MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Horror movies almost invariably deal with more or less dysfunctional families or as Tony Williams puts it: “[f]amily horror is an integral component of the entire horror genre” (Williams 1996, 270). The depiction of children in these products of the cultural imagination ranges from divine agents (e.g. The Reapening, 2007) to satanic disciples (e.g. The Omen, 1976). In the former case, a tabula rasa, in John Locke’s sense, seems to be assumed, thus, the child is born in perfect innocence, in the latter case, the exact opposite seems to be portrayed. Apparently, adults harbor ambiguous feelings towards children for, as Steven Bruhm attested in “Nightmare on Sesame Street,” (2006) eventually they are going “[…] to overthrow their parents and […] replace them in the matrices of power.” (106) This ‘natural’ course of events seems to be regarded as threatening, if this ‘revolt’ of the next generation is initiated too early, if the child is still unrefined, has not yet progressed to the Symbolic Order in the Lacanian sense, if the child is still pure id and has not yet fully developed its super-ego. The fear of the unrefined id, is negotiated in many horror movies and usually the outcome is imagined to be disastrous (e.g. The Ring 2002, Orphan *2009, *Sinister 2012). This fear of the uncontrolled aggressive child also appears in the common trope of the psychokiller who has mentally remained in a child-like state (e.g. Psycho 1960, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974, Identity 2003). In my presentation/paper, I am going to analyze the implications of such a depiction of children from a psychoanalytic point of view, shedding light on the more sinister representation of children in this particular genre.