IU-3 GhNRfc AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYW< .-n tlie Biography Channel on TV* which faithfully subscribes to a full-life documentary forir.\a Erin Brockovkh (2000) ingeniously responded to expository demands without slowing i -pace: a pre-crcdh scene places Brockovích in a job interview in which she spills out her ile story to a prospective employer. 10. Custen, J3/o/P/fi, p. 145. 11. Anderson, 'Biographical Film', p. 336. 12. Recent biopics are more chauvinistic than ever: 78 per cent of single-person btopics in ( r sample were US citizens, compared to Custen's figures of 42 per cent in the 1970s, 46 ■•»■■ cent in the 1960s and 66 per cent in the studio era. 13. Custen, Bio/Pics, p. 134. 14. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (Ncv. York: Pantheon, 1988). 15. Aítman, Film/Genre, p. 117. 16. Scot! Alexander and Larry Karasüewski, Man on the Moon: The Shooting Script (N< * •''■*.. Newmarket Press, 1999), p. vii. 17. Cusim, Bio/Pics, pp. 154-5. 18. Ibid., p. 153. 19. Confirming Stone's status as a commercially viable auteur, 'Warners has released a t . ".'*..e 'Oliver Stone Collection' on DVD. This set includes a 52-mÍnute documentary grat ■ entitled Oliver Stone's America and a four-hour 'director's cut' of Nixon. 20. Although this opening scene seemed a ludicrous invention to many, Howard Hunt I " fact, according to a screenplay note, rent this 16mm training film and screen it to tl burglars on the night of the break-in attempt. See Eric Hamburg (ed.), Nixon: An i. r Stone Mm (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 84. 21. Dave Kuehls, 'Previewed', Runner's World {February 1997), pp. 48-56; Mercell Nt ui 'A Mad Dash: 'íívo Films about Prefomaine Go Neck and Neck', Entertainment We >.» 7 February 1997, pp. 21-2. 22. Kuehľs, 'Pre-vieweď, p. 56. 23. The overseas marketing for Retnember the Titans completely elided the biopic angle ■ • '" studio was concerned with overcoming 'the usual barriers surrounding American sp "" i black-themed pictures' by highlighting the 'inspirational leader element'. See Don ( .< \ 'It's a Whole New Ballgame', Variety, 1 January 2001, p. 17. 24. For example, print ads for Be/ore Night Falls presented at least three marketing app"- ■■ '* -the critically acclaimed art film, the critically acclaimed art film about a gay man am . historical-poSitical drama about Cuba. The first two approaches featured a barrage i '., «!<■* from critics surrounding a central image of Javier Bardem. In the gay press, Barden • .■• pictured sunbathing next to another man. After Bardem's Academy Award nominal . smaller ads dropped the raves, headlined the nomination and presented a ragged in . • • • Bardem next to copy referencing the 1980 Cuban exodus. 25. Patrick Goldstein, A Couple of Real Fighters', Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2001, G ■ ' 26. See Altman, Film/Genre, pp, 38-43, 27. Pascal, quoted in Goldstein, 'A Couple of Real Fighters'. 8 From Paranoia to Postmodernism? The Horror Movie in Late Modern Society Andrew Tudor Even the most eager advocates of the claim that we live in 'postmodern' times would have to concede that the currency of the term itself has become somewhat devalued over the past couple of decades. What may have seemed a reasonably concise expression in, say, Lyotard's early use of it1 has been spread ever more thinly across a under and wider range of social and cultural circumstances. This is as true in film studies as elsewhere, where it has become almost de rigueur to invoke postmoderntty in seeking to characterise the state of the cinema at the turn of the century. Quite what the term suggests about contemporary film {or, indeed, about contemporary society) is far from agreed, and I shall try to clarify some its range of meanings later in this discussion. For the moment, however, I want to look at the term 'postmodern'as.it ismvoked in application to contemporary horror movies. It is not clear quite when critical discussion began to talk of late-century horror as somehowj^iraodei^. .Čertík ing currenidevelopments in the horror movie and postmodern theory.2 In 1989, almost as an afterthought to my study Monsters and Mad Scientists, I suggested that certain aspects of modem horror related to at least some of the social and cultural changes that had been characterised as postmodern.3 A year later, Noel Carroll made a similar although rather more subtle point, arguing that 'the contemporary horror genre is the exoteric expression of the same feelings that are expressed in the esoteric discussions of the intelligentsia .with respect to postmodernism'.4 Neither Carroll nor I was overly enthusiastic about using the term itself, about so-called 'postmodern theory', or about the desire to diagnose our times as a social condition of postmoderntty, but the parallels were too obvious to resist and the cultural resonance too rich to ignore. Since then there has been a proliferation in use of the expression 'postmodern horror' as an apparently unproblematic descriptive term and rather fewer attempts to examine the proposition that there is indeed something about the modern horror movie which merits the designation. A good instance of the latter, and one to which I shall return, is Pinedo's 1997 volume.5 But for the most part, recent horror movies have been dubbed 'postmodern' with little or no discussion of what that involves or implies. in this chapter 1 want to explore