In this imaginative new work, Adam Lowenstein explores the ways in which
a group of groundbreaking horror films engaged the haunting social
conflicts left in the wake of World War II, Hiroshima, and the Vietnam
War. Lowenstein centers Shocking Representation around readings of
films by Georges Franju, Michael Powell, Shindo Kaneto, Wes Craven, and
David Cronenberg. He shows that through allegorical representations
these directors' films confronted and challenged comforting historical
narratives and notions of national identity intended to soothe public
anxieties in the aftermath of national traumas.
Borrowing elements from art cinema and the horror genre, these directors
disrupted the boundaries between high and low cinema. Lowenstein
contrasts their works, often dismissed by contemporary critics, with the
films of acclaimed "New Wave" directors in France, England, Japan, and
the United States. He argues that these "New Wave" films, which were
embraced as both art and national cinema, often upheld conventional
ideas of nation, history, gender, and class questioned by the horror
films. By fusing film studies with the emerging field of trauma studies,
and drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, Adam Lowenstein offers a
bold reassessment of the modern horror film and the idea of national
cinema.