The Politics of Hysteria in David Cronenberg's "The Brood"
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 22, 2019
- Creator
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Averett, Kate
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Art and Art History, Art History
- Abstract
- This thesis situates David Cronenberg’s 1979 film The Brood within the politics of family during the late 1970s by examining the role of monstrous birth as a form of hysteria. Specifically, I analyze Cronenberg’s monstrous Mother, Nola Carveth, within the role of the family in the 1970s, when the patriarchal, nuclear family is under question in American society. In his essay The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s critic Robin Wood began a debate surrounding Cronenberg’s early films, namely accusing the director of reactionary misogyny and calling for a political critique of his and other horror director’s work. The debate which followed has sidestepped The Brood, disregarding it as a complication to his oeuvre due to its autobiographical basis. This film, however, offers an opportunity to apply Wood’s call for political criticism to portrayals of hysteria in contemporary visual culture; this thesis takes up this call and fills an important interpretive gap in the scholarship surrounding gender in Cronenberg’s early films.
- Date of publication
- May 2017
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Bauer, JJ
- Magee, Carol
- Levine, Cary
- Degree
- Master of Arts
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2017
- Language
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