How the Scream Franchise is a Collage by Quentin Pham

Summary

Scream (1996) is a horror movie franchise that feeds the usual slasher trope and follows a protagonist named Sydney Prescott. The franchise has released 5 films with the 6th film set to release this upcoming March. The general basis of each film is that a masked killer by the name ghostface hunts down Sydney and her friends until she’s essentially the last girl standing. Sydney and her colleague Gale Weathers are the only two characters to have survived all 5 movies. At the end of each movie, the masked ghostface killer is revealed to have been someone close to Sydney and her friends, with their motives ranging from family revenge to fame.

How Scream is a Collage

Scream is a collage because of its hyper-awareness of horror movie cliches and replication of multiple horror movie aspects. The movies continue to play into tropes of such as thematic openings and the idea of a final girl. Let’s take a look at into some specific tropes Scream uses that make it a collage of the horror genre.

The girl that gets killed in the first 10 minutes of the movie

In almost every horror, usually slasher, movie, there’s a thematic opening scene in which a seemingly clueless girl is attacked by the killer. This opening usually introduces the main villain and signifies the start of when a hometown turns from good to bad. Scream 1 is noted as having one of the most memorable opening scenes in which Casey, played by Drew Barrymore, is killed after having a treacherous phone call with the killer.

Running up the stairs when you should be running out the front door   

Every horror movie chase scene has it. The scene where the killer is chasing their victim and the victim makes the poor decision of running upstairs to escape as opposed to running out the front door to escape. Even Sydney mentions this in a ironic saying where she says “Horror movies are all the same…it’s just some dumb girl running from a killer and going upstairs when she should be running out the front door.” I’ve compiled some clips to show this.

Scream 1 Chase Scene Scream | ‘Where Are You?’ (HD) – Neve Campbell | Miramax

Analyzing Scream and how it’s become a model for the horror world

Scream does a great job of collaging multiple genres of horror. Some strategies that the creator uses that continues to be successful is this trope of an essentially undefeatable final girl and the morall that enemies are closer to you than you think. Additionally, Scream has inspired the franchise of “Scary Movie”, a comedy that mocks cliche horror tropes and starrs a main character named “Cindy” (meant to replicate Sydney). An important faucet to take from the Scream franchise is using the cliches or tropes of a specific genre and making it your own.

Prompt: Choose a genre and make a collage piece replicating the cliches/tropes of that genre.

Discussion Questions

How can we incorporate different genres of media into one collage?

Can something be considered a collage if it’s simply replicating a redundant cliche? Does changing the media form of something make it collageable?

What other genres/films do you know of that replicate the same collage style that Scream does?

On “17776” by Caroline Anthony

What is 17776?

“17776” is the name given to the hypertext project by Jon Bois that explores what the world would be like 15,753 years from today. The project was released online in 2017 through the Vox-owned media outlet SB Nation (of which Bois is the creative director) under the guise of a regular speculative sports journalism article, titled “What football will look like in the future.” And, when you first click on the link, that’s all it seems to be, complete with a photo at the top of a group of footballers tackling each other. However, as soon as you finish the first paragraph the words enlarge to fill your screen and suddenly you’re looking at a calendar with the date “March ‘43” written across the top, specific year not specified. This is where the multi-media piece of 17776 begins, and over the next one to two hours, the reader will be immersed in an equally idyllic as it is a little bleak future, looking down on the world of humans from lightyears away in the eyes of the space probe Pioneer 9 (nicknamed just Nine in the story), Pioneer 10 (nicknamed Ten), and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (nicknamed JUICE, and is scheduled to launch in April of this year) . No humans have been born or have died since April 7th, 2026, the continents are a different shape from global warming, and, most importantly, football is still a huge thing.

17776 and collage

From the first chapter this piece is full of multimedia, but what I feel really roots it in the distinctly familiar and yet so alien feel is its use of collage. For example, right from the beginning as we’re first being introduced to who we are and what this world is, we are faced with a number of real newspaper headlines and clippings from the 1960s-1980s discussing Pioneer Nine’s launch and subsequent loss of contact with NASA. This use of collage is effective in both grounding the reader in the character of Nine, as well as enhancing the narrative; the articles say that the probe failed after 18 years, so how are we still here?

17776 doesn’t just use textual collage though, and, as a lot of the narrative revolves around huge games of football happening on Earth, Bois has found a way to visualize it for the reader. For the sake of being brief I’ll try to explain as simply as possible: football has essentially escalated over the past tens of thousands of years to the point that most games are not played in a stadium but instead with, in this case, state lines as endzones. As a result, Bois has placed gifs of Google Maps with his own images on top of them to illustrate these gargantuan games (interspersed with character commentary as well). These gifs are a constant in the piece, and are used to give the readers a concrete image of everything from the aforementioned games to letting us see from the space probe’s eyes. This is also effective, both as a storytelling tool and method; can’t quite understand the magnitude of these games? Here’s a picture. How are we even seeing this right now? You’re looking through the eyes (camera?) of a space probe.

