Can I Believe Her?: Fantastic Abjection in Contemporary Horror Narratives By Women
Abstract
Recent years have seen a renaissance in horror media. The revolution in horror has crossed mediums, touching film, television, and literature. The expansion and evolution of horror captures previously untold terrors. Marginalized stories are being told with the classic tenets of the genre, turning the traditional narratives on their heads and offering new perspectives. Horror serves as an ideal vessel for storytellers who wish to convey the unfairness and cruelty they face in a brutal form. The expansion of the genre into the mainstream has opened discussions of the value of “pop” horror versus the value of “artistic” or “elevated” horror. The distinction between the two has become a point of contention among old and new fans of the genre. The new artistic and avant garde approaches to the genre capture a key aspect of horror: “Much horror depends upon destabilising our sense of security, defamiliarising the familiar, and questioning what is seen as an everyday norm–of the body, identity, family relationships, continuity, time, space, boundaries of life and death, alien, Other and self” (Wisker 145). The familiar slasher film has been met with high brow films that question what constitutes horror? Both traditional horror and its new imaginings ask the question: who is horrified?