Culture Wars and Horror Movies : Gender Debates in Post-2010’s US Horror Cinema

Navigating a polarized society in their representation of social values, twenty-first-century horror films critically frame conflicting and divisive ideological issues. Culture Wars and Horror Movies: Gender Debates in post-2010 US Horror Cinema analyses the ways in which these “culture wars” make their way into gender, focusing on the post-2010 US context and its fundamental political divisions. Approaching these topics from feminist and postfeminist theories to ecocritical views, this volume explores how contemporary horror movies engage with the current context of “culture wars.” Contents Notes on Contributors Chapter 1: Introduction: Culture Wars Revisited: Navigating Gender Dynamics in Post-2010 Social Horror References Part I: Female Bodies/Disposable Bodies Chapter 2: Woke Gal Gone Bad: Populism and Gender Trouble in Wrong Turn (2021) Culture Wars, Populism and “Unpolitics” An “Unpolitical” Allegory Populist Horrors in the Rural Slasher Intersectional Suppression and Gender Invisibility. Conclusion References Chapter 3: Living Deliciously? The Borderless Horror of Female Empowerment Magic and the South: Il legame The Voices Know Things About Us: Voces Wouldst Thou Like to Live Deliciously? The Witch Conclusion References Chapter 4: The Culture That “Can’t Anymore”: Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) as Pilgrimage of a Traumatized Society References Part II: Female as Creation Force Revisited Chapter 5: Mother! Nature: Creation, Apocalypse, Climate Skepticism, and Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017) References Chapter 6: Monsters, Women, and Magic: Intersecting Hierarchies of Gender and Religion in The Witch (2015) References Chapter 7: Decay and Fear: Take Shelter (2011) as Social Horror Anxiety and Loss of Resources Conclusion References Part III: Gender(ed) Anxieties Chapter 8: Antebellum (2020): White Supremacist Masculinities and Black Lives Matters in the Trump Era Senator Denton vs. Dr. Henley Captain Jasper vs. Amara Conclusion References Chapter 9: Gaslighting, Captivity, and Trauma: Notes on MeToo Horror Films MeToo and the MeToo Horror Film The Gaslighting Cycle The Captive Woman Cycle The Trauma Cycle Conclusion References Chapter 10: From the Female Grotesque to the Crone: Beware of the Older Woman in The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) Introduction Abjection: Bodily Wastes, Border, Mother Uncanniness: Others, Doubles, Mirrors Under Constant Surveillance: From Pathologization to Vilification Demonizing the Older Woman: Horror Archetypes and the Allegory of Possession The Older Woman’s Gaze: From Spectacle to Spectator Conclusion References Chapter 11: Mutilation and Dual Body in The Perfection (2018): A Reading on Queer Horror The Perfection: Contextualizing the Film and the Plot The Boundaries, the Insane, the Queer Mutilation as Control of One’s Own/the Other’s Body Conclusion References Index