Research Catalog

Title

Body genre : anatomy of the horror film / David Scott Diffrient.

Author

Diffrient, David Scott, 1972-

Publication

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 316 pages : illustrations; 25 cm.

Summary

"In this groundbreaking work, author David Scott Diffrient explores largely understudied facets of cinematic horror, from the various odors permeating classic and contemporary films to the wetness, sliminess, and stickiness of these productions, which, he argues, practically scream out for a tactile mode of textural analysis as much as they call for more traditional forms of textual analysis. Dating back to Carol Clover's and Linda Williams's pioneering work on horror cinema, film scholars have long conceptualized this once-disreputable category of cultural production as a "body genre." However, despite the growing recognition that horror serves important biological and social functions in our lives, scholars have only scratched the surface of this genre with regard to its affective, corporeal, and sensorial appeals. Diffrient anatomizes horror films in much the same way that a mad scientist might handle the body, separating and recombining constitutive parts into a new analytical whole. Further, he challenges the tendency of scholars to privilege human over nonhuman beings and calls into question ableist assumptions about the centrality to horror films of sight and sound to the near exclusion of other forms of sense experience. In addition to examining the role that animals-living or dead, real or fake-play in human-centered fictions, this volume asks what it means for audiences to consume motion pictures in which actors, stunt performers, and other creative personnel have put their own bodies and lives at risk for our amusement. Historically grounded and theoretically expansive, Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film moves the study of cinematic horror into previously unchartered waters and breathes life into a subject that, not coincidentally, is intimately connected to breathing as our most cherished dividing line between life and death"--

Series Statement

Horror & monstrosity studies series

Uniform Title

Horror and monstrosity studies series.

Subject

• Horror films > History and criticism
• Human body in motion pictures
• Senses and sensation in motion pictures
• Horror films > Production and direction
• Horror films > Psychological aspects
• Motion picture audiences > Psychology
• Fear in motion pictures
• Horror films
• Motion picture audiences

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-291) and index.

Contents

1. Books, bodies, beliefs: Introducing a genre that needs no Introduction -- 2. Heads will roll, bodies will shake, souls will shatter: Horror film's formative stages and physical changes -- 3. Corporeality, materiality, mortality: The horror film as "body genre" -- 4. Going deep, sticking to the surface: Bad deaths and wet bodies -- 5. Sliced eyeballs and severed ears: On (not) seeing and (not) hearing horror films -- 6. Dead, but still breathing: The problem of postmortem movement in horror films -- 7. Smelling like a slaughterhouse: Cinematic olfactics and the stench of horror -- 8. Shitty, slimy, smelly, smiley: dirty spaces, funny faces, and the textural pleasures of "laughably bad" texts -- 9. Spooky encounters of the humorously disgusting kind: Clutching hands and hopping corpses, from Hollywood to Hong Kong -- Coda. Preparing to be unprepared: Horror film's predictable unpredictability -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Call Number

MFL 24-760

ISBN

• 9781496847966
• 1496847962
• 9781496847973
• 1496847970
• 9781496847980 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781496847997 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781496848000 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781496848017 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2023030776

OCLC

1378385994

Author

Diffrient, David Scott, 1972- author.

Title

Body genre : anatomy of the horror film / David Scott Diffrient.

Publisher

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2023]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Horror & monstrosity studies series

Horror and monstrosity studies series.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-291) and index.

Other Form:

Online version: Diffrient, David Scott. Body genre Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2023 9781496847980 (DLC) 2023030777

Research Call Number

MFL 24-760