the implications of that tendency by pursuing two 106 GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD?, related lines of argument. First, I shall examine late twentieth-century horror movies withij a view to establishing their distinctive characteristics. In this I shall build upon thq| account of horror movie history laid out in Monsters and Mad Scientists, seeking to extencf * that analysis from 1985 to the century's end. Note, however, that IJhjye^npj.Mteinptd|| to replicate the kind of detailed statistical analysis found in the_origina[ studjLl : increasing tendency to distribute horror .direct_m.video.Jimits..the representativeness if . such figures when based^ cerned to see if the horror discourse that I called ^ranoid hpjT^in^hg.original stu l\ has mutated into some more 'postmodern' formi or ifl_a.s,Pined.e„Suggcs.*, my 'paranoid horror' simply..equates to what-she calls 'rwstrnc^ern horror'.6 Havŕ j: examined the recent history of the horror movie, my second line of argument then g< <■ - j\ on to ask what, if anything, is to be gained by describing contemporary horror as 'po\ \ modern' and how that relates - if at all - to the larger social context of the so-cali A \ postmodern world. The horror film since 1985 What, then, has happened to the horror movie since 1985? If one were to advancí j naive description, that is to say one without the benefit of detailed historical comparison, several features would be immediately apparent. Perhaps most obvious would — the growing dependence of the genre on clearly defined cycles in which one sequel H lows hot on the heels of another. The Friday the 13th franchise - the term scej ■ >■ appropriate in a consumerist culture - which had already reached its alleged 'final chapter' with the fourth film in 1984, was revived in 1985 in Friday the ľith Part V: A N. v Beginning and ran through three more sequels before reaching an apparent apotheos* in 1993 with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Needless to say, there is now a Jos' •• X (2001), in which he is revived in the future. The enormous success o£A Nightmare i.v Elm Street (1984) meant that it was speedily followed in 1985 by Part 2 and then gt n erated another four sequels, five if you include the elegantly reflexive Wes Craven's N> 'i Nightmare (1994). Scattered among the rest, and now choosing examples almost at random, we find three sequels to Alien {1979); House í 1986) and House II: The Second Sic r\ (1987); Psycho III (1986) and an almost shot-by-shot remake of Psycho (1998); a coupL-of Fright Nights; three each in the Hellraiser and Child's Play cycles; a couple ^: Candymans; no less than Halloween 8 (2001); and a string of one-off sequels aid remakes. And, in addition, there are those films that follow both directly and indirec' * in the wake of the hugely influential Scream (1996), of which more later. In a historical perspective, of course, one might wonder whether any of this is rea ľ new? There is a sense in which I think that it might be. While it is true that the hon -i movie has always worked with clearly marked cycles (consider, most obviously, tu* Frankenstein, Dracula, werewolf and mummy cycles which have recurred throughc 11 the genre's history), the recent reliance onrapid sequences .pLs.eqUjds^ilkhjJn tji '' \ marketing, are offered as precisely that,..does appear to be a genuinely distinctive U ■ ture of 1980s and 1990s horror. It is as if the concept of a 'sequel' - or, if you like, tl • process of 'sequelling' - has itself become a major convention of the genre, a phenoi ■ fROM PARANOIA TO POSTHODERNI5M? 107 on fully understood and, more important, expected and embraced by a genetically loinpetent horror audience. As a character observes in Scream, 'these days you've got to have a sequel' - the quality of which phenomenon, appropriately enough, then turns up (is a l°pic k"' c'assroom discussion early in Scream 2 (1997). A second aspect of contemporary horror which would be as immediately apparent to she naive viewer as to the sophisticate is the prominence of comedy. Around thirty or so of the films I viewed for..consideration here would merit the description^comedy-, horror', while a substantially larger grpup.reg!,ilariy,mtroduce.cornic elements into what are otherwise 'serious' narratives. Again, historically this is not new. There has always been a thread of comedy running through the genre, especially at the low-budget end, hut the ubiquity of comic elements in recent horror is striking, as is the character of the comedy itself. Two features of that stand out.. One is the Unking of comedy to-'spiatter'.i In 1980s films such as Re-Animator (1985), Brain Damage (1987) and Evil Dead II (1987), much of the comic fun to be had derives from the excess of gory detail. The other aspect, in this case more a development characteristic of the 1990s than the 1980s, is the tendency to reflextvely generate humour by openly appealing to a knowing audi-*r^ ence's familiarity with thegenre conventions. There are some quite subtle variations on "^■--this ~ the delightful Tremors (1989), for example, has half an eye on 1950s horror - but the real locus c/assicus is Scream, succeeded by its own two sequels as well as by the likes of The Faculty (1998), Scary Movie (2000) and Cherry Falk (2000). it is such films as' these that have so often attracted the designation 'postmodern', if only superficially, because of their studied