Masks in horror cinema : eyes without faces / Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra, author.

Series:

Horror studies.

Horror studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Horror films--History and criticism.

Horror films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (185 pages).

Place of Publication:

Cardiff : University of Wales Press, [2019]

Summary:

Why has the mask been such an enduring generic motif in horror cinema? This book explores its transformative potential historically across myriad cultures, particularly in relation to its ritual and mythmaking capacities, and its intersection with power, ideology and identity. All of these factors have a direct impact on mask-centric horror cinema: meanings, values and rituals associated with masks evolve and are updated in horror cinema to reflect new contexts, rendering the mask a persistent, meaningful and dynamic aspect of the genre's iconography. This study debates horror cinema's durability as a site for the potency of the mask's broader symbolic power to be constantly re-explored, re-imagined and re-invented as an object of cross-cultural and ritual significance that existed long before the moving image culture of cinema.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781786834980

1786834987