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Sex and the Domestic Sphere in Slasher Movies (Charlotte)

One of the most important elements of a slasher movie is its setting. Two of the most iconic slasher movies ever made, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), make great use of their settings, and are defined by their settings. Halloween takes place in suburbia, while Texas takes place in the middle of nowhere. While these two settings are very different, these filmmakers seem to be using these settings to communicate similar messages. Both movies seem to be warning the audience about the danger of disrupting the typical American domestic sphere and specifically the power of female sexuality to disrupt that sphere.

Halloween tells the story of a psychopath named Michael Myers, who kills his older sister, Judith, as a young boy. He escapes a mental hospital 15 years later and goes on a killing spree on Halloween night, targeting a group of babysitters.

Toward the end of Halloween Laurie finds the bodies of her friends in a bedroom. The majority of the movie takes place within suburban homes, and this is an obvious disruption of the domestic sphere—extreme violence in such an intimate space. Another theme that permeates the film is one of morality. Laurie, the only one of these teenagers to survive the film, is also the only one that is a virgin. The choice to put these young bodies in a space associated not only with love and domesticity, but also with sex, is a clear statement. Teen sexuality and premarital sexuality leads to the degradation of the traditional American home.

It is also crucial to mention that Annie is splayed out on the bed, dead and only partially clothed, with the stolen headstone of Judith Myers above her. Michael also killed Judith shortly after she engaged in sexual activity, and while she was still naked. Michael’s murder of Annie is a reenactment of his murder of his own sister fifteen years prior, which, it seems, was itself “punishment” for her teen sexuality. However, even though it seems that Michael is trying to punish these teenagers for engaging in sex, it also seems as though he is sexually fascinated by them. He kills them extremely intimately, and he moves their bodies after he kills them. The way that the bodies are arranged in the bedroom is carefully curated.

Michael then tries to stab Laurie, slashing the sleeve of her shirt. Given how close he was to her at the time it seems possible that he was not trying to stab her, but rather was trying to cut her clothes off. The ensuing struggle can be read as one for Laurie’s life or as one for Laurie’s body.

It is important to note that he uses a kitchen knife as his weapon. He is repurposing a tool from perhaps the most domestic part of the home, the kitchen, the hearth, and using it against the home. That points to how he is disrupting the domestic sphere throughout the film.

Laurie flees to the kitchen—the hearth, the supposed safest part of the home—and locks the door. She struggles to open an exterior door that’s blocked with a rake—yet another domestic tool. It is noteworthy that none of the weapons or obstacles used in the home (with the exception of the gun that Loomis uses) are from outside of the home. In every case, from Michael’s kitchen knife to the rake to the knitting needle and coat hanger that Laurie uses to defend herself, these are emphatically domestic items being turned against their natural environment. This is not a home invasion, but rather a home corruption.

Michael, using brute force, punches a hole through the kitchen door and steps inside. The shot of him entering the kitchen is disturbing. He looks so out of place not only because he’s a violent criminal in a mask, but also because he looks too big. He is taller than the refrigerator. He quite literally does not fit in this space.

Laurie narrowly escapes by breaking a window—by, in her own way, corrupting this domestic space—and we get a long shot of her fleeing the home. Suddenly, this warm, tight-knit neighborhood feels cavernous and abandoned. She screams for help, but no one comes to her aid. The shot is long and without cuts. The camera pans to follow her, but stays fairly still. This kind of camera movement turns the audience into yet another bystander, watching this unfold without helping her.

Their struggle continues. Laurie survives and for a moment it seems that Michael is dead. However, it is important that the movie does not end on this note. We cut back to see that Michael is no longer lying “dead” on the ground. This is followed by several shots of the interior of the house and the neighborhood, accompanied by Michael’s heavy, masked breathing. The implication is that he could be anywhere. These domestic spaces are not safe.

Texas tells the story of two siblings, Sally and Franklin, who travel with a group of friends to visit their grandfather’s grave. On their way back, they decide to stop by their grandparent’s old home and there encounter a psychopathic family of cannibals.

In many ways, Texas is a far more ham-fistedly told story. The corruption of the domestic sphere is obvious, with the cannibals’ home being covered in blood and innards, full of furniture made of human bones and skin, and the dried up, mummified remains of grandparents hidden in the attic. It is difficult to think of a more corrupt home environment. However, there is one less obvious and more subtle aspect of the home that is corrupted. There is no real female figure in the house. While their grandmother is technically present, she is dead and has no agency. This is a statement about what happens when women are absent from the home—men go insane.

