Dark Thoughts Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror

by Schneider, Steven Jay; Shaw, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780810847927
• ISBN10: 0810847922
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-16
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Summary

This is a collection of highly engaging and provocative essays by top scholars in the increasingly interrelated fields of Philosophy, Film Studies, and Communication Arts that deal with the epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and genre dynamics of horror cinema past and present, reveals that our fascination with horror cinema, and the pleasure we take in it, is in the end simply a natural extension of a philosopher's inclination to wonder. Contributors include Curtis Bowman, No'l Carroll, Elizabeth Cowie, Angela Curran, Cynthia Freeland, Michael Grant, Matt Hills, Deborah Knight, George McKnight, Ken Mogg, Aaron Smuts, Robert C. Solomon, and J.P. Telotte.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	v
Introduction	vii
Horror, Tragedy, and Pleasure
The General Theory of Horrific Appeal
Noël Carroll	1	(9)
The Mastery of Hannibal Lecter
Daniel Shaw	10	(15)
The Lived Nightmare: Trauma, Anxiety, and the Ethical Aesthetics of Horror
Elizabeth Cowie	25	(22)
Aristotelian Reflections on Horror and Tragedy in An American Werewolf in London and The Sixth Sense
Angela Curran	47	(18)
Horror's Philosopher-Auteurs
Heidegger, the Uncanny, and Jacques Tourneur's Horror Films
Curtis Bowman	65	(19)
Hitchcock Made Only One Horror Film: Matters of Time, Space, Causality, and the Schopenhauerian Will
Ken Mogg	84	(21)
What You Can't See Can Hurt You: Of Invisible and Hollow Men
J.P. Telotte	105	(15)
Philosophical (Horror) Investigations
on the Question of the Horror Film
Michael Grant	120	(18)
An Event-Based Definition of Art-Horror
Matt Hills	138	(20)
Haunting the House from within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial Experience
Aaron Smuts	158	(16)
Murder as Art/The Art of Murder: Aestheticizing Violence in Modern Cinematic Horror
Steven Jay Schneider	174	(24)
Horror and Reality
The Slasher's Blood Lust
Cynthia A. Freeland	198	(14)
American Psycho. Horror, Satire, Aesthetics, and Identification
Deborah Knight and George McKnight	212	(18)
Real Horror Robert
C. Solomon (with reply from Daniel Shaw)	230	(35)
Bibliography	265	(16)
Index	281	(10)
About the Contributors	291