Sex, Foreigners, Repression and Ultra-Violence: The “Monsters” of Bride of Frankenstein, Cat People, Psycho and Clockwork Orange

The “monsters” of the film’s Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935), Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942), Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) and Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) can be analyzed as allegorical characters representing a challenge to the dominant social definition of “normal” or “right and wrong” existing during their film’s creation. Because of the character’s inability to fit harmoniously within the structure of society, these “monsters” are a threat to the status quo. Although each character is a different manifestation of a “monster”, they are all similarly tortured by the unique traits that ostracize them from the average civilian in their respective film worlds.

The earliest of our selection of horror films deals with the sexual outsider. Created in the 1935 by James Whale, who faced the public’s perception of his own monstrosity as a homosexual during a time when sexuality was a social concern, controlled and manipulated by press, government, schools and religious institutions. Bride of Frankenstein shows an abnormal creature looking for companionship and being constantly rejected, in the end even by the bride created for him. As a homosexual living during a time when this was unacceptable, Whale faced his own dilemmas in finding love and the internalization of social disapproval. Frankenstein’s bride’s rejection of Frankenstein parallels this internalization, where a homosexual may turn against his own self and those who may be compatible with him because of socially defined abnormality of it.

German Expressionism influenced visual style of Bridge of Frankenstein, where the high contrasts of light and shadow in disorienting geometric shapes can be seen in older German silent films of the 20’s such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. This style lends itself to conveying the theme of the dapple ganger, not only present in the internal duality of the characters, but also the double meaning of the story itself. Half of the meaning of the film comes from the plot of the story, that being of a man-made monster brought to life and searching for companionship and rejected by “normal” people. The second being the underlying story, which parallels the social disapproval of homosexuals during the time and the pain it caused for those who where sexually attracted to their same gender.

The scene where Frankenstein’s bride is awaken from the dead encapsulates this expressionistic style of Bride of Frankenstein. Frankenstein comes down the stairs into the lab wearing an all black suit; the patterning of illumination on the wall creates bands of light and dark, slanted and unmotivated by any sources, but creating a vertigo effect leading down into the lab of the scientist. A close up on Frankenstein as he searches for his bride illustrates heavy shadows on the ridges of his face. He discovered his bride and she is dressed in all white, more evenly lit and with a lightening streak of white in her hair. These elements continue throughout the film, where lighting is not always motivated by sources, but motivated by the psychological implications of the scene.

Realism steps behind design, which lends itself to creating the psychological and unseen reality of the characters. Because the subject is not of the common world and the underlying social commentary is also invisible, it is the psychological understanding the audience has of what the creature is undergoing that is important. The black and whites society creates defining what is “good” and what is “bad” only serve to disorient and alienate those who live in the greys and soft edges of acceptability and normalcy.

Irena Dubrovna Reed in Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 Cat People is an example of an outsider attempting to conform to the definition of normalcy in American society. Despite her best efforts, her character serves as the personification of the fear of foreigners influence on traditional America. She is a character who although attempting to fit into average America (settle down, marry an American, own a pet, repress her nature with therapy) is unable to deny the animalistic instincts of her country of origin. She enters the equation as a mysterious, exotic, and sexually desired woman who the lead male protagonist Oliver Reed falls in love with, despite the fact that there is the wholesome American girl Alice Moore who has interest in him.

During a post World War 2 time, when women were entering the work force and the dynamic of the family unit was undergoing change, the horror film takes on elements of the noir with Cat People. The film blends the Femme Fatale with the Monster and portrays female empowerment as the equivalent to female sexuality having dominance over men’s rationality. The female antagonist does not always consciously utilize this psychosexual element. It can reside as a dormant threat that can arise when men and society do not have full control over the woman. This is shown in Irena’s struggle and ultimate relent to the darkness of her “jealousy” over her husband’s relationship with Alice.

The scene where Irina stalks Alice down an alleyway after Alice has parted ways with Irina’s husband after work is suited for any noir film of the 40’s in style and pace. The scene begins after Alice and Irina’s husband leave a restaurant were the two were having coffee. Alice is evenly lit with hair lights giving her a hot edge, Irina is half in shadow half in light as she watches them from behind a bush. As we first enter the ally, Alice walks into the light as she travels down, while Irina walks into the shadow and the stalking begins. The suspense is built dominantly by the sound of high heels as the two women progress down the ally, we see the women walk through highlights and shadows. 

This set up is similar to the lighting set up from the Bride of Frankenstein scene described earlier in this essay, where we almost completely lose them in the darkness. We cut to shots of their feet, Irina’s moving quickly and definitely towards Alice. The footsteps stop and Alice walks completely into darkness, only her form is shown against the black background. She turns and looks and Irina has disappeared from behind her. Now alarmed, she begins to run and we come to close ups on her face looking back. This tactic of suspense building has become a staple of noir, thrillers and horror, building a paranoia in the audience and an unknowing as to where the monster is coming from.

This sense of paranoia of the unseen grows as we continue onto our next film Psycho. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960, it explores the unseen monster within us, in a hypothetical examination of how those around us create our mental instability and define our sense of right and wrong. Rather than a foreigner whose strangeness brings dangerous elements into the established order, Psycho looks at the dangerous element within the “normal” person, as seen in the characters Norman Bates and Lila Crane.

