Lecture Twelve
HALLOWEEN
1978
John Carpenter
Terms
Freud: Sigmund Freud (not to be referred to as Siggy baby!) developed a theory of behavior rooted in sex.
Homage: a tribute to some one – usually a director or film. Sometimes, but not always, it is indicative that the film maker is just stealing ideas.
Incest: Being sexually involved with a relative – not necessarily married to a relative. Attempts to define incest on a cross cultural level have been futile. Sexual relations which are considered incestuous in one society, and negatively sanctioned, may be mandatory in another. The relationship between sex and marriage is often confused in western society perhaps because of its overt feeling that sex should only occur between married couples. Prohibitions about classes of people with whom one may not have sex, are often called “incest prohibitions or taboos”. The term “exogamy” (marrying out of a group” is generally used to indicate a group of people one can not marry.
Leitmotif: In music, a “theme song” or melody associated with a specific person or event. Some symbol associated with a specific person or event. Associated with “trope” usually a word used to stand for something else – a metaphor.
Oedipal Complex/ Electra Complex: A “complex in which a child becomes sexually attracted to the opposite sexed parent and has feelings of hostility to the same sexed parent. Urban Legend: Folklorists often define “myths” as sacred stories believed to be true; “tales” as secular stories believed to be false and “legends” as secular stories believed to be true. Urban legends are stories generally told about a something which “happened to a friend of my friend” and often carry heavy admonitions about “proper” behavior – especially for young people.
Componential Analysis:
Many components Which to select?
Consider kinship father = male. Lineal, ascending generation (1st)
Similar problems in hermeneutics. Which aspects to focus on?
Feminism focus on gender. Thnicit focuses on culture (but often race which is biology and appearance) agism focus on age and physical changes associated with it.
Leads to an anti science feeling – no real science everything is rooted in perception – end of rationalism. Concern about attitudes and feeling so of researchers who need to tell you their background to allow for bias (but not if you are minority – no disitinct terms to separate men and women, denial of given gender marked names, sexuality important. Nothing is objective.
Post modernism goes to the extreme with PC
Growing concern with the body with emphasis on ignoring sex and race and age. Gmelch in book on Irish says they are sexiest people in the world in that their denial of sex is so pervasive you have to think about it all the time.
Additional problems with AIDS STDs
This gives sex a new meaning of danger now tied to blood sports. Body fluid problems etc.
Old tabus vanish – new appear – child molestation. bestiality, incest;
Horror films largely conservative in transgression of horror is removed an status qup is resumed.
Sexual promiscuity is flaunting of rules which is flaunting of society. Relatively important bind – be individualistic and pro society.
In many of the theories of this sort the writer argues these are films which involve support of PATRIARCHY not simply society, leading one to wonder how much of the analysis is what the analyst WANTS to find.
Some writers have argued that films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them!are science fiction films because they attack male patriarchy rather than making the feminine the mosterous (especially in it ability to reproduce. Those that reestablish male aptriacrchy are sci fi, where as those that attack the female body and make the body mosterous are horror.
Counter arguments are legion.
The Film and What followed:
The film Halloween was originally 90 minutes long. When it was sold to NBC they wanted some cuts made, which made the film too short for the two hour time slot. Carpenter, then working on Halloween 2, shot additional footage to lengthen the film to fit the time slot. In this version, the film is shown with all the original footage plus an additional 11 or 12 minutes of the new footage.
The original plan was that there would be a sequence of films called Halloween each of which would have one thing in common: they all took place on Halloween. The success of the first film prompted the sequel, Halloween II which continued the original story in violation of the plan. The third in the series Season of the Witch dispensed with Michael Myers and the rest of the cast completely and reverted to the original idea.
That film is hated by many Halloween fans (who are, in reality, Michael Myers fans), although it frequently gets better reviews than Halloween II
In terms of “genre” – a complex definitional issue – Halloween is often called both a “horror” film or a “slasher” film (which may be a subdivision of the horror film), although two of the 5 murders are done with a knife. There are two strangulations and an unknown method is used with the truck driver. It is like Psycho, to which it owes a great debt, relatively bloodless. Watch for “references” to Psycho in the film.
People have discussed Carpenter’s interest in showing a “darker” side of small towns in Middle America. Would this film have been as effective if it had been set in a large city like New York?
Michael Meyers is the major “puzzle” in the film. Think about his status (human or not), and what he may represent in the film. “Monsters” often represent something in the unconscious. What can we say about the matter in this case?
There are a number of “tropes” or “leitmotifs” in the film – what are they, how do they operate?
A Little Bit About the Holiday Halloween Itself
Halloween is an old Scottish holiday called samhain which occurs half way between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. It was thought of as a time when the world “rotated” on the “world axis” and that portals with the supernatural were open.
Freud was, as you know involved in a sexual psychological theory, believing that everything almost was rooted in sex. In his Oedipal conflict theory boys are attracted to their mothers and want to kill off their father’s. The female version is the Elektra complex in which women want to marry their fathers and kill their mothers. Oh well.
In early anthropological theory it was thought that the Oedipus complex might be tested cross culturally. Ultimately not much was resolved, but in societies known as matrilineal, where descent is reckoned through the males on the mother’s side of the family, the Oedipal conflict is often seen as placed somewhat differently. Men want to be involved with their sisters and do in their mother’s brothers, so there is a different kind of incest.
Homage:
In this film there are two other films shown The Thing from Another World and Forbidden Planet both of which have relevance to the film. One deals with a dangerous thing that is interested in killing and the other with a planet on which there is an invention that allows “monsters from the id” to be created in real life. Michael is in a sense both of these.
