Week 1: ADOLESCENCE
Carrie, The Exorcist, Teeth
Horror films transfix and terrify audiences through techniques relating to suspense, gore, the macabre and the supernatural - unfailingly achieving suspension of disbelief because fear is a universal emotion. Through psychological interpretations, Mary Wild will analyse representations of women in horror films, in which female bodies appear paradoxically fragmented, decayed and impure, as well as wholesome, nurturing and attractive. It is sometimes claimed that the portrayal of women in scary movies is misogynistic, but here the proposition is that horror cinema presents a unique visual language for expressing an overwhelmed fascination with the experience of feminine subjectivity.
Mary Wild is the creator of the PROJECTIONS lecture series at the Freud Museum - promoting psychoanalysis for film interpretation. She also teaches film courses at City Lit and Hackney Picturehouse. In addition to the horror genre, Mary also loves science fiction, high-camp melodramas, and ontological thrillers. Her favourite film auteurs are David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Darren Aronofsky and Stanley Kubrick - her research interests focus on cinematic representations of identity, the unconscious, and mental illness