"There's an often repeated argument that horror has undergone an "elevation" in recent years, with sophisticated films such as , Hereditary , and The Babadook examining social and political issues through a spooky lens. But film critics will tell you that horror has always been political, and that's the focus of Eleanor Johnson's new book, Scream With Me: Horror Films & the Rise of American Feminism, 1968-1980 ."
""I thought to myself, there's something here that's larger than just a lecture," Johnson told Jezebel in a recent conversation. That's how Scream With Me took shape. The book analyzes how The Exorcist (1973), The Stepford Wives (1975), (1976), (1979), and The Shining (1980), depicted women's equal rights struggles during the second wave of feminism."
Late-1960s through 1980 American horror films used supernatural, domestic, and bodily scares to reflect and interrogate second-wave feminism and reproductive-rights conflicts. Rosemary's Baby frames pregnancy as a site of control and abjection, paralleling Roe v. Wade and the later Dobbs decision's effects on women's autonomy. The Exorcist stages possession as a crisis of bodily integrity and medical authority. The Stepford Wives critiques enforced domestic conformity and gendered labor. Carrie centers adolescent female rage and the policing of female bodies. Alien and The Shining dramatize workplace exploitation, maternal precarity, and the collapse of domestic safety as political anxieties about gender equality.
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