ABSTRACT
In the late 1970s, film studies scholars turned their attention to horror cinema—including Halloween—using methodologies adapted from Marx and Freud to analyze horror cinema’s depictions of race, class, and gender. Scholar Robin Wood developed a psychoanalytical theory for interpreting horror cinema. He labeled films that he felt were uncritical of dominant ideology’s heteronormative, capitalist, patriarchal attitudes as ‘reactionary.’ On the other hand, films that were critical of dominant ideology were labeled ‘progressive.’ Wood found Halloween reactionary, largely because it neglected to explore how the bourgeois family produced a monster like Michael. A decade after Wood’s assessment of Halloween, scholar Andrew Tudor developed a sociological-based approach for analyzing horror, considering how films depicted the ability of social institutions to protect their citizens. According to Tudor, ‘secure’ horror films show social institutions as efficient and able to contain threats. ‘Paranoid’ horror films feature social milieus that have been failed by institutions unable to protect their citizens. Using Tudor’s model to read Halloween as ‘paranoid’ provides a clearer picture of Halloween’s depiction of dominant ideology, which is far from uncritical, and its failure to protect youths.