self-consciousness and their use of pastiche. Apart from sequelling and comedy, aň accbúriťôf iäťé-céntiiry horror would have little else to add that had not been already apparent by the 1980s. A continuation of the trend towards the youth market, seen in the constant use of American high school and college environments as a setting and source of typical characters. A further extension of highly skilled, gory special effects, with a concomitant emphasis on the spectacle of splatter and on 'body-horror'. The familiar return of classical horror stories in the form of big-budget films from 'respectable' directors, such as Coppola's Dracula (1992) or Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). Proof, if proof were needed, that it is still possible for the occasional low-budget horror film such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) to make the jump from the genre ghetto into more general commercial success, in this case made interesting because of the role played by the World Wide Web in selling the project direct to the public. And, sadly, precious few films with the power to disturb found in, say, Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Last Heme on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), or Shivers (1975); perhaps only Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (ľ)^)^, Man Bites Dog (1992), or, in a rather different mode, Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1991), even í aspires to that kind of assault on horror movie sensibilities. None of these features - apart from the role of the Internet in selling The Blair Witch \ 'roject ~ is significantly new. To appreciate what might be genuinely innovative or ; unusual, it is necessary to frame the historical context a little more systematically. To do so I shall return to the central ideas of Monsters and Mad Scienti%ts and look again at my characterisation of modern (i.e. post-1960s) 'paranoid' horror as being qualitatively 108 GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD? ^different to the,'secure' horror discourse that preceded it.7 This contrast can usefully introduced in the schematic forrnoFa table summarising the main contrasting com) nents of the two discourses: Secure Horror successful human intervention effective expertise authorities as legitimate sustainable order 'external' threats centre-periphery organisation defined boundaries closed narratives Paranoid Horror failed human intervention ineffective expertise authorities as unreliable escalating disorder 'internal' threats victim groups organisation diffuse boundaries open narratives Table 8.1 The Discourses of Secure and Paranoid Horror Essentially myjdaimjsjhaithe dominant discourse of film horror prior to the 1960s presupposed an ultimately secure world in which the monstrous threat was finally defe itcd anJjoH«2^s^^^tapTíshed authorities were TroacŠly reliable^the bound incs between known and unknown were clearly marked, and protagonists were able to intervene with some Realistic .hope_of success. In, marked contrast, horror movie disco..:se from the 1970s onwardsjpresumes^ beyond cp.^ can no longer provide credible protection, the threatfromtheunknown pervade* the everyday world, and rfiere always remains potential for escalating disorder. Individ ujly , die difference is perhaps best seen in the contrast between a classic 'mad scientist' narrative such as Frankenstein (1931) and a terrorising psycho&cnarrattve such as Haßou^n (1978)..In. theformejr, the narrative's central threat is a consequence of human voUtion._ Jisjexternaľ to the human body .and rmncLifi clearly distinguished from 'normality1, .'nd ' is[finally defeated. Human expmiscjs'elfe legitimate ti- the jatter, .the-thKatJsjunexplainecl,.it is 'internal' in the sense that„it,emerge!» from 'he psyche and is located in an ordinary everyday world, and the boundary between 'imi-mality' and 'abnormality' is not clearly marked. The monster survives, and 'experts' »re unable to deal with it. At every turn, the world of Halloween and its many successoi * >* I thoroughly unreliable and insecure. Key to the development of such psycho-movies as the most prominent feature of p*ist* _ 1960s horror is the distinction between internal, and external.threats. Even when-1 (.»__ explanation is offered for their behaviour, the rampaging psychotje^who follow In "he ^alňcoí^TSUPsycho (1960).^ as. monstrous threats by yirtue.of^ t° \ I«'*.- bejng/piis was a major change of emphasis in as much as «most horror movie thtt.-ts prior to the emergence of the psycho-killer were externally derived:, they came-Jw:»-space, for example, or supernature, or were created by virtue of scientific interfere :^c FROM PARANOIA TO POSTMODERNISM? 