A Technology of Violence: Materiality, Discourse, and Victim Functionality in the Contemporary Horror Genre

Thesis (Ph.D.), English, Washington State UniversityThis dissertation examines the function and role of the victim in the contemporary horror genre. By looking at a number of important films over the course of the genre’s history, such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Psycho, Halloween, and The Cabin in the Woods, this work aims to show how the victim’s function has shifted in the genre from one of narrative importance to one of material importance. This shift has resulted in the development of regressive body discourse within the genre, that views and treats the human body less as a subject with narrative depth and more as an object of materiality. At one time a fringe element of the genre, through a series of semantic and syntactic changes, the discourse has become the definitional mark of the genre’s contemporary form.Washington State University, EnglishBy student request, this dissertation cannot be exposed to search engines and is, therefore, only accessible to Washington State University users