response

The Scream Trilogy, “Hyperpostmodernism,” and the Late-Nineties Teen Slasher Film
Author(s):

VALERIE WEE

Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 57, No. 3 (FALL 2005), pp. 44-61
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video
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The Scream Trilogy, “Hyperpostmodernism,” and the Late
Nineties Teen Slasher Film

VALERIE WEE

IN “GENERICITY IN THE NINETIES: ECLECTIC

IRONY AND THE NEW SINCERITY,” published

in 1993, Jim Collins examined a number of

popular genre films released in the early

1990s,1 remarking that “what we have seen of

postmodernism thus far is really a first phase,

perhaps Early Postmodernism, the first tenta

tive attempts at envisioning the impact of new

technologies of mass communication and
information processing on the structure of nar

rative” (262). In December 1996, Dimension
Films released Scream, a slasher film that went

on to resurrect and redfine that dormant genre

for a new generation of teenagers. The Scream
trilogy {Scream 2 [1997], Scream 3 [2000]) also
marks a later phase of postmodernism than the
early postmodernism highlighted by Collins. I
have labeled this more advanced form of post

modernism “hyperpostmodernism,” and in the
Scream trilogy it can be identified in two ways:

(1) a heightened degree of intertextual referenc

ing and self-reflexivity that ceases to function at

the traditional level of tongue-in-cheek subtext,

and emerges instead as the actual text of the

films; and (2) a propensity for ignoring film

specific boundaries by actively referencing,
“borrowing,” and influencing the styles and for

mats of other media forms, including television

and music videos?strategies that have further
blurred the boundaries that once separated
discrete media.

The Slasher Film: Emergence
and Evolution

The teen-oriented slasher film came into its

own in the 1970s, with the release of The Texas

Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Halloween
(1978), and became one of the most popular
horror subgenres in the decade that followed

(Clover 24; Ryan and Kellner 191; Tudor 68-72).
It was in the 1980s that the familiar conven
tions of the teen slasher film were established.

These conventions include: a group of young,

often teenage, characters as potential victims;
imperiled, sexually attractive young women
being stalked by a knife-wielding, virtually

indestructible, psychotic serial killer; and
scenes of unexpected and shocking violence
and brutality. Teen slasher films also originated

the trend toward spin-offs, sequels, and imita
tors, sparking a rash of successful slasher film
franchises.2 With the release of each install

ment in the series, the conventions of the genre

were repeated and consolidated. The growing
popularity of these films was in fact tied to the

increasing familiarity of these conventions. As
Andrew Britton argues, film audiences were

drawn to the very predictability of the plots,

so that “the only occasion for disappointment
would have been a modulation of the formula,

not a repetition of it” (qtd. in Clover 9).
The genre was especially popular with teen

age boys. In examining the audience for slasher
films of the 1970s and early 1980s, Carol Clover

notes that “the majority audience, perhaps
even more than the audience for horror in gen

eral, was largely young and largely male_

Valerie wee is an assistant professor in the De
partment of English Language & Literature at the
National University of Singapore.

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Young males are also … the slasher film’s im

plied audience, the object of its address” (23).
The films’ obsession with the torture and often

brutal killing of nubile young women appeared

to be a particular draw for this audience.

By the mid-1980s, however, the slasher film

appeared to reach a point of exhaustion. The
formulaic nature of subsequent low-budget,

independently produced slashers, and the ex
cessive repetitions in the form of the sequels,

remakes, and imitations, inevitably made the

audience overly familiar with the genre, so that

“by the end of the decade the form was largely

drained” (Clover 23). Consequently, many of the

films released in the late 1980s were the final
installments of franchises that had been popu

lar in the previous decade, and a large number

of these were straight-to-video releases.3

By the late 1980s, it appeared that the cycle
of teen-oriented slasher films had played itself

out. Despite the impending demise ofthat
cycle, a number of these later films did begin

displaying characteristics, such as a tendency
to blend humor and horror, and self-reflexive

“winks” at the audience, that would eventually

find significant representation in the resurgent

slasher cycle of the late 1990s. At the time,
however, these innovations failed to refresh

the genre or attract an audience, and the genre
fell dormant between the late 1980s and mid

1990s.4
It would take the launch of Dimension,5 a

film division dedicated to genre films, to resur

rect the slasher genre and launch a new cycle.

Dimension’s plan to revive the slasher film for
a new and distinct, late-i990S American teen
generation hinged on the realization that it
needed to find a way to maintain the integrity

of the genre, which meant retaining many of

its conventions, while simultaneously updat

ing this material. Furthermore, any attempt to

resurrect the slasher genre had to acknowledge

the changes that had overtaken the film and

media industries, as well as developments
in the teen market. Bob Weinstein, the force

behind Dimension, recognized that the me
dia-saturated American teenagers of the late

1990s were probably overly familiar with the

Conventions of the slasher film and would

never accept a mere retread of the old genre

(Eller Ai). Similarly, John Carpenter, the auteur

responsible for horror-slasher classics such as

Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and Village
of the Damned (1995), noted that any attempt

to resurrect the slasher film must necessarily

take into account “[the] cynical, young, new

[1990s teenage] audience who believe very
sincerely that they’re smarter than the mov

ies they see” (Strauss L22). In short, the new
teen audience of the 1990s would motivate the

slasher genre’s shift from a 1980s postmodern
sensibility towards a i990S-oriented hyperpost
modernism.

Resurrecting the Slasher Him:
The Scream Trilogy

Conceived from the outset as the first part of a

trilogy,6 Scream begins when teenager Sidney

Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends at
Woodsboro High School become the targets
of a serial killer. The killings attract ambitious

television journalist Gale Weathers (Courtney
Cox), who arrives in town determined to solve

the crimes. Amidst a rising body count, Sidney
and her friends engage in numerous debates,

comparing their circumstances with those of
the protagonists in famous slasher films such

as Halloween and Friday the 13th. The film con

cludes with Sidney and Gale Weathers cooper
ating to save each other and defeat the killers.

Scream 2 is set two years after the Woods

boro murders. Sidney is enrolled in Windsor
College, and Gale’s book about the Woodsboro
killings has been turned into a movie called
Stab. The release of Stab leads to a new round

of copycat killings, and discussions about
slasher-film sequels and their conventions.

Sidney and her friends again become targets.

Once again, Sidney and Gale help each other
defeat a set of killers.

In Scream 3, set three-and-a-half years after

the events of Scream 2, Sidney Prescott has

opted for a life of seclusion in Northern Califor
nia, while Sunrise Studios, the company be
hind the movie Stab, is in the midst of filming

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Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro. Another series of

murders occur on the set, targeting the original
Woodsboro survivors as well as those associ

ated with Stab 3. A murderer has again adopted
the original killer’s costume and strategy of

chatting with his victims on the phone before

killing them, motivating conversations about

the relationship between Stab 3 and the events
in Scream, as well as the conventions surround

ing the final installment of a horror franchise.

As the corpses pile up, Sidney reemerges to
confront her traumatic past. In the final violent

confrontation, before the villain of Scream 3 is

killed, the narrative is brought full circle when

he reveals that he was responsible for instigat
ing the killing spree in Scream, thus setting off

the cycle of events chronicled in the trilogy.

