COML0021 - From the Uncanny to Horror: Film and Psychoanalysis

Status
A
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
From the Uncanny to Horror: Film and Psychoanalysis
Term
2022C
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML0021401
Course number integer
21
Meeting times
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Meeting location
BENN 401
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Jean-Michel Rabate
Description
From the Uncanny to Horror: Films and Psychoanalysis.
This class will introduce students to the links between psychoanalysis and film by focusing on two themes, the Uncanny and Horror. Psychoanalysis and film were invented and developed at the same time and one can observe a reciprocal influence. Taking Sigmund Freud’s Unconscious as a point of departure, Julia Kristeva’s analysis of Horror and Slavoj Zizek’s post-Lacanian readings as theoretical tools, we will study a number of films displaying the features of Horror and the Uncanny. We will verify the points of insertion of psychoanalytical concepts such as hysteria, paranoia, abjection, castration, Oedipal desire, the Uncanny and the “Thing” in about twenty-one films. Why do we enjoy being afraid when we watch horror movies? What is fascinating in tales of madness and haunting? Why do we believe unconsciously that the dead can return? A psychoanalytic approach to our anxious enjoyment of terror in filmic works will provide original methods of interpretation. The films we will discus include Doctor Caligari (Wiene), Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds (Hitchcock), Pet Sematary (Lambert & Kölsch and Wildmeyer), Dogtooth (Lanthimos), A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1 - 4 (Craven), The Babadook (Kent), Goodnight Mommy (Fiala and Franz), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper), Deep Red and Opera (Argento), Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato), Insidious (Wan), It (Muschietti), Martyrs (Laugier), It Follows (Mitchell), and Split (Night Shyamalan). Bibliography: Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (PEPweb), Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on abjection, (Columbia U.P., 1982, online) and Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry (MIT, 1991). Requirements: 7 short film journals (3 pages each) and one final research paper (10 pages).




Course number only
0021
Cross listings
CIMS0021401, CIMS0021401, ENGL0021401, ENGL0021401
Fulfills
Arts & Letters Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis
Use local description
Yes