Seems the time is right for me to roll into the seventies here and present the fifth part of my thesis, my discussion of Carrie and the shift that occurs from the women of Psycho and Rosemary's Baby.  Today's cited works include the film itself, Vivian Sobchack's essay "Bringing It All Back Home:  Family Economy and Generic Exchange" from The Dread of Difference:  Gender and the Horror Film, Shelley Stamp Lindsey's essay "Horror, Femininity, and Carrie's Monstrous Puberty" from the same book, and Joseph Maddrey's Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue:  The Evolution of the American Horror Film.  Next time:  Halloween.

The 1970s: Independent Female Protagonist
     In the 1970s, the female protagonist began to become stronger and more able to protect herself. While some qualities of the main female characters of the milestone movies of the 1960s were apparent in the new horror actresses, it was a slightly greater degree of self-awareness, depth, and inner strength that set them apart from their predecessors. This change in traits was particularly seen in the female leads of two movies from the latter half of the decade. The first of these films, Brian de Palma's Carrie, has been analyzed in multiple pieces in terms of how the film discusses teenage and societal fears about growth, sexuality, and repression. De Palma also has been praised for crafting a movie that so effectively conveys the all-to-human desire to belong, while clearly and accurately describing high school life. At the same time, it is interesting to note De Palma's masterful ability to control his audience, eliciting just as many feelings of sympathy for Carrie because of the heinous actions of the high school clique as it does feelings of disgust and disdain at the murderous rampage that occurs as a result:
      "Adolescent Carrie is a pitiable victim of her culture who evokes sympathy. She is a nerd whose outrage, however horrific and excessive its expression, is a response to a comprehensible betrayal. [...]Carrie's fury is as justified as it is frightening-irrational in its power and force, perhaps, but rationally motivated" (Sobchack 151).
It is this interesting sympathy and empathy that make the character memorable and separate her from those who came before her while simultaneously moving toward the traits of those who would follow in later decades.

     Sissy Spacek's portrayal of Carrie White is different from the two aforementioned female protagonists for a multitude of reasons. In fact, one might interpret the overall performance as a microcosm of the evolution of the female lead from weak victim to stronger, more active heroine/anti-heroine. At the beginning of the movie, Carrie is spiritless, shy, and vulnerable. The more popular girls in the teenage hierarchy prey on her mercilessly, taunting her and throwing tampons at her in response to Carrie's reaction to her first period. She cowers in the corner of a shower while the twisted version of "hazing" continues. Visually, the viewer can see Carrie becoming more and more desperate for a way out. She screams for help and her eyes grow wide as she progresses further and further into hysterics. This event culminates in her first telekinetic feat, an exploding light bulb overhead. This scene is the first clue to the viewer that Carrie is not like her predecessors much less the average young woman. Where Marion and Rosemary were either helpless or could not effectively respond to changing surroundings, Carrie has supernatural powers that make her stronger and more dangerous than the rest of the girls. It is important to note, though, that she is not fully accustomed to this newfound energy and strength, needing to be "saved" and protected by the gym teacher during this particular scene. The movie addresses this fact by later showing Carrie researching telekinesis, miracles, and powers of the mind in the school library in an attempt to gain a fuller understanding of her abilities.

     A similar reluctance is shown when she tries to explain the fear and embarrassment she felt over her first period, the reaction of her schoolmates, and the exploding light bulb to her hyper-religious mother. Her mother responds by trying to make Carrie realize, through biblical readings and fundamentalist catholic literature, that these are all signs that something is wrong with her and that the devil is acting through her. "And God made Eve from the rib of Adam. And Eve was weak and loosed the raven on the world. And the raven was called Sin. Say it. The raven was called Sin!" (Carrie). When Carrie resists this idea, her mother responds violently, attempting to impose her will on the still-weak Carrie and force her to say exactly what she wants her to say. In so doing, Carrie is forced to admit to committing all the perceived "Sins of Women", as the title of the chapter in her mother's book says. In many ways, this particular scene shows the height of Carrie's vulnerability, ending with her being forcibly locked in a room filled with disturbing religious paraphernalia.

