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The horror film genre is a movie genre containing multiple subgenres. A goal of this genre includes invoking responses of trepidation and panic from the audience.[1] Elderly and aging characters are often written in order to contrast against younger characters and in horror the characteristics typically assumed to accompany old age can exaggerated to invoke a stronger response from audiences.

Elderly and aging characters in film are often written in order to have a sharp and easily defined contrast from younger characters in order to fuel plot points that can include tension and drama, as well as to use societal fears of aging and aging poorly to invoke feelings of fear from the audience.[2]: 1–2  Horror films that heavily feature aging or aged characters include The Amusement Park, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and Cronos.

Depictions of elderly in film edit

Elderly people are frequently featured in all film genres. They are often utilized as a way to bring about drama or tension in film plots as they provide either a form of assistance to other characters or a hindrance. These characters may also be written to have a sharp and easily defined contrast from younger characters in order to fuel plot points that can include tension and drama.[2]: 1–2  These depictions may reflect on the society's attitudes towards aging and the elderly at the time the film was created and can frequently depict the characters with some sort of disability or infirmity.[3] Aging women in particular are more likely than their male counterparts to be featured suffering from the effects of old age in visual mass culture as a whole, as "older women are at particular risk of madness, decrepitude, death, or murder: visual reminders of the loss of mobility, loss of mind, loss of functional capacity, and possibility of lingering or sudden death associated with aging".[4] Per Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, these depictions have changed due to multiple factors that include shifting demographics, extended lifespans and workforce years, and societal understandings and representations of aging.[2]: 2 

In horror the elderly may be depicted by way of stereotypes such as senescence and debility, as a way of evoking societal or personal fears of aging from the audience. Agnieszka Kotwasińska has noted that in 2000s and 2010s horror there was a trend of using aging female bodies to "signal moral degradation and otherworldly terror (as in Legion, 2010, Dead Silence, 2007, [REC], 2007 The Witch: A New-England Folktale, 2015)."[3]

Roles in horror films edit

The treatment of aging and the aged in horror films can be associated with the fear of the abject and of aging itself.[5]: 43 [6][7] This can result in the portrayal of an elderly character in one or several roles.

Crone edit

Elders as others/outsiders edit

Elders may represented as "others" or "outsiders" in horror that stand in stark contrast to the movie's protagonists. Cynthia J. Miller has cited the character of Sylvia Ganush in Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell as an example of this. She is othered due to her abject poverty and haggard appearance that makes her appear "inhuman, threatening, and laughable" as opposed to Christine's youth.[8]: 111 


(see Elder horror : essays on film's frightening images of aging)

Elders as memory keepers edit

Elders as monsters edit

Some films feature elders as monsters or the act of aging as monstrous. Some scholars have also argued that some depictions of

(same, Elder horror : essays on film's frightening images of aging)

Ex: zombies[9] (witch probably deserves its own subsection)

Susan Behuniak has posited the argument that depictions of slow, lumbering zombies in films such as George Romero's Night of the Living Dead has contributed to the stereotyping of patients with Alzheimer's Disease as zombies.[9] (not sure if really belongs here, tbh)

Psycho-biddy edit

The "psycho-biddy" character is typically an older or elderly woman who is unable or unwilling to accept that their life has changed or deal with the problems she may be facing.[10]: 85  She may long for the youthful person she has been while also possibly dealing with past physical, mental, or emotional trauma.[11]

Witch edit

Portrayal of men vs. women edit

Women have been frequently portrayed in horror films as either monsters or final girls, with an emphasis on aged women portrayed as villainous or sinister.[12] Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent has theorized that this is due to older women appearing less frequently in horror than their male counterparts and as such, it becomes "easier to mythologise women in such a way" and that they are "vessels for our societal fears".[13]

Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie have also noted that depictions of aging in the 60s often depicted fantastical creatures such as vampires, which were usually male.[10]

Subgenres edit

Psycho-biddy edit

Main article: Psycho-biddy
 
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Psycho-biddy is a film subgenre which combines elements of the horror, thriller and woman's film genres. It has also been referred to by several different terms, which also include Grande Dame Guignol, hagsploitation and hag horror.[14][15] Per Peter Shelley, the subgenre combines the concepts of the grande dame and "Grande Guignol". Films in this genre conventionally feature a formerly-glamorous older woman who has become mentally unbalanced and terrorizes those around her.[16][17][18]

The genre is considered by scholars such as Shelley and Tomasz Fisiak to have been launched with the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Film in this vein continued to be released through the mid-1970s and per Fisiak, has had an influence on multiple areas that include music videos.[19] Renata Adler, in her New York Times review for the 1968 film The Anniversary, referred to the genre as "the Terrifying Older Actress Filicidal Mummy genre."[20]

Per Shelley, for a film to fall within the subgenre the movie must use grande guignol effects and have an actress who portrays the lead character as one "with the airs and graces of a grande dame".[14] He further stated that common hallmarks of actresses in the subgenre included those who were "no longer considered leading lady material" or had "previously specialized in supporting rolles", and "had not worked for some time".[14]: 2 