17776 is a testament to the power of storytelling through mixed media, with so many different aspects of narrative through alternate means that I did not even get close to covering all of here. Its use of collage mainly serves the purpose of grounding the reader in the bizarre environment that the story has created, as well as to push the distinct and unique aesthetic for the entire piece. And, in taking images and articles from the time we are living in now, it forces us to envision the future in which the narrative takes place, thus making a fascinating statement on the state of humanity today.

Discussion Questions

1. In lot of the other pieces we’ve looked at, collage was the main vessel through which the story/ideas were put across; how much of a difference does it make to use collage simply as a tool to enhance the narrative instead of finding a story entirely in another’s work?
2. A lot of collage work is transformative, but how does it change when the work itself maintains its original meaning (i.e. newspaper clippings still being used as newspaper clippings)? How does specific context alter the meaning/significance?

Prompt

Write a piece in which you use collage as a tool to ground your story, whether that be in a certain time period, a certain location, as a certain person/character, etc.

On “H of H Playbook” by Athena Haq

“A facsimile of Carson’s own personal playbook, ‘H of H’ is a performance of thought, one that speaks not only to the heroic past but to the tragic present.”

—Casey Cep, “Anne Carson’s Obsession with Herakles,” The New Yorker

Drawing on her background as a classicist, H of H playbook is yet another of Anne Carson’s retellings of Greek tragedy Herakles by the 5th-century BC poet Euripides. The book is written as a play told through collage, using Carson’s illustrations and writing. Herakles is the main character of H of H Playbook, unlike Carson’s well-known Autobiography of Red, which took the perspective of Geryon. H of H Playbook tells the story of Herakles after he returns home from his famous labors (and years of violence) to find that he cannot adapt to a domestic life.

H of H playbook begins with a few stand-alone illustrations, followed by a cast list and set. The story then unfolds, with each page including illustrations, cut-outs of writing, or both. Some pages even seemed to be torn, or left out, giving the reader a sense that this is not a traditional retelling. The book opens with the words “a tragedy of Euripides,” “first performed 416 BC,” “translated by anne carson.” Like in all of her work, Carson re-invents genre and blurs the boundaries between translation and creation. The writing of H of H playbook is not so much a traditional play. Much of it is written lyrically, resembling poetry, especially her dialogue of the “chorus,” reflecting the dialect of the “chorus” in many ancient Greek works. Additionally, some parts of the book more closely resemble a screenplay than a traditional play—for example, Carson sometimes indicates that a character’s dialogue is a voiceover, and her settings are written similarly to the style of a movie script. Her work is controversial because, while labeled a translation, many argue that the unconventionality of her retellings are more loosely inspired by their original works than a true translation. However, Carson labels her work as translation as she takes ancient Greek works and puts her own modern twist on them. H of H playbook is a collage not only of different mediums, but also of different genres.

As we compose our own collage works, drawing on H of H playbook, it is important to keep in mind that we don’t need to hold on to the boundaries of conventionality. No one form, genre, medium, or format defines what makes a collage. A prompt inspired by this work: create a collage that uses at least two mediums (ex. drawings, writing, photographs) and utilizes more than one genre.

Discussion questions:

1. Do you think this book can be considered a translation of the Greek tragedy Herakles? Why or why not?
2. How does the use of crossing genres affect the work as a whole?

On “A Humument” by Natalie Hampton

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips

In the 1960s, artist Tom Phillips began to experiment with collage, and in 1966, he decided to try something larger. In a discount furniture warehouse, he randomly chose the Victorian novel A Human Document, and spent the next few years collage every page, resulting in a collection of 367 collaged pieces. When asked about the process in an interview, he said, “I hadn’t really thought about it at all. I just worked with other little bits, edges of pages here and there, thinking, how strange that these words occur in this way. And it was only that day when I bought the book that I thought, ‘I could do something on a larger scale with a proper book!’ And [A Human Document] was the book. It all happened in a day!”

Since its original publication in 1980, Phillips has continued to make collages over his existing work—or a collage of a collage. He’s now on the sixth edition, which was released in 2016 and is supposedly the final version. An example of a difference between the editions is below. Though some of the differences in editions was more subtle, ones like this were substantial both to the words and to the artwork.

However, even throughout the different editions, the meaning stays the same. The text is meant to be read as a diary describing the love story between a woman named Irma and a man named Bill Toge.