     The middle portion of the movie then appears to show the slow growth of Carrie's self-confidence and inner strength as she prepares for the climactic prom scene. This includes a series of scenes in which Carrie disobeys her mother's wishes and snubs her attempts to shame Carrie and restrain her from going to the dance. At one point, Carrie uses her mind to close windows and force her mother to talk to her, thus revealing "the power of the Devil" to her mother for the first time. Later, she would defuse her mother's final attempt to prevent her from going to the dance by actually using her powers on her mother, twice knocking her off her feet and onto a bed.
     However, overall, the prom sequence is the quintessential barometer of Carrie's growth as a protagonist and as a form of anti-hero. In it, Carrie is tricked by many of the same girls who mocked her in the opening scene. The girls nominate her prom queen only to dump a bucket of pig's blood onto her. Parallels can be drawn between the blood used in this action and the blood associated with the misunderstood period that was the impetus of the initial confrontation. (Lindsey 289-90) By this point in the movie, Carrie has honed her powers and inner strength and responds in an exponentially greater manner; much like the bucket of pig's blood could be seen as a much more serious insult than the initial hazing. Carrie's fiery, cataclysmic destruction of the gymnasium represents a form of filmic rebirth of female protagonists in which the previous weak, one-dimensional characters (including Carrie herself at the movie's beginning), are left behind. In their place is a character that reacts against oppression and punishes those who attempt to restrain her. (Maddrey 61-2) This particular idea is seen in the numerous murders and killings that occur in her initial rampage, the car she runs off the road with her mind as she walks home after the prom, and her mother who is killed with Carrie-controlled kitchen implements that stab her in such a way that she mimics the crucified statue seen in the fateful religious room. This final murder in particular can be seen as Carrie attempting to deliver a metaphoric fatal blow to a person who attempts to foster within her the restraint and weakness seen in many of the characters who preceded her.

Whilst I nurse this sunburn (more on that in a site report from the convention later this week), It's time for another piece of my epic.  Today we will be finishing off the 1960s by discussing Roman Polanski's classic Rosemary's Baby.  Cited works today include the film itself (because I'm paraphrasing the plot to discuss this properly), Gregory A. Waller's Introduction to American Horrors:  Essays on the Modern American Horror Film, Virginia Wright Wexman's "The Trauma of Infancy in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby" from that book, Carol J. Clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws:  Gender in the Modern Horror Film, and Reynold Humphries's The American Horror Film:  An Introduction.

