Horror Film and Otherness

by Adam Lowenstein

What do horror films reveal about social difference in the everyday world? Criticism of the genre often relies on a dichotomy between monstrosity and normality, in which unearthly creatures and deranged killers are metaphors for society’s fear of the “others” that threaten the “normal.” The monstrous other might represent women, Jews, or Blacks, as well as Indigenous, queer, poor, elderly, or disabled people. The horror film’s depiction of such minorities can be sympathetic to their exclusion or complicit in their oppression, but ultimately, these images are understood to stand in for the others that the majority dreads and marginalizes.

Adam Lowenstein offers a new account of horror and why it matters for understanding social otherness. He argues that horror films reveal how the category of the other is not fixed. Instead, the genre captures ongoing metamorphoses across “normal” self and “monstrous” other. This “transformative otherness” confronts viewers with the other’s experience―and challenges us to recognize that we are all vulnerable to becoming or being seen as the other. Instead of settling into comforting certainties regarding monstrosity and normality, horror exposes the ongoing struggle to acknowledge self and other as fundamentally intertwined.

Horror Film and Otherness features new interpretations of landmark films by directors including Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Stephanie Rothman, Jennifer Kent, Marina de Van, and Jordan Peele. Through close analysis of their engagement with different forms of otherness, this book provides new perspectives on horror’s significance for culture, politics, and art.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Horror

248 pages, Hardcover

Published July 19, 2022

About the author

Adam Lowenstein works on issues relating to the cinema as a mode of historical, cultural, and aesthetic confrontation. His teaching and research link these issues to the relays between genre films and art films, the construction of national cinemas, and the politics of spectatorship, with particular attention to American, British, Canadian, French, and Japanese cases.

Reviews

[Helena Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

i absolutely loved this book. it explored common tropes as well as odd facets the horror genre with a level of respect and passion that made me feel so seen. i'll be the first to admit that some of the ideas went over my head and there are still some topics brought up that i couldn't summarize properly for the life of me, but i FULLY plan on rereading this book to understand more of it. it pushed past the us vs. them narrative that so often pervades these films, and instead offered up a counterpoint i find myself completely agreeing with. this book made me feel so validated in my love of and interest in the horror genre, and honestly i don't have much more to say than that.

[Victoria Timpanaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent look at how horror films deal with the many different types of othering, such as religion, ethnicity, age, economics, gender, and race. Lowenstein uses films by important directors of the past 50 years including George Romero, Tobe Hooper, David Cronenberg, Jennifer Kent, and Jordan Peele to show how filmmakers use these fears of the other to scare us and make us think at the same time. After reading each chapter, I wanted to revisit these films with a new perspective.

[Nodiaus DiTonno · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read the entirety of this but I AM SO EXCITED!!! This relates back to my research and honestly just my personal interests in so many ways 🤯🤯 Will definitely be referring back to the chapters of "Gendered Otherness" and "Racial Otherness" while doing my grad school final project.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horror Film and Otherness provides an exploration of otherness in horror film that may feel somewhat familiar for individuals well versed in queer/phenomenological approaches of horror but can be altogether transformational for those who have only begun to undertake that intellectual journey.

[sara]

dissertation

[Josh Kahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Check this book out! Buy it!