From Postmodernism to

Hyperpostmodernism

Intertextual Referencing: From Subtext
to Text

Postmodernism is often considered a problem
atic term with multiple possible definitions.
However, most of these definitions associate

postmodernism with a breakdown of boundar
ies, the decline of master narratives, and the

erosion of authority. David Tetzlaff defines post
modernism as “fragmentation, segmentation,
superficiality, stylistic jumbling… the collapse
of past and future into the moment of the pres

ent” (80). In “Postmodern Elements of the Con

temporary Horror Film,”7 Isabel Pinedo defines

“the postmodern world” as “an unstable one
in which traditional (dichotomous) categories
breakdown, boundaries blur, institutions fall

into question, Enlightenment narratives col

lapse, the inevitability of progress crumbles,
and the master status of the universal (read

male, white, monied, heterosexual) subject de
teriorates” (86). Postmodernism is also associ
ated with a tendency for intertextual referenc

ing, a propensity for ironic or parodic humor, as

well as textual and generic mixing.
Kim Newman, Tania Modleski, and Isabel

Pinedo have all labeled the late-i98os slasher

films, such as the later Nightmare on Elm Street

and Friday the 13th films, as postmodern texts.

Newman notes their increasing turn toward

camp and the tendency to combine horror with

comic elements as characteristics of the post

modern (211-15). Modleski finds the postmod
ern in these films* propensity for open-ended

narratives, minimal plot developments, and
the unappealing characters that defy audience
identification. And Pinedo highlights both the

genre’s transgression of classical horror film

conventions and its co-opting of science-fiction

and suspense-thriller generic codes and struc
tures as indications of its postmodern nature
(Recreational 14). Incidentally, although Jim Col

lins did not study the slasher film for “Generic

ity in the Nineties,” his examination of other

genre films led him to identify generic mixing

and the often ironic appropriation of codes
and signs from other genres as key elements of

“Early Postmodernism” (262).8
Certainly, many of the postmodern quali

ties documented by these scholars can be
identified in the Scream trilogy. For instance,

the trilogy displays a tendency toward generic
hybridity, in particular the blending of signs,

codes, and conventions associated with both

horror and comedy, a blending identified by

both Newman and Pinedo in the 1980s slasher
film. The serialized nature of the Scream narra

tive also conforms to Modleski’s critique of the

postmodern, open-ended structures of 1980s
slashers. In addition, scholarly examinations of
the Scream trilogy acknowledge its postmodern
qualities. Todd F. Tietchen’s “Samplers and
Copycats: The Implications of the Postmodern

Slasher in Contemporary American Film” dis
cusses a number of films, including Scream

and its sequels, and argues that these films are

postmodern because they feature serial killers
who are re-creating existing and memorable

murders. Tietchen suggests that the signifi
cance of these films may extend beyond their
cinematic realities to reflect “the serial killer’s

status in contemporary media culture” in the
real world (106).

It is apparent, then, that the Scream films

display a range of recognizable postmodern

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characteristics. However, I would like to sug

gest that the Scream trilogy does not merely

continue the postmodern, 1980s slasher cycle,
nor does it simply recirculate the already famil

iar postmodern characteristic of blurring the
boundaries between reality and cinema. The
Scream franchise is distinctive, and it repre

sents a later stage in postmodernism’s evolu
tion, with a significant number of Scream’s

postmodern elements signaling an advanced or
heightened stage of postmodernism.9

One distinguishing aspect of the Scream
trilogy is the way it uses intertextual referenc

ing. Certainly, referencing is not unique to the

Scream franchise. Many teen texts, including

the exploitation films of the 1950s and 1970s,

have used the device. Halloween (1978), for
instance, has a character named Dr. Loomis,

which references Psycho’s Sam Loomis.10 Hal
loween III (1982) contains a self-reflexive scene
in which a clip from the first Halloween film is

seen playing on television while the film’s hero,

Dr. Daniel Challis, attempts to break free from

the chair he is tied to. In Friday the 13th Part IV:

Jason Lives, a potential victim notes self-reflex

ively, “I’ve seen enough horror films to know
this means trouble.” In these earlier cases,

however, the references tend to be either op

portunistically derivative or tongue-in-cheek
moments of subtext that often amount to little

more than inside jokes.
In contrast, referencing in the Scream trilogy

is distinctive because it is not restricted in this

way, to occasional, passing allusions confined
to the level of subtext. Instead, a significant

proportion of the intertextual referencing in the
Scream films functions as text. The films con

sist of multiple sequences in which characters
engage in self-conscious, highly self-reflexive,
sustained discussions and commentaries on

the nature and conventions of the genre itself.

The characters in all three films obsessively and

self-reflexively discuss other media texts, par

ticularly teen slasher films. They are all media

saturated individuals who are self-consciously
conversant in the signs and codes of the classic
slasher film. The Scream films, therefore, take

the previously subtle and covert intertextual

reference and transform it into an overt, discur
sive act.

Ultimately, Scream and its sequels are pri
marily films about slasher films. We see this,

for instance, in Scream’s distinctive opening
sequence, where a blonde teenager, Casey
Becker (Drew Barrymore), is making popcorn

and preparing to watch a slasher film on video.

She receives a phone call from an unidentified
male and the conversation turns to slasher

films. But this casual, amusing discussion of

favorite films soon takes a disturbing turn when

Casey discovers that the person she is chatting

with is watching her. He then begins to quiz

her on slasher film trivia, threatening to kill her

and her boyfriend, who is on his way over, if

she gets the answers wrong. Following one of

her incorrect responses, she looks out her patio
doors to see her boyfriend dead outside. The
killer then taunts Casey by commenting on her

frenzied and hysterical attempts to escape and

comparing them to the similar antics of charac

ters in the classic slasher films they have just

been discussing.
This opening sequence sets the stage for

numerous other scenes in which the film’s

characters engage in hyperconscious, self-re
flexive, slasher-movie-oriented discussions and

observations. “If this were a scary movie,” notes

one character, “I’d be the prime suspect.” The
film’s heroine, Sidney, is accused of “starting
to sound like some Wes Carpenter flick” (clearly
a deliberate confusion/conflation of Scream

director Wes Craven and his colleague, horror

director John Carpenter). In another scene, two
characters stand in a video store and comment

that if the police watched more slasher films,

they would be better equipped to deal with the
killer. This conversation then continues with a

detailed analysis of the various suspects and
how each one conforms to slasher film conven

tions. Later, another of the wisecracking teenag

ers, a self-professed slasher-film aficionado,
enumerates the cinematic rules of survival. “To

successfully survive a horror movie, you have

to abide by the rules,” Randy (lamie Kennedy)
reminds a group of his high school friends. “You

can never have sex: The minute you do, you’re

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as good as gone. Sex equals death. Never drink
or do drugs: It’s an extension of the first. And

never, ever, say, ‘I’ll be right back_'” These
“rules” are arch confirmations of the audience’s

own hyperawareness of the genre and the ways

its conventions traditionally play out.

This self-reflexivity is taken a step further in

the sequel. Scream 2 transcends the original
film’s interest in discussing and critiquing other

texts by actively discussing and critiquing itself.

In other words, the intertextual referencing in

Scream 2 includes not only other slasher films
but the original Scream as well. Its opening
sequence introduces a heightened level of
self-reflexivity that is sustained throughout

the film. Scream 2 opens at the premiere of
a movie called Stab, which is based on the
“real-life” events told in Scream. An African

American couple is attending the premiere,
and their conversation revolves around certain

slasher-film conventions, specifically the ab
sence of African American characters in these

films. As one of them notes, “The horror genre

is historical for excluding the African American

element.” Even as we are entertained by the
arch, self-aware nature of the comment and

amused that Scream 2 has already subverted a
genre convention, we see the couple violently
and terrifyingly dispatched by the serial killer.

