ON METHODOLOGY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS OF THE “LIVING DEAD” IMAGE IN THE IDEOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM

Abstract

The article analyzes the reasons for the popularity of the plot with the “living dead” in the American horror film. It is established that this theme is borrowed by Hollywood from ethnic mythologies and reproduces the ideas of traditional early agricultural society. That actualizes the analogy of the living dead with savages who did not know the culture of specially prepared food. The trophic theme develops in the way they eat human flesh, which is never eaten to the end. On the contrary, the horror film visualizes a model of oral satisfaction from eating living people by the dead, which indicates the symbolic nature of their trophic relationships. On the other hand, it introduces powerful layers of archetypal meanings into the artistic context of mass culture. The spread of infernal heroes fixes a sharp contradiction in the dialectic of generations, which is always ignored by contemporaries. The emergence of the artistic symbols of the «living dead» acts as imaginative compensation for the destroyed continuity of generations and an extreme motivator for the ideological reconstruction of the general social and cultural tradition.