Ok, so I know that I just wrote a post about an hour before this one, but I’ve been re-reading Freeland and Wood’s articles for my final essay, and I think there’s something very interesting in Freeland’s format. Part One of her essay mainly focuses on psychoanalytical approaches to horror, citing numerous theorists and analyses, then toward the end, states simply that she doesn’t agree with them. She then introduces her own steps toward analysis, and in Part Two discusses this in detail. (Maybe I’m turning into a structuralist, but… ) it seems like she sets this up simply to elaborate on her own major points. She is either discussing these theorists she doesn’t agree with to juxtapose her own (“right”) feminist readings against theirs or she does it to educate her readers who may not have had any background with feminist horror film psychoanalytical analysis. It’s possible that both are the answer. I find this format interesting simply because of her detail and length set aside in her own esay on her own analyses. (She discusses ad nauseam Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed, Stanley Cavell, etc., etc. only to state that she doesn’t agree, and here are her personal steps toward horror analysis.)
As for Freeland’s issues, I find some of them to be unfounded or unnessecary. She claims that Clover “assumes the validity of an alternative theory of gender and of our psychological conceptualizations of it,” then says of Laquer, “There are several distinct questions to raise here. First, one might ask on what basis we should be persuaded to adopt his particular theory of gender. Laquer is a historian of science whose views are by no means universally accepted, and so relying on his theory is a rather strange and arbitrary choice.” OK, FREELAND. FIRST of all, what is wrong with Clover’s acceptance of differing views of gender theory than your own? Why is a psychological understanding and conception of it so horrible? I find that a psychological approach to the conception of gender may actually be helpful, to at least attempt to determine why we conceptualize the way we do. Secondly, why should Laquer’s profession dissuade us from his theory? Why is the choice “strange”? Many writers and philosophers worked (and still work) jobs to provide a means of living but continue to theorize and create. I don’t believe one needs to be completely perfect and accepted at an unrelated job in order to be completely perfect as a theorist. I’m almost positive that Freeland’s views are not “universally accepted” everywhere. Does this make her as credible as Laquer?
I do, however, find that her approach to analyzing horror in terms of historical and social context is easy to agree with (at least for me, personally). I find that how a film portrays women, or the monsters (linked either ot women or to men-a close viewing is required to determine this) can be greatly influenced by culture of the time the film was made. Understanding this gives the viewer a better reading of the meaning of the film, as well as the society and its views distorted into ghastly creations and plot points. Well done, Freeland, although your criticism of others seems slightly hypocritical.