The brutal stabbing of Scream 2’s first female
victim, Maureen Qada Pinkett Smith), as she

watches Stab’s first female victim being killed
on screen, provides a particularly clever conflu
ence of intertextual events. The intertextual

ties are further enriched since Stab’s images
re-create the first murder in Scream, in which

Casey is terrorized, pursued, and gutted. Stab’s
re-creation, however, blends a representation
of Casey’s murder with classic images bor
rowed directly from Psycho. Watching Stab, we,
and the film audience in Scream 2, are treated

to images of Heather Graham (in a cameo)

playing Casey, by way of Marion Crane. Graham

is shown stepping out of her robe and into a
shower,11 complete with the familiar shot of the

showerhead from Psycho, only to be interrupt
ed by a phone call from the serial killer. At this

point, Stab re-creates the Casey murder from

Scream in extremely graphic terms, and this

“murder” is itself played out against Maureen’s
“real” murder in Scream 2.

The sequel’s commitment to self-reflexivity

and self-critique is sustained throughout the

film, with many of the characters commenting

on the repetitive nature of sequels. Early in the
film, a group of students in a film class discuss

the nature of sequels, one of them declaring

that “the entire horror genre was destroyed by

sequels.” Later in the film, after the body count

begins to rise, film aficionado Randy again de
tails the “rules of the sequel,” highlighting that
“the body count is bigger” and that “the death

scenes are always much more elaborate. More
blood, more gore. Your core audience just ex
pects it.” Scream 2’s ending, in turn, is a direct

reference to the plot of an earlier slasher film

classic, Friday the 13th.12

Scream 3 takes the intertextuality and self
reflexivity even further. Much of Scream 3 takes

place on the set of Stob 3, which recreates the

“real” setting of the first Scream film. Conse

quently, numerous scenes in the third install

ment directly echo those from the first, except
that they are played out on a movie set. This

has the effect of disturbing the boundaries sep
arating the events in the original film from the
reenactment of those events in the film-within

the-film, while also heightening the self-reflex

ivity of every scene. As Gale Weathers notes,

when she first steps onto the Woodsboro movie
set, “Jesus, dej? voodoo.” The uncanny sense
of dej? vu permeates a sequence in which
Sidney wanders onto the Woodsboro movie set

and finds herself standing in a replica of her

bedroom. As we hear dialogue from the first

film in a voice-over, Sidney is attacked by the

killer, which references an attack from the origi

nal Scream. As the sequence plays out, we see
Sidney reenacting her actions from the original

film as she tries to evade the killer yet again.13

This sequence effectively collapses the spatial,
temporal, and textual boundaries separating
Scream and Scream 3, leaving the audience
momentarily confused and adrift. In addition,
the actual characters from the first two films are

joined by the “actors” who have been hired to

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reenactthe original characters’ roles in Stab 3,

a development that further collapses the limits
that divide this film’s characters from the char

acters from the film-within-the-film. As Jennifer

Jolie (Parker Posey), the actress hired to play

Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), points out to the

“real” Gale Weathers, “I’m being stalked. Be
cause someone wants to kill me? No, because

someone wants to kill you. So now, starting
now, I go where you go. That way, if someone

wants to kill me, I’ll be with you, and since they

really want to kill you, they won’t kill me, they’ll

kill you.” As the killings continue, the charac

ters resort to discussing events that occurred

in Scream in an attempt to figure out who the
killer could be; the result is several instances of

highly self-reflexive dialogue, such as “Some
one’s killing them in the order they die in the

movie.” This statement is followed by a scene
in which the killer traps several characters in a

house and then sends them a script over the
fax machine, detailing how they will be killed.

While the script is being read aloud, the killer
strikes as described. The leitmotif of the film is

that “the line between movie horror and real

life horror can be crossed, erased, twisted and

toyed with” (Ross 6).
In addition to referencing its own past and

highlighting its filmic foundations, Scream 3
also continues the tradition of overtly com

menting on and analyzing movie conventions.
Randy, the movie geek killed in Scream 2,

makes an appearance on videotape to highlight
the movie “rules” governing trilogies:

Is this simply another sequel? Well, if it is,

same rules apply. But here’s the critical
thing. If you find yourself dealing with an

unexpected backstory, and a preponderance
of exposition, then the sequel rules do not
apply. Because you are not dealing with a
sequel, you are dealing with the concluding
chapter of a trilogy_It’s a rarity in the
horror field, but it does exist_So if it is a

trilogy you are dealing with, here are some
super trilogy rules. One, you got a killer
who’s gonna’ be super human_Number
two, anyone including the main character,
can die_Number three, the past will come

back to bite you in the ass_The past is
not at rest, any sins you think were commit

ted in the past are about to break out and

destroy you.

Maintaining the film’s heightened commit

ment to self-reflexivity, these rules accurately

describe the events that ultimately take place
in Scream 3.

The Scream films are, thus, the product
of filmmakers who recognize that the over

wrought, intense nature of the horror genre

can no longer be experienced “straight” by an
American teen audience which has become

overly familiar with and increasingly derisive of

the genre’s conventions. Consequently, these
conventions are filtered through a much more

cynical, knowing perspective, one that allows
the audience to engage and “interact” with the

equally hyperaware characters on screen.

Intertextual Referencing: Crossing Media
Specific Boundaries

The intertextual referencing and self-reflexiv

ity that characterize the Scream trilogy are

not restricted to explicit discussions of past

slasher films or previous installments of the

trilogy. Instead, the films’ pop culture refer

encing crosses media-specific boundaries to
include cheeky, self-aware nods to popular
contemporary American teen television shows
as well. And these cross-references are notable

because of the extreme way they mix and inte
grate distinct media texts on the levels of narra

tive, style, and format.

One example of this intertextual referenc

ing occurs between Scream 2 and television’s

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Buffy star Sarah

Michelle Gellar making a brief appearance in

the film as a victim scrambling unsuccessfully

for her life. The film’s target teen audience
would have been aware of the ironies inherent

in Cellar’s performance, because every week

Gellar, as Buffy, subverts the “blonde-female
as-victim” convention directly associated
with the slasher genre.14 As a teenage, female
superhero, Buffy defends the world against an

unending assortment of demons and monsters,

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defeating them with ease and saving all those
around her. Most of the teenagers watching
Scream 2 would be familiar with Gellar^s televi

sion alter ego and thus would enjoy an addi
tional level of amusement in watching her play

against type, as a helpless female victim.
Also significant are the ways in which the

style and form of Scream 2, particularly the
sequence in which Gellar is stalked and killed,

resemble those of Bufly the Vampire Slayer,

a television series that borrows many of its

monster-stalking-unsuspecting-female visual
techniques from slasher films. Voyeuristic shots

of female victims from the point of view of the

killer/monster; a lack of establishing shots to

heighten spatial confusion; a cluttered mise
en-scene; and low, dim lighting are character

istic of slasher films in general, of the Scream

films, and of Bufly the Vampire Slayer as well.

Consequently, it is now almost impossible to
distinguish between the feature film’s style and

aesthetics and the television show’s style and
aesthetics.

It is also worth noting that the intense, self

aware, hyperintertextual referencing character
istic of the Scream films is not restricted to the

films themselves. It was very quickly embraced

and adopted by other teen-oriented texts.
Consequently, while Scream may have begun
the referencing to other slasher films, it quickly
became the referent for other teen-oriented
media texts. Five months after Scream 2 was

released, fans of the teen-oriented television

drama Damon’s Creek were treated to an epi
sode titled “The Scare” which paid particular
homage to Scream and its sequel. “The Scare”
is full of lengthy, self-conscious, discussions in

which the characters deconstruct the similari

ties between the incidents they are experienc
ing and incidents in the Scream films. Like the

characters in the Scream trilogy, the Dawson’s
Creek characters reference classic slasher

films including Halloween and Friday the 13th.

