Although we generally like to steer away from the most overused resource on the net, the Wikipedia entry on The Haunting is a pretty good introduction to the film. It offers a handy guide to its key themes along with neat background facts/gossip about the production, and a restrained treatment of the key issue that may concern us in the context of this course:
How Uncanny is the isolation of Eleanor as the focal point of the film? How deftly does the film navigate between a reduction of the phenomena experienced by the characters (because it's clearly not "all in Eleanor's head") to either a psychological or a supernatural explanation? How does the story, including Eleanor's fantasies/recollections/disclosures, turn on Repression as an instigator of the Uncanny response--even if it doesn't fit neatly into Freud's scheme?
You may also enjoy:
Patrick Samuel's essay on The Haunting at the Static Mass Emporium website, which is a "deconstruction" of a key, famously frightening scene.
Another issue I hope you'll consider as you view and review The Haunting: The term "Cinematic space" may be used in two ways (at least). The first is the illusionistic image within a frame or between cuts--How does cinema create spaces on screen? The second is the imaginary space created in the viewer's mind by editing practice (and sometimes special effects). "Haunted house" films are a particularly convincing example of the power of cinematic practice to evoke a fantasy world--that has never existed in three-dimensional reality--and especially of the way that imaginary space can affect us emotionally and psychologically. (Consider how this film takes off from "The Fall of the House of Usher," the classic haunted-house gothic novels of the 18th-19th century such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, or for that matter, the novel upon which this film is based, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. It seems as if cinema were made to depict haunted houses; early experimental filmmakers were drawn to "Usher".) The Haunting is sometimes praised and sometimes panned as a horror movie, but few critical treatments note this outstanding feature: Its capacity to identify domestic space created onscreen--with its obscurities and gaps--with characters and emotions so that we really develop a virtual experience of the Uncanny.
To provoke discussion next week, please offer your comments on either:
1. The role of Eleanor or of the house as a focus for the Uncanny in the film, or any other aspect of the film that seems to you worth considering as an indicator of the Uncanny;
OR
2. The position of the narrator and narration--who tells the story and how the story is told--in one of our readings from Poe, or any other aspect of a story, or common point among the stories, as an indicator of the Uncanny.
In a way, of course, we are still asking: What's spooky about these movies and stories? And why is the spookiness pleasurable? But I hope that beyond that, we might ask some questions about how and why we succumb to illusions in art.
You may find The Haunting online at Veoh, though I don't know how reliable that is. Our Poe short stories are online in the Required Readings folder on Blackboard, and accessible through links in the sidebar to the right of this post.
Please comment by 9 am Tuesday, Oct 1, in response to the film or to your reading of Poe's stories.
PS A similar set of themes and settings is to be found in the 1973 film The Legend of Hell House (click on link for Wikipedia entry). (The screenplay was adapted by the respected sci-fi/fantasy author Richard Matheson from his novel.) A key feature is the association of sexual repression, insecurity, and "perversions" with malevolent ghosts. Hmmmm . . .
Eleanor is a deeply conflicted woman. She starts her journey as an innocent woman, an ingenue, but as the story moves forward she becomes conflicted and tormented by her thoughts. It is uncanny that the director allows us to enter into her mind, this invasiveness makes her even more vulnerable and frazzled, and growingly unstable and very dark.
ReplyDeleteEleanor daydreams a lot, probably meaning that she is looking for an alternate reality, in this case a place where she can finally feel at home. Daydreaming is also a way of connecting to your subconscious, and she argues with her subconscious throughout the entire film.
Her last name should be PTSD(Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), the poor woman is plagued by suppressed, traumatic and sad memories, and they are quite haunting. She is saddened by the memories of her father, to whom she was quite fond of. In fact, her father was the only person that truly loved her and and when he died she was left with a sick and abusive mother. Then she spent 11 miserable years taking care her of the mother, meaning that she was not able to have a life of her own, including fulfilling her sexual needs. Her desires and wishes are repressed as well as memories.
Because of her character development, there is a sense of unbalance between what is reality and dream in Eleanor’s mind, and for that reason she is always searching for something, and she feels that the house is where she will find her answers, is where she truly belongs.
The Hill House is full of secret passages,a possible symbolic tool used by the author to connect the house to Eleanor. Both are odd, and full of hidden secrets, in Eleanor’s case, perhaps hidden sexual desires. And the house, well, in the end the house desires are fulfilled, it devours or in other words, eats Eleanor.
The main character of the film the Haunting is not Eleanor, but the house itself. The house controls the entire narrative and the plot circles around it, right from the very beginning. It pulls all of the characters towards it and manipulates them into getting what it wants.
ReplyDeleteIf looked at from a Freudian context, the house could be seen as representative of overwhelmingly dangerous sexual desire. Each of the women that are lured to it seem to form an emotional attachment to the house. The first woman's husband built the house for her, perhaps out of love and perhaps out of obsession. The nurse was too busy being involved with her boyfriend that she caused the death of the other woman who was so repressed that she was basically a child for her entire life. The nurse is so consumed with guilt that she kills herself as well.