     The other movie of the 1960s that tends to emphasize a weak female protagonist, though through somewhat different circumstances, is Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. In fact, the movie has even been considered, in much the same way as Psycho, as a crucial component of the beginning of the modern era of American horror films. (Waller 2) Regarding what specifically tends to be cited as the reasons for Rosemary's Baby's impact, the movie is often noted for Polanski's ability to make a movie with a degree of nebulousness in its main plotline separate from that seen in the story it was based on. "Though Polanski's screenplay stays close to Levin's original story, the movie maximizes the ambiguity between paranoid projection and real events that the novel repeatedly strives to resolve."(Wexman 37) Specifically what is being discussed most often is the degree to which the viewer of the movie, throughout almost the entire film, is made unsure of just how much of the events befalling Rosemary are actually happening in reality and how much of them are misinformed overreaction or imagination. While some analysts have claimed that Polanski made the answer abundantly obvious by the revelation of the coven at the movie's conclusion, the superimposing of an inhuman face over Rosemary's body, and filmic techniques meant to imply imprisonment and helplessness, the fact that Polanski never actually shows the child in the movie still leaves the question slightly open-ended. (36-7) In fact, it is this ambiguity that can show just how similar Rosemary really is to the aforementioned weak female lead, Marion in Psycho.
      Upon further analysis, while Rosemary is able to survive the entire movie, unlike Marion, it is interesting to note that, throughout the movie, she is unable to gain control of her situation, no matter what she attempts. She becomes a quintessential victim of her circumstances, her surroundings, her naiveté and the wants and desires of others. In the beginning of the movie, Rosemary willingly buys the fateful apartment with her husband Guy, even after discovering the building's dark, bloody history from her former landlord Hutch. She also, at least at first, allows herself to be sucked into a friendship with her elderly next-door neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castavet, initially not questioning her husband's closeness with Roman or strange occurrences relating to gifts she receives from them. She permits them to convince her to change her obstetrician from one she was recommended by a friend to one whom they endorse and who will prescribe treatments heavily influenced by Minnie's strange herbs. Also, on the night of conception itself, Rosemary's downfall is that she allows herself to be incapacitated, whether by tainted chocolate mousse or too much alcohol, and is thus totally unable to control and fend off her husband's sexual advances and desires. She was, in a manner of speaking, unwillingly impregnated: "When Guy tells Rosemary that he ‘didn't want to miss baby night,' he acknowledges not just an act of ‘necrophile' penetration, as he puts it the morning after, but impregnation as well."(Clover 80)
     As the movie continues, Rosemary becomes more and more suspicious of her husband and her neighbors. However, she still shows herself to be immensely weak in her convictions at multiple points over the story, most memorable of these being when she complains of both the raw meat she has begun to find herself eating and the excruciating pain she has been experiencing for the first few months of her pregnancy which Dr. Sapirstein has been ignoring. When the pain suddenly goes away as soon as it reaches its zenith, Rosemary returns to trusting Sapirstein and taking the Castavets' strange brew of herbs, suppressing the fears she once expressed. She also, to a degree, trusts her husband after she discovers he does not have a mark on his shoulders that would show he belonged to the coven. This particular example of Rosemary's naïveté is seriously egregious in that it goes against a slowly increasing amount of evidence that her husband may be untrustworthy, including his implication in the tragedies that befell a fellow actor and Hutch and his apparent unwillingness to listen to his wife's concerns regarding the Castavets.
     In the movie's final scenes, one sees Rosemary attempting everything in her power to determine the truth about her pregnancy or prevent the birth. She is thwarted in each attempt to either gain information or expose the coven, however. She attempts to determine the Castavets' secrets through research, yet her husband throws away her book when he figures out what she is doing. She tries to revisit Sapirstein to tell of her suspicions, only to realize he may be one of the Castavets' allies. She returns to her prior obstetrician, Dr. Hill, only to be betrayed by him to her husband and Sapirstein out of disbelief rather than allegiance. Finally, she attempts to run from Saperstein and Guy en route to the apartment, barricading herself inside the building. This fails as well when Guy is able to easily get through the locks with the doctor, as it is also his apartment, and sedate his wife. Ultimately, Rosemary is momentarily fooled into thinking she has had a miscarriage, discovers the truth when acting upon suspicions brought about by hearing a crying baby, and determines the extent of the coven's influences. Overall, the clearest proof of her victim role, her helplessness, and her general weakness is seen in the fact that she cannot suppress her maternal instincts and appears to agree to raise what is presumed to be the devil's child as her own. Thus, the movie ends on a note of subjugation and control in which the elders, Rosemary's doctor, and Rosemary's husband are able to utilize Rosemary's femininity and sexuality for their own gains. As put by Reynold Humphries in The American Horror Film: An Introduction:
"[...] what we are seeing is a persecuted young woman accepting the tasks of the dutiful mother and their attendant ideology. [...]For during the ‘rape' sequence the alternating shots of Guy and of Satan having sex with Rosemary insist on the piercing eyes of both: whether one accepts the supernatural reading or prefers a rational one, Rosemary will be under constant surveillance"(88-9).

Seeing as I'm currently fasting for blood work in the morning (that blood drive thing made me look at some other odd things in my life like random dizzy spells, leading me to consider the possibility that I am possibly maybe developing slight hypertension or diabetes), I'm watching the Dolphins episode of Penn and Teller:  BS (thank god for free on demand samplers), and I haven't done this in a while, IT'S TIME FOR PART THREE!  Today we will be attempting to prove that the characters of Marion and Lila in Psycho were not earthshattering changes as some might have you believe.    Sources cited today are: Psycho itself (though not physically, I am paraphrasing plot points here), the "Posters and Psycho Ads" special feature on the Psycho Collector's Edition dvd from 1998, Tony Williams's essay "Trying to Survive on the Darker Side:  1980s Family Horror" from the literary criticism collection The Dread of Difference:  Gender and the Horror Film, and Carol J. Clover's classic book Men, Women, and Chainsaws.  Of particular note in this section:  A)I have no idea how I got a B+ on this because GOD did this have spelling and grammar errors before I edited it for this, B)This section contains the first instance of me purposely rubbing my advisor's face in my use of Demon Knight later on, and C)I'm VERY thankful for that Carol Clover quote at the end.  Enjoy!  Next time:  Rosemary's Baby.