109 in the proper order of things. Internality also finds expression in the growing use of con-tempp.rary anc[prosaic everyday settings such as small, towns, suburbs, ordinary houses, family groups, and theJjkes,This renders the characteristic threats of j>aranqid horror 'internal' in the sense ofbelonging within our familiar physical and social world, not distanced from us as they are in the Gothic ehewhen of an imaginary Transylvania or among the exotic equipment of a fanciful laboratory. Tntemaj^jtan^uggests internality in both a mehwl'änHTsBčwrsehse. In the course of the 1980s, and. 1990sr.furthermore, it also dcveloplíčTáíTasTociaTedpnysical dimension with the further growth of 'body-horror', its ferocious and graphic destruction of victims', bodies a very direct and visceral, expression of the turn to internality. Parallel to this growing emphasis we find a change in the tacit social structure of the typical horror movie world. In secure horror, where constituted authorities (e.g. seien-tists, military^the police, etc.J are generally seen as legitimate, those authorities are central to narrative resolution and essential if the larger population of potential victims are to foej&v^ dependence. In paranoid horror, where authorities are no longer seen as legitimate and are no longer effective in combating the monstrous threat, thesocial struc- can be mounted at all, is based upon loose alliances between those victims, rather than on.authorítath^jsxr^tííse^or^the^variously. coercrye arms of the state. Th^qjd centre-pcriphejxmodel of so^llifeJwhichJargeíi^cha.fa.«ensecl secure horror, gives way tó a victim^ented world in which embattled individuals and groups struggle for survival. Does this charactensatx^ the dominant horror movie discourse of the late twentieth century? Broadly I believe thaHt dc«s.j^ and their narrative articulation has altered. It may be, for; example,that the balance between, open and closed oarratives hasshifted slightly back towards the former since the 1980s, ox that the psychorkilleris nolonger c^he as prominent a figure,, but.seen ..against the background of secure horror, recent horror movies remain 'paranoid' through and through. This does not mean, of course, that there are not some broadly traditional., films to be fpundjn this. as. in. .another period. Haunted (1295)^ as befits afilmfroma . director as Jong established as.Ixwis-.Gjlte.rt, Jbas. many, attributes of the classic ghost story, while, as always* films .ejected, at the mainstream, market, such as the. Sixth Sense Ü999) and What Lies Beneath (2000), routinely compromise on the more excessive demands of the paranoid discourse, But.the general 'shape' of the world presumed by late modern horror remains that mapped out in the secure/paranoíd model. , Within that broad pattern, however, it is still possible that the character of the paranoid discourse has been modified significantly by the seemingly new elements in 1990s horror: most notably, genericalhj setf-conscipus comedy and the accelerating incidence 0 seclÍí^Jín^- The significance of these two features is that they interact to add a further ' of reflexivity to the relation between audience and film, inviting the moviegoer to Participate in the construction of the horror experience via ihodes of responsewhich are '«creasingly self-aware. That gives rise to a number of obvious but important questions. MO GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD Does such self-awareness undermine^the^Wious^^LQf. the paranoid-iruiürijjt:1 world? Do these characteristics of m^ n,;l intensity; of the experience? Does the affectionate mockery implicit in their rja^iic.^- i-f generic conventions also apply to the underlying assumptions which make the discoi r*i ~T mearungful? Or, is the e|rec|jyity of the basic discourse untôuchedby theseessemi i: y superficiale^ w audienceslbecajj,sea.^e^e^onate m exrx\i- _»a a ence - and that claim is central to my analysis - then humourous or not, self-consci.>j>. "or r£ot,jKe basic structures of meaning implicit in the genre remain constant. Le, u> examine some of these issues a little more closely in relation to what has arguably b-t n the most successful 'reflexive' horror movie of the 1990s: Scream. Scream Scream did not introduce self .consciousness about genre conventions into horror - son c degree of awareness has always been a key element in the genre audience's response n as much as generic competence is routinely textually played upon and audiences h v. e usually been willing to rise to that bait. What Scream has done is find a highly comn : r New Nightmare. In that film, the conceit was that both actors and director from A Ni} i mare on Elm Street (the first and best of the cycle, and the only one directed by Cm l »I find themselves under threat from the original film's monster, Freddy Krueger, who Iw-, as it were, escaped the confines of cinema into the 'real' world of the New Nigfctm "■' j The slipperiness of the boundary between reality and dreamworld which drives the i .'»v \ Street narratives is thus turned back on itself, and the shift of levels generates a kind of meta-film in which the actors (and Craven) play meta-versions of themselves. This r- a- ' tivising of the film's reality frame raises complex issues of involvement and verisimilitud'-", and in consequence the film was perhaps too knowing for its own commercial govJ \Scream, in some contrast, keeps its reflexivity and self-consciousness firmly within "hi* {confines of the diagesis, its characters explicitly articulating genre conventions (in b nh ^dialogue and action) in such a way as to ensure that their self-consciousness remain1« a verisimilitudinous component of the narrative and does not dierefore question he 'reality' of the film's world. As Randy (Scream's horror movie expert) observes in "íe course of explaining horror conventions: 'You get too complicated, you lose your tai ľ. " audience.' Just so with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but not with Scream. Unlike New Nightmare, Scream decuira to blur the line between film and film-makju (although the briefly appearing jan&orThamed as Fred