Why has the mask been such an enduring generic motif in horror cinema? This book explores its transformative potential historically across myriad cultures, particularly in relation to its ritual and mythmaking capacities, and its intersection with power, ideology and identity. All of these factors have a direct impact on mask-centric horror cinema: meanings, values and rituals associated with masks evolve and are updated in horror cinema to reflect new contexts, rendering the mask a persistent, meaningful and dynamic aspect of the genre's iconography. This study debates horror cinema's durability as a site for the potency of the mask's broader symbolic power to be constantly re-explored, re-imagined and re-invented as an object of cross-cultural and ritual significance that existed long before the moving image culture of cinema.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note
Situating Masks and Horror Cinema Masks and Horror in Literary and Performance Traditions and Early Cinema Masks in Horror Film before 1970 Skin Masks: Ritual, Power and Transformation Blank Masks: Ritual, Power and Transformation Animal Masks: Ritual, Power and Transformation Repurposed Masks: Ritual, Power and Transformation Technological Masks: Ritual, Power and Transformation.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed November 21, 2019)
Series
Horror studies.
Available in Other Form
Print version: Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra, 1974- Masks in horror cinema. Cardiff : University of Wales Press, 2019
