Modern Ghost Melodramas : 'What Lies Beneath' (Film Culture in Transition)

Walker, Michael

Routledge（2025/12発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 484 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781041182986
• DDC分類 791

Full Description

The popular and critical successes of films like The Sixth Sense and The Ring and its sequels in the late 1990s led to an impressive international explosion of scary films dealing with ghosts. This book takes a close look at a number of those films from different countries, including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Great Britain. Making a crucial distinction between these atmospheric films and conventional horror, Michael Walker argues that they are most productively seen as ghost melodramas, which opens them up to a powerful range of analytic tools from the study of melodrama, including, crucially, psychoanalysis.

Contents

1. Introduction 2. Three major predecessors 3. The fallow years: an assortment of ghosts SEMINAL FILMS 4. Ghosts in the city 5. Ghosts in the machine 6. Schoolgirl angst 7. Childhood abuse EVOLUTION OF THE CYCLE 8. Generic developments 1: Messages from the dead 9. Spain and history 1: Politics and war 10. Hollywood reinflections 11. Asian variations 12. Generic developments 2: Ghosts in the woman's film 13. Ghosts and institutions 1: South Korea 14. Ghosts and institutions 2: The West 15. National variations 16. Anatomy of the ghost melodrama 17. Spain and history 2: The Franco legacy and the Catholic church 18. Return of the British ghost film 19. Recent US developments and conclusion, Filmography, Bibliography