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FLMGL1111: AMERICAN HORROR

Assignment: Research essay

Chloe Benson

David Firth

30058513

(2,204 wds)

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The Silence of theChainsaw Massacre

To what extent do two of the films studied in this course relyon the spectacle of violence to generate a sense of horror?

In this essay I will focus on Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw

Massacre (1974) and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

In both cases I will argue that the films rely deceptively

little on the spectacle of violence to generate a sense of

horror. I will briefly consider aspects of spectacular

suggestion, evaluate specific incidents of violent spectacle

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from each film and elucidate some other strategies employed by

each film to generate an atmosphere of terror. In conclusion I

will demonstrate how these films utilize the spectacle of

violence, to generate, not, in fact a sense of horror but

rather to engender a feeling of relief.

Horror films are intended to provoke sensations of tension,

fear and anxiety. “The pleasure of the text is, in fact,

getting the shit scared out of you” (Brophy in Tudor 444).

Andrew Tudor discusses a cultural predisposition by which fans

of the genre respond to certain elements within the text,

according to diverse triggers. This relationship also allows

those people who make horror films to exploit known stimuli

and structure the text accordingly, in order to maximise the

intensity of the response. This can be done through the mise-

en-scène, including props, sets, soundtrack, lighting and

acting, as well as through direct and/or indirect reference to

extra-diegetic elements such as, historical precedence, social

context and recurring motifs of the genre.

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In 1942 Val Lewton’s Cat People revolutionized the style of the

horror film genre by “substituting horror effects and

psychological atmosphere for the attacks of physical monsters”

(Worland 176). Part of Lewton’s technique involved

privileging the setting with an equal or greater status than

the actors, to create a “fatalistic, hopeless mood” in which

“settings echo the psychic dislocation of its characters”

(Worland 184). Many films began investing more in suggestive

devices; innovative lighting, camera work, and sound effects.

Much of the violent action occurred off screen, intimated

through the reactions of supporting actors. More recently,

technical advances in special effects, and a greater exposure

to violence, such as, televised warfare in Vietnam, the

disillusionment of John F. Kennedy’s assassination (Murray

11), contributed to the use of more graphic realism in

cinematic violence.

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‘Realistic’ blood splatter in “The Battle of Bloody Porch” from Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), made “during and in response to the politically and socially turbulent” 1960's (Murray 11).

Mark Jancovich identifies a cultural division between horror

fans, whereby, fans of “gory excess” deride fans of

“atmosphere and suggestion” for their “femenised preference

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for the predictable, safe and untroubling”, whereas, fans of

“suggestion” look upon gore fans as “low brow” (Jancovich

152). An aversion to excessive gore may indeed connote

feminine overtones, in light of its affinity to scopophilic

fetishization, (a connection perhaps more worthy of derision

than any “femenised” preference), but there can be no

assurance that “atmosphere and suggestion” will remain “safe

and untroubling”.

Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Jonathan

Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) are both widely renowned for

their ability to shock and disturb but as Kendall Phillips

points out, despite its reputation for being “one of the

bloodiest and most violent films in history”, The Texas Chainsaw

Massacre “has virtually no on screen gore”. According to

Phillips, The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) “offers a vastly

more graphic display of bodily fluids and disfigurement”

(Phillips 116). Julie Tharp puts “the total body count” in The

Silence of the Lambs, at ten, “five women and five men”. Tharp goes

on to add that “we never see women killed, only men” (Tharp

109). In fact the only person we actually see killed onscreen

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is Jame Gumb. We do have five corpses, a good amount of blood

and a severed head in a jar but the level of violent spectacle

remains relatively negligible. “Although Deme does reveal the

results of the killer’s violence, he for the most part

refrains from showing the acts themselves; the film could

never be accused of pandering to voyeuristic impulses”

( Jancovich 157).

The Silence of the Lambs opens with dramatic, brooding, menacing

music. Even the font of the opening credits is dark over a

grey sky. The solitary figure of Clarice Starling struggles

through an obstacle course, in a mist engulfed, dark and

shadowy wood; sound light and setting work together to

establish a sinister tone. Jodie Foster’s diminutive stature

marks her as a figure of vulnerability. Starling rhymes with

darling and is the name of a small bird, much less inclined to

be predator than prey. This offers a direct reference to

Norman Bates, placing the film firmly within established

cannon. “Many of the elements that made Psycho a horrific

experience for its original audience have been magnified and

in some cases collapsed into one another in The Silence of the Lambs

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in order to similarly horrify the more sophisticated (or

jaded) audience of 1991” (Tharp 106).

