The Psycho records
(2016)

Fiction

eBook

Provider: hoopla

Details

PUBLISHED
[United States] : Columbia University Press : Made available through hoopla, 2016
DESCRIPTION

1 online resource

ISBN/ISSN
9780231543491 (electronic bk.) MWT11860178, 0231543492 (electronic bk.) 11860178
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called "psychos" if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase for a range of psychotic and psychopathic symptoms or dispositions. They transferred a war disorder to the American heartland. Drawing on his experience with German film, Hitchcock packed inside his shower stall the essence of schauer, the German cognate meaning "horror." Later serial horror film production has post-traumatically flashed back to Hitchcock's shower scene. In the end, though, this book argues the effect is therapeutically finite. This extensive case study summons the genealogical readings of philosopher and psychoanalyst Laurence Rickels. The book opens not with another reading of Hitchcock's 1960 film but with an evaluation of various updates to vampirism over the years. It concludes with a close look at the rise of demonic and infernal tendencies in horror movies since the 1990's and the problem of the psycho as our most uncanny double in close quarters

Mode of access: World Wide Web

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