and wearing a Freddy Krueger striped top, is surely Craven himself). Its self-consciousness is contained; an occasion for humour and joyous audience involvement, but not a mechanism for questioning the workings of the horror movie as such. Indeed, Scream's distinctive quality lies in its skilful balancing of knowing humour with well-crafted, tension-filled sequences. Consider, for example, the film's famous opening in which Casey, the genetically archetypal, alone-at-home, androgynously named teenage girl played by Drew Barrymorc, is terrorised by roH PARANOIA TO POSTMODERNISM! M ! telephone and finally murdered by the masked killer. This sequence never sacrifices the i tension to the gags or to the genre references. Instead the insertion of allusions to hor- i ror films actually adds to the mounting sense of pursuit. 'Do you like scary movies?' asks j the telephone voice early in the scene, its slightly strange tonal quality belying the appar- 1 entlv jocular character of the question and of the interchanges thus far. By the rime the now angry voice insists that '%u should never say "Who's there?". Don't you watch scary movies? It's a death wish,' the genre references are actively contributing to the rising tension. We watch scary movies and we know exacdy what this means. And the series of questions thatioliow -'name the killer in Halloween' ... 'name the killer in Vriday the \}lh* ■■■ 'what door am í at?' -pushes that yet further even where (as I witnessed more J than once on the film's first release) audiences are shouting out the correct answer when / a panicking Casey wrongly name's Jason 'in 'response to the ^second cjuestion. />•<■ Similarly with the long party sequence which climaxes the film, as the killer terrorises one victim after another. This meticulously constructed 40 minutes of rising anxiety moves effortlessly between the Casey/Billy relationship, tension-building, humorous asides, the jokey Deputy Dewey/Gile Weathers subplot, and increasingly graphic violence, without allowing any of the elements to undermine progress towards the grand climax. So, for example, in the set-piece scene in which Tatum is trapped in the garage - with its carefully cued echoes of H«//oz^^.which is,e^eit-tlien,playing on the VCR in the house - tension, humour and violence combine. Having ensured that we are aware of the mechanised garage door by having her accidentally raise and lower it as she enters from the house (and thus having also ensured that as a cinematically competent audience we now expect it to play a significant part in what follows), Tatum is then treated in the classic genre fashion of those who blithely enter cellars, attics, garages and the like. After the business widi the garage door, she walks out of shot, leaving us uneasily contemplating the open door to the main house. We see the reverse shot of her heading towards the fridge, then the reverse from within the fridge as she takes the beer bottles. Then a close shot of the house door as, predictably, it slowly (and creakily) closes, followed by a rising low chord on the music track as the camera rapidly closes in behind her. Tension builds, there is a sudden noise, and a precipitate series of cuts to garden tools falling over, to Tatum jumping with fright and to the cat fleeing through the cat flap. Tension is released and our expectations are fulfilled in the familiar manner of the suspense-shock cycle', in which growing tension is punctured by a shock (or, indeed, by humour, or by both) and then rebuilt.8 Throughout this manipulation we, as genre film-goers, know exactly what is happening; we are both willing victims of the technique and simultaneously self-aware parties to its construction. Having captured us in this way, the process now begins again. Tatum returns to the closed house door only to find that it is locked. Suddenly the lights go out and the music once more begins to build. She sets the garage door to rising, but before she can escape, K stops and starts to close. Tatum turns, and the reverse shot reveals the masked killer, hand on the door switch. The 'dialogue' that follows is constructed almost entirely from movie references, 'Is that you, Randy?' she asks. The masked figure slowly shakes its head. 'What movie is this from?' as she walks towards him, 'I spit on your garage?' He I (2 GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY HOUYWOcf Scream (1996); knowing humour, crafted tension, reflexive horror blocks her exit. 'Oh, you wanna play psycho-killer.' The camera angle is oWn intc " face as she stands below him. 'Can I be the helpless victim?' The mask nods, and camera again reverses to the downward-angled close-up. 'OK, let's see,' and, in an a-ted, high-pitched voice, 'No, please don't kill me Mr Ghostface; I wanna be in sequel.' He still prevents her leaving, and losing patience she tries to push past: '' ' Caspar,' she says, 'that's a wrap.' They struggle, he produces the knife and very deli ately slashes her arm. I have described this scene at such length because its evident self-consciousness the comedy contained in the dialogue do nothing to undermine the growing tension our expectation of nastiness tp^ome^We may well be. amused by the^references to L on your Grave (1978), to psycho-movies, to sequelling, and even„to„Cs$j*r (1995), we lalsoi remain JuUy.mvolved in the scene's dramatic dynamics. Unlike latum, we k Jk?*...!^?