The term and genre have received criticism, particularly in regards to claims that psycho-biddy films exploit actresses who have experienced or are vulnerable to ageism.[21][14] Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie noted the genre in their book Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema, stating that the "cycle of films renders the aging women at their core as monstrously "othered" objects."[22] Bustle writer Caitlin Gallagher criticized the term "hagsploitation", as she felt that it "shows a certain lack of respect for the actresses who starred in these types of movies", further noting that together with the term "psycho-biddy" the terms "use disparaging terms for older women — "hag" and "biddy" — to not only indicate how unattractive the female characters are in these types of films, but to also show that these characters are psychotic."[23]

BFI's Justin Johnson commented on the genre, saying that "“If Crawford and Davis didn’t carve out this niche with Baby Jane and all the films that followed, then a lot of legendary actresses would not have had third career acts".[24] Peter Shelley has argued that criticism of the psycho-biddy subgenre is inaccurate, as it implies that the actress is lowering her standards by acting in a horror film by also implying that her earlier work is superior. The criticism also implies that the actress is only portraying a character out of her normal range out of desperation.[14]

Criticism and critique edit

Critics and scholars have noted that aging and the elderly are depicted in specific ways in the horror genre and subgenres. Some films, such as The Taking of Deborah Logan, have elderly characters that display or are believed to display dementia, memory loss, or Alzheimer's Disease, ailments commonly associated with aging, that play a part of or disguise horror elements.[6][7] Others have commented on the presence of actors known for their work during their youth, arguing that their aged appearance assists in evoking horror because of how their appearance and characters may deviate from the expectations set by their prior work. Per Sally Chivers, this in turn causes the audience to question how they will age and decline.[5]: 43 

References edit

  1. ^ "Film Genres: Horror films". Dartmouth Library. 25 September 2019. Retrieved 4 October 2019.
  2. ^ a b c Elder horror : essays on film's frightening images of aging. Cynthia J. Miller, A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Jefferson, North Carolina. 2019. ISBN 978-1-4766-7537-4. OCLC 1088670694.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ^ a b Kotwasińska, Agnieszka (September 2018). "Un/re/production of Old Age in The Taking of Deborah Logan". Somatechnics. 8 (2): 178–194. doi:10.3366/soma.2018.0249. ISSN 2044-0138.
  4. ^ Woodward, Kathleen (2006). "Performing Age, Performing Gender". NWSA Journal. 18: . 162–18.
  5. ^ a b Chivers, Sally (2011-01-01). The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-4079-5.
  6. ^ a b Kotwasińska, Agnieszka (2018). "Un/re/production of Old Age in The Taking of Deborah Logan". Somatechnics. 8 (2): 178–194. doi:10.3366/soma.2018.0249. ISSN 2044-0138.
  7. ^ a b "'The Father' Offers an Unsparing Glimpse into the Mysteries, of Old Age". Time. Retrieved 2021-05-31.
  8. ^ "Making the Hard Choices: The Economics of Damnation in Drag Me to Hell". Elder horror : essays on film's frightening images of aging. Cynthia J. Miller, A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Jefferson, North Carolina. 2019. ISBN 978-1-4766-7537-4. OCLC 1088670694.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  9. ^ a b Behuniak, Susan M. (2011). "The living dead? The construction of people with Alzheimer's disease as zombies". Ageing and Society. 31 (1): 70–92. doi:10.1017/S0144686X10000693. ISSN 0144-686X.
  10. ^ a b Shary, Timothy; McVittie, Nancy (2016-09-06). Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema. University of Texas Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-4773-1063-2.
  11. ^ Fisiak, Tomasz (2019-11-01). "What Ever Happened to My Peace of Mind? Hag Horror as Narrative of Trauma". Text Matters. 9 (9): 316–327. doi:10.18778/2083-2931.09.19. ISSN 2084-574X.
  12. ^ Worland, Rick (1997). "OWI Meets the Monsters: Hollywood Horror Films and War Propaganda, 1942 to 1945". Cinema Journal. 37 (1): 58–59. doi:10.2307/1225689. ISSN 0009-7101.
  13. ^ "Have horror movies made a monster out of the older woman?". The Independent. 2019-04-21. Retrieved 2021-05-31.
  14. ^ a b c d e Shelley, Peter (September 15, 2009). Grande Dame Guignol Cinema: A History of Hag Horror from "Baby Jane" to "Mother". Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland and Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0786445691.
  15. ^ "MENOPAUSAL MANIACS: A HAG HORROR WATCHLIST". Rue Morgue. 2018-02-01. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
  16. ^ Pahle, Rebecca (2019-11-13). "A primer for the unexpectedly awesome hagsploitation horror subgenre". SYFY WIRE. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
  17. ^ Keegan, Rebecca. "The birth of 'hagsploitation'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2021-05-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ YesWeekly. "The crying shame". YES! Weekly. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
  19. ^ Fisiak, Tomasz (2020). "Stranger Than Fiction: Gothic Intertextuality in Shakespears Sister's Music Videos". Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture (10): 194–208. ISSN 2083-2931.
  20. ^ Adler, Renata (1968-03-21). "Miss Davis's 78th". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
  21. ^ Douglas, Susan J. (2020-03-10). In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-65256-7.
  22. ^ Shary, Timothy; McVittie, Nancy (2016-09-06). Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema. University of Texas Press. pp. 80–86. ISBN 978-1-4773-1063-2.
  23. ^ "'Feud' Depicts "Hagsploitation" In All Its Offensive Glory". Bustle. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
  24. ^ Hobbs, Thomas. "Trog: The strangest horror film of its era". BBC. Retrieved 2021-05-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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