The ending sequence of the film begins with Sally trapped in the cannibals’ home being tormented during a kind of “dinner party”. It is a confusing and disorienting series of close ups of the men cheering each other on as one tries to kill Sally with a hammer. This, too, is a weapon found inside the home, but it is more garage than kitchen. It is an emphatically more masculine tool than the knife in Halloween. This is a home that is devoid of the feminine. However, these men seem to be aware of that. During this sequence, Leatherface is dressed up as a woman, in make-up and a wig. He is play-acting the role of the “woman of the house”. It is also possible that the mask he wears is made of the skin of women specifically, in which case he is really trying to embody a woman in the most literal sense. This seems to stand in contrast with all of the anti-women language being used during the attack, such as, “Kill that bitch!” These men seem to have a real hatred for women as much as they have a fascination with them.

Like in so many horror films, the villain here is a visibly terrifying, ugly man who seeks to hurt a young, beautiful woman. It is possible that violence is the only way these men feel they can gain access to a woman’s body, and it is something of a replacement for sexual intimacy. This seems to be the case in Halloween, and certainly seems to be the case here as well. During the attack on Sally, one man holds her arms behind her back. They are crowded around her, physically intimidating her and physically forcing themselves on her. There is a close-up shot of her torn shirt and the bare skin of her back. It is terrifying, but there is a nod to the sexual. It can be read as a pseudo rape scene. It makes sense, though, that this takes place in a dining room rather than a bedroom, because, of course, once she is dead these men plan to eat her. At this dinner party, she is the dinner. This reversal, of turning women who theoretically should be warm, motherly creatures that make dinner into dinner is an ultimate corruption of the domestic sphere. A house without a woman, without a mother, becomes violent and disturbed.

Sally, like Laurie, escapes by smashing a window. She corrupts the domestic sphere further in order to escape it. We immediately get a shot of her hitting the ground, with open land in front of her and all around her. But, this gives the audience a sense of hope and freedom rather than a sense of helplessness. The suburban neighborhood in Halloween felt far more dangerous, because there exists a false sense of hope within it. Laurie is surrounded by people, people she knows, but none of them are willing to help her. Sally is alone, and yet she is the one who finds help.

Sally takes off running, and a truck driver stops and helps her to fight off Leatherface. A man in a pickup truck then lets her jump in the bed of his truck and helps her escape. It is odd that in such an isolated, desolate place, she manages to find help. The film may be arguing that it is best to not trust domestic spaces at all, for it is in a house that Sally is attacked, and it is out in the wild that she finds protection.

While Sally escapes with her life, the film ends on a similar note as Halloween. Sally watches from the truck, hysterical, as Leatherface waves his chainsaw around. He is not dead. He is still out there.

In conclusion, both of these examples of the slasher genre contain compelling commentary about the American home and about the role of sexuality within the home. Both seem to argue that the safety of the home is a myth, and that the domestic sphere is far easier to topple than we might like to believe, especially in the 70s, the age of women’s liberation. The changing role of women in this time scared people, and so it is fitting that scary movies would be made about it.

Restrictive and Privileged Cameras (Charlotte)

Film audiences are accustomed to particular cinematographic conventions. Audiences expect to be given a certain type of privileged vantage point—one that shows them not too much and not too little. They don’t expect things happening within the diegesis of the film to be hidden from them. But, in that same vein, they don’t expect to be shown any more than is necessary. Both The White Ribbon (2009, dir. Michael Heneke) and Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, dir. Abdellatif Kechiche) break with these conventions in especially effective and affecting ways, and it is because of the way these filmmakers refuse to conform to cinematographic conventions that these films are so successful.

The White Ribbon is a haunting film. Set in a feudal German village just prior to World War I, the film follows the adults and children alike as a series of cruel acts unfold without explanation. It is disturbing, but not in the way that a horror movie is disturbing. The disturbing nature of the film arises in large part not from what it shows its audience, but from what it fails to show.