In addition, there are several references to Psycho (especially the shots of the knife and also the name Sam Loomis which is the name of the boy friend in Psycho). The lamp on a cord which is in the closet where Laurie is hiding swings back and forth when Myers breaks through the door is not unlike the swinging light in the basement at the climax of Psycho. The highly repetitive music of Psycho is also “duplicated” in a highly repetitive theme in the film. This repetition without a strong melodic line that would allow a “finish” the to the piece produces a tension as well. Compare the music in Psycho (opening theme, (also used while driving), the music for the shower scene; the music for the approach of the shark in Jaws and the to major themes by Carpenter for Halloween. Incessant rhythm of music like fate. Note also the speeding “unstoppable” train that passes when Loomis finds the first body (truck driver). The sound of Michael's breathing in the mask are familiar to people who know 2001: A Space Odyssey wherein Bowman (Keir Dullea) returns to the space ship.
What tropes are there in the film?
Tight shots make it hard for audience to see what is around them. Similarly the clown mask obstructs the view.
Characters:
Laurie:
Annie and Linda:
Dr. Loomis:
Michael:
URBAN LEGEND
Compare myths (believed to be true and sacred), legends (believed to be true but not sacred) and tales(not believed true or sacred)
Urban legends often deal with teenagers “making out” and running into a psychopath who kills one or more of them off. See Urban Legends (1998), Candy Man (1969) Is this film an urban myth? Is Michael killing off sexually active teenagers? Laurie is reasonably safe until she enters the house where the bodies are.
Adults seem of little use. Police, Loomis, are rather powerless to do anything. Adults leave their children to others to babysit; the people in the house where Laurie runs screaming turn on the lights, but inore the screams and turn them off again. Only Tommy comes down and opens the door to let Laurie back in. The “community” her is one of young people – who are not only immoral and illegal many times, but even the young children are (realistically) rather cruel. They trip Tommy and cause him to fall on the pumpkin that beaks and so on. Laurie has a semi adult status, ignores Tommy’s talking about the “bogey man”.
Incest: The fact that Michael kills his sister is indicative of an incestuous fantasy. He is upset that she is sexually involved with someone else. The stabbings themselves constitute a kind of sexual act. At the same time it isn’t clear why Michael goes after those he attacks, since they are not his sisters. His writing of “sister” on the door is difficult and appears in a shot that was added later. But baby sitting and sister are in some way equated.
Why is Michael in pursuit of Laurie?
Michael is a kind of avenging angel, basically coming after people who are breaking the moral code, but as a kind of vigilante. He is judge, jury ad executioner..
Like Michael, the town is also masked – there are darker things underneath (compare Blue Velvet) – the youngsters are sexually active, use drugs, there have been other “weird” or unexplainable murders besides those of Michael Meyers. (Man at graveyard mentions these to Loomis saying he thinks all towns have these.
The film involves a number of reversals - the main character is female and both hero and victim. The two males who are hunting Michael are incompetent and look for Michael in the wrong place. Loomis does ot even see the car pass him with Michael in it.
One of the women lights 2 cigarettes while in bed and gives one to her boyfriend. Lighting 2 cigarettes and giving one to a lover is typical fro males to do in films not females. There is a certain amount of gender reversal in the film.
The opening Point of View shots show a person looking around the house from the outside and the going through the house, taking a knife (the sleeve of a clown suit is evident), putting on a mask and going upstairs. He is identified as 6 year old Michael Myers by his sister just before he kills her.We finally see him outside between his parents in his clown suit with no mask and holding the bloody knife. Several problems are apparent in that the POV shot is far to high to be Michael. Later we learn that Michael was 6 and has been institutionalized for 15 years (making him 21) although the credits say Michael at 23! Loomis does the addition aloud in the film. This tends to make Michael something of a mystery and may be in a sense a way to make him mythical. His first appearance to Laurie is outside the school while the teacher drones on about "Fate". linking Michael to that idea (compare Chigurh in No Country fro Old Men)
The film deals with breakdown of social rules (common in the 60's and 70's as gender/sex and ethnicity/race equality battles were changing th nature of he legal landscape. as was the arrival of the "sexual revolution". Such breakdown is typical of the breakdown of society, a possible analysis of the core of the horror in horror films. In this case developing sexuality, a breakdown of sexual roles are clearly possible interpretations of the sub text, and the extrapolated to a genre analysis.
Horror films often want people to face something frightening (which is why people go), but then the audience members may look away or cover their eyes at that time!
In most horror films (and science fiction films) the society's order is disrupted and then reestablished indicating a kind of conservative aspect to the film. In Halloween it is not clear the order is restored, but it is clear that the defender of the structure (Michael) is still around.
POV shots: Initially Michael (often so) occasionally Laurie
Lots of motion, Unstable frame.
Reasonably asexual. Dress with high socks. There are many jokes about her not having a boy friend and being a “Girl Scout” (pure and virginal). Jokes appear about the fact that she is even interested in clothes. Has an interest in boys, but they think she is too intellectual. Not adverse to smoking marijuana in the car.Strong personality – not the frail heroine of earlier horror films – fights with Michael and basically wins in that she escapes him.
sexually active teenagers.
Understands Michael by some unclear means. Recognizes his dangerousness. What is dangerous about Michael or his ideas?
Equated to Jack-o-lantern (a symbol for both Halloween and the supernatural) and to the “bogeyman” and to fate (remember the school discussion on fate by the teacher with the boring delivery) – a kind of avenging angel from the start. (Is this what Loomis sees – that age 6 the child is already taking a violent moral position? (Compare Bad Seed or Prophecy this latter involves the “death of the last martyr"). Upholder of morality, but in lethal way. Perhaps a morbid comment on society’s approach to things.