     Over the course of the history of the horror film, the role of female characters in horror movies has slowly evolved from supporting, weak, powerless roles in some "creature features" to women who are strong, self-sustaining, powerful fighters that attempt to survive at all costs. This change did not occur all at once. Rather it has happened in stages that one can see by examining movies released during each decade from the 1960s on that were either popular or which strikingly showed the trend of the decade in the evolution of the feminine. While many of the movies that will be discussed are of high critical acclaim and are beloved by a sizeable audience, it is sometimes the cult film that can prove the progression equally well. It is for this reason that, while films like Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, and The Silence of the Lambs should rightly be discussed here, so as well should the "slasher" film milestones some consider to have been detrimental to the genre due to the deluge of sequels they spawned. Even lesser known, sometimes critically dismissed, offbeat movies such as Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight deserve some credit in the progression due to how certain characters in them are able to show depth, emotion, and strength heretofore unseen in film and demonstrate the overall progression of female characters in general.
     It is important to note that the 1960s can be chosen as the first dividing decade due to a small change seen in two movies of the decade. The first film that features this is Psycho, though not because women exhibited different characteristics in this movie than they had previously in any way, shape, or form. In fact, the main difference between the female protagonist and her sister, Marion and Lila respectively, and the women of the movies that preceded them is that Marion is the main character focused on in the first act of the film. It is her story and the consequences of her actions that allow the plot to move forward and the movie's events to occur. That is not to say that the movie was marketed in that way, though, as Anthony Perkins's role as Bates was top-billed both in the trailer and on the movie posters and lobby cards, compared to Janet Leigh's which was last in all the marketing materials. ("Posters and Psycho Ads")
     Marion is the character whom the action revolves around from the beginning of the film and is the reason for the developments that occur as the movie goes on. However, to claim that she acts differently because of this is patently false. The opening sequence of the movie shows her in a motel room with her lover, having sex with him and discussing the possibility of marrying him. During this sequence, Marion appears to be quite uncomfortable with the secretive circumstances with which she must meet with her lover and acts so as to bring some degree of respectability and commitment into their relationship. She then goes to her job (a secretary-like position). At her job she is presented with $40,000 cash as part of a real-estate job and is supposed to deposit it in a safe-deposit box. Instead, she steals the money and leaves town in an attempt to find both herself and her lover. Along the way, she lies to a policeman, changes cars, and ends up at the Bates Motel after leaving behind the suspicious policeman at a used car lot. Once there, after a private dinner with Norman, Marion returns to her room where she is stabbed. Throughout this sequence of events, Marion acts of her own free will, attempts to be somewhat self-sufficient for the time period, and is, as a result, dead halfway through the movie. In order for her death to be avenged, it takes her lover, Sam, and Lila to hunt Norman down and discover his secret, with Sam specifically being the one to knock Norman out, rescuing Lila from mortal peril in the process.
     Thus, in general, the female roles of Marion and Lila represent a small step forward rather than a massive change. The characters in the film are far more similar to the expected role of the female in horror to that point, particularly Lila who only survives the movie because of Sam's protection. (Williams 170) Marion falls less into this category because she attempts to express her femininity and exercise her rights. However, she is still constrained by societal roles as seen through her job as a secretary and the questions she is asked by the police officer who appears to find it very suspicious that a woman driving alone would be in such a rush. (He asks her multiple times if anything is wrong and also follows her down the road to her next destinations.) She is also helpless in that she is taken by surprise by Norman and is thus powerless to stop herself from being stabbed to death. In general, Psycho is a turning point in the history of horror movies in that it redefined the way movies are marketed and the way in which directors and actors instigate fear in audiences. However, when the roles of the two primary women are examined, it is seen that the development of the feminine had not yet fully begun. Rather, Psycho was simply one of the first popular horror movies to have a woman in a protagonist role, even though she was still just as weak as women in horror movies had been before. Overall, while some of its plot elements were quite derivative, it was how they were put together and portrayed by the actors that made the movie such a touchstone. As Carol J. Clover puts it while describing Psycho in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws:
"Its elements are familiar: the killer is the psychotic product of a sick family, but still recognizably human; the victim is a beautiful, sexually active woman; the location is not-home, at a Terrible Place; the weapon is something other than a gun; the attack is registered from the victim's point of view and comes with shocking suddenness. None of these features is original, but the unprecedented success of Hitchcock's particular formulation, above all the sexualization of both motive and action, prompted a flood of imitations and variations" (23-4, underlining mine).

And now part 2.  In which I admit that Psycho is worthy of general praise for being an overall classic and show how.  In the next part, I'll break down why, while it may be a classic, its far LESS original than most people might think in some areas.  Cited in this run:  AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, and Ransom Riggs's article in Mental Floss Magazine (Nov-Dec 2006)"Masterpieces:  Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho".  Enjoy......

