A scholar examines 14 everyday objects featured in horror films and how they manifest their power and speak to society's fears.
Take a tour of the house where a microwave killed a gremlin, a typewriter made Jack a dull boy, a sewing machine fashioned Carrie's prom dress, and houseplants might kill you while you sleep. In Household Horror, Marc Olivier highlights the wonder, fear, and terrifying dimension of objects in horror cinema. Inspired by object-oriented ontology and the nonhuman turn in philosophy, Olivier places objects in film on par with humans, arguing, for example, that a sleeper sofa is as much the star of Sisters as Margot Kidder, that The Exorcist is about a possessed bed, and that Rosemary's Baby is a conflict between herbal shakes and prenatal vitamins. Household Horror reinvigorates horror film criticism by investigating the unfathomable being of objects as seemingly benign as remotes, radiators, refrigerators, and dining tables. Olivier questions what Hitchcock's Psycho tells us about shower curtains. What can we learn from Freddie Krueger's greatest accomplice, the mattress? Room by room, Olivier considers the dark side of fourteen household objects to demonstrate how the objects in these films manifest their own power and connect with specific cultural fears and concerns.
"Provides a lively and highly original contribution to horror studies. As a work on cinema, it introduces the reader to films that may be less well-known to casual fans and scholars; more conspicuously, it returns to horror staples, gleefully reanimating works that one might otherwise assume had been critically "done to death" ( Psycho, The Exorcist, The Shining)." -Allan Cameron, University of Auckland

Autorentext

Marc Olivier

Inhalt

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I: Kitchen/Dining Room

1. Refrigerator
2. Microwave
3. Telephone
4. Dining Table

Part II: Living Room

5. (Sleeper) Sofa
6. Remote
7. Sewing Machine
8. Houseplant

Part III: Bedroom

9. Bed
10. Typewriter
11. Armoire

Part IV: Bathroom

12. Radiator
13. Pills
14. Shower Curtain
    Conclusion
    Filmography
    Bibliography
    Index