Campus Gothic

Campus Gothic refers to slasher movies that are set in the locale of a college or high school campus (seeslasher movies). One of the reasons for the location of these slasher movies is the circulation of legends about serial killers on college campuses since the mid‐1960s (Tucker 2005: 177). As the most prolific category of all slasher movies, campus Gothic thrived during the 1980s in Reagan's America. In the 1990s there was a slasher revival with Wes Craven'sScream(1996), and other non‐campus‐based slashers such asI Know What you Did Last Summer(1997). Characterized by its low‐budget productions, campus Gothic invited teenage viewers to enjoy nudity, blood, and gore. Manipulating the “body‐count” film that structures its progression around the growing number of horrific murders and the teen exploitation picture, campus Gothic addressed teenagers with cautionary tales. The transgressions of the teen protagonists that the viewer was invited to enjoy voyeuristically were also the prerequisite for their punishment by adult authority, symbolized in the identity of the killer. While these movies superficially called for the enjoyment of transgressive behavior, of violence and sexuality, they were actually constructed as conservative fairy tales warning Red Riding Hoods about the dangers of the lurking wolf. They expressed Republican ideas about sin and punishment and the nation's social and political anxieties about Reagan's policies during the 1980s. President Reagan's illusory promises to the people were fundamentally disparate from what he actually managed to deliver in reality (Muir 2007: 11). This double mentality, of a deceptive happiness and order and an uncertain, fearful reality reflects the attitude of the campus slasher movies: underneath the seemingly secure, lustrous, and peaceful surface of the campuses lay a different reality that was about to violently erupt on screen.