*^^?' fejor.rcai, and the simultaneous deferraj and suggestion of immincnt_ violence achieved in the self-conscious movie references. actuaüy„strj;tche^au! -thejcn-sion. When the violence does come (after a pitched battle, Tatum is killed when, jammed in the cat flap as the garage door rises, she is crushed against the door's frame), it serves as both temporary tension release and a further turn of the overall screw. This bajance ]se^ -and JjoiToCk maintained right through the rest of Scream's climactic sequence, withi the.genre allusions multiplying as rapidly ¥š"thT|ařě7Howevertlt* should be said thatJ^jaiLrecentlysuccessful horror movies manage this balance as well as Scream. Scary Movie, for instance, resorts to slapstick, and is mpstíý"á none too siibtlě replicatiye parody of Stream with some good jokes, but little or no tension. Similarly with Cherry Falls, the comedy largely displaces fROM PARANOIA TO POSTMODERNISM? n^^imm the horror.,„This is perhaps unsurprising given a story-line in which a rampaging killer (who, inverse to slasher conventions, is attacking only virgins) precipitates a mass deflowering aniong the population of college kids. The typical character of this humour is more than apparent in the pun of the film's title or in the admittedly rather splendidly tasteless line: 'we are talking hymen holocaust here". Nor are these lesser copies of Scream exceptions. When the record is examined, few films actually aspire to Scream's carefully j judged balance between self-consciousness and tension, let alone achieve it. In fact, the I modern horror movie has hardly been overwhelmed or even dominated by such reflexivity and pastiche,, and. there istUI,,,rßmains„,,an,,enthusias«c audience for relatively straightforward 'stalk-and-slash' such as I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) -written by Kevin Williamson, who also wrote Scream - which is well crafted and remains „ largely non-reflexive. While Scream has indeed played a key role in turning modern hor- j ror in a more reflexiye direction, it would be a mistake to characterise the.whole genre_.\ in terms of this 'postmodern' shift. Postmodernism and contemporary horror Where, then, does this leave the common claim that we live in a period characterised by 'postmodern horror'? There are, I think, three broad ways in which this claim can be understood and assessed, and I shall examine them in ascending order of generality. At its least ambitious, the diagnosis of recent horror as distinctively postmodern is simply a claim about stylistic attributes of texts: particular styles or techniques may conveniently be labelled 'postmodern'. Atjfog^ecnridfbroader level of generality the^designation encompasses these stylistic featuresjbut inaddition sees them as symptomatic of a larger pattern of cultural and moral change - postmrxkrruff» as a world view, a doctrine, an i^oíogy,,.r^r]^p^eiejL&,pfe &ÍKÍ levefthe argument is as much about postmodemiiyas. postmodernism Jľes^it;ciaim^ to be considered as postmodern; yes, there is an emergent pattern of postmodern cultural and moral change;, hojy^^ .of,the. historical social transition from modernity to postmodernity. To this extent postmodernity is indeed 'post'; markedly different to what has gone before. At each of these three rungs on the ladder of generality, successive claims are more difficult to sustain in the sense that the weight of evidence required to make them plausible becomes ever more demanding. On the first and lowest level, the case is easy enough ; to make. Films such as Scream, its sequels, successors and imitators, are considered postmodern by virtue of their overt resort to a number of distinctive textual features. l*he use of pastiche and humour is seen as inviting the audience to be complicit and self- X aware, to participate in what Paul WeHsjiescribesas 'knowmgdecpnstnjcjipns^of the^ subgenre'.9 For Wells and similarly disposed commentators, the postmodern horror movie is concerned above all openly to articulate the rules of the game and play them out as exactly that: a gámeľln"so doin^,tirsö it is claimed by some, they lose their poten- j tial for subversion or critique, and are able to'speak only I jmitedly about theculturethat { produces them V^^lsregre^ this alleged diminution of the horror movie's power and sees it as a logical outcome of the 'McDomldisation of horror', but others are more post- M GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOO tively djsjMsedtó„^Ís^ arc. ■ lv- ture --arguably the main context from which the term entered commonparlance '*as aesthetically celebrated for pastiche and self-consciousness, for freeingjiesign fro i :\ •" (alleged) strictures of modernism, so, too, the postmodern horror movie can be !\j«>i-tiyely valued for its aesthetic reflexivity. Use of the term in thisjieňseuthen,_ ^ in.* inappropriate, perKaps even useful, in as much as.it draws our attention^to specific .tis. v tic features of {some) recent horror movies. However, given the additional social ..nd cultural baggage thatthe"ascription^oŠtŕri'oďern' routinely now carries, its invitat!"