Vision And The Act Of Looking - 1527 Words

The Ocular Spectatorship Vision and the act of looking is an important and recurring theme in many horror films. In early gothic literature, such as in Guy de Maupassant s Le Horla, the author presents vision as definitive and universal proof and stresses the importance of seeing as well as the act of showing gore. As a society, we are routinely told ‘seeing is believing in the wake of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, placing weight on the tangible. However, as science and technology have progressed the faithfulness of visual representation is increasingly throw into question, which in turn has led to societal anxiety. A few years earlier, video footage of an event rarely had its validity questions, whereas now it is easy†¦show more content†¦Not only does it allow the viewer to ‘fill in the gaps and imagine what the paranormal entity may look like but the greatest factor that allows for the audiences anxiety is that they are constantly waiting for a revealing, which never mat erializes. Some argue that there is a greater fear than the fear of the unknown. As in Tony Perrello s argument, the viewer experiences more horror watching the victim be attacked by the monster than being confronted by the monster itself. It has been noted that the audience will mirror the reactions of the character on screen, screaming when they scream or shielding their eyes when the victim on screen does, regardless of the role of the character. As in Hitchcock s Strangers on a Train (1951), the director draws the audience into empathizing with the evil character in a race against time to commit murder or James Whale s portrayal of Frankenstein s monster in 1931. Laura Mulvey also speaks of the spectatorship of siding with the killer in Peeping Tom (1960). The audience simultaneously empathizes with the victims on the screen while occupying the killer s point of view. The Uncanny (Sigmund Freud) Sigmund Freud coined this term when trying to explain something strangely familiar yet unfamiliar. It speaks to seeing or experiencing new but also takes us back to our own psychological past or something within the material world. It is suddenly recognizing something that seems unfamiliar and in fact, has an identity