The intertextuality implicit in the many parallels, both The

Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs, share with Alfred

Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), carries a rich depth of spine

chilling inference all the way forward from real life’s Ed

Gein. Cinema goers would be quick to acknowledge the

connection and enter a state of appropriate apprehension in

either case. “Robin Wood has discussed Psycho as a ‘Key work of

our time’ one that could be deciphered and accepted by a mass

audience” (Sharrett 256). Tharp regards the commonality

between Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs to be so prolific that

she “cannot imagine the latter to be subconsciously imitating

the former” (Tharp 107). Sharrett, recognizing “an obvious

structural and thematic relationship” between Psycho and The

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, considers the similarities to be so

apparent that there may be more to be gained from discussing

“a distinction between the two films” (Sharrett 259).

Inspiration for Hitchcock, Hooper and Deme the “gruesome

crimes of Ed Gein... mass murderer and cannibal” (Sharrett

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259), consist of details so horrific that the remotest

connotative association should manifest blood curdling dismay

in even the most stalwart horror fan.

“Gein had a collection of body parts that included a belt

decorated with nipples, a box of nine vaginas, several

face masks replete with hair, chair seats composed of

human flesh, several bowls made from skulls, a torso

"vest" with a cord either for hanging as a decoration or

donning as apparel, a box of noses, and Bernice Worden's

entrails rapped in a suit jacket and her heart in a bag

on the floor.” (Sullivan 47).

According to Sharrett, “the Gein crimes are more faithfully

rendered in Hooper’s film, particularly in Leatherface’s

fetishism, his use of human skin as a mask, and the artworks

made of human and animal remains” (Sharrett 259). Sullivan

identifies a “main narrative revelation” in The Silence of the

Lambs, as “Bills motivation for killing, (like Ed Gein) he

wants to fashion a ‘woman suit’" from the skin of actual women

(Sullivan 39). Regardless of any connection to Gein, this

subject matter, from either film, is enough to engender a

fixed state of repulsion.

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The first unambiguous depiction of violence in The Silence of the

Lambs occurs in the form of crime scene photos, pinned to the

noticeboard of Crawford’s office. The camera makes a sweep

across the photos, allowing for only a fleeting glimpse. This

blurring of the images also blurs the boundary between

spectacle and suggestion. Here there is more than the mere

intimation of violence but it is not by any means a graphic

celebration. The only real indication of the photographs’

monstrosity is offered in Jodie Foster’s look of constrained

disgust. The fascinating aspect of the Polaroid photography at

the beginning of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that what we see is

not actual photographs. We see rotting corpses illuminated by

a series of flashes, in much the same way that the lightening,

which “alarms” Mary Shelly, animates dead flesh for Henry

Frankenstein, in James Whale’s, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The

difference being, in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though somewhat

resurrected, the dead aren’t bought to life. We simply see

them being photographed. The idea and visual imagery of

sculpture constructed out of rotting human corpses, while

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disturbing and macabre in the extreme, is a far cry from the

spectacle of violence.

Discussing the difference between still photography and the

moving filmic image, Christian Metz invokes Roland Bathes to

explain that still images cannot convey the same “impression

of reality” According to Metz, “Films release a mechanism of

affective and perceptual

participation in the spectator” (Metz 4), which photographs do

not allow. “When we look at a photograph, says Roland Barthes,

we do not see a presence ‘being there’ but a presence that

‘has been there. We therefore have a new category of space–

time: place present but time past—so that in still photography

there is an illogical conjunction of here and then’” (Metz 6).

We always know that what the photograph shows us is not really

here. “The movie spectator is absorbed, not by a ‘has been

there,’ but by a sense of ‘There it is’” (Metz 6). The

significant difference of course is motion. Metz points out

that while we might recognize filmic images to be illusory;

the motion of the images is nonetheless real motion (Metz 8).

Still images, no matter how graphically “real” can never

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invoke the same level of unsettling discomfort. The Polaroid

flash bulb sequence in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre can be read in

the same vein, since, although we see the subjects rather than

the images, those subjects themselves are still (dead) images.

(Comparable scenes in The Silence of the Lambs are the crime scene

and autopsy sequences, which Tharp describes as “respectful

and realistic” (Tharp 109).). The point being, it is very hard

for photographs to convey a spectacle of violence. Photography

also links the films thematically to George Romero’s The Night of

the Living Dead (1965). “The grainy photographic images of the

zombie cull at the end of the film, which recall contemporary

photographs of the carnage in Vietnam” lend the film a sense

of “documentary-like verisimilitude” (Harper 11). Photographs

offer the films a greater connection to realism than

spectacle, making them all the more disturbing. The

introductory narration and ongoing radio reports in The Texas

Chainsaw Massacre further enhance “the notion of the film being a

recreation of actual crimes” (Sharrett 257).

