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Carpenter's Halloween (1978) (Opening: (when it switches, medium shot…
Carpenter's
Halloween
(1978)
We're watching a movie about a guy killing people, who cares about vivid and compelling backstories?
where does the pleasure/fun come from? (Is Clover right?)
normative tropes: Michael's naked sister, stabbing with a knife (very Clover)
Opening:
opening creds bills women "Introducing Jamie Lee Curtis"
POV shot, orients us to the killer's position (following Clover's argument)
use of mask: cuts off Meyers' sister's face. She is just a body--her "use" is flesh on screen
Meyer's sister's sounds as super sexual while dying.
when it switches, medium shot with a crane shot zoom out to extreme long shot. He's not an "ugly" kid, he's just outside with a bloody knife?
plays with our idea of what counts as "monstrous"
"Timmy next door" makes the violence "possible" and close
by moving the violence to a suburban space, we're thinking about economics/images of white middle class as safety
Lynda's Death Scene
all the women dying sound like they're having sex; calls attention to the hypersexualization? Also contributes to the misogyny of the genre
diegetic Meyer's breathing but seems amplified--aligns us with the killer/ dramatic irony of having the same knowledge as Michael
use of close up and a nip slip/shot to frame Annie--objectification. Also the line "See anything you like"--meta-film or hailing the audience? If we're generous, it is Carpenter shaming/calling attention to the politics of pleasure. But it still relies on objectification and it still uses the trop
strangling from behind
How does this film imagine systems of safety/authority?
failure of institutions
no parental authority
useless cops
Dr. Loomis and medical authority
36:00: Loomis and Sheriff in house
"a man couldn't do this" "isn't a man"
insane as devoid of all humanity
mental health histories
how
Nurse and Loomis car scene
"their gibberish" "don't you think we could refer to it as him?" Question of humanizing versus dehumanizing/objectifying; questions of ableism and making neurodivergence into horror
How does this movie imagine whiteness?
seems to solidify the image of white men's violence as a product of mental disability? (Meyers and the mental institution). That rhetoric removes culpability/accountability?
what if violence is
made
? With the failures of intitutionalization and failures of parents, it seems to indite the things that make violent white masculinity
the mask as separating the person (average white dude) from the monster