Beyond this narrative, Phillips also focuses on the transition of the original text. The author of A Human Document was racist and antisemitic, and his views are reflected in the original document. When Phillips collages the text, he calls out the original author’s views of hatred. For example, in one anecdote in the original text that is based on Jewish stereotypes, Phillips paints a gold star of David on the page. In other instances, he references the Holocaust, which occurred decades after the original text was written. Both Phillips and the reader’s modern knowledge is used to give a new meaning to the original text and how harmful and dangerous its thinking is.

As Phillips updates and re-collages his work, he also updates it with modern references, while still preserving the original meaning. For example, he references Facebook and the MeToo movement. In a recent interview, he said, “#MeToo didn’t mean anything until very recently, and so, that leaps out of the page. It was always there, but it didn’t mean anything [until the #MeToo movement].” This demonstrates that how the original text can stay the same throughout time, its meaning and connotations can change significantly.

What I think really sets Phillips’ work apart from other collages is the way he re-collages and updates his original work. Though the original was published decades ago, it still has a modern and relevant meaning to modern readers. This is something that we can consider in our own collages, and how we can create a living body of work that continues to change with us.

Discussion Questions:

1.     What are the advantages of updating collage over time, and what are the advantages of staying only with the original?

2.     How can collages be used as commentary on the source text?

Prompt:

Take a collage that either you or someone else previously made. Create a new collage out of this collage. Do this twice: once trying to preserve the original meaning and once trying to alter the original meaning.

On “My Emily Dickinson” by Carmina Andrade

Summary:

My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe was published in 1985 and is a full-length biography about the 19th century poet. American poet Susan Howe explores the life of Emily Dickinson and utilizes various sources of poetry and text to reconstruct America’s image of Emily Dickinson. Susan Howe combines quotes from famous poets at the time, letters from Emily Dickinson, poems by Emily Dickinson, and poems by other writers to create a literary collage that is part poetry, part biography.

Excerpts 1-3 Notes:

Excerpt 1: Focuses on Puritan culture in order to explain Dickinson’s backstory; includes sources of Puritan settlers in the early days of the Thirteen Colonies

Excerpt 2: Emily Dickinson’s illegible handwriting; the beginnings of the poem, shows the original formatting/line breaks that were generally altered when published later on

Excerpt 3: Details the similarities of Jonathan Edward, a Calvinist preacher, to Dickinson; Dickinson’s notes/poems as a young woman

Effectiveness of Collage:

The use of collage in My Emily Dickinson is primarily to give the reader background information on the culture of the United States at the time that affected how Dickinson was perceived by others and how she herself perceived others. It also lends credibility to Howe’s argument, making it extremely effective in My Emily Dickinson. The use of collage in My Emily Dickinson provides much necessary historical and cultural context in order to understand the roles of women at this time, which highly affected the reception of Dickinson’s work. As this is ultimately a biography and examination of Dickinson’s life and how her writing was shaped by the

world around her, the extensive use of citation allows the reader to place themselves in Dickinson’s mind and provides support to Howe’s claims about Dickinson being a revolutionary writer.

Inspiration/ serves as a model

My Emily Dickinson is a great example of combining academia with art to create a powerful statement. To this end, this book pushes our boundaries on the ideas of what college is, and that it does not have to be limited to solely achieving artistic purposes but also scholarly ones. Or how about accomplishing both?

Discussion Questions

1. What is considered a collage “source”? Anything that helps convey a broader message?
2. Can old sources “lose” their original meanings? How can we preserve them?

A Dive Into Cameron’s World by Zella Price

Cameron’s World, in the words of the man himself, is “a web-collage of text and images excavated from the buried neighbourhoods of archived GeoCities pages (1994–2009).” But, what does this actually mean? The best way to figure it out is just to check out the site for yourself, but if I had to describe it, I would say it’s an immersive, confusing, and possibly headache inducing portal back into the culture of the late 90’s interwebs.

The creator, Cameron Askin, essentially gathered old GeoCities websites using a site called the Internet Archive (a site used to archive and save pieces of the web, even after they’ve been deleted), and then combined those sites to create an interactive gallery of old websites. In addition to these websites, he’s also gathered various old gifs and jpegs, including the classic “under construction” banners, and the kitschy glittering roses. Whilst you scroll and click through this gallery, upbeat, cyber music plays in the background.

Using these elements, Cameron creates an immersive deepdive into the past. There are four main elements utilized: text, music, gifs and still images, and of course, the websites themselves.

As you browse the site, you come across floating quotes archived from websites, some of which are playful and poetic, such as:

Take a wistful gaze into my celestial coffee cup…

Others of which are more ominous:

IF YOU STUDY THE MATERIAL ON THIS WEBSITE YOU WILL HOPEFULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT OUR PURPOSE HERE ON EARTH HAS BEEN.

