Department of English

This class will introduce students to the links between psychoanalysis and film by focusing on the themes of the Uncanny and Horror. As psychoanalysis and film were invented and developed at the same time, one can observe a deep reciprocal influence. Taking Sigmund Freud’s Unconscious as a point of departure, Julia Kristeva’s analysis of Abjection and Darian Leader’s analysis of the Lacanian term of jouissance as theoretical tools, we will study how films display features of Horror and the Uncanny. We will verify the points of insertion of psychoanalytical concepts such as hysteria, paranoia, abjection, castration, Oedipal desire, the Uncanny and the “Thing” in the filmic genre of horror. Why do we enjoy being afraid when we watch horror movies? What is fascinating in tales of madness, haunting and torture? A psychoanalytic approach to the anxious enjoyment of terror in film will allow us to apprehend the horror of desire and the desire for horror. The films discussed will include Doctor Caligari (Wiene), Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds (Hitchcock), Pet Sematary (Lambert & Kölsch; remake Wildmeyer), Dogtooth (Lanthimos), The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven), The Babadook (Kent), Goodnight Mommy (Fiala and Franz), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper), Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato), Hostel and The Green Inferno (Eli Roth), Split (Night Shyamalan), Deep Red, Opera and Suspiria (Argento), the Suspiria remake (Guadagnino), Insidious and the Saw series (Wan), The Ordeal and Alleluia (du Welz), It 1-2 (Muschietti), Martyrs (Laugier), It Follows (Mitchell), Midsommar (Aster), Us, Get Out and Nope (Peele), Cinderella (Bong), Trouble Every Day (Denis), Raw and Titane (Ducournau).