sidney, who has a gun
pointed right at Billy's head, declares ''Not in my movie,'' and
pulls the trigger the moment Randy's prediction comes true. Sidney's
insider knowledge of the stalker subgenre enables her to anticipate
the killer's improbable return and break with convention by
finishing him off in unambiguous fashion. Billy's accomplice Stu
(Matthew Lillard) may be right when he remarks that ''these
days--you gotta have a sequel,'' but neither he nor Billy will be in
it.
*heroine x2: sidney joins forces with (courtney cox) to kill the
baddies in* */scream 2./* *this breaking of convention is evidence
of sidney's serious self-reflexivity.*
/Scream 2/: Plenty more horror references for fans of the genre to
grin knowingly about, including ones to /Graduation Day/ (1981),
/The House on Sorority Row/ (1983), and the outerspace slasher
/Alien/ (1979). Self-reflexivity comes with Randy's smug
pronouncement that ''someone is out to make a sequel. You know--cash
in on all the movie/murder hoopla--so it's important to observe the
rules of the sequel.'' But unfortunately for Randy, who has been
upgraded to one of the leads this time around, /Scream 2/ is not
just /any/ stalker sequel. After being told by the killer that he
will ''never be a leading man,'' he meets with a gruesome death
halfway through the picture. Sidney, in contrast, shows that she is
ready to apply even those lessons learned in the first /Scream/.
Moments after teaming up with Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) to
finish off the new pair of killers, she shoots one of them in the
head at point blank range ''just in case.''
p.83
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/Halloween H20/: Self-reflective moments in this film include
allusions to /Friday the 13th/ and /Psycho/ (Janet Leigh--Curtis'
mother, and the actress who played Norman Bates' shower
victim--makes a cameo as Laurie's secretary, Norma). A videotape of
/Scream 2/ is shown playing in the students' dorm room. And, as was
mentioned above, clips from the original /Halloween/ get
interspersed throughout. The self-reflexive turn comes when Laurie,
on the run from Michael, spots a closet that looks just like the one
she tried (unsuccessfully) to hide in twenty years earlier. Through
Laurie's mind, and on the screen in front of us, runs the relevant
footage from Carpenter's film. Not wanting to make the same mistake
twice, she mutters ''No way.'' Cut to Michael passing by the closet
and noticing blood on the door handle. As he opens the door, Laurie
sneaks up behind him (she was hiding around the corner) and stuns
him with a blow to the head.
But it is at the end of /Halloween H20/ that we find our purest example
of serious self-reflexivity in the neo-stalker. Having been stabbed in
the chest by Laurie numerous times and getting pushed out of a two-story
window, Michael is declared dead by the police and zipped up in a body
bag (never mind that they leave his mask on). Instead of taking off with
her son, though, Laurie hijacks the ambulance containing Michael's body
and speeds away. Sure enough, Michael starts coming around once again.
Driving the ambulance off a cliff, Laurie manages to trap Michael
against a tree. He reaches out for help; she extends her hand, hesitates
... then decapitates him. Blackout. Throughout the film, Laurie's belief
that Michael is still alive and out to get her is scoffed at by others.
Her hijacking of the ambulance is made to look like the insane action of
a traumatized woman. But of course, Laurie is right. She has been right
all along. Much like Sidney at the end of /Scream/ and /Scream 2/,
Laurie puts her insider knowledge to good use by breaking with stalker
convention and unambiguously killing off the killer.
/IKWYDLS/: Earlier, it was observed that this is the most traditional of
Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> neo-stalkers. Discussing the difference
in tone between /IKWYDLS/ and /Scream/, Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> has
admitted that ''/Scream/ was sort of a sendup. This is more serious,
more of a suspense thriller. I tried to play it straight, to keep the
emotions and the behavior very real. I didn't want to make another
/Scream/ ... until /Scream 2/'' (Sullivan <#SULLIVAN1997> 20). As a
result of ''being played straight,'' /IKWYDLS/ exhibits less
self-referentiality and self-reflexivity than the other neo-stalkers.
