Palmer, Lakkaya Armahn;
(2025)
Ferocious Fathers: Masculinity and Fatherhood in American Horror Cinema, 1970-1980.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
After the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), a new sub-genre of horror films known as ‘familial horror’ gained popularity. In horror cinema of the 1970s, the shift in the identity of the monster went from external threats and ‘creatures’ to the once praised revered patriarch who had been represented as a figure of reverence but had quickly become a figure of contempt. This research seeks to address why fatherhood went, in the 1970s and beyond, from being idolised to something depicted as violent and monstrous. This research fills a gap in scholarship by offering a sustained analysis of fatherhood within horror films from this new perspective. This research develops a range of original fatherhood archetypes that emerged in 1970s American horror cinema, which revealed different characteristics associated with the nature of fatherhood within broader American society. For example, at the start of the decade, fatherhood was depicted as something that started to lose its power to those who transgressed societal norms, to by the decade's end, something explicitly violent and nostalgic, longing for the promise of achieving the American Dream. The archetypes of fatherhood established in this research have continued and evolved in recent horror cinema, highlighting their significance for understanding the genre. This research takes an interdisciplinary approach by incorporating film theory and psychoanalysis with social and cultural history to highlight how socio-political factors contributed to the construction of these fatherhood archetypes, as well as gender and family studies to showcase how the father’s position within the nuclear family and the consequences of this when his position was perceived to be coming under threat; further adding to the construction of the ferocious father as a theoretical framework.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Ferocious Fathers: Masculinity and Fatherhood in American Horror Cinema, 1970-1980 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of the Americas |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205591 |
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