Westerns are another genre frequently given over to allegory: infamously,
John Wayne despised High Noon because he believed it was an
anti-blacklisting allegory; Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar is in a similar
vein as it alludes fairly strongly to McCarthyist hysteria.
Cheers,
James

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 12:31 AM, Paul Ramaeker <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Well, of course, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is classic H'wood allegory,
> and what I would imagine to be esp. valuable about it, in terms of class
> discussion, is, What is it an allegory of, exactly?  Commie infiltration?
>  Or social conformity?
>
> A lot, A LOT, of horror is easily read as allegory.  Romero is of course
> key- for Night of the Living Dead, civil rights, but it's also a critique of
> the family (return of the repressed, for Robin Wood), whereas Dawn can be
> read in terms  of consumerism.  I suppose critique and allegory begin to
> blur here, or more specifically allegory and metaphor.  How would you
> specify that distinction?  Consider, for instance, the original Cat People.
>  Or, most/all Buffy episodes (eg., Angel loses his soul after sleeping w/
> Buffy as allegory of women's fears about losing their virginity).  Or,
> Rosemary's Baby- it's actually about pregnancy, but being impregnated by the
> devil makes it about fears surrounding pregnancy in a broad sense.
>
> If this sort of stuff is allegorical on the lines you are thinking, then
> certainly you should look up Wood's stuff on horror, like the chapter in
> Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan.
>
> pbr
>
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