Abstract

This dissertation is a constellational study of four horror films of the nineties. Linking Freud's psychoanalytic theories of the uncanny, temporal theories of trauma and Kierkegaard's theorizations of dread and fear in The Concept of Dread and Fear and Trembling, I examine the conceptual and philosophical aspects of dread, trauma and the uncanny, as they jointly but differentially form a constellational cryptology of the experiential and philosophical dimensions of horror spectatorship. The interlocked spatial and temporal dimensions that attach themselves to the uncanny and the specter of dread are what I define, via Walter Benjamin, as constellational, and connect horror to its historical contexts of time and space. ;A historical introduction to the horror genre of the seventies and eighties, prefaces this dissertation's case studies of familial horror in the nineties. Through my examinations of Cape Fear , Candyman , Dolores Claiborne and Se7en , I offer a theoretical critique of horror as the allegorization of an anxiety constitutive of postmodernity, on the eve of the twenty-first century. These anxieties which I name millennial dread are symptomatic of radical historical changes. My examination of the philosophical and psychoanalytic economy of the family, connects gothic tropes of secrets, trauma and the uncanny to cultural anxieties of race, gender and sexuality. This leads me to an ideological examination of hermeneutics and ethics which are key thematic and structural components in each of the four horror films examined. If the uncanny attractions of dread are part of the pleasures of horror spectatorship, their peculiar pleasures are, I claim, threaded with apocalyptic fears that have recently regained prominence in the American social landscape. This dissertation's linkage of philosophy with theories of cinematic spectatorship and historical change thus offers new explanations for the long-standing cultural popularity of horror