The episode also faithfully adopts the horror
slasher aesthetics mentioned in the previous
paragraph. Although Dawson’s Creek is a teen
melodrama, it was able to seamlessly incor
porate the style and aesthetics of a slasher

film into its more conventional format. In fact,

entire sequences from the television show suc

cessfully replicated scenes from the films, in

cluding Scream’s infamous opening sequence,
in which the killer makes his threatening

phone call to his unsuspecting female victim. A
scene that reproduced the stalking and killing
of a female victim culminated with one of the

show’s characters appearing in the same mask
that the killers wear in the Scream films. The

intertextual relationships between these texts
are further enhanced by the fact that Joshua
Jackson, a member of the Dawson’s Creek
cast, had a small role in Scream 2, while the

episode’s guest star, Scott Foley, was soon to
appear in Scream 3.

The abovementioned intersections between

the Scream trilogy and teen television shows,

like the increasing blending of narrative, stylis
tic, and aesthetic elements across different me

dia forms, reflect a new level of the postmodern

collapse of boundaries. The blendings are
extreme instances of James Peterson’s observa

tion that “in postmodernity, there is no longer

a difference between essence and appearance,
latent and manifest content, authenticity and
inauthenticity, signifierand signified” (148). I

believe these instances of intertextuality were

motivated and driven by the overt technologi
cal, economic, and synergistic imperatives that
characterized the multimedia entertainment

industry of the late 1990s, as discussed below.

Factors Motivating the Shift
to Hyperpostmodernism and
Hyperintertextuality

This shift to hyperpostmodernism was moti

vated by several intersecting factors: (1) the
development of new media technologies such
as cable, video, and an increasing range of
digital media; (2) the emergence of a new
teen demographic in the United States; and
(3) the entertainment industry’s escalating
commitment to cross-media promotional and
marketing practices. In attempting to revive the

tired and disreputable slasher genre in the late
1990s, the filmmakers had to contend with the

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numerous technological, industrial, and demo
graphic changes that had taken place during
the genre’s dormancy?considerations that
would impact the latest cycle of the slasher
genre.

The Impact of New Media Technologies and
Multiple Delivery Platforms

As scholars including Thomas Schatz, Thomas
Doherty, and Jim Collins have pointed out, the

1980s were marked by the emergence of a wide

range of new distribution platforms. These

platforms were “generated by the technological

developments associated with the informa
tion explosion (cable television, VCRs, digital
recording, computers, etcetera)” (Collins,

“Television” 331). These technological develop
ments allowed the media industries to extend

the shelf life of their products indefinitely.

Consequently, texts from classic eras continued
to be available and accessible to audiences

along with more recently released material.

According to Collins, these conditions paved
the way for “the proliferation of signs and their

endless circulation” in the 1980s and after
(“Television” 331). Thus, as new texts joined
older ones, which were now indefinitely acces-.

sible, numerous and competing messages and
signs emerged, with new texts often referencing
and recirculating signs from the older ones.
These conditions accelerated the shift toward

self-reflexivity and semiotic excess in media

texts that revolved around the appropriation

and absorption of other popular entertainment
texts through the recirculation of iconic or fa

miliar images, multiple references to popular
texts, and/or the mixing of generic plot lines.

Technological advancements have continued
into the 1990s with the emergence of new

forms of technology and new delivery systems

for an ever-expanding range of entertainment

texts. The rise of the Internet and other digital

technologies and delivery platforms has only
added to the plethora of texts already circulat

ing. These technologies have definitely affected
the nature and content of American teen culture

in the late 1990s.15

Generation Y and Media

Hyperconsciousness

American teenagers in the late 1990s came of

age in a cultural environment in which a surplus

of media texts, both past and present, was con
stantly accessible via the multiple distribution

platforms discussed in the previous section. By

the 1980s, media texts were characterized by
an increasing amount of intertextual “borrow

ing.” The 1980s and after saw the rise of a post

modern culture characterized by a high degree

of “hyperconsciousness,” “a hyperawareness
on the part of the text itself of its cultural

status, function, and history, as well as of the

conditions of its circulation and reception” (Col
lins, “Television” 335). As Collins notes, “In the

‘meta-pop’ texts that we now find on television,

on newstands, on the radio, or on grocery store

book racks, we encounter… a hyperconscious
rearticulation of media culture by media cul

ture” (“Television” 335). This “rearticulation

of media culture by media culture” intensified
in the 1990s. With increased access to media

and technology, American teenagers in the
1990s surpassed previous generations in their
exposure to and familiarity with media texts

both past and contemporary. Consequently,
this group was far more culturally literate and

media-saturated than any generation before it,
possessing a media-oriented hyperconscious
ness. Media literate, highly brand conscious,
consumer oriented, and extremely self-aware
and cynical, the late-i990S teen demographic
that came to be known as Gen Y is distinct from

previous teen cohorts. The Scream films, with

their witty, often humorous, commentary on
familiar horror-movie conventions and their

abundance of self-aware and self-referential

statements, were specifically created for a

generation steeped in pop culture. Many of the
trilogy’s postmodern elements highlight the

films’ artificiality, acknowledging their status as

popular cultural texts whose “circulation and

reception are worked back into the ‘text’ itself
(Collins, “Television” 226). These instances of

overt self-reflexivity call attention to the artifici

ality of all the Scream films and, by extension,

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all media products, highlighting their status as

consumable cultural products.
These characteristics of hyperpostmodern

ism clearly articulate and accentuate the cen
tral role that entertainment texts and the media

play in the teen lifestyle. Discussions of films
and other entertainment media dominate teen
interests and concerns. Media texts and their

consumption often function as the topics of
teen conversation, exchange, and even identity,

a situation that is reflected and perhaps en
couraged by the Scream films. Essentially, the
films hold up a mirror to teens, reflecting how

they actually converse and interact while simul

taneously encouraging them to adopt a me
dia-oriented form of communication. The films

reemphasize the vital role that media play in
their lives. In fact, within the Scream universe,

knowledge of and familiarity with media texts

is literally a matter of life and death. Further

more, Scream and its sequels also function to
increase teen awareness of other media texts,

introducing older texts, such as Psycho, to
new and younger audiences. These references

encourage a new teen generation/audience
to seek out and consume these older texts. In

doing so, the intense intertextual references

also keep these older texts relevant in terms of

media literacy.
Finally, to keep Scream foremost in the

teenagers’ minds, Dimension exploited the
demographies devotion to multiple forms of
media and entertainment by extending the
Scream experience across a range of other
contemporary media. Besides the intertextual

referencing between the films and television

programs such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and

Dawson’s Creek, the postmodern Scream texts
also include soundtracks, magazine spreads,
and television spots on youth-oriented net

works such as MTV.16 This proliferation of texts
has further weakened the boundaries between
distinct media texts.

The Cross-Media Marketing Matrix

Scream exists within a complex interconnected
multimedia matrix that was shaped by the
exigencies of publicity, promotion, and market

ing. Since the 1970s, media companies have
been evolving strategies to exploit the promo
tional opportunities offered by multiple media

platforms, including television, music videos,

and print. This interest in capitalizing on mul

timedia promotional prospects has motivated
an increasing convergence across the existing
entertainment arena, leading to the rise of

high-concept films; these films have pioneered
the strategy of “borrowing” or integrating sty

listic elements from promotional media such

as advertising and music videos, combining
visual and aesthetic styles into a new market
ing method.17 This strategy has led to the
creation of film texts that consist of “modular

set pieces” built around different marketing

components?musical sequences, for example,
that can be repackaged as promotional music
videos (Wyatt 17), or stylistically sophisticated
images that can be used in television trailers

or print campaigns (Wyatt 36). John Thornton
Caldweirs contention that the rise of each

new media technology “not only influenced
what was seen by viewers… [but] also had a
profound influence on how these images were
constructed, altered, and displayed,” was no
less true in the 1990s (77). Wyatt and Caldwell

were writing about the 1980s, but Dimension’s
marketing strategies for Scream and subse
quent teen films evolved out of these earlier
activities.

