New England as landscape to female horror in The Witch

Authors

  • Laura Loguercio Canepa Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, Centro de Pesquisa em Comunicação Audiovisual, São Paulo, 04705-000
  • Rodrigo Carreiro Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Centro de Artes e Comunicação (CAC)/Departamento de Comunicação Social, Recife - PE, 50740-550

Keywords:

Cinema, Feminine Horror, American Gothic, New England, The Witch

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to conduct an analysis of the film The Witch (Robert Eggers, USA, 2015) in order to demonstrate how the issue of the female autonomy in a fundamentalist Christian society and in the wild and inhospitable space of New England, builds, drives, and modulates the conventions of horror within that narrative. We will first examine how the historical and religious context of the seventeenth-century US produced families incapable of dealing with the idea of female autonomy, seen as unnatural – therefore, potentially supernatural. We will also briefly discuss how the US historical process of the XVII and XVIII centuries has given rise to a long tradition of horror stories passed in the New England region to which The Witch is also related.

Author Biographies

Laura Loguercio Canepa, Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, Centro de Pesquisa em Comunicação Audiovisual, São Paulo, 04705-000

Laura Loguercio Cánepa is PhD in Multimedia (Unicamp, 2008) and MA in Communication Sciences (USP, 2002). She concluded, in 2014, her Post-Doctorate research in the Department of Cinema, Television and Radio of USP. She is currently Coordinator and Professor of the Graduate Program in Communications at Anhembi Morumbi University. She is leader of the research group “Expanded Cinema From Stereoscopy to Web Footage: new visual regimes in the 21st century”. In the first semester of 2019, she completed a postdoctoral internship (Visiting Research Fellow) at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, at University of Leeds (UK).

Rodrigo Carreiro, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Centro de Artes e Comunicação (CAC)/Departamento de Comunicação Social, Recife - PE, 50740-550

Rodrigo Carreiro is a professor of post-graduate studies and undergraduate studies of Film at the Federal University of Pernambuco. He conducted a post-doctoral research at Fluminense Federal University, in Rio de Janeiro, and holds a PhD and a MA in Film Studies from UFPE. His interest areas of research includes film sound,
stilystics and genre cinema, mostly horror films and thrillers.

References

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Adélia Sampaio

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Published

2020-01-22

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2020): Women and space in contemporary cinema

Section

Special Section