Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film

Abstract

The subtitle of Shocking Representation establishes the key terms of Adam Lowenstein's new study of modern horror films, but gives little hint of its transformative aims and its scope. In every register it claims, the book sets out to overturn conventional wisdom. This is a genre analysis that disrupts the familiar taxonomies and boundary effects of genre. Tracing the work of horror films across national borders, media and historical periods, Lowenstein shows it to be a form continually cross-pollinating with other kinds, including its apparent opposite, art cinema. This is also a study of representations of historical trauma – across five national cinemas – that runs against some strong currents in trauma theory and that challenges familiar genealogies of cinematic nationalism. It is also a Benjaminian view of mass art that seeks alternatives to the psychoanalytic models of affect and address so long dominant in cinema studies. For all its close focus on horror film then, this is a study of remarkable scope and for all its transformative aims, one that is far from combative or contrary. Lowenstein writes in fluent, thoughtful and economic prose that makes these complex arguments immediately engaging.