The Haunting (1963) - Please comment by 9 am Tuesday, Oct 1, in response to the film or to your reading of Poe's stories

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 . . .

Blog Reflection - Freud's Uncanny - Please comment by 9 am Tuesday, Sept 17 in reply to this post

The central influence of Freud's version of the Uncanny is evident from the fact that our key modern readings in theory derive from it: Garber, Todorov, and Jackson all use Freud's ideas as a point of departure.
But that's not to say that his statement on the Uncanny entirely satisfies all readers.

To provoke discussion at our next session, please post a comment here briefly (in a paragraph or so) evaluating Freud's conception of the Uncanny, taking up any or all of these questions:

What are the strengths and weaknesses of his definition?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of his analysis?
How fair and useful is his reply to Jentsch?
Does his formulation give you something meaningful to work with when you consider films, stories, artworks that you consider instances of the Uncanny?

BLOG REFLECTION - The Fantastic, the Sublime, and the Uncanny - PLEASE COMMENT BY 9 am TUESDAY, SEPT 10

To help guide discussion at our next session on Wednesday, please select one of the theoretical readings up to this date:
Edmund Burke on the Sublime
Tzvetan Todorov on the Fantastic
Rosemary Jackson on Fantasy
Noel Carroll on Horror

and assess the contribution that it makes to the understanding of works of art (literature, film, etc.).
   In one paragraph, state its main idea and examine whether and how it gives us a valid, useful principle for understanding the appeal of works that frighten, confuse, or distress us. You may wish to apply your chosen author's idea to a specific work--a film, story, artwork you already know--to see if it deepens your understanding of the selected work.

BLOG REFLECTION: DEAD OF NIGHT - PLEASE COMMENT BY 9 AM TUES SEPT 3

We've looked at Dead of Night as our first example of the Uncanny in art for a number of issues it raises:
-- The role of dreaming--the nightmare in particular--as exemplary experience of the Uncanny
-- The peculiar compulsion to narrate the uncanny incident, and the enthrallment of the audience
-- The reality status of the uncanny incident: Within the rules of the fiction, do we accept the supernatural event, or explain it as a psychological phenomenon?
-- The contribution of plot structure and style of narration/depiction to the uncanny effect

To prepare for next week's discussion, please post a comment below on the uncanny in Dead of Night.
You should review your notes first and focus on a key topic that you find promising in understanding how the film achieves its effects. You may want to consult your own sense of the uncanny, and your recollections of other films, tales, or artworks that struck you as uncanny, for comparison and contrast.

AS3381A The Uncanny in Literature, Film, and Art - Fall 2013 - Corcoran College of Art and Design

 

The world becomes uncanny when it is no longer perceived as simple substance, but also as shadow,

 a sign of the existence of a world beyond itself, which it is nevertheless unable fully to disclose.

--Paul Coates, The Gorgon’s Gaze: German Cinema, Expressionism, and the Image of Horror

The experience--or sensation?--or concept?--of the Uncanny has been the subject of debates in criticism since the early days of Romanticism: Is it just a physical response to something creepy, un-expected, or inexplicable? Is it something more exalted, a variation on the Sublime, or the artistic trace of an attempt to represent what can never be represented? To understand how these questions moved from the periphery to the center of ideas about modern art, we will explore Freud’s influential theory of the Uncanny, as well as other attempts to explain the lure of the fantastic and supernatural in art. To trace some of the forms of the Uncanny, we will look into prominent tropes of the uncanny in film and literature—haunted houses, doubles, and ghosts—in examples such as: Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and other tales; E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Sandman; Carl Dreyer, Vampyr; Jacques Tourneur, Cat People.

Course Objectives:

§ To comprehend the historical development of the aesthetic category of the Uncanny, particularly in relation to the Sublime and to psychoanalytic theories of art and culture.

§ To evaluate the relevance of the concept of the Uncanny to modern and contemporary aesthetics, art, and culture, through examination of key examples.

§ To enhance capacities for critical analysis of film, literature, visual art, and critical theory through investigation of key examples, testing your own developing ideas.

All readings listed on the schedule will be available online at the course Blackboard site at:  https://corcoran.blackboard.com/, along with the syllabus, assignments, and other important and useful information. We can also use the Blackboard page to submit assignments, share resources, and send notices or comments to the whole group.