The 1960s: Weak Female Protagonists
To claim that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is unoriginal and uninspired is just as large a fallacy as claiming it is the only line that defined all movies that followed it. It is perfectly logical to present the argument that Psycho is a classic of horror in its own right. After all, a movie like Psycho is not dubbed the 18th best overall movie and most thrilling movie of the last 100 years by the American Film Institute for no reason.(AFI's 100Years...100 Movies, AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills) Psycho is best known for having one of the most effective "twist endings" in the history of film. It's also distinctive because it is one of the first mainstream horror movies to be promoted as having a female protagonist. However, what may be Psycho and Hitchcock's greatest legacy is the ability of the film and its director to create the maximum tension and suspense in the viewing public through techniques that would become horror staples, particularly in the slasher genre some claim it fostered. In particular, analysts examine the infamous 45 second shower scene as proof of this. Using a soundtrack meant to evoke the action of stabbing a victim, foreshadowing by showing a shadow entering the bathroom during the protagonist's shower, and camera angles throughout the montage showing the killer's, victim's, and "knife's" perspectives; Hitchcock is able to "create the impression of nudity and violence without actually showing a breast, a buttock, or a knife puncturing skin" (Riggs 25). To this day, the sequence is seen as one of the most effective and scariest sequences in the history of the genre.

While the "shower scene" is memorable, it alone does not make Psycho compelling. Without effective character development, cinematography, and direction, the movie would have probably fallen flat. Fortunately for the annals of film criticism and film history, Anthony Perkins's portrayal of Norman Bates, along with Hitchcock and cinematographer John L. Russell's movie-making style, serve to turn Psycho into a classic. Perkins's ability to present Norman Bates to the audience as a meek, sympathetic character trapped under the thumb of an overbearing "mother" makes it all the more likely that the viewers will be stunned by the truth about the character's deep psychological disturbances and murderous tendencies. After all, Bates would go on to become one of the most infamous killers in film history partially because of the fact that the mental faculties that could lead to such a series of actions were not yet fully understood at the time of Psycho's release, nor were they talked about very often in everyday conversation. Hitchcock understood the power and unexpectedness of Psycho's ending, as well as how different his villain character was from the norm, showing this by both adding characters that explained Perkins's psychoses and family background and driving the point those characters made home by "[cutting] to Norman in a holding cell, grinning madly with his mother's dead face superimposed over his own" (27). Through this method, Hitchcock is able to explain to the audience just what could cause the mind-blowing, shocking activities they just witnessed. Overall, Psycho as a whole, including its psychologically-layered plot/ending and Hitchcock's genius at directing, storytelling, and cinematography; definitely deserves to be remembered as a masterpiece of filmmaking. However, this does not by any means prove that Psycho is the full, complete, and sole genre shift it is sometimes seen as, particularly in an area that is seen by some as one of its hallmarks of originality: its female protagonist.

And so we begin.  Today:  the intro. It'll take a bit for me to edit the next part as it will get into the body of the paper then.  The cited works in this section are:  Reynold Humphries's "The American Horror Film:  An Introduction", Joseph Maddrey's "Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue:  The Evolution of the American Horror Film", and Kendall Phillips's "Projected Fears:  Horror Films and American Culture".  I will be saying that info at the beginning of each part.  Now then:  *clears throat*

MILESTONES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HORROR FILM AS TRACED THROUGH THE ROLES OF WOMEN

"One word can sum up the shift from classic horror to modern horror: Psycho" (Humphries 85).
"While there is considerable debate over which film inaugurated the modern era of the horror film, Psycho(1960) is among the earliest candidates" (Maddrey 48).