The mise-en-scène in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre becomes

increasingly disturbing as the film plays on. Images of solar

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flares that may have developed a greater significance in view

of our enhanced knowledge of climate change signal “the

dawning of an inevitable age of degradation and destruction”

(Phillips 113). The radio reports “incidents of international

terrorism; oil spills; wholesale arson... establish[ing] the

idea of an Evil age and the collapse of causality” (Sharrett

261). Pam warns of the increased malefice of retrograde

Saturn. An atmosphere of discomfort is established through the

heat, cramped conditions and Franklin’s incessant whining

(Sharrett spells “Franklyn”. The film credits “Franklin”). The

terror of vulnerability finds its seed when Franklin is

knocked down the hill by the force of a passing truck. This

scene also hints at the industrial mechanization which has

rendered physical labour redundant. A conversation regarding

the slaughter process alludes to the subsequent reduction of

physical being to slabs of meat. The relish with which

Franklin details the new technique elicits stunned abhorrence

from his travelling compatriots. Franklin’s ghoulish and

enthusiastic descriptions are embellished with the inter cut

images of “sick and dying cattle” (Sharrett 269), accompanied

by the discordant clamour of an increasingly frantic

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soundtrack that continues to corroborate an escalating sense

of distress. At this point we encounter the feverish

hitchhiker and his bizarre antics. By which time we have

become more than convinced that a pretty unsettling scenario

is about to unfold. “Their home is decorated with the bones

and skin of their victims and they dine on barbequed human

flesh” (Phillips 116).

Of the violence depicted in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the first

account is the hitchhiker’s self mutilation and slashing

Franklin’s forearm. Sharrett describes it as the “apocalyptic

gesture in microcosm”, which he qualifies as “a tendency to

self destruction to provoke a crisis in oneself when there is

no resolution to the frustration or interchange in the

exterior world” (Sharrett 268). Kirk is despatched without

ceremony but we don’t see Leatherface’s mallet actually strike

him. Viewed from behind, the blow is obscured by Kirks head.

Jerry is killed in the same quick fashion and we see Pam

allegedly hung on a meat hook but again the carnage remains

out of view.

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What makes these scenes somewhat harrowing is once again mise-

en-scène. Bones decorate the wall. Leatherface imitates a pig.

There is a sound of snapping sinews as the hammer falls. Kirk

shakes and kicks as though in a seizure. A second blow recalls

Franklin’s admonition that “They’d start squealing, freaking

out and everything and they’d have to come up and bash em two

or three times” (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Pam trips over,

falls into the front room and finds herself immersed in a sea

of bones and feathers, looking up she sees a chicken in a

budgie cage. The surreal incongruity, also revisiting Psycho,

comes to fruition when she notices human bones and skulls,

used to decorate the furniture. Engulfed in catatonic

hysteria, she tries to flee but is caught by Leatherface ,

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“unceremoniously hung on a meat hook and then ignored as

Leatherface uses his chainsaw to carve Kirk’s body” (Phillips

117). However, we see neither the chainsaw make contact with

Kirk’s body, nor is there visible any of the blood spray or

splattered debris we might reasonably expect from such a

situation. Franklin’s dismemberment, similarly, occurs

carefully obscured from shot.

Probably the most unpleasant scene in The Silence of the Lambs is

when the psychopath, Miggs says to Agent Starling, ”I can

smell your cunt” and later throws a handful of semen on her

(The Silence of the Lambs), which is neither spectacle nor

suggestion. Hannibal Lecter, Dr Chilton says, is “a monster...

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a pure psychopath”. His infamy carries a reputation so widely

acknowledged that the details are hardly mentioned. “When the

nurse leaned over him, he did this to her.” Chilton shows

Agent Starling a photo but we don’t see it. Chilton goes on to

explain with delight, “The doctors managed to reset her jaw,

more or less, save one of her eyes.” Hannibal’s cold precision

is born home in the chilling indictment, “His pulse never got

above 85, even when he ate her tongue” (The Silence of the Lambs).