He combines these quotes, along with gifs and jpegs of corresponding theme in order to craft different sections, a sly nod to the original Geocities site. These sections can be matched to the Geocities neighborhoods, with themes of outer space and religious dogma. However, clicking on a gif in a certain section doesn’t always guarantee you a website that corresponds. While some sites do either somehow relate to the gif or image, many of the links are seemingly unrelated and random. This ultimately aligns and contributes to the themes of the site’s overall chaos. You never know what you’ll get when you click on something!

But despite the chaos, the site is surprisingly cohesive. He utilizes jpegs and gifs of corresponding color in order to shift from section to section, creating smooth transitions as you scroll through the extensive site, managing to blend a galactic section with a love themed, boudoir-esque section.

By doing this, he creates a controlled chaos– one that is still disorienting and reminiscent of a poorly designed, busy looking geocities site, but not so disorienting that the site loses its purpose. Through the use of collage, Cameron Askin was able to preserve and memorialize the websites of hundreds of people, that would have otherwise been lost to time, and he was able to do it in a way that created an entertaining and engaging experience.

On “Cento Between the Ending and the End” by Camille Gonzales

“Cento Between the Ending and the End” is a poem by Cameron Awkward-Rich. It is part of a collection called Dispatch: Poems published in 2019 by Persea Books. The speaker in the piece describes the feelings of friendship, healing, and gratitude after living through a time or a moment that they felt like they shouldn’t have lived through (“Ending”). The piece is about allowing oneself to be healed by being surrounded by loved friends. Warm, happy words are used like “honey” and “velvet-gold.” Lines like “the body whole bright-winged” suggest a sense of found peace or “End” in others.

A cento is a form that is composed entirely of language that poets take from other poets. In other words, it’s a language based collage. This piece is made of lines that the author strategically chose to convey his message, and it’s effective. The lines were chosen so well, even, that they sound like words originally belonging to just this poem rather than language repurposed. It’s clear that the author had a sound in mind when scavenging for this piece from the words he chose, as “honey” is used twice, and the piece contains heavy images of warm, renewing scenes all following consistent themes.

“‘Cento Between the Ending and the End’ is composed of language that was scavenged from the works of Justin Phillip Reed, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Fatimah Asghar, Kaveh Akbar, sam sax, Ari Banias, C. Bain, Oliver Bendorf, Hanif Abdurraqib, Safia Elhillo, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Franny Choi, Lucille Clifton, and Nate Marshall.”

-Cameron Awkward-Rich

The author used lines from poetry written by his friends and favorite Poets, including Danez Smith, Franny Choi, and the incomparable Lucille Clifton. To this end, I think an interesting prompt inspired by this piece would be to compose a poem made up of lines from other creative writers’ works (at least three different pieces from friends)!

I think it’s challenging to find language that gives the same feelings or tells a story as clearly and flow-y as “Cento Between the Ending and the End” in various works written by different writers who all have different styles and word choice within pieces. The writer must pay attention to and understand how individual lines relate to the whole, opening up a new perspective on the specific choices that poets make with their every line. But then again, how important is it really for a collaged piece to tell a story? I mean that most generally. Additionally, where do textual collages differ from visual collages?

On “15th February” by Sofia Fontenot

15th February is a short film poem made up of live action clips, drawn animation, and stop-motion animation. The film implicitly follows a Valentine’s Day rejection, with repeating clips of the speaker sending letters stamped 15TH FEBRUARY. As the film gets more chaotic, the poem begins and the clips switch to animation of a grocery store, dying roses, and a stuffing heart being ripped apart. The poem is made up of sentences which are rearranged over and over again to form new meanings, like ‘I really tried to put in what I felt.’

15th February combines auditory, written and visual collage: tracks of breathing, stamping, and licking are cut and aligned to form a rhythm. The poem is a collage of itself, three or four sentences broken down and rearranged many different ways to make different meanings. Visually, the film blends three mediums and pieces the clips together in the choppy feel of collage, jumping from far shots of an apartment to quick, repeating shots of hands shoving a letter into a mailbox. By using collage, the film becomes unsettling because of the nature of collage to single out and combine the most striking aspect of many pieces; the audience is forced to listen to emphasized uncomfortable noises, like licking, repeatedly. Shots of satin hearts are interspersed with split seconds of wriggling worms, giving shock without resolution because the worms are already gone.

The film challenges the idea that collages must be made from many other artists’ works, as every aspect of it is credited under a single artist. It models how we might collage our only our own work or emulate collage to emphasize the mood or point of a piece. It also explores how collage can embrace creative writing, visual art, and filmmaking all at once.

Is it possible for a collage to be made up of only one artist’s work? How fragmented does the artist’s work have to be to be considered a collage?

Is there a distinct collage ‘feeling’? Do all collages have this? If you cannot tell that a piece has been collaged, does that make it ineffective?