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Demonic Possession And Fractured Patriarchies In Contemporary Fundamentalist Horror, Lindsey Slanker

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This thesis is a survey of contemporary horror films from the perspective of fundamentalist American audiences. Using Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity and religious studies scholarship as framework, I investigate how five visual texts perpetuate patriarchal family structures. The five texts I explore are The Last Exorcism (2010), The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Witch: A New England Folk Tale (2015), and The Exorcist television series (2016). In each chapter, I analyze a key family member per patriarchal norms, and how violations of these norms contribute to the family’s supernatural crisis. The figures I analyze for …