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 Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20688497 Accessed: 04-11-2019 01:43 UTC

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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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