Not sure the suspense definition works, Dan, given that it suggests a
"reactive" position whereas you're starting from a "presentational" one
below. I think, actually, Martin is being a little "para-nostalgic" himself
on that front re: the frame he mentions (ie: isn't the reaction you
mention, Martin, rather post-hoc?) . . . and I do get concerned that we're
missing the commercial imperatives attached to the notion of 'Horror' --
the most comprehensive viewers of Horror are also the primary (statistical)
film viewer group (15-24 year olds) -- thus mass media Horror is an encoded
sales pitch as much as a textual or, indeed, narrative tradition . . . I
don't think us "consumer culture" dwellers can really forget that.
Graeme
"Shaw, Dan" wrote:
>
> Couldn't help asking some questions I've been considering lately: when does
> film violence become horrific enough to qualify the film as a horror movie?
> When do psychotics, and other purveyors of realistic horror, become scary
> enough? Or is Noel Carroll right, that we should limit the appellation
> "horror" to that which deals with the impossible, and call these others
> suspense films?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Barker
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: 12/5/00 9:58 AM
> Subject: Re: Violence as . . .
>
> John Bleasdale makes an interesting point. In the last of a TV series
> here in Britain on Sunday night, there was a consideration of the
> operation and functions of freeze-frames in cinema, and one of the
> examples examined was the one at the end of Butch Cassidy - as the two
> burst out, guns in hand, they are frozen in a very unballetic pose as
> the sound of the gunfire that will extinguish their lives continues over
> their frame, with a slow move to a sepia, para-nostalgic colouring of
> the image before the screen goes blank. The point is, surely, that this
> image is effective for more than its formal properties. It is for where
> it comes - the last climactic moment; for what it signifies - their
> 'life-after-death', their sense of being out of time; and for what
> accompanies it - the sound of the gunfire that means the deaths are
> being in a way withheld from us: that the scene matters.
>
> Martin Barker
>
> Dr Martin Barker
> Reader in Media Studies
> University of Sussex
> Falmer
> Brighton BN1 9RQ
>
> Tel: 01273-678954
> Fax: 01273-678644
--
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G.Harper [log in to unmask]
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