      To write a film criticism piece solely claiming that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is influential, a milestone in the history of horror, or a general masterpiece of American cinema would be redundant, derivative, and, some might say, unnecessary overall due to the sheer mass of analysis of the movie that exists. The impact of this excess of research is expressed by Kendall Phillips in the chapter devoted solely to the film in his book Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture: "With little doubt, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is the most heavily analyzed film in the long career of the most investigated director in the history of American film. [...] The film has been the subject of numerous books, hundreds of essays, and indeed, the critical and academic attention to Hitchcock and Psycho played an integral part in the development of film studies". (61)

      However, to claim, as Reynold Humphries does in the quote that begins this essay, that Psycho is the sole dividing line between a "classic" horror movie and a "modern" horror movie is short-sighted and somewhat flawed. While it is true that, style-wise, Psycho was a visionary work that influenced numerous other movies over the years, to say it is the only movie to divide between "classic" and "modern" both oversimplifies the development of the horror movie and neglects numerous other movies that have advanced the plots and popularity of horror through the last 40 years through various stylistic approaches. Instead, this particular analysis will attempt to first show the flaw in describing Psycho as a totally revolutionary movie, different in every way from those which came before. It will then divide the "modern" horror movies that followed Psycho into subsections based on the development of female protagonists from the helpless, weak characters of the 1960s, through the strong, self-aware characters of the 1970s, into the stereotypical "Final Girl" of the slasher films of the 1980s, and finally into the protagonists of some 1990s movies featuring "hybrid" protagonists, women whose character traits are enhanced by stereotypically masculine actions. It will conclude with an examination of movies from the 21st Century both proving just how influential these previous films have been overall, and depicting the state of the female protagonist since 2000. In this way, it will be proven that Psycho, while undeniably a cinematic tour de force, was not the final step in either the evolution of the horror movie or the progression of the female main character.

All right, I'm comfortable enough with my slightly re-edited intro now to begin doing this.  Updates will be irregular as I'm not sure how many parts this is gonna be or how much proofreading some of these sections will need.  All will be put into the same category though on my blog, so you should be able to find them there.  Now then:

For this first part of this, I just wanted to give a touch of background in what lead to this project.  The program I was a part of in college forced us to do academic research papers in both my Freshman and Sophomore years.  I remember doing one on Donatello and his works, I remember doing one on the evolution of Freedom, Equality, Slavery, etc. in Enlightenment literature, and I BARELY remember writing a paper about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how his preachings were based in Judeo-Christian philosophy that he had read and in his upbringing.  (Riveting, no?)  So time rolls on, and in Junior year they let us go into Seminar classes on more localized subjects.  I took one on Southeast Asian Culture and Anthropology which was very interesting and a class on human sexuality. 

That was where the seed of this was planted:  The Human Sexuality and Gender class.  At the end of it, we were to write an essay relating to the subjects we'd discussed in class.  There was no set rule of what we had to do, it just had to relate to the class and show that we could apply what we'd learn to something important to us outside the class.  By that time, I was becoming more and more horror-loving, so I thought about androgyny.  I thought about why certain characters in horror are gay, or why some male characters have feminine qualities, or why a director might use transsexualism as a plot device.  So I banged out a relatively quick 7-pager hitting Silence of the Lambs, Stephen King's IT, Sleepaway Camp, and the "Spoiled" and "A Fatal Caper" eps of Tales from the Crypt.

I actually enjoyed writing that paper so much that when the time came for our senior thesis, it was still on my mind.  We were told that we had our choice of what to do.  I still went in thinking that I had to do something classically academic.  Until someone stood up and said they were doing it on the process of opening an art exhibition.  Someone else had done it on the process of opening an AIDS musem in NYC.  And I thought....if they can do that, then I should be able to....and thus this was born.

But not anything like this.  The original outline was an unfocused mess.  At that point, the thesis was about just how sex was used, it didn't prove a point or anything.  It was going to cover how adult film stars cross over into mainstream film usually through horror, androgyny and homosexuality(expansion of the first paper), sex as an amplifier of unsettling scenes, sex and religion, sex as a marker of the victim, sex as it relates to famous movie villains and their characteristics, and sex as a trap.  The number of movies used wouldve been astronomical and I'dve prolly had to deliver it with a crane.  My main professor in this class though pointed out the unfocused aspect and told me to look back over the books I was using for support.  Which was when I started to see that people kept using phrases as "Shift" and "inaugurated" the modern era in discussing Psycho.  And by that time, I'd seen Psycho and I could tell it was good, but I knew other movies came after that changed the genre as well.  And thus I pushed for a fluid timeline of modern horror rather than the Psycho dividing line theory (as I started calling it) and everything else fell into place.  It led to the chronological structure, the idea to use fewer films, etc.

I'm very proud of it and soon, I'll begin serializing it in earnest, but for now I just wanted to let everyone know what led up to the paper in my life.

And yes, that is the title page I used.  I had the idea to use a picture of each main female protagonist pre-2000 I focused on in it.  Jeryline was pretty hard to find a good photo of.