Eleanor, who seems to be sexually pure, has the strongest attraction to the house out of all the other characters. It scares her but at the same time excites her. It is interesting to note that the first terrifying event occurs when Eleanor and Theo are in bed together.
In fact most of the hauntings seem to revolve around Eleanor's physical encounters with the other characters in the house, especially Theo and Dr. Markway.
The demon or spirit inside the house that is constantly chasing after Eleanor could be seen as a physical manifestation of her own fears about sexuality. Her fear of sex is so strong that there is a physical force preventing her from acting upon it.
Eventually she is so consumed by these repressed feelings that she goes insane and kills herself by crashing into a tree. Her desire for sexual experiences and her overwhelming fear of what would happen if she acted upon them finally drove her to the only option she felt she had left.
What wasn't uncanny about The Haunting? I mean the entire movie is an unnerving ghost story. But the first aspect that I noticed in an uncanny way, was the camera angles and setting. There were camera angles that weren't "normal'' for that time (following the spiral of the staircase) that would make the viewer feel uncomfortable. The setting was unsettling because the house of unsettling...there were mirrors and statues everywhere that heightened that uncanny sense of being watched. As we talked about in class, the mirrors could also symbolize a certain personal reflection or even a fear of one's self. What I found interesting is that in the beginning the characters kept on referring the ghosts but as the story progresses, they start referring the strange happenings to the house itself...as if it was it's own being. I also found the character of Theo as very interesting. At a time that being gay was so frowned upon, it makes me wonder if the adding a lesbian character was an intended boost in uncanniness. Overall this was a very good movie and excellent example of the uncanny in a ghost story.
ReplyDeleteThe House as a focus for the Uncanny is perplexing in that it’s the ultimate “unfamiliar-familiar” space. In some ways, the characters know that something “spooky” is happening in the house and anticipate paranormal activity and the appearance of the supernatural. However, no one seems ready when things actually start to go down. It’s the embodiment of the medium space, the space where confusion meets awareness. In the film, I believe Dr. Markway had mentioned something about familiarizing oneself and/or preparing oneself with the paranormal/things that seemed “uncanny” in order to accept it’s presence and be more observant to it’s significance rather than being fearful of it. Well, I think that’s what he was saying (I should’ve written it down, oh well).
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, the significance of the house lies with its ability to act as a projection screen for Eleanor’s deepest desires and needs. Looking at it from a Freudian perspective, Eleanor “projects” everything she suppressed over the years onto the house (or technically into the house) where they seem to come alive. Not only does Eleanor experience it but everyone in the house does, experiencing these uncanny happenings with her from the outside in. Though I can’t help feel that perhaps the house itself isn’t truly “uncanny”. Perhaps it’s merely a shell, a stage for which things occur because without the context of hauntings, spirits and such, I wonder how it would stand. I suppose I’m trying to look past the obvious “it just looks creepy so it is creepy and creepy means strange and uncanny” but I guess you can’t deny the coincidental sound of “Hill House” to “Hell House”.
What I found very uncanny in The Haunting was the reversal of camera angles that gave different perspectives, even sometimes that of an unknown entity. Sometimes it felt very normal, like a typical shot from a movie, but then sometimes it felt like we were the eyes of either one of the character’s, even the house. In the beginning, this was very evident when Eleanor walks up to the house, we see her from a bird’s eye view from the tower. We get the feeling that we are the eyes of some supernatural entity, but we aren’t certain. A different time, when Eleanor runs into Theo’s room and they both hear the banging, the camera twist and turns as it follows the edge of the door. These shots enhance the feeling and places us within the house, feeling all of the same odd feelings the characters are. Time and time again instances like this occur throughout the movie. When some climatic situation happens, the camera takes on a completely different perspective. A single shot can make us realize something isn’t right and it creates a mystery for us and we want to know more. That is why the uncanny camera angles I feel made this movie so powerful.
ReplyDeleteI just want to say I loved the movie!!!!!! It was so interesting! The under tones of the characters the overly dramatic and romantic Eleanor. I'm not even sure why exactly but I liked the film a lot. My little brother is a movie , I want to watch it with him, a 5 year old. That would be interesting. Any who, it was interesting to see the gender roles play out through out the film. Having that lesbian presence, prince charming, the drunk, and the crazy is not a foreign combo. I feel each character could be related to. The sexual under tones of even the scene where Eleanor heard noises coming from another room from a child being hurt, were interesting. She felt she was holding the hand of her lesbian roommate while hearing a child squirm, The squirm in its self was very sexual in a way, but the undertone of those gestures read as Uncanny. The Uncanny and sex.
