Ferocious Fatherhood: A Crisis in Masculinity and Fatherhood in American Horror Cinema

"Ferocious fatherhood examines the evolving representation of fatherhood in horror cinema from the early 1970s to the present, developing a new theoretical framework to understand how paternal figures embody shifting cultural anxieties. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, feminist film scholarship, and socio-political analysis, the book introduces a taxonomy of archetypes, including the Faux Father, Cannibal Father, Haunted Father, Fragmented Father, and their contemporary transformations into Objectified and Bereaved forms. Through close analysis of key films such as The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, and The Stepfather, alongside contemporary texts including Get Out, Hereditary, and The Conjuring franchise, it demonstrates how horror cinema stages crises of masculinity, authority, and the nuclear family. These paternal figures reflect broader tensions surrounding capitalism, race, gender politics, and generational conflict, revealing fatherhood as an unstable and contested site within cultural discourse.