The horric film genre is a scene of vicarious desire

Evidence

Much of this collective memory was filled with images from horror films. Lacanian analyses of these films suggest that the violent fantasies portrayed on the screen amount to “the ’ mise-en-scene of desire’ for the spectator.” If we accept that it is “the experience of the ecstatic, often horrific Real that manifests itself in so many contemporary films,” then perhaps the spectacle of 9/11 is a reversal, or blurring, of this. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 734

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Lacanian reading of horror film as the ‘mise-en-scene of desire’ — a reusable analytical frame for the book’s monster imagery.
• XREF: The reversal/blurring of Real and screen connects to the reader’s thesis: the Muslim monster as constructed image that comes to be met as reality.