The scene that illustrates this idea best occurs early on in the film. The pastor’s two oldest children, Klara and Martin, did not return home until very late at night, and the pastor decides to beat them as punishment. The scene begins in a cramped hallway. The pastor’s wife, Anna, calls Klara and she descends the stairs. She stops on a landing, above her mother and brother, and the frame cuts her in half. We cannot see the expression on her face nor can we see any kind of silent interaction she has with either of the other two characters. In fact, throughout the opening scene we barely see the characters’ faces, and if we do they are in profile or somehow obscured in part. They barely speak, and so the audience has very limited access to their internal thoughts and feelings. The most significant gesture we see is Anna’s lingering hand on her son’s back. A benefit of this stripped-down, withholding camera is that every piece of information we are given, because we are given so little, is imbued with meaning. By depriving his audience, Heneke makes us hyper-vigilant. The camera pans down the hallway and the three characters walk single-file toward the dining room’s door. We watch from our same spot as they walk away—again, we do not see faces, only the backs of heads. Throughout the scene, the camera hardly ever moves from its spot, it just pivots. It is as though Heneke has made the viewer herself a character in the scene, standing and turning her head to follow the action, but rooted to the spot, unable to move. The three characters disappear behind the door, and the camera remains in the hall. Because viewers are so accustomed to being shown everything, it seems unnatural to not follow the characters in. Martin comes back into the hallway, head down, and the camera from its limited vantage point follows him as he retrieves a switch from another room. He then returns to the dining room and we are once again left staring at a closed door. We can, however, hear him being beaten through the door. The film revolves around a community that is so repressed and secretive. So much goes on behind closed doors, in this case literally, and the camerawork reflects that. The passivity of the camera also gives the viewer a sense of helplessness. We are just standing there, hearing all this unfold from the hallway. The camera is not fully engaged with the scene in the way that we expect it to be, and that distance reflects the distant complicity of every other member of this community throughout the film.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Blue is the Warmest Color, a film following the affair between a young girl and an older female art student. It is affecting because it shows its audience absolutely everything. One scene that illustrates this occurs after the protagonist, Adele, breaks up with the boyfriend she has early on. She returns to her room and breaks down crying. She strips off her scarf and jacket and the camera follows her as she collapses on her bed. We see her in this moment of extreme vulnerability and emotionality in a very intimate space, her own bedroom and her own bed. The viewer is given access to every piece of her private life. Kechiche immediately takes us to an extreme close-up of Adele’s face—and it is worth noting that a disproportionate percentage of the film is composed of extreme close-ups of Adele’s face. It is as though Kechiche is trying to climb inside her head. In the same way that Breathless can be said to be a study of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s face, so too can Blue be said to be a study of Adele’s. Kechiche stays in that close-up for an uncomfortable amount of time, so long that a viewer might want to look away. Adele does not look pretty in this moment, and part way through she picks up a candy bar and takes a bite, chewing with her mouth open. It is a raw, ugly study of a painful moment in this character’s story. It is almost too intimate, and feels invasive. The way Kechiche uses his camera ties into the overall themes because it is a revelatory film—it depicts a love story rarely seen on film, and it is, in many ways, about Adele’s journey to come out. The film seeks to dig into this intimate, private affair and give its viewers access that they otherwise would never have. It is trying to get into the heads of these women, and Adele in particular, and it does so by looking at her face.

In conclusion, these two films serve their overall themes by breaking cinematographic conventions in opposite ways. In taking these risks, their directors have created effective and affecting films.

John Hughes and the "Silent" Scene (Charlotte)

John Hughes is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 1980s and arguably of the 20^th century. He was one of the first filmmakers to honestly depict the experiences of adolescents and really make them feel seen, understood, and reflected. He is well known for his dialogue, but the real power of his films lies in scenes with no dialogue at all.

Two of his most well-known works, The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), contain expressionistic scenes completely devoid of dialogue that do a great deal of heavy lifting for their respective films: the dance scene in The Breakfast Club and the museum scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They both use strong imagery and actor physicality to get at the heart of what these movies are about.

The dance scene in The Breakfast Club comes toward the end of the film, immediately after all five characters have engaged in a long and emotionally intimate conversation about how they ended up in detention. During that conversation, the characters sit still throughout, and the camera remains static. These characters who all began the morning as strangers have let each other in. They have been vulnerable with each other emotionally. The following dance scene is a physical, visual expression of that emotional release and that emotional intimacy.

