In the Director’s Cut of Ari Aster’s MIDSOMMAR, Christian asks Ulla and Maja about the “attestupan” ritual which takes place at the end of the life cycles of the Hårga people: “Do you have a typical period of grieving? Is there a time when you mourn?” Ulla’s answer is a simple, yet so complex: “We grieve and celebrate”. In this incisive lecture, horror scholar Tugce Kutlu analyzes the intricacies of grief and mourning in contemporary horror cinema, introducing a new way of understanding the function of such films.
The turn of the millennium saw a rise in violent events transpiring in the public eye as well as a surge in public displays of mourning, as in the cases of 9/11 and the funeral of Princess Diana. Death was everywhere, on our televisions, on our computers, and finally, on our smartphones. There was nowhere to hide. This may have urged contemporary horror filmmakers to create cinematic “memento mori,” five of which will be examined using Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ “Five Stages of Grief.” MIDSOMMAR will be addressed in a section on “Denial”; HEREDITARY receives an in-depth reading in the section on “Anger”; the latest iteration of PET SEMATARY facilitates a consideration of “Bargaining”; THE WOMAN IN BLACK goes back to horror’s roots in gothic literature to examine “Depression”; and the section on “Acceptance” investigates one of cinema’s most tangible portrayals of grief, THE BABADOOK.
For a genre with such unbreakable bonds to death, serious studies regarding grief in horror cinema are still sparse — and guest speaker Tugce Kutlu aims to change that. This talk explores the reasons why representations of mourning in horror may have risen in the last two decades, and proposes a view of these films as cinematic “memento mori” that can finally unite grief studies with cinema, and perhaps help usher viewers through their own grieving processes.
Tugce Kutlu completed her undergraduate education in Radio, Television and Film as a valedictorian at Ankara University, received another BA in International Relations from Anadolu University. She completed her MA in Film Studies at University College London (UCL) under a scholarship, wrote her dissertation on grief in the 21st-Century horror films supervised by Professor Susanne Kord at UCL and was awarded a Distinction. She is currently writing her thesis on the 21st-century Turkish cinema and power relations for her second MA at Ankara University. Her works I am not Carrie: Rebellious Girls of Horror Cinema’s New Era and The rule of the weird: power relations in the films of Yorgos Lanthimos have been published by academic journals. She has been to numerous academic conferences, pressenting her work. She is currently doing her PhD at Ankara University and she is a graduate teaching assistant at the same university.