Nevertheless, traces of both can be found. Early on, Julie and her
friends take turns interpreting the meaning of an urban legend about a
psychotic with a hook for a hand. Julie, for one, is sure that it is ''a
fictional story created to warn young girls of the dangers of having
pre-marital sex.'' This also happens to be a popular (if problematic)
interpretation of stalker films such as /Halloween/ and /Friday the
13th/, in which promiscuous adolescents are ''punished'' with death and
the virgin always survives. Later, when visiting the home of the man
they accidentally ran over the year before, one of the girls shows signs
of reflexivity: ''Jodie Foster tried this [in /Silence of the Lambs/]
and it scared a serial killer out through the front door.'' But just
like Tatum in /Scream/, and Randy in /Scream 2/, Helen (Gellar) winds up
paying the ultimate price for her lack of seriousness. The most
self-reflexive line in the film actually gets delivered by the killer,
who offers Julie the following advice: ''Next time, when you leave a man
for dead, make sure he's really dead!'' This is just the kind of insider
knowledge Julie might have picked up from Sidney or Laurie.
p.84
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION V. The Gen-X Stalker Audience
Pinedo <#PINEDO1997> writes that /Scream/ ''takes seriously the premise
that teenaged audiences of the horror film draw on ample reserves of
insider knowledge about the genre'' (134). Perhaps. But it is far more
likely that the audience members of /Scream/ drawing on ''ample reserves
of insider knowledge about the genre'' are not teenagers, but /Gen-Xers/
-- those Americans born between 1963 and 1977 according to one recent
study (Zevin <#ZEVINETAL> 68). Although it cannot be denied that Jason,
Michael, and their psycho-killing cohorts have transcended (if that is
the right word) the films in which they appear, those who know them best
are the twenty- and thirty-something moviegoers who watched them when
they were in their primes. Gen-Xers like Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> ,
who was twelve when he went with friends to see /Halloween/ at the local
theatre in 1978: ''/Halloween/ was my revelation.... I watched as men
and women screamed at the screen, yelling and coaxing the characters on.
It was a roller-coaster ride from beginning to end. I knew from that
first screening I wanted to affect people like that. /Halloween/ was the
film that opened my eyes'' (x).
/Scream/'s phenomenal success can be attributed to its ingenious
targeting of two different audiences at once: curious adolescents
looking to ride the stalker film roller-coaster for themselves, and
nostalgic Gen-Xers hoping to see the subgenre--and their teenage
years--revived. In an interview given just prior to the release of
/Halloween H20/, Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> expresses his awareness of
the neo-stalker's crossover appeal:
I think we're in a nice wave of horror movies where horror movies
are kind of exciting right now. There's sort of been a rebirth of
them, so you've got that contingent. And then you've got Jamie Lee
Curtis, that will bring in that contingent, the fans of Jamie Lee
Curtis. So hopefully, with all of that, it should do well, on a
bunch of different levels. It'll appeal to a bunch of different
people. (Martin <#MARTIN> )
/Halloween H20/ takes pains to assure younger viewers that, although
Michael has been around for quite a while, he is no old fogey. When the
police, investigating a pair of grisly murders, consider the possibility
of a Michael Myers return after two decades of silence, one officer
jokes ''Tell 'em to look for a guy with a cane and Alzheimer's.'' His
baby boomer captain is quick to correct him: ''The guy would be younger
than I am, o.k.? I was fifteen when he killed his sister back in '63.''
Bottom line: Michael still presents a threat, and viewers of all ages
had better get that straight.
But Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> does not content self with retro
casting and chronology lessons; his specialty lies in the creation of
characters who appeal to different sectors of the audience at the same
time. Deputy Dewey in /Scream/ is a Gen-Xer, the older brother of
Sidney's best friend. In conversation with Gale Weathers, Dewey lets out
that he's twenty-five. Weathers replies flirtatiously,
Twenty-five, huh? In a demographic study I proved to be most popular
amongst males, eleven to twenty-four. I just missed you. Of course
you don't look a day over twelve, except in the upper torso area.
Dewey's response: ''I just turned twenty-five. I was twenty-four for a
whole year.'' From this exchange, it seems that Dewey both /is/ and /is
not/ a member of the Gen-X population. At the very least, his taste is
that of the younger market. This message gets reinforced later during a
scene in which Dewey, eating an ice cream cone, is juxtaposed with an
older, cigarette-smoking Sheriff Burke (Joseph Whipp).
