Weeks Eight and Nine: Misery

Hi, welcome to the eighth and ninth weeks of my blog! I wasn’t able to do much during week eight, so I decided to combine these two posts.

When meeting with Ms. Tilly for these past two weeks, we mainly discussed the summary of Medea I’ve been working on for my paper. I’ve focused on writing drafts and getting feedback from Ms. Tilly on what information I should include, and what information is not necessary. Since my paper is going to be around 10-15 pages, we figured that my summary of Medea would be about a page. I still need to get advice on my most recent version, but so far I think my summary has been effective! Other than that, she’s been assigning me some more articles to read that examine gender roles in Medea.

During our week eight meeting, Mrs. Gorla and I discussed Carrie (1976), as well as discussing the introduction of the book Men, Women, and Chainsaws. In it, the author discusses gender roles in horror, using Carrie as an example of female characters in relation to their gender. One idea that I’m going to try to incorporate into my project is how typically in horror from the 1970s and 1980s, the gender of characters are decided based on their actions, not the other way around. For example, a character who cries and hides doesn’t do that because she’s a woman, but she’s a woman because she cries and hides. This idea, when analyzed along with Medea and my film choices, illustrates the idea of power in relation to gender, especially in Misery.

At the end of our week eight meeting, Mrs. Gorla and I decided that we would be watching Misery (1990) next. While watching, I made sure to keep the Men, Women, and Chainsaws introduction in mind, especially the idea of power in relation to gender. In Misery, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) is obsessed with a writer, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), to the point where she kidnaps and tortures him after rescuing him from a car wreck. In preparation for week nine’s meeting, I also read an article by Hollie Catherine McDonnell titled “The Misery of Women: Liminality of Gender Roles in Stephen King’s Misery,” which talked about the switching power dynamics between Annie and Paul. Despite being locked up, Paul knows that Annie is obsessed with him and he uses it to his advantage multiple times throughout the film. As well as the power dynamics switching multiple times, Annie often switches between feminine and masculine, with a more masculine appearance when’s angry at Paul and more threatening.

Despite week eight being a little boring, I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made over the past two weeks and I’m excited to keep working on my project. See you next week!