Following Burkean critical theory, this essay examines five examples of films about haunted houses to determine their symbolic potential as “equipment for living.” These films help audiences to overcome feelings of anomie and disorientation. The essay studies ways in which film content and the cinematic medium engage issues of chaos. It is argued that both content and medium subject the audience symbolically to paradoxical conjunctions of realms of time and space which do not ordinarily coincide. The essay demonstrates how such an experience serves the audience as equipment for living.
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Barry Brummett (1985) studied this question.
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