The Scream trilogy exhibits the same stylistic
and aesthetic excess that Wyatt argues were
directly shaped by marketing and promotional

considerations, only in a heightened state.

In marketing the trilogy, Dimension actively

pursued a variety of promotional avenues, in
cluding music soundtracks, music videos, print
advertising, and magazine features.18 In some

instances, these promotional activities directly

affected the nature, style, and aesthetics of the
Scream films themselves, as well as the teen

audiences’ experience of and interaction with
those texts.

The marketing campaign for the Scream
films involved a range of media, including ra

dio, television, and record-store promotions,

which resulted in an expanding range of related

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Scream media texts. One of the cornerstones of

Dimension’s marketing campaign was music,

which was tied to the additional publicity (and
revenue) that could be derived from releasing

the films’ soundtracks.19 For instance, Capitol
Dimension released the soundtrack to Scream 2

on 2 December 1997. The soundtrack was tar

geted at the film’s core audience of thirteen- to

twenty-five-year-olds. The soundtrack’s release
increased awareness of Scream 2, since the

soundtrack was accompanied by an intense
and focused marketing campaign that included
“unavoidable” television, radio, and record

store campaigns designed to coincide with the
release of the film on 12 December (Olsen 16).
The soundtracks to the films featured a mix

of mainstream, Top-40 artists such as Moby,
the Foo Fighters, and Creed, and less-estab
lished performers including Coal Chamber and
Ear20oo. These soundtracks were mined for

their cross-promotional opportunities. For in
stance, the rock band Creed contributed “What

If?” to the soundtrack for Scream 3. This track
was also featured on Creed’s own CD Human

Clay, which was released a few months before

the soundtrack. Including the song on the

movie soundtrack helped bring Human Clay to
the attention of the target market. In addition,

the soundtrack component of the marketing
strategy, and in particular the accompanying

music videos, made it possible for Dimension
to promote the films on MTV.

MTV was a particularly effective way for

Dimension to target the films’ core teen and

youth market. MTV, the quintessential teen/

youth cable channel, aired an hour-long special
on the sequel that included clips both from

the original Scream and the sequel. The MTV
special also featured interviews with Scream
2’s entire cast and showcased music videos

that integrated musical set pieces lifted directly
from the films with music from the soundtracks.

MTV was thus an active and vital participant

in the creation of a complex and increasingly

integrated matrix of (interrelated media texts,

all in the service of promotion and marketing.
Consider the music video for Creed’s “What

If?” where images of the band performing

their song were intercut with images of the

band members being stalked by the masked

killer from the film. One of the trilogy’s main

stars, David Arquette, is also seen in the music
video, heightening the degree of intertextual
ity. Both the appearance of the Scream killer

and Arquette’s appearance as Officer Dewey in
the music video effectively blur the boundaries
between the film text and the music video; the

texts promote each other. As we can see, the

Scream trilogy’s hyperpostmodern, intertextual

elements are tied to a series of complex, cross
media promotional activities between the film
industry and MTV.

The distinctive intertextual referencing be
tween Scream and the television series Daw

son’s Creek mentioned earlier is yet another

instance of contemporary multimedia promo
tional synergy; the film franchise benefited

from exposure on a hit television show, and the

television show targeted the teenagers respon
sible for the popularity of the film franchise.

The Scream-Dawson’s Creek connection

must also be viewed as part of a trend in the

1990s for entertainment personnel to transcend

the boundaries separating the different enter

tainment media, to “cross over” (or between)
them.20 An entertainer crosses over when s/he

moves between the film, television, and music
industries, rather than remaining in a single
one. Clearly, this was not unheard of before the

1990s. The history of Hollywood includes many

performers who successfully crossed between
film, television, radio, and other media. Howev

er, the 1990s were marked by the emergence of
a number of creative individuals who built their

careers working in a variety of media simultane

ously?a practice supported and advocated by
an increasingly multimedia entertainment in

dustry. Scream’s scriptwriter, Kevin Williamson,

for example, is also the creator of Dawson’s
Creek.21

In the late 1990s, many of the creators,

producers, and scriptwriters most clearly as

sociated with teen culture were people who
comfortably, and successfully, shifted between
television and film. In fact, there has been a

surge in the number of film writers who are also

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creating teen-oriented television series.22 This

cross-media movement by teen stars and, more

significantly, by the creative personnel associ
ated with teen texts has led to a heightened

convergence in style and aesthetics across film,

television, and music videos, making it more

and more difficult to distinguish these forms

from one another, particularly when they are
aimed at teens. Williamson’s decision to create

texts for both film and television, for instance,

paved the way for the Dawson’s Creek episode
“The Scare,” which replicates, in large part, the
narrative conventions, characters, and visual

style of the 1990s teen-oriented horror film. This

stylistic and aesthetic convergence across me
dia contributes greatly to the heightened post

modem intertextuality of the 1990s teen text.

These complex interrelationships between
ever more convergent media industries have

directly shaped the nature of the text and

intensified its postmodern qualities. In many

cases, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish

between the text and the promotion of the text,
since most of the articulations function in both

capacities and tend to share, or at least blend,
the visual styles associated with diverse media.
Soundtracks, music videos, trailers, fashion
magazine features, and television appearances
are just some of the many components circulat

ing simultaneously and functioning as related

and competing intertexts. These promotional
aspects tend to “multiply the meanings from
the texts in order to increase the audience

base,” a strategy that has been successful for

several decades (Wyatt 44) and that exempli
fies the relationship between postmodernism
and consumerism noted by Frederic Jameson
and Mike Featherstone, among others.

In the above analysis, I have shown that part

of the intensification of postmodern intertex
tual elements associated with the Scream tril

ogy is inextricably tied to issues of technology,

audience, and promotion. Every iteration of
the Scream multitext was linked in some way

to promoting the others, encouraging media
consumption, and enhancing profits. The asso
ciation between postmodernism and increased
consumerism raises concerns about the me

dia industries’ active and clearly conscious
attempts to reduce individuals, in this case
teens, to a single identity?that of consumer.

While this may be cause for alarm, I propose

that this shift to hyperpostmodernism also

opens the way for a potentially more positive,

politically significant development.

Hyperpostmodernism and the Politics of
the Nineties Teen Slasher

In The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutch

eon argues that postmodermism can critique
and comment on issues of power. Central to

Hutcheon’s argument is the notion of post
modern parody. According to Hutcheon, “Par
ody?often called ironic quotation, pastiche,
appropriation, or intertextuality?is usually
considered central to postmodernism, both by

its detractors and its defenders” (93). She goes
on to assert that it is “through a double process

of installing and ironizing, [that] parody signals

how present representations come from past

ones and what ideological consequences de
rive from both continuity and difference” (93).
Hutcheon’s endorsement of postmodernism’s
ability to critique conventions, representations,
and genres offers a useful way to begin examin
ing the politics of the Scream trilogy.