The revelation, all the more ominous for it’s being delivered

under the glaring red glow of the danger alert lamp, in an

extreme close up of Dr Chilton’s predatory grin. Even during

the ferocious escape we see only a partial glimpse of two

men’s faces. The back of Jimmy’s head is off screen as

Hannibal pounds it against unseen bars, made present only by

sound effect and when Hannibal bludgeons the other guard, the

blows are delivered entirely out of shot. All we see is

Hannibal’s bloodied face and menacing grimace as he swings the

guard’s truncheon, followed by a mischievous cut to a shot of

the cannibal’s meal, splashed with the blood of his captor.

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The enraged attack is startling but somehow not horrific. We

have come to sympathize with Hannibal. We want him to escape.

He is resourceful, articulate and charismatic. He has an

infectious smile. He listens to Bach. Tharp describes Lecter

as a “rounded human being” (Tharp 113). We are offered

familiarity, in the way he interacts with Starling, for the

respect he shows her and the detail with which he communicates

to her. “Virtually all male characters in the film menace,

patronize, grope and sexualize Starling. Wherever she goes,

criminals, law officers, and fellow FBI trainees gaze at and

harass her. Only Hannibal Lecter, convicted serial killer,

treats Clarke [sic] with a modicum of respect. In this regard,

he is, perhaps, the most sympathetic male character present in

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the film” (Sullivan 39). The guards are underdeveloped

characters and we have little investment in them.

There are three particularly graphic incidents of violence

across the span of both films. They are all perpetrated by

characters who have our sympathies and against those who

don’t. The truck driver who runs over the hitchhiker in The

Texas Chainsaw Massacre also throws a spanner at leather face

knocking him down and causing him to drop the chainsaw across

his own leg.

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When Agent Starling shoots Jame Gumb, he becomes the only

character in The Silence of the Lambs to die on screen.

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These three incidents all occur in the final scenes of the

films. The satisfaction with which we physically see the

antagonist/s maimed or killed goes some way to provide closure

to the unresolved narrative. The spectacle of violence is

therapeutic, even necessary, as long as it is retributive.

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Perhaps the brutal despatches of Jame Gumb and the hitchhiker

afford some sense of recompense in lieu of the real Ed Gein,

who spent the last 27 years of his life peacefully, in the

relative comfort of the Mendota Mental Health Institute,

Wisconsin. In conclusion I argue that the spectacle of

violence is used in both of these films, not to generate a

sense of horror but rather to engender a cathartic release

from a state of heightened tension, gradually instilled over

the course of each film’s respective narrative, via a diverse

range of theatrical mechanisms which are, for the most part,

other than spectacle.

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Works Cited

The Bride of Frankenstein. Dir. James Whale. 1935. Universal Studios, 1991. DVD.

The Exorcist. Dir. William Friedkin. 1973. Warner Bros, 1998. DVD.

Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Trans. Michael Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Print.

Harper, Stephen. “Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic.” Bright Lights Film Journal 50 (November 2005): n. pag. Web. 3 November 2014.

Jancovich, Mark. “Genre and the Audience: Genre Classifications and Cultural Distinctions in the Mediation of The Silence of the Lambs.” Horror: The Film Reader. London; New York: Routledge, 2002. 151-61. Print.

Murray, Gabrielle. This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life: Violence and Utopia in the Films of Sam Peckinpah. Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger Publishers, 2004. Print.

Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George Romero. 1965. Synergy Ent, 2008. DVD.

Phillips, Kendall R. “The Exorcist (1973) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).” Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2005. 101-22. Ebooks Corporation. Web. 24 October 2014.

Sharrett, Christopher. “The Idea of Apocalypse in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Metuchen, NJ; London: Scarecrow Press,1984. 255-76. Print.

The Silence of the Lambs. Dir Jonathan Demme. 1991. Image Entertainment, 1997. DVD.

Sullivan, K.E. “Ed Gein and the figure of the transgendered serial killer.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 43, (July, 2000): 38-47. Web. 31 October 2014.

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Dir. Tobe Hooper. 1974. Dark Sky Films, 2006. DVD

Tharp, Julie. “The Transvestite as Monster.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 19.3 (Fall 1991): 106 (8pp). EBSCOhost. Web. 5October 2014.

Tudor, Andrew. “Why Horror? The Peculiar Pleasures of a Popular Genre.” Cultural Studies 11.3 (1997): 443-45; 456-63. Taylor & Francis. Web. 27 October 2014.

The Wild Bunch. Dir. Sam Peckinpah. 1969. Warner Bros, 2006. DVD.

Worland, Rick. “Cat People (1942): Lewton, Freud, and SuggestiveHorror.” The Horror Film: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell,2007. 176-92. Print.