ReplyDeleteEleanor grew into her crazy, I think anyone can become crazy or perceived as crazy when trying to find out where they fit into the world. I know I'm all over the place with this but naturally my mind was moving through all these thinking bubbles when viewing the film. The lesbian role mocked the crazy, the drunk was the logic, the doctor was the believer, all these roles in which I have come across in life or film. The roamer seems to always get the label of crazy or even the homeless. The homeless guaranteed her the title. All homeless ppl are crazy right?
In last week screening of The Haunting, one can comment on the idea that in every uncanny scenario that we have encountered so far in class, has been narrated by a character that is psychologically perturbed and therefore makes one question the reality of certain phenomena. Eleanor from The Haunting is a prime example of this, as the majority of the story of the Hill House is told in her perspective.
ReplyDeleteVery similarly the stories of Edgar Allen Poe are narrated in a manner where one questions the sanity of the narrator and the credibility of a story. All of the stories are told by a madman’s point of view, but what is most interesting in these instances and what some of the stories have in common, it is the necessity by the main character to divulge their dark secret of murder. What triggers the uncanny is the pressure of knowing what has been done and the guilt or burden it creates. They get away quite easily and cleverly with the action they have committed, with no one noticing. Yet at the end of the day they are their own biggest threat as they feel compelled to give it all away. There’s a weird feeling of wanting to get caught or acknowledged for their cleverness of disguising the crime. This relates back to Eleanor, where one can only wonder if the house is her biggest danger or is it her perturb mind and obsessive relationship with her mother. Earlier in the film she divulges that right before her mother died she did not attend to her, she herself is disturb by the fact that she left her mother to die.
It is not that The Haunting is not uncanny, contrary it is uncanny, the story revolves around the idea of the house being haunted by ghosts and unexplainable events such as doors shutting, cold breezes, loud sounds and doors warping. One is willing to believe the events and get involved in the building up of the suspense but one can only question if this entire story is happening all in Eleanor head.
The Haunting does a fairly superb job of keeping us guessing. Is there a supernatural force at work or is it purely a psychological study? I feel like one could make arguments either way. Although there were phenomena such as cold spots and the bulging door, we are still able to ask questions regarding the reality of the situation. We've all had experiences where we remember things as being much more intense than they were and everyone in that house was under extreme duress. I like to think that there was an undercurrent of the supernatural in the house but not in any outward manifestation. It brings to mind the scenes in Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 when the inanimate objects within the cabin come to life and taunt the main character Ash. Again it is unclear whether or not they are truly moving but the psychological transformation within Ash is palpable. The house seems to be a metaphor, a metaphor for the place one goes in their head during the final stages of delirium. The mental state where all your issues are amplified and the world seems to taunt you bringing you closer to the edge. Before even leaving her apartment, Eleanor is already on the edge. If she hadn't visited the haunted house, it is entirely conceivable that she would still end up losing her mind. That is the extent to which she is already damaged. Eleanor is a fairly interesting and complex character but the film paints her in such broad strokes that it is impossible to not see her as a symbol of arrested development and repression. I don't always believe that psycho-analysis gives the only answer but The Haunting makes it clear that her past is responsible for her behavior. In fact, the only aspect of the movie I didn't fully enjoy was how utterly annoying Eleanor could be at times. Other than her back story, her unease with sex, and her discomfort with human interaction, they also gave her the vocal inflections of a whiny five year old. While I found this hard to stomach at times, it was effective in making it completely clear who we were dealing with. In total the Haunting remained captivating, interesting, and yes uncanny through a paradoxical combination of straightforward themes mixed with less easily deciphered plot devices. It was quite effective and quite pleasurable to watch.
DeleteI like what you said about Eleanor's character. I, too, found her very annoying at times and I wasn't quite sure why. But I think you nailed it. A grown woman regressing to a child like behavior every time she wanted attention. Thanks for that.
DeletePoe has a knack for stringing the reader along blindly; revealing details at the last moment to maximize the sensation of the uncanny, and “The Black Cat” holds no exception. The narrator, who remains entirely nameless throughout the story, swoops seamlessly from childhood flashbacks to more recent events so that his descent into madness is nearly imperceptible. One moment he is discussing his childhood love of animals, and the next he is violent and enraged. He never explicitly explains the reason for his emotional shift, and I believe this is because even he does not understand it. As Freud might say, it is his repressed feelings that are emerging in the form of violence. For example, it seems quite unlikely that the second cat’s white splotch actually shifted shapes to resemble the gallows, and that perception was instead a side effect of the narrator’s paranoia and fear of death. Gradually he became mentally unhinged and sought alternative outlets for the emotions too difficult to face head-on. Because black cats already carry the connotation of sorcery and evil, Pluto may have seemed like an easy target for the narrator’s feelings. Doubling, as we have mentioned in class, can be a facet of the uncanny: the reappearance of the black cat figure, albeit a different one, clearly had an uncanny effect on the narrator. Though I wouldn’t classify the explicit actions in “The Black Cat” as downright spooky or scary for the reader, it is instead what is hidden and repressed that becomes eerie.
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