I agree that self-reflexivity and intertextuality

can work to question and subvert traditional

generic conventions, ideologies, and repre
sentations. The most interesting aspect of the

Scream films, and of the shift to hyperpostmod

ernism, is the heightened ability to discuss and
criticize the conventions of the genre and to

subvert its values and representations. By re
fusing to relegate the intertextual referencing to

the level of subtext, by bringing its references

to the surface and discussing them as text, the

trilogy is able to directly address and critique
its genre’s traditions. Nowhere is this more

apparent than in the trilogy’s examination of

gender, race, and sexuality.
The slasher film has always maintained a

complicated relationship with issues of gender.

As is widely noted, the genre is predicated on
the torture and victimization of teenage girls.

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One of the more interesting aspects of the

Scream trilogy is its conscious and consistent

critique of this convention. In Scream, Sidney

complains of slasher films, “It’s always some
stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl

who can’t act, who always runs up the stairs
when she should be going out the front door.

They’re ridiculous.” Interestingly, while Sid

ney’s comment is true of many earlier slasher

films, Scream itself revised the “stupid killer”

convention, replacing it with two scheming

and intelligent killers, and instead of the “big

breasted girl who can’t act” we have a range of

entirely competent actresses (including Drew
Barrymore, Neve Campbell, and Courtney Cox),
all of whom do run out the front door and val

iantly fight back against their attackers.

Scream 2 continues the interrogation of

genre conventions by addressing the racial limi
tations of the traditional slasher, having an Afri
can American female character note of a slash
er film: “It’s a dumb ass white movie about

some dumb ass white girls getting their white

asses cut… up.” Moments later, this “rule” is
subverted when this character is herself “cut

up.” But she is not the only person of color in

Scream 2, which offers a more integrated cast,

including African American actress Elise Neal

as one of the film’s potential killers/victims.
One might question the politics of brutalizing
women, African American or otherwise, even as

one might question the “progressiveness” of
casting an African American as a potential vil

lain/victim. But it is the recognition, criticism,
and subversion of conventions and traditions

that is valuable here because it encourages
viewers both to acknowledge and to question
what is “allowed” and “accepted.”

In addition to revising the traditional repre

sentations of female victims, the Scream trilogy
also tweaks the genre’s other conventional

female representation: the courageous, intel
ligent, and competent female survivor. Films

such as Friday the 13th (1980), Slumber Party

Massacre (1982), A Nightmare on Elm Street
(1984), and Texas ChainsawMassacre 2 (1986)
present female survivors who manage to out

live numerous violent attacks and dispatch

their attackers by themselves. These girls

emerge as exceptions to the “female-victim”

norm and are marked accordingly. Dubbing
these female survivors “the Final Girl,” Carol

Clover points out that these figures are chaste,

unlike the sexually active female victims, and

in most cases are best described as “boyish”
(39-40). While these final girls are clearly the

predecessors of the capable, brave, and ac
tive girls of late-i990S slasher cycles, Scream
rewrites the conventional representation of the

final girl, and even raises the stakes by offering

audiences two final girls: Sidney Prescott and
Gale Weathers.

Sidney is a revised version of the final girl.

An ordinary high-school girl, Sidney has a

boyfriend and a group of good friends. She is a

significant advance on the sex-role stereotypes

associated with the traditional final girl, neither

an outcast of the Carrie (1976) variety nor a boy
ish virgin, as in Halloween. Instead, she is an

attractive, popular, resourceful young woman

who manages to prevail over a difficult past,

overcome her boyfriend problems, and defeat

her attackers. And she eventually has sex,

even though the audience and the characters

on the screen know that, according to slasher

convention, “sex equals death.” Scream, how
ever, rewrites the rules so that Sidney not only
escapes postcoital death but also overcomes
the villains. Scream, therefore, acknowledges
but ultimately rejects the rules of the classic
slasher film, which demand that the sole sur

vivor always be a lone, female virgin. Instead,

Scream’s requisite self-described virgin is Ran
dy (Jamie Kennedy), the male slasher-film fan
who articulates the genre’s rules. Little more

than a sidekick, Randy, despite being a virgin,

is just as susceptible to violence, brutality, and

death as his sexually experienced counterparts.
Going against convention, Scream has the no

longer virginal Sidney save Randy when he is
attacked and almost killed.

Gale Weathers, the television journalist, is an

even greater deviation from the final-girl norm.

She is career-oriented, selfish, ambitious, and
largely amoral, yet she is never vilified for these

“negative” qualities, nor does she acquire any

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HH^^HBL^^t ‘mKtKK^^Ktt^, i Photo 1: “Hellooo Sid
^BBJ /’-{Bm^^^^^^^^^^Ki I ney”: Neve Campbell

i ^^^^^BlfcF^ as Sidney, the Scream
HIIP^ ^^^^Xti^m^^^^f^f-“^^KKf^m>.m^K trilogy’s “final girl.”

monstrous connotations. Instead, she emerges
as the other final girl at the end of all three

films, helping Sidney to save her remaining
friends from the killer. While these two women

begin as adversaries, they are able to overcome
their differences and effectively work together

to defeat the killers. Ultimately, these final

girls save themselves and each other. More
importantly, with the exception of Sidney’s

androgynous name, neither one is marked as
particularly boyish, nor are they actively differ
entiated from the other women in the film. The

Scream films, therefore, celebrate Sidney and

Gale’s independence and resilience, and refuse
to demonize them.

Parody is often taken to mean the appli
cation of recognizable, even conventional,
stylistic features to a “comically inappropriate
subject” (Abrams 18). It might be tempting to
consider the trilogy parodic in this sense. Cer
tainly the heightened intertextuality and self-re

flexivity in the films are witty and often humor
ous. However, I do not believe that the films

themselves are comic parodies of the slasher
genre. While characters in the Scream films
offer ironic observations about the conventions

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of slasher films, the films themselves remain

“straight” slasher films, with horror sequences

that are disturbing and terrifying. In the films,

the scenes of murder, slaughter, and torture

are never inappropriately comical?the terror
is never undercut or mocked. My point can

best be illustrated by comparing the Scream
films to the overtly comic and parodic Scary

Movie (2000), in which all the key conven
tions, including and especially the slaughter
sequences, are ridiculed and played for laughs.

In a direct parody of Scream and earlier slasher

films, Scary Movie reenacts the murder of “a

big-breasted girl who can’t act” in its opening

sequence. Parodying and spoofing the opening
sequence of Scream, Scary Movie treats viewers
to familiar images of a nubile female stalked

and pursued by a killer wearing the mask and
black robes associated with the Scream tril

ogy. At one point, the victim, played by Carmen
Electra, runs out of the house to encounter two

road signs pointing in opposite directions, one
marked “safety,” the other “death.” After a

moment of consideration, she opts for “death.”

As the killer grabs at her, she is progressively

divested of her clothing and the style of the

film shifts to soft-core pornography; Electra

is shown prancing in slow motion across a
well-manicured lawn with well-placed water
sprinklers, dressed only in her lacy underwear.
For some moments, the killer is forgotten and

the “victim” is shown reveling in her state of

undress and sensuously enjoying the water as
it cascades over her. When the killer catches

up with her, he stabs her in the left breast only

to find a silicone breast implant impaled on

his knife. The mocking, parodic quality of this

sequence is a definite departure from the way
Scream treats its scenes of murder and torture.

If we compare this sequence to the opening
sequence in Scream, when Casey is stalked and
killed, we see that while the intertextual refer

encing of the slasher conventions in the latter

is often amusing and entertaining, the humor is

never carried over into the scenes of slaughter.

The violence and brutality are never played for

laughs or dismissed through parody.

