![]() ![]() Gemma: But part of the fun of David Koepp’s Stir of Echoes (1999, adapted from the novel by Richard Matheson) is that, much like an old Val Lewton movie like Cat People, The Seventh Victim, and Ghost Ship, it begins with an acknowledgement that working-class people A) exist and B) are more than capable of seeing ghosts, reading books, knowing stuff - i.e. I feel like someone needs to write that Master’s thesis. Like non-slasher horror movies had to have some weirdly British or Ye Olde American Puritan pedigree in order to operate as horror movies in a successful way. This is of course offset by Bruce Willis’s white-collar psychiatrist.) In Stir of Echoes, the entire narrative takes place inside that blue-collar milieu, and it’s hard to describe how unusual seeing that was, even twenty years ago. (That was one of the joys of The Sixth Sense, that Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette played characters whom one could call working class, or, hell, maybe even poor. So it’s nice to see movies that are set in, well, the real world. How can you possibly have unruly ancestors bothering you from beyond the grave, unless you have enough of posh pedigree that you actually have what one would call ancestors - a lineage going back to William of Orange, or who-the-fuck-ever, and not just common and garden moms and dads, Uncle Phils and Aunt Ednas. It’s like having wealth is a requirement for even being allowed to be ghost-ridden. ![]() Hill House, Hell House, that one in Thirteen Ghosts, Dracula’s castle, the House of Usher, various pseudo-gothic monstrosities in The Others, The Innocents, you name it. Enormous old houses and mansions are practically de rigeur in order to be haunted. As you and I have talked about before, Gemma, it is fascinating to examine the role that class and social strata play in horror movies. Sandra: Who doesn’t like to see rich people suffer? Unless I ever become a rich person, in which case I strongly object to seeing me suffer. “They don’t want to see their own problems reflected onscreen when they go out for a night at the movies.” “Or they really like seeing rich people suffer,” I suggested. (How’d I get this lease? Well, being a Satanist definitely helped!) “People like seeing how the other half lives,” a teacher of mine once explained. In a way, I guess this is just the general “escapist glamor of film” syndrome: the same thing that explains why someone like Bridget Fonda just happens to already occupy a ridiculously huge New York apartment in Single White Female, when the sheer unlikeliness of an apartment that size even existing was actually part of the plot of Rosemary’s Baby. Gemma: Back when we discussed Brad Anderson’s Session 9, we spent a little time talking about how difficult it often seems to be to name horror film narratives - especially ghost stories - structured around working-class people. By “trash talking” we of course mean erudite and thoughtful examinations of genre tropes as represented in current and past films, and their impact on the cultural conversation. It’s Day 20 of The Kasturi/Files at Speculative Chic, where Gemma Files and Sandra Kasturi do some trash talking about horror movies for the month of October. ![]()
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