Table Of ContentDeleuze And Horror Film D
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Anna Powell l
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‘With its complex but fresh theories and inviting style, this work will enhance both e
film and gothic studies collections.’ A
Choice n
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‘Anna Powell’s book is both visceral and intellectual. It deftly combines attentive
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accounts of specific films with broader theoretical speculation. Powell gets to the
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heart of what’s compelling and addictive about horror films: their rhythms and
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intensities, the feelings they arouse, the ways they get under the skin of the viewer.’ r
Professor Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University o
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The horror film analysed from a Deleuzian perspective.
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This book argues that dominant psychoanalytic approaches to horror films neglect l
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the aesthetics of horror. Yet cinematic devices such as mise-en-scène, editing and
sound are central to the viewer’s visceral fear and arousal. Using Deleuze’s work on
art and film, Anna Powell argues that film viewing is a form of ‘altered consciousness’
and the experience of viewing horror film an ‘embodied event’.
The book begins with a critical introduction to the key terms in Deleuzian philosophy
and aesthetics. These include: subjectivity/becoming, the body without organs,
molecularity, time/duration, affect, movement/rhythm, space, anomaly and
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schizoanalysis. These concepts are then applied to horror films.
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Themes such as insanity, sensory response to film, the subject/object, fractured time,
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the body and cinematography are explored in horror films such as Jacob’s Ladder, Dr
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Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, The Fly, A Nightmare on Elm Street,
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Alien Resurrection, The Others, The Shining, Interview with the Vampire, Bram Stoker’s
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Dracula and Nosferatu.
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Features l
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• A substantial new contribution to horror film theory
• A critical introduction to key terms in Deleuzian philosophy and aesthetics
• New readings of the classic horror canon and recent films
• Analysis of horror styles, narrative and special effects.
Deleuze
Anna Powell is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Manchester Metropolitan
University.
And Horror Film
isbn 978 0 7486 1748 7
Edinburgh University Press Ed
22 George Square, Edinburgh eh8 9lf in
www.euppublishing.com b
u Anna Powell
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Front cover image: Repulsion h
Compton-Tekli/Royal/The Kobal Collection
Cover design: Barrie Tullett
123256 powell.indd 1 10/08/2010 16:41
Deleuze and Horror Film
In memory of my loving mum,Alice Powell (1923–2002):
‘that book’
Deleuze and Horror Film
Anna Powell
Edinburgh University Press
© Anna Powell,2005
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square,Edinburgh
Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd,Manchester,and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
The Cromwell Press,Wilts
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7486 1747 7 (hardback)
The right ofAnna Powell to be identified as author ofthis work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction:New Directions in Horror Film Studies 1
A Deleuzian Slant on Horror 6
Structure and Rationale 8
1 From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis:An Intensive
Voyage 14
Psychoanalysis and Horror 15
Schizoanalysis:Pure Naked Intensity 19
Schizoanalysis,Art,Horror 21
Psychoas Schizo 23
The Mise-en-scèneof Madness:The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 25
‘Man is not Truly One,but Truly Two’:The Schizoid Screen
in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 31
‘Schizoid Misery and Glory’:Feeling Repulsion 38
The Brain as Mise-en-scène:The Shining 43
Place,Time and Motion 45
The Schizoid Machine:Imaginary Friends 48
‘Trapped in a World of Ghosts’:Intensive States in Natural
BornKillers 51
Natural Born Predators 52
Becoming-Schizo 54
Back-Projections and Other Anomalies 56
2 Becoming Anomalous and the Body-Without-Organs 62
Body-Horror,Masochism and Film Studies 64
Becoming Anomalous 66
Becoming-Indeterminate:Cat People 68
