Scream with Me : Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980)

Horror film fans and ardent feminists will discover common ground—and share some screams—with Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism 1968-1980. Columbia University professor Eleanor Johnson entertains and educates as she dissects six films, detailing domestic and reproductive violence, misogyny and patriarchy with wit and relish. Far from stuffy academic lectures, Johnson’s essays read like you’re sitting next to her in a dark theater as she illuminates the cultural shifts that inform our understanding of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Stepford Wives (1975), The Omen (1976), Alien (1979) and The Shining (1980). During the time frame in which the six films were made, writes Johnson, American women “witnessed the bizarre, disorienting, and demoralizing trajectory” of the Equal Rights Amendment, which serves as the period’s scratchy soundtrack. Concurrently, frustrations about abortion laws gained steam and abortion went to court. Johnson notes that the amplifying effect of cinema “turned whispers” about domestic and reproductive violence “into screams.” Examples abound: In 1968 (and up until 1993), a husband could legally rape his wife, which Guy smugly claims to do in Rosemary’s Baby. The film, Johnson writes, “gave voice to a reality already well known to but unnamed by many American women: a reality in which they were forced to become pregnant and then to stay pregnant by their abusive husbands.” The Shining’s Jack Torrance, unforgettably played by Jack Nicholson, preyed upon his wife and son while under the influence of the malignant Stanley Hotel, signifying domestic violence. Cultural shifts since then, fueled by feminist waves and the #MeToo Movement, questioned whether a director like Roman Polanski, a convicted rapist and student “of how much strain and agony the female body and mind could take before crumbling,” was using his art to abet the abuse of women. But, Johnson suggests, some hope has arrived on the screen: Films like Paranormal Activity (2009) and Creep (2014) have infused the old horror tropes with “an emerging cultural awareness that male filmmakers . . . were altogether too often also predators and dehumanizers, and that they should be held accountable for that.” However, Johnson still raises the alarm. After the Dobbs decision recriminalized abortion, Johnson saw the horror classics she was teaching in a new, even scarier light. With women’s political, physical, medical and legal equality again under threat, there is new reason to witness the violence enacted on women—and to scream.