-: to presume more general claims may mean that its analytic disadvantages outweiJi Us advantages. In any case, it is now rare for analysts of the postmodern, in film or elsev ii^rv, to limit application of the term simply to the descriptive and aesthetic. They ten«. r ip. . idly to escalate to the second level of generality, where to speak of pqstmodcn horror is also to invoke a whole series of assumptions about thedisttnctive natu:« ot the cultural and moral context in which such horror thrives. Fragmentation, theu'.,e:> w'on,fif traditional forms as inappropriate to contemporary life, the denial of ort! i dux narrative convenuonSj the ciecunejor nxe« identity^ the rise ot relativism and nir.n^n are alHdeas now ^commonly associated with postmodern iorms..-The. ..charac.t.; i ijtic cultures of the late twentieth century are said to embody these features,, with 1 q« no exception. A well-known difficulty widi such views, however, is not that th^'-not speak to some of the evident characteristics of the age, for they clearly do, that they have done so throughout the twentieth century. So, for example, the ■ \ sition in literature and art from nineteenth-century realism to twentieth-« ■' smodernism has often been described in just these terms: fragmentation, nat>.i:ue 'innovation, relativism, variable identity, and the rest. What then of specifically .''i/i/-■modern horror? Is it no more than the delayed application of modernist precesi' -n íthe hitherto largely traditional world of popular culture? And if so, does ii mei' '-be distinctive qualities attributed to it by those determined to see postmoderni m n culture as a reflection of profound changes? Hnedp provides a stimulating example of an analysis pitched at this second lew " of generality. The postmodern horror movie, she suggests, 'transgresses the rules of th<- ■.' >■>■ sically oriented horror genre', increasingly deals in 'hybrids' with other genre- md constructs an audience for whom overturning conventions itself becomes a new i»i-vention." She further proposes five key characteristics of this postmodern í*"ľ', unremitting violence in everyday life; blurred boundaries.and endemk.danger;.r ii'""-ality questioned and authority undermined; rejection of narrativef.,cÍQsure; ex'miu violence which 'attests to the need to express rage and terror in the miď»i ,í( postmodernsc^iaiupjiegyaL12, Yet for all the care with which she addresses thes- I*. lures, it is.significant that Pinedo has difficulty in precisely^ demjr^atmgwhatJsJic -' ■ '* postmodern about contemporary horror. As she says herself, four-ofthe five may-1*---tures with which she is concerned are characteristics of horror more, generally, bui * ■"" been treated with greater intensity or elaboration in postmodern horror,. None of Uij. is qualitatively new. Indeed, among Pinedo's criteria it seems to me that only open" i - Co 'ni IV ■j-y PROM PARANOIA TO POSTMODERNISM? 115 gression of genre rules, possibly hybridityialthough I am.no.t,conviiKed thauhere is any more hybridítyjnjheJaté rwentíeth^ceflíury^genrethan there.was in^ay, the 1950s or X* the 1970s) and an audience both aware of and expecting the overturning of genre conventions genuinely distinguish late-century horror from earlier forms of the paranoid discourse. Essentially, that is, an extension of reflexivity on |h.£ part of both the genre. f audience and the textsithemseJyes..But.Ís. that enough to locate contemporary horror as * part and parcel of a larger postmodern culture? Or is there, as Neale persuasively suggests, a tendency to overstate th^e significance: of allusion, pastiche, hybridity, 'sjequelitis'' and the like in NesLHoíywooďs genres?.^... One way of dealing with such questions, of course, is to shift levels yet again and mount a case about the radical character of late twentieth-century social change. This kind of account suggests that a state of postmodcrnity exists in late modern society and that postmodern horror is no more (or less) than a popular cultural articulation of that state. Pinedo formulates a version of this argument when she sums up the 'postmodern world' in the following terms: For my purposes, the postmodern world is an unstable one in which traditional iclichotomous} categories break down, boundaries blur, institutions fall into question, Enlightenment narratives collapse, the inevitability of progress crumbles, and the master status of the universal {read male, white, monied, heterosexual) subject deteriorates. Consensus in the possibility of mastery is lost, universalizing grand theory is discredited, and the stable, unified, coherent self acquires the status of fiction.'* Whether that state of affairs should properly be called 'postmodern' is, of course, a matter for some debate, and many have argued that the social changes of the late twentieth century represent recognisable extensions of earlier social patterns - 'late modernity', if you will - rather than radical dislocations, for those holding this view, such as Anthony Giddens, what we are witnessing is a process of 'modernity comrngtound^rstand itself' thraughajrowinj^^ reflexive awareness, for doubting the credibility of experts and the knowledge systems "P°.5, ^M$hj}}^y,^^M^^^^^^Éá^^yj^,^4^ ^K % F^^encing a generalised anxiety, are all implicit in modernity itself. There is no need to postulate an epochal transition to^rn^ life, and to do so is to misunder- stand the character of late modern society and its culture. Faced with this escalation to the grander reaches of social theory, there is a temptation to think that in the end it may all reduce to a question of semantics. My 'paranoid horror' is much the same as Pinedo's (and others') 'postmodern horror', and perhaps it matters little which term is used. In as much as we agree on the central features of horror in the latter part of the twentieth century, and they correspond to features of recent culture that arc afforded the label, then 'postmodern' is as good a term as any. Where such pragmatism falls down, however, is that specific theoretical and historical assumptions are now irreducibly incorporated into the usage, 'ib employ the term 'postmodern1 's to make claims about both the causes and consequences of the cinema (or cultural trait) -,) I 16 GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWO'Cf thus described. There is no doubt that the modem horror movie, like all popular cul ■ .re tells us something about the society in which we live. That it is a society in.