Instead, the Scream trilogy effectively re

defines the slasher genre for the 1990s by

knowingly commenting on its conventions and

cleverly revising some of its rules. In doing

so, the trilogy made the genre relevant to the

adolescent female moviegoer?a segment of
the audience that had been largely dismissed
by previous practitioners in the genre. This time

around, however, Scream and its sequels ac
knowledged female moviegoers and benefited
greatly at the box office as a result. Much of

Scream’s success came from its appeal to this
overlooked segment of the horror audience:

girls and young women, a segment that was

becoming increasingly influential and power
ful. It attracted that segment by offering strong,

complex, and intelligent female characters that

develop into brave, self-reliant women.

According to Wes Craven, writer Kevin Wil
liamson oriented Scream’s narrative toward

concerns particularly relevant to teenage girls.

Williamson has said, “I try to write very smart

women… [who have to] deal with issues of
betrayal and trust” (Weeks 1A). The films’ plots

essentially examine the issue of trust in roman

tic relationships, using slasher-film conven

tions to explore the turmoil of female adoles

cence. Sidney’s horror at discovering that her

boyfriend, Billy, is linked to a series of violent

murders could be read as a metaphor for every
teenage girl’s fear that she does not really know

her boyfriend. The fact that Sidney discovers

this after she sleeps with Billy introduces an

other concern: the boyfriend who turns against

his girlfriend after sex. That Sidney refuses to

let these betrayals destroy her, that she learns

self-reliance and independence while standing
up to her “lying, cheating boyfriend,” is a par

ticularly empowering message for teenage girls.

The centrality of the female characters is

further evidenced by the trilogy’s narrative tra

jectory. Significantly, Sidney and Gale remain
the main characters in all three films. In addi

tion to rewriting the sexual and gender conven

tions of the genre, the trilogy also reverses the

convention that permits the monster to return

in sequel after sequel to terrorize new groups

of victims; in the Scream sequels the victim/
survivors return to face new villains with each

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installment. In the trilogy, the (largely) male

monsters are defeated and replaced, while the
female characters endure, evolve, and grow.

Thus these films preserve the significance

and importance of the (female) survivors over

that of the (male) killers, inverting the genre’s

conventions. In this way, the trilogy “explores

the possibilities of inverting conventional map

pings and distributions of power” (Connor 259).

This shift toward hyperpostmodernism must

therefore be read as a double-edged sword.
While the trilogy encourages its target audi

ences to an ever-greater consumption of media

texts, it also actively subverts and revises the

often problematic gender conventions associ
ated with its genre; the films comment on and

critique those conventions, and, within a tradi
tion that has often treated power and gender

roles ambiguously, the films offer representa

tions of empowered females.

Conclusion

The Scream films together grossed $293.5 mil
lion, the highest combined box office ever for
a horror franchise (Chetwynd and Seiler 4E).23

The trilogy emerged as the representative texts
of both the slasher film and the teen film of the

late 1990s, and it had a significant impact on

the entertainment industry as a whole. More

significantly, the trilogy helped legitimize the

slasher/horror/exploitation genre, enjoying
both great public and critical acclaim.

Scream and its sequels are examples of
hyperpostmodernism, a distinctive, more
advanced form of postmodernism character
ized by a heightened, self-conscious degree
of intertextual referencing and self-reflexivity.

Where conventional intertextual referencing

is generally confined to implicit, often fleet

ing, allusions to other texts, the Scream trilogy

consistently engages in explicit discussion
and critique of other film texts, including itself,

so that many of these references emerge as
the actual text of the films. The Scream films’

propensity for ignoring film-specific boundar

ies in actively referencing, “borrowing,” as well

as influencing, the styles and formats of other

media forms, including television and music

videos, is another quality associated with this
later stage in postmodernism’s evolution. I

have shown that these developments in the
Scream trilogy’s style, content, and aesthetics
are invariably tied to macroindustrial forces,

such as the industry’s marketing and promo
tional strategies, as well as to the rise of a new

teen demographic.
The Scream films’ overt and clever dissection

of genre conventions, and its rewriting of vari
ous time-honored customs, have resulted in a

group of films that are distinct and noteworthy

for their progressive politics. In updating the
genre to reflect a more adolescent-female sen

sibility, featuring empowered central female
characters that refuse to be victims and who

fight back against their attackers, the films

have made the genre relevant and appealing
to its traditional core male audience while also

cultivating a new generation of avid female
fans.

NOTES

I would like to thank Sunita Abraham for her helpful
comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

1. The films Collins examines include Batman

(1989), Back to the Future III (1990), and Theima and
Louise (1991).

2. The pioneering Halloween led to Halloween 2,
(1981), Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982), Hal
loween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), Hal
loween 5 (1989), and Halloween: The Curse of Michael

Myers (1995). Friday the 13th generated eight more
films in the series: Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981), Part
3 (1982), The Final Chapter (1984), Part5: A New Be
ginning (1985), Part6: Jason Lives (1986), Part/: The
New Blood (1988), and Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan
(1989). The original d Nightmare on Elm Street was
followed by five sequels: Part 2 (1985), Part3 (1987),
Part4 (1988), Parts: A Dream Child (1989), and Fred
dy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991).

3. A study of box-office grosses highlights the de
cline. The first Halloween film, released in 1978, cost
$325,000 and grossed $47 million. In 1980, the first
Friday the 13th cost $700,000 and grossed $37.5 mil
lion. In 1984, Nightmare on Elm Street cost $1.8 mil
lion and grossed $25.5 million. During the 1980s, the
first few sequels in each franchise managed to gross
as much as, if not more than, the original?the third
and fourth installments of Friday the13th, grossed
over $30 million, while Nightmare on Elm Street, Part

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2, Part3, and Part4 grossed $30 million, $45 mil
lion, and $50 million respectively. However, by the
early 1990s, the franchises’ grosses had diminished.
Halloween Part 6, the final installment before 1998’s
Halloween: H20, grossed $15 million. The last Friday
the 13th grossed $16 million, and the final Nightmare
on Elm Street made $18 million. While these grosses
are still considerable in the light of their relatively low
production budgets, there was a significant drop-off
in the films’ box-office compared to their peak gross
es in the mid-1980s. It should also be noted that the
films mentioned here belong to initially popular and
particularly high-profile, branded franchises. As such,
they were able to sustain public interest and popular
ity for longer periods than could lesser-known slasher
films. Significantly, by the early 1990s, the number

of slasher film releases had fallen sharply, and those
few tended to belong to popular, established slasher
franchises.

4. This overview is necessarily brief. For a more
detailed discussion of the history and evolution of the
genre, see Clover; Tudor.

5. Dimension Films was launched in 1993 as a
subsidiary of Miramax Films, the studio launched by
brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. This new division
was an attempt to diversify beyond the highbrow,
quality art films associated with the Miramax brand.
Where Miramax specialized in independently pro
duced art-house fare, Dimension focused on develop
ing and producing low-budget, mass-appeal, genre

movies?primarily horror, sci-fi, and action films.
Dimension was launched shortly after Miramax Films
was acquired by the Disney Corporation.

6. During the launch o\ Scream 2, Bob Weinstein
claimed that “this is not the classic case of going,
‘Wow, we made a lotta money, can we make another
one quick?’ We always saw this as a trilogy of movies.
It’s like George Lucas’ plan for Star Wars, only here

we’re dealing with a knife wielding killer in a mask”
(Hochman 28). Director Wes Craven, too, has said,
“From the onset, this project was conceived as a tril
ogy. A third movie was already sketched when we
started the first” (Kleinschrodt L20).

