The Cinematic Boogeyman
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The Cinematic Boogeyman
In the 1978 horror film classic Halloween, little Tommy Doyle asks his babysitter Laurie Strode "what is the Boogeyman?" This book answers this question by assessing the qualities that create the Boogeyman persona in Western popular culture particularly in the fairytale and the modern horror film. Using an archetypal approach derived from the work of Carl Jung and his successors Erich Neumann and Edgar Herzog, the book assesses the figure of the Boogeyman through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates research from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and film studies. The book begins with an examination of the key traits associated with Bluebeard, a quintessential example of the folkloric Boogeyman featured in Charles Perrault's 1697 collection of fairytales. Through an intense comparative analysis, it highlights the presence of similar qualities in the popular villains from the contemporary American slasher movies of the 1970s and '80s. Specifically, these characters include Michael Myers from Halloween (1978), Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th (1980), and Freddy Krueger featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). This examination situates these terrifying antagonists within a larger context of monstrosity and simultaneously establishes their role as cinematic manifestations of the folkloric Boogeyman.
The Cinematic Boogeyman
This doctoral thesis complements earlier scholarship by Marina Warner concerning the Boogeyman as a figure representative of monstrosity and otherness by assessing these topics through an interdisciplinary lens. Employing a methodological approach that incorporates research from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and film studies, I analyse the Boogeyman within the context of the traditional fairytale and the modern horror film, and thereby reveal the key facets of this figure in the Western cultural imaginary. Specifically, I demonstrate that the villains of the contemporary slasher film (a subgenre of the horror film) are cinematic manifestations of the folkloric Boogeyman through a comparison of their physical and psychological attributes. Examining the archetypal properties of these characters, I argue that the traits that characterize the Boogeyman are the result of the fact that he is a composite of three archetypal forms: the collective Shadow, the Terrible Father, and the Death-Demon. I address three key questions: (1) what particular physical and psychological qualities are associated with the Boogeyman; (2) how the persona of the Boogeyman is constituted in the public consciousness; and (3) what moral, philosophical, and psychological role does he serve in Western culture. Over the course of this thesis, I demonstrate the fact that the Boogeyman represents the amalgamation of three archetypal components. Firstly, he embodies the role of the collective Shadow and functions to personify violent and anarchic characteristics that are repressed by the community and projected onto monstrous figures in the popular consciousness. Secondly, he is a manifestation of the negative attributes associated with the archetypal Father (referred to in literature as the "Terrible Father") who punishes individuals that defy hegemonic values. Finally, he is a cultural embodiment of the Death-Demon, a conceptual figure that personifies anxieties related to death, and the degeneration of the body. This thesis provides a comparative analysis of a series of case studies that clearly illustrate the characteristics synonymous with the Boogeyman in the Western cultural imaginary. I begin with an examination of Bluebeard, a homicidal villain featured in Charles Perrault's 1697 collection of fairytales titled Histoires ou contes du temps passé. In her seminal text No Go the Bogeyman, Warner posits Bluebeard as a clear example of the folkloric Boogeyman due to the fact that he is physically grotesque and morally repugnant. In Perrault's story, Bluebeard is a villain who marries and then murders a series of women for disobeying him, and subsequently stores their bodies in his private chamber. Extrapolating the salient characteristics of Bluebeard as the folkloric Boogeyman, I assess these traits under an archetypal lens and demonstrate that Bluebeard/the folkloric Boogeyman is a manifestation of the collective Shadow, the Terrible Father, and the Death-Demon. After determining the archetypal properties of the folkloric Boogeyman, I highlight the presence of these same qualities in popular villains from the contemporary American slasher films of the 1970s and '80s. Specifically, these characters include Michael Myers from Halloween (1978), Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th (1980), and Freddy Krueger featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Through my analysis of these terrifying figures, I situate them within a larger archetypal context of monstrosity and simultaneously establish their role as cinematic manifestations of the folkloric Boogeyman. This examination reveals the placement of the Boogeyman within the cultural imaginary as a violent disciplinarian who reinforces moral boundaries through sadistic acts of violence and paradoxically brings both chaos and harmony to the collective by preserving social borders. By extension, I demonstrate the link between the slasher film and the fairytale, both of which serve a didactic function, imparting hegemonic values to the public concerning sexual politics, social propriety, and moderation.
Race, War, and the Cinematic Myth of America
Author: Eric Trenkamp
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Release Date: 2022-03-09
In this book, Eric Trenkamp addresses a question that many American cinema fans may have asked themselves over the past 20 years – “why is everything superheroes now?” Although it might be easy to dismiss Hollywood’s last two decades of comic book movies as nothing more than overly simplified morality tales, the reality is much more complex. The pervasiveness of the comic book genre throughout American culture, Trenkamp argues, perpetuates a subtextual myth about what it means to be an “American” in the contemporary world. At the core of this myth is the image of who Hollywood considers to be the ideal American hero – the White male savior. This book explores the evolution of this ever-changing image of White superiority in American cinema, which can be traced from the earliest silent Westerns, through decades of war films, and up to the modern day comic book genre. Through provocative and engaging analysis of a wide variety of Hollywood films, Trenkamp demonstrates the industry’s history of popularizing White supremacy and the ways in which these films can act as propaganda to support various dehumanizing U.S. policies, both abroad and at home. Scholars of film studies, comic studies, genre studies, American studies, race studies, pop culture, and history will find this book particularly useful.