It can even be read as a metaphor for the trajectory of the group’s dynamic. At the start of the scene, the characters are all separate, isolated from one another and on various hierarchical planes that seem to correspond with their social statuses. Brian begins in the A/V booth, isolated and most connected to the school. Claire and Andrew dance up in the mezzanine, the highest up in the bunch. Allison dances across the floor while Bender sits, head banging, on a statue in the center of the library (a statue he most certainly should not be climbing), a rebel that has more street cred than Brian and Allison, but not as much as Claire and Andrew.

For almost all of first several cuts, each character is seen alone in the frame. But, quickly, the characters seem to fight against the constraints of their separate frames. Brian dances in the doorframe—a liminal space, a crucial border—that separates him from the group. He crosses it and, metaphorically, crosses the social lines dividing him from the rest of the group.

There are several shots of people’s dancing feet. Their feet seem to stomp at the edges of the frame, willing it to widen. Also, the frame which used to contain the entirety of these character’s bodies now can only contain their feet—the frame is too small. And, although all their shoes are different, they are united in dance, a form of human connection and communication so ancient, so physical, and so foundational that it can transcend these artificial borders set up to divide them.

These shots are intercut with medium shots of the characters. Once again, the frame is too small to contain their entire bodies. One particular shot of Allison shows her face and hair swinging in and out of view, literally not contained within the frame.

Finally, we see the characters dancing together. First, Allison and Bender, the two lowest on the metaphorical totem pole, followed by the three boys, and then the two girls. The moment between the two girls is significant in that they represent the top and bottom of the social hierarchy and yet, in this moment, they are equals.

The final shot of the sequence shows Allison engaging in a flailing, wild dance that ends with her crumpled on the floor, exhausted. This moment has been a release for these characters, a release from their social bonds and expectations, a cleaving together of them on a deeply human and physical level. The music backing the scene says it all: We Are Not Alone.

The museum scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off functions similarly within a distinctly different narrative. In this case, the scene represents a revelatory release, but involves a splitting apart rather than a cleaving together. Ferris, his girlfriend Sloane, and his best friend Cameron have cut class and taken off for Chicago. Throughout the day, Ferris and Sloane are carefree, but Cameron is riddled with anxiety. His outlook on the world is different from theirs, and, more than any of the other characters this moment seems pivotal in his understanding of himself.

The scene also seems to mirror the process of their coming of age—appropriate given that graduation is looming for all these characters. They start by infiltrating an elementary school’s field trip, a kind of regress back into childhood, with, of course, Ferris leading Cameron, the two divided by Sloane. Then we see Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, a painting depicting one man on his own, representing Cameron, along with a couple, Ferris and Sloane. Another noteworthy painting is Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath, in which a mother lovingly bathes her child. This again represents childhood and dependency upon parents.

We see several abstract paintings followed by a striking, head-on shot of Rodin’s Portrait of Balzac, a statue with crossed arms. Then we have a reverse shot of the three characters mirroring the statue’s pose back to it. This kind of imitation represents the start of adolescence, the point at which all one does is mimic “grown-up” behavior. The characters seem to be arranged hierarchically, with Ferris at the front, followed by Sloane and then Cameron. Sloane again divides the two.

We then immediately get a shot of the three of them lined up, this time with Ferris in the middle, mirroring three abstract, late career Picassos. All three depict people, but fragmented, scattered people. This represents the adolescent period of self-discovery and confusion, a period that might not ever fully end.

Then, we see Cameron on his own before A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, a pointillist piece. He looks into the face of a young girl, the only figure facing out toward the viewer from the piece. Several shots of the young girl’s face are cut together, each one progressively tighter in until the face is unrecognizable as a face. Cameron’s expression is fearful, confused, and revelatory. He seems to be looking in a mirror, seeing himself disappear. After this scene Cameron is never the same. He seems almost comatose for a while and then his attitude completely changes. He realizes that he cannot live his life in fear—of his father or of anyone.

Intercut with this scene is a shot of Ferris and Sloane kissing in front of panes of stained glass, a church-like piece. They seem to be engaged in a pseudo-marriage. They seem to be leaving Cameron behind.

Both of these scenes are the crown jewels of their respective movies. They capture the essence of their films without saying a word (quite literally). They are unexpected, expressionistic, and truly artful. They follow the emotional arcs of these movies and we get to watch the dynamics between these characters play out physically. They touch the viewer emotionally in a way that simply cannot be done with words.