The story begins with the introduction of Lila Crane, an innocuous secretary who on the outside appears to be a submissive and normal citizen, who allows the potentially offensive sexual advances of one of her boss’s clients and maintains her position for her employer for 10 years. But her second side begins the film’s spiral into chaos, as her sensational liaisons with a man from another town lead her to steal 40,000$ from the offensive client and attempts to start a new life with her lover. Through her escape from her suburban town, Hitchcock leads us on a road of paranoia of all institutional figures, Lila’s boss, the police and even Lila herself who begins to doubt her actions and decides to turn herself in.

Psycho continues a psychosexual undercurrent, as Norman Bates’s monstrosities are linked to his repression. Norman Bates is depicted as a likeable and unremarkable character who runs the hotel of his mother, a woman whose mysterious rejection of outsiders and abuse towards Bates leads Lila into believing she has corrupted her son’s life. Lila attempts to encourage Bates to stand up for himself and separate his life from that of his mothers. Unknown to Lila, Bates has indeed stood up for himself by murdering his mother, but his mother’s influence has already permeated deeper into his psyche than even he knows.

Voyeurism and the invasion of a person’s life and mind are a large part of Psycho’s tactics. The audience comes from the public sphere, establishing shots of the town, to the intimate pillow talk of Lila and her lover inside their hotel room. Further we transgress the perceived safety of walls and invade Lila’s personal space, watching her along side Bates through a peephole while she is in the undressing. Finally in Lila’s most vulnerable, while she is showering, the audience takes the place of Bates with the point of view of her murderer. The film progresses deeper into the minds of the characters, as the mystery of the relationship between Norman Bate’s and his mother is revealed.

Meanwhile Hitchcock himself digs deeper into the consciousness of the audience, dictating their will as he directs the film. Hitchcock was a stylized director who, as with the previously mentioned first two films, was influenced by the German-European esthetic during his time working UFA and the editing practices of soviet montage. Hitchcock found ways to incorporate the spiral into his films, both visually and through his narrative spiral into the depths of insanity. For example during the middle climax of Psycho when Lila is murdered, we see the spiral of blood in the bathtub cut to a close up spiraling out of the pupil of her eye. This signifies the beginning of an inescapable dominoed fate, once the transgressional action has been taken.

Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange made in 1971 could be interpreted as a film built around a series of transgressional actions, to which society attempts to correct and in doing so further damns the individual struggling to find logic in a chaotic world. During a time of civil rights movements and struggles for equality between all classes, genders and races, Clockwork Orange examines the youth culture. It deals particularly with the extreme acts of violence that the youth could potentially release against their oppressors and previously defined notions of normalcy.  The film looks at the cause of these violent preoccupations, questioning where this violence comes from and who is the true victim in the fight for social dominance.

The main character Alex, a youth leader for a gang of droogs, enters industrial creations of society and physically violates the people residing there. The first violent encounter the audience witnesses begins when we see Alex and his droogs drinking at a milk bar amongst other youths before heading out for a bit of “ultra violence.” They find their first victim beneath a bridge, an older homeless man. Alex professes his hatred for the alcoholic waste that has reached middle age with nothing and standing for nothing, a potential allegory for how the youth reacted toward war veterans. Soldiers who have returned home physically and intellectually wounded from Korea and Vietnam and unable to continue as productive members of society.

It seems that aesthetically the world Alex inhabits has two realms. There is the side of the decaying past, such as under the bridge and the old opera house where Alex and his gang battle a rival gang in the midst of enjoying the rape of a young woman. Here reside the violent youth and the broken middle-aged, separate from society and warring against one another. The other is the sector of the wealthy, the modern house where Alex and his gang enter and violate a well off woman and her husband, as well as the institution that takes Alex and attempts to reprogram him to be civil. This is the sector of society that dominants the weak such as Alex and maintains the power, despite Alex’s attempts to disrupt it.

Although Alex is shown throughout the film as the perpetrator of ultra violence and consequently the obvious villain, there is the complexity of what is taking place against him, the traditional violence of the status quo. Although there is the veneer of civilization for the wealthy and institutional who take action to “cure” Alex of his mental disturbances, the way that they do this is brutal and in it’s own right deeply inhumane. Where as Alex physically assaults his victims, “civilization” assaults Alex’s mind, forcing his eyes to remain open to violent images while corrupting the only human element he had left, his appreciation of music. This brings up the question to if there is any party which has not given into their brutality in this scenario.

Through the process of living alongside the characters Alex, Norman Bates, Irena and Frankenstein, the audience is given privy to the experience of an outsider, an entity they may never have thought to consider as anything but a threat, if encountered in their everyday life. But rather than an automatic dismissal or simple demonization of the other, horror films present an avenue to psychosocial understanding for the average person. Perhaps even prompting those attempting to create order in society, to loosen their grip on normal and become a bit more open to the unusual. Although it may be too idealistic to expect acceptance or sympathy from the audience, although it is definitely possible, perhaps audiences can at least view differences as less black and white and potentially entertaining.