More pervasive in Williamson's <#WILLIAMSON1997> films, however, are
teenage characters who sound like Gen-Xers. The sophistication of
Sidney, Julie, and their friends is not solely a function of their
having seen lots of stalker movies. It is a function of their
enculturated self-awareness. As Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> puts it:
p.85
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Typically in horror films the character just services the plot, and
you really are just going from 'point a' to 'point b,' just so that
you can end up at 'point c.' They are just sort of stick characters.
That's just not interesting to me. I think that our target audience
today is just so savvy, so I try to write all of my characters so
that they are self-aware. They've all lived through the
psycho-babble of the eighties, and have a self-awareness now. Even
if their behavior is not that of an adult, they can sure talk like
one. That's certainly true in /Scream/ and /Summer/ and in [my
television show] /Dawson's Creek/. You could dub that show /Thirty
Something/, even though they (the characters) are fifteen. I'm
really having fun with that. (Decker <#DECKER1997> )
But just who makes up the ''target audience'' that Williamson
<#WILLIAMSON1997> is referring to here? Teens may constitute a majority
of the neo-stalker audience--they certainly constitute a majority of the
audience for /Dawson's Creek/--but today's teens are /not/ the ones who
''lived through the psychobabble of the eighties.'' At least not in
comparison with the Gen-Xers, who were fully cognizant the whole time.
It seems that, by effecting a fusion of two generations in his
adolescent characters, Williamson <#WILLIAMSON1997> has found a voice
which appeals to them both.
**
*Paul Budra*
*DATE: *1998
''Recurrent Monsters: Why Freddy, Michael, and Jason Keep Coming Back.''
In /Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel/. Eds. Paul Budra and Betty
Schellenberg. Toronto: U of Toronto P. 189-99.
*Wes Craven*
Interview on /Scream/ videocassette. Dimension Home Video.
*Carol Clover*
*DATE: *1992
/Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film/.
Princeton: Princeton UP.
*Sean Decker*
*DATE: *(Oct. 15, 1997)
''An Interview with Kevin Williamson.'' http://www.horror
movies.com/profiles/Williamson[rang ].
*Vera Dika*
*DATE: *1987
''The Stalker Cycle, 1978-81.'' In /American Horrors: Essays on the
Modern American Horror Film/. Ed. Greg Waller. Chicago: U Illinois P:
86-101.
*Bob Kurson*
*DATE: *(Nov. 9, 1997)
''Novelist Shocked by 'Slasher Film'.'' /Chicago Sun Times/:22.
*Mick LaSalle*
*DATE: *(March 27, 1998)
''/Summer/ Isn't Quite a Scream.'' /San Francisco Chronicle/: 16.
*Brian Martin*
''Exclusive Interviews: Kevin Williamson.'' /Halloween H20/ Official
Website. [lang ]http://www.halloween movies.com/intv 11.htm[rang ].
*Isabel Pinedo*
*DATE: *1997
/Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing/.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
*Steven Schneider*
*DATE: *(1997)
''Uncanny Realism and the Decline of the Modern Horror Film.''
/Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres/ 3.3-4: 417-428.
*Darcy Sullivan*
*DATE: *(Oct. 1997)
''I Know What You Did Last Summer.'' /Fangoria/: 20.
*Andrew Tudor*
*DATE: *1989
/Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie/.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
*Kevin Williamson*
*DATE: *1997
/Scream: A Screenplay. With a Forward by Kevin Williamson and an
Introduction by Wes Craven/. New York: Miramax Books.
*Gloria Withalm*
*DATE: *1997
'''How did you find us?'--'We read the script!': A special case of
self-reference in the movies.'' In /Semiotics of the Media: State of the
Art, Projects, and Perspectives/. Ed. Winfried North. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
*Dan Zevin*
*Brendan Koerner*
*DATE: *(Oct. 20, 1997)
''Boom time for Gen X?'' /U.S. News & World Report/ 123.15: 68-72.
p.87
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright
Access paid by The UCLA Library - this link will open in a new window
Printed from International Index to Performing Arts © 2008ProQuest LLC.
All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment