Since the 1950s, children have provided some of horror’s most effective and enduring villains, from dainty psychopath Rhoda Penmark of
The Bad Seed (1956) and spectacularly possessed Regan Mac Neil of
The Exorcist (1973) to psychic ghost-girl Samara of
The Ring (2002) and adopted terror Esther of
Orphan (2009). Using a variety of critical approaches, including those of cinema studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and psychoanalysis,
Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors offers the first full-length study of these child monsters. In doing so, the book highlights horror as a topic of analysis that is especially pertinent socially and politically, exposing the genre as a site of deep ambivalence toward—and even hatred of—children.
Spis treści
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Little Horrors: Introduction
1. Reaching the Age of Anxiety: The 1950s and the Horror of Youth
2. Spoiled Rotten: Horror’s Bourgeois Brats
3. A Scary Sight: The Looking Child
4. “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”: The Child Villain’s Malignant Mom
5. Vicious Videos, Missing Mothers:
The Ring
6. Little Bastards: Patriarchy’s Errant Offspring in
It’s Alive and
The Omen
7. Past Incarnations:
The Exorcist and the Tyranny of Childhood
8. All Fun and Games till Someone Gets Hurt: Hating Children’s Culture
9. Too Close for Comfort: Child Villainy and Pedophilic Desire in
Hard Candy and
Orphan
Afterword
Notes
Works Cited
Index
O autorze
Dominic Lennard is Associate Lecturer in the Centre for University Pathways and Partnerships at the University of Tasmania, Australia.
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