Becoming-Woman 72
Sharing Species:Alien Resurrection 74
Ripley and her Relatives 75
The Bodies-Without-Organs of Horror 78
vi
Uncontrollable Flesh:Videodrome 80
Frank Pulls Himself Together:Hellraiser 83
Becoming-Invisible:The Hollow Man 88
Machinic Desire:Becoming-Human in Demon Seed 92
Heavy Metal Meets the Soft Machine:Hardware 98
Freddy Krueger:Shape-Shifter Extraordinaire 102
3 The Movement-Image:Horror Cinematography and
Mise-en-scène 109
Sensation and Perception:The Aesthetics of Affect 110
Bergson’s Movement-Image in Deleuze 112
Moving Images 115
The Infinite Spirit of Evil:The Forces of Light and
DarknessinNosferatu 120
Into the Black Hole 121
Forces in Combat 125
In a Glass Darkly:Lyrical Abstraction and Molecularity in
Vampyr 128
Sensory Anomalies and Intensive Space 131
Sensational Colour:Spectral Horror 135
Death by Colour:The Masque of the Red Death 137
Dressed to Express:Colour and Costume in The Vampire
Lovers 139
Tactisigns of Terror:Suspiria 142
The Face of Horror:The Intensive Affection-Image in Les
Yeuxsans Visage 145
4 Horror Time 154
Bergson’s Time:Movement and Duration 156
Deleuze’s Time-Image 159
Time and Motion 163
Duration and Entrapment in the Gothic Haunted House:
TheHaunting 166
Haunted Cinematography and Mise-en-scène 168
Death by Flashback:Jacob’s Ladder 174
Incompossible Worlds 175
‘They’re Coming Out of the Walls’ 178
Back From the Black Hole:Event Horizon 181
Inner Space in Outer Space:Travels in Duration 182
‘It’s Alive’:The Event Horizonas Demonic Machine 184
Dreaming Duration in Mulholland Drive 187
vii
Betty’s ‘Dream Place’ 187
Diane in Duration 192
Space-Time and Dream Duration 195
Conclusion:Living Horror:Thoughts On Our
Nerve-Endings 201
Glossary of Key Terms 210
Bibliography 216
Filmography 223
Index 225
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my friends for inspiration,support and love,both through this
book and the difficulties of the last two years. Special thanks to Barbara
Kennedy for her sensational lines of flight. To Rob Lapsley and David
Deamer in the Deleuze reading group at Manchester Metropolitan
University for mental gymnastics. To the English Department at
Manchester Metropolitan University and Sue Zlosnik for teaching remis-
sion in the final stages. To Edinburgh University Press and the skilled
support of Sarah Edwards and Eddie Clark and the copy-editor Lorraine
McCann.And finally,thanks to Ranald Warburton for hours of computer
assistance, insight into the ‘proper’ singularities of physics, and for our
own machinic connections.
For a preliminary version ofmaterial on affect,see Pli:Warwick Journal
of Philosophy,Autumn,2004.
Introduction: New Directions in
Horror Film Studies
the unbearable itself is inseparable from a revelation or an illumination,as from a
third eye.1(Deleuze)
Mike, the soundman of a film crew lost in the woods, admits to kicking
their only map into the creek, because it was ‘useless’. From this point,
they move on,clinging to their own rigid map of reality and to the heavy
film equipment which weighs them down. They follow the lines of an
invisible,occult map which draws them further offtrack into a terrifying
maze.I take this moment in The Blair Witch Project,directed by Meyrick
and Sanchez,as a way in to re-theorising the horror film from the perspec-
tives ofDeleuze.The existing theoretical map ofhorror Film Studies will
be pocketed as we find out how far we can travel without it.
At this point, I issue a warning: doing Deleuze leads in turn to being
done by Deleuze.For me,theory must have use-value and practical appli-
cation beyond the academy. Experiencing, articulating and sharing works
offantasy like horror film is not just something I do for a living,but is a vital
part of my cultural experience and my being in the world.At first glance,
Deleuze’s work might appear to be yet another totalising master discourse
like the existing paradigms of film theory,but I will be arguing otherwise.
My motivation for this project is twofold. The initial stimulus came
from my earlier psychoanalytical readings of horror texts. Although I
could graft unconscious schema onto narrative,dialogue and mise-en-scène,
I was becoming increasingly conscious oftheir limitations.Psychoanalysis
felt like an inadequate key to unlock either the multiple levels of horror
film,or my responses to them.I also started to wonder whether the image
of lock and key was not itself inadequate.The films I watched were more
complex than a predetermined overlay of symbolic or structural meaning
suggested. They seemed to operate elsewhere than the straightforward
equations of social stereotypes and political ‘messages’that can be found
in them.Throwing away the key,I set out to explore this ‘elsewhere’.
Horror film fandom revels in the genre’s special effects, but a corre-
sponding theoretical exploration ofhorror aesthetics is scarce and I aim to
