Dreading the White Picket Fences: Domesticity and the Suburban Horror FilmViewing pleasure, as well as the possibility of later analysis of various horror narratives, is often directly or indirectly, but always closely, related to the issue of setting and space as a defining category needed for a more complete understanding of the genre. In many ways, gothic/horror spaces are the linchpin connecting and unifying the various elements (and sometimes stereotypes), but only rarely are these spaces theoretically exposed as the source and cause of some type of cultural and social anxiety (being the premise for a later genre related articulation). This article proposes the reading and tracing of a particular type of space - the American suburb - and its role in and contribution to the articulation of social anxieties through the horror slasher subgenre. The analysis will delineate the required historical and theoretical context preceding the birth of the suburban space as depicted in horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). Elements including the idealized space of the home, the post-WWII inherited position of women within domestic spaces, the questions of repressed sexuality leading to the creation of the suburban monstrous, together with the final act of violent (feminine and nonfeminine) rebellion will be addressed in the attempt to form a connecting theoretical arc between spatial issues and a specific segment of horror genre production.