\vhich we I .ive , become more aware of risks; a society in which we are less, convincedby .thesystcir-. of expertise that surround us and the institutions that seek to regulate our lives; a sock i\ .n which our concept of the self is unreliable; and a. society in^hieh-anxieíy^ndíeat I .ivc become ubiquitous. But to attribute this tp pObtmcdermsnv.or„pcätmoalejrtóyJs^e\ Je a crucial truth; that the social, cultural and environmental crises of the late moder tra are manifestly produces of moďenií^^ ,u d social organisation in. whichi. it ..found consummate expression. Weare not *ct postmodern, nor shall we be until we have overcome the awesome consequences oi \ut ' historyy- Notes 1. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge [1979] (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). 2. Tania Modleski, "The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmod. _,i Theory', in Tania Modleski (ed.), Studies in Entertainment; Critical Approaches to Mass Culture (Bbomington: 'Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 155-66. }. Andrew Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie (Oxi v<\ Blackwell, 1989). 4. Noěl Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart {New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 210. 5. Isabel Cristina Pinedo, Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Vien' •* (New "fork: State University of New "Vbrk Press, 1997). 6. Ibid., p. Í0. 7. Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists, pp. 102-4, 211—14; Andrew Tudor 'Unruly Bodies, Unquiet Minds', Body & Society, vol. 1, no. 1 (1995), pp. 34-7. 8. Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists, pp. 108-11. 9. Paul Wells, The Horror Genre: From Beelzehuh to Blair Witch (London: Wallflower, 2000' p. 97. 10. Ibid. See also Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies: A Critical Guide to Contemporary Hortv Films (London: Bfoomsbury, 1988), pp. 211-15. 11. Pinedo, Recreational Terror, p. 14. 12. Ibid., pp. 14,17-50. 13. Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 245-51. 14. Pinedo, Recreational Terror, p. 11. 15. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), p. 4* See also Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the fate Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); and Ufrick Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott La'sh, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994). 9 The Impossibility of Romance: Hollywood Comedy, 1978-1999 WÜNam Paul The rise of Animal Comedy Hpll>wopd„.comedy in the last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed a radical reorientation, in partin response tonewer freedoms grantedbxtl^r|gg svstóm, iiVpart because of changes in die culture at large. Following '^^rmmaj^^^^u^^cá National Lampoon's 'Ämt/rat House (1978) there arose a series of comedies defined by their raulictn^^ to push beyond acceptable bounds of good tast.1 Whilělhé^ films had enough in common to constitute a distinct comic genre, their power at the box office established them as the dominant comic form for ^erican audiences in the early tc.mid-1980s.. For the preyious^xtyjŕears or so, rpmantíccomedy was.__ (be comedy in Hollywood. While it did not become as deadjisthe Western in the 1980s, it certainly went intojdeclíner2The new.Style that precipitated the decline I have dubbed 'Animal Comedy' in honour of its primary progenitors, Animal House (1978) and Porky's (1981). Animals arehev^ literally, and, ofte^ejagjugh!vErejienteď in strikingly simjlar ways. The insistent emphasis on anímaíitypoints toC^sjra|t^§xkxji^^!|.9£^i^. films. As a consequence7physical comedy generally receives pride of place over verbal. Physical comedy of a fairly broad sort is hardly a new thing in American movies, but in the sound period at least it had generally been either Ji.n^ted.tomomentS3itbin.ajronian:_ tic comedy plodine or, if spreadí throughout the film, relegated to the lower-class realm of B-moyks and shorts featuring the likes of the B^eryJBoys^andthe_ Three Stooges^^ Animal Comedy represented a return to slapstick on a faidyjprand^dinsistent scale. . , hs origins Ue, I would argue, in the 1960s. . aV' In the mid-1960s, a couple of films starring The Beatles and directed by Richard ■Lester appeared and instandy prompted comparisons to the Marx Brothers. While *">-<--K invocations of the Marx Brothers comedies were apt, the Beatles films actually appeared under the guises of different genres. A Hard Day's Night (1964) presented itself as a kind of documentary, one however given to flights of fancy, while Help! f 1965) parodied the spy genre suddenly made popular by the James Bond films. In neither case could the films be regarded as romantic comedy, but in order to escape £-