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The wounds of nations explores the ways in which horror films allows international audiences to deal with the horrors of recent history – from genocide to terrorist outrage, nuclear war to radical political change. Far from being mere escapism or titillation, it shows how horror (whether it be from 1970s America, 1980s Germany, post-Thatcherite Britain or post-9/11 America) is in fact a highly political and potentially therapeutic film genre that enables us to explore, and potentially recover from, the terrors of life in the real world.
Exploring a wide range of stylistically distinctive and generically diverse film texts, Blake proffers a radical critique of the nation-state and the ideologies of identity it promulgates, showing that horror cinema can offer us a disturbing, yet perversely life affirming, means of working through the traumatic legacy of recent times.
Introduction: traumatic events and international horror cinema
I German and Japanese horror – the traumatic legacy of world war two
II The traumatised 1970s and the threat of apocalypse now
III: From Vietnam to 9/11: the Orientalist other and the American poor white
IV: New Labour new horrors – the post-Thatcherite crisis of British masculinity
Conclusions
Bibliography
Filmography
Index