7. Pinedo focuses on horror films released before
1995 and so does not discuss the Scream trilogy.

8.” I would like to thank one of the reviewers of this

article for pointing out that genre hybridity is not nec

essarily linked to the rise of postmodernism; scholars
such as Robin Wood have argued that even traditional
genre films tended to mix elements from different

genres. I accept that genre mixing, in isolation, may
not necessarily signal a postmodern perspective. In
discussing the increasingly postmodern qualities of
the slasher film, I offer genre hybridity as only one of
a range of characteristics that, in combination, are
acknowledged (by scholars including Isabel Pinedo,
Kim Newman, and jim Collins) as indicators of post
modernism; these characteristics are predicated

on postmodern concerns regarding the collapse of
boundaries and a growing sense of uncertainty.

9. While Tietchen does acknowledge that the kill
ers in Scream engage in intertextual referencing via
their “copycatting” of existing murders, he does not
consider this a deviation from traditional postmodern
characteristics. His essay ultimately makes no effort
to examine postmodernism’s evolution.

10. The fact that Halloween stars Jamie Lee Curtis,

the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho, sug
gests that the Loomis reference is unlikely to be coin
cidental.

11. Maureen responds to this shot by asking, “Now
why does she have to be naked? How does that
serve the plot?” Her criticism, however, is actually
“answered” by the intertextual reference to Psycho,
whose infamous shower scene established the horror

tradition of the vulnerable, nude female about to be
knifed to death.

12. In Scream 2, we learn that Billy Loomis’s mother
is the main villain. Loomis, one of the killers in

Scream, was killed by Sidney and Gale at the end of
that film. In Friday the 13th, the killer turns out to be

the mother of Jason, a boy who drowned years earlier
at camp due to the irresponsibility of the teenaged
counselors.

13. While Scream 2 referenced the original film
by re-creating some of its key scenes, these reenact
ments were clearly marked as such and a measure of
distance was maintained by having different actors
performing them. In Scream 3, this distance is erased
as we see the original Sidney going through the same
motions in the same familiar space.

14. Buffy creator Joss Whedon has often maintained
that the character was his feminist-inflected response
to horror films in which the young, blonde female is
the first to die.

15. The evolution of new technologies has also
resulted in the emergence of a global teen market. In
the past, cycles of teen culture were largely conceptu
alized as, tailored for, and targeted at a “local” North
American market. I am not suggesting that these
earlier teen products did not reach an international
audience, rather that they were not necessarily con
structed specifically to do so. In recent years, how
ever, the American culture industries have evolved

corporate structures that efficiently distribute teen

culture across national borders, expanding the global
possibilities and influence of American teen culture.
The continual merging of media institutions, accom
panied by the increasing turn toward global cultural
exchange and international cultural flows?much of it
aided by the rise of the borderless World Wide Web
has ushered in an era in which cultural texts, with

their representations of American teen culture, have
become readily available to international audiences.
American films, television shows, and music have of

ten enjoyed international exposure and consumption.

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MTV’s global expansion has enabled its emergence
as the international arbiter of youth culture. Similarly,
music corporations such as the internationally based
Zomba Music Group are well positioned to launch
their artists globally, so that teens world-wide can
access the same products simultaneously. These
developments suggest that we are witnessing the rise
of a global teen culture that embraces and shares a
host of media products. This may lead (and perhaps
already has led) to generations of teens who have
more in common, culturally, with their international
peers than they do with other generational segments
of their home cultures.

16. Many of these strategies are not unique to the
Scream trilogy or even to the film industry; both the
television and music industries use them in their

attempts to capture the teen market. One reason for
this crossover between media must lie with the mul

timedia conglomeration that characterizes the enter
tainment/culture industries in the 1990s. See Wee.

17. See Wyatt.
18. Dimension’s quest for publicity included the

January 1998 issue of Seventeen, which promoted
Scream 2 with two stories. The first profiled Scream 2
star Timothy Olyphant, while the second was a fash
ion piece to help its teenage readers dress like the
film’s female characters. A few weeks after Scream 2

premiered, the Los Angeles Times ran an article de
tailing the fashion labels worn by the stars of the film,

highlighting the key trends, and telling readers where
to purchase the items and how to replicate the look
(Goodwin E2).

19. This marriage of music and film is, of course,
not new. As Doherty shows, the strategy was charac
teristic of some of the earliest teenpics from the 1950s
(Teenpics). However, the complex industrial and com

mercial structures that tied the musical elements to

the soundtrack, the promotional music videos, and
the accompanying MTV special promotional events
are much more recent.

20. The early definition of crossover concentrated
on race and was used to describe nonwhite, usu
ally African American, entertainers who were able to
transcend their racial “identities” and “cross over”

into the mainstream. I am not using the term this way.
Rather, I use crossover to describe the more recent

phenomenon of creative personnel moving between
and working within different media simultaneously.

21. Interestingly, “The Scare” opens with the
characters watching and discussing another Kevin

Williamson-scripted slasher film, / Know What You Did
Last Summer (1997).

22. The WB television network was particularly
aggressive in crossing media-specific boundaries and
recruiting feature-film talent. Recognizing the teen
viewer’s love of movies, the WB network actively tried
to fortify the television-film connection. One strategy
involves WB’s commitment to using film-like visual

styles and techniques in its teen-oriented shows. All
of WB’s teen shows, for example, use the single-cam
era format and are shot on film, offering the rich, or
ganic visuals lacking in video. In addition, WB actively
sought out arrangements with filmmakers rather than

established television personnel. Besides William
son, the network also worked with Joss Whedon, who

was responsible for WB’s hit television show Buffy
the Vampire Slayer. Like Williamson, Whedon also
worked in feature films. He wrote the film version of

Buffy the Vampire Slayer(1992), Toy Story (1995), and
Alien Resurrection (1997). Many of WB’s other shows
also use feature-film personnel. Felicity creators J. J.
Abrams and Matt Reeves began in films, the former as
a scriptwriter on films such as Regarding Henry (1991)
and Armaageddon (1998), the latter as director of The
Pallbearer (1996). The producers and creative person
nel on WB’s summer series Young Americans include
production designer Vince Peranio, who collaborated
with John Waters on his films and also worked on

Blair Witch II (2000), and camera operator Aaron
Pazanti, who worked on the Oscar-winning American
Beauty (1999).

23.1 would like to thank the reviewer of this essay

who pointed out that this box-office figure is particu
larly impressive if we consider that there were only
three movies in the series. The Scream trilogy’s box
office far exceeds the box office totals of much-longer
series such as Halloween and Friday the 13th.

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• Contents

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p. 47
p. 48
p. 49
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p. 53
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• Issue Table of Contents

Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 57, No. 3 (FALL 2005) pp. 1-62
Front Matter
From the Indexical to the Spectacle: On Zhang Yimou’s Postmodern Turn in Not One Less [pp. 3-13]
The Pitfalls of Media “Representations”: David Lynch’s Lost Highway [pp. 14-30]
Moviegoing and Golem-Making: The Case of Blade Runner [pp. 31-43]
The Scream Trilogy, “Hyperpostmodernism,” and the Late-Nineties Teen Slasher Film [pp. 44-61]
Back Matter

WeeklyReading Response:

300 Words

Must Referencing These two: Screening – Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)

Reading: Valerie Wee – “The Scream Trilogy, ‘

This assignment asks you to respond rather than just to summarize what was covered that week. Maybe you wish our discussions/materials had gone further and you can think of other places you’d apply that week’s ideas. Maybe you disagreed with an interpretation of a film/concept and want to offer your own thoughts / counterexamples. Take it where you want