ENG1230 The Social Thriller

Twenty-first century cinema’s most subversive vehicle for timely cultural debate, social thrillers are defined by writer-director Jordan Peele as “horror movies where the ultimate villain is society.” Unlike their “social problem/message picture” predecessors of the 1940s and 50s, however, social thrillers notably conceal their didactic intent beneath the bells and whistles of genre convention while advancing urgent sociopolitical critique. Tracking the emergence of this popular and influential form over a half-century, students will explore its rhetorical and discursive power in suspense-driven allegories on diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice. This film studies course surveys a varied range of classic and contemporary movies and television that may include (fully or in excerpt): Get Out, Seconds, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Night of the Living Dead, Dirty Harry, The Twilight Zone, The Brood, Ingrid Goes West, Nanny, Black Mirror, Parasite, Candyman, and Promising Young Woman among others. Since social thrillers emphasize the experiences of those culturally marginalized due to age, race, ethnicity, religion, (dis)ability, class, citizenship, gender, and sexuality, we will consider the way literary and cinematic form alternately limits and expands opportunities for political agency among historically restricted groups.

 

Credits

4 sh

Offered

• Winter

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will demonstrate their ability to analyze and interpret films when they:
    Practice formal modes of interpretation
    Practice developing interpretations based on evidence
    Practice intertextual and comparative analysis and interpretation
    Examine issues of genre and form
    Consider authorial choices
2. Students will demonstrate an awareness of cinema as informing and informed by a variety of contexts when they:
    Examine films in their historical, cultural, social, political, and economic contexts
    Explore film texts in relation to other cultural productions and mediums, including but not limited to literature, painting, sculpture, television, graphic art, popular music, etc.
    Draw on interdisciplinary/intradisciplinary approaches
3. Students will demonstrate the ability to engage with theory and criticism when they:
    Encounter ideas and methods informed by theory and criticism
    Recognize and apply diverse schools of theory (social, critical, cultural)
    Engage with popular/public and scholarly interpretations of film
4. Students will engage with one or more issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism when they:
    Practice antiracism in relation to literary studies
    Consider intersectionality while reading literary texts
    Read and engage an inclusive range of texts and approaches from dominant and non-dominant voices