COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 29 one physician suggests Chris enlist the help of a priest, fearing Regan’s symptoms and behavior could be the result of demonic possession. Andrews’ other favorites include the Saw and Hostel films because of their “meditations on the vulnerability and instability of the human body” and the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, with their portrayals of life in and around suburbia and strong focus on high school culture. After Lehigh, Andrews hopes to further explore her interests in an academic setting. She currently teaches courses in the Health, Medicine and Society (HMS) program, focusing on health and humanities. This allows her to explore more of her interests in the field. “I would love to teach similar things in either an HMS-type program, or in a similar program based in medical schools, teaching humanities literacy to medical students,” she said. She is also open to working in a nonacademic position that has a focus on health. Horror films and novels have evolved to focus on more psychological aspects, further blurring the lines between the genre and the health humanities. Andrews’ research is one of the many conversations focused on exploring the ever-deepening connection between the two. ● anxiety as medical conditions have been studied and researched extensively, but less when it comes to their connection to horror film and literary genres. Andrews felt it was important to add her own perspective to these conversations. “Horror can sometimes be looked at as a kind of ‘thrills and chills’ genre that doesn’t say much or is viewed as a less valuable genre,” she said. “And in the health humanities area, there hasn’t been much publication as to how they fit together.” Yet, Andrews points out, a depiction of our shared fears can teach us about what a culture values. “In horror, we’re shown how often those shared anxieties center around the body. I think that’s an important idea for health humanities, and medicine more broadly, to examine,” she said. Specifically, Andrews suggests contemporary horror films can help health humanities discuss three particularly complex issues: contagion and the associated violation of bodily and social boundaries; the history and current reality of racial abuse and exploitation in medicine, and psychological trauma and its medicalization. “I look at racial exploitation of black bodies specifically. For me it was ethically important to not have an all-white dissertation,” she said. She mentions Jordan Peele’s 2017 film Get Out as an example of a work by a black filmmaker that speaks to the intersection of health and horror. The film centers on Chris and Rose, a young interracial couple who have reached the “meeting the parents” stage of their relationship. Chris is invited to a weekend getaway with Rose’s parents. What Chris writes off as overly accommodating behavior on the part of Rose’s family becomes something much more sinister. “It was such a massive success and helped this social horror sub-genre gain a lot of momentum,” Andrews explains. She cites the 1973 classic The Exorcist—one of her personal favorites—as a prime example of how the overlap of horror and health care are perceived. In the film, 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) starts acting strangely, then gradually more aggressive and terrifying. Her actress mother, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), seeks answers from a host of doctors. The medical professionals run a battery of tests, including one scene showing a spinal tap that could make a viewer with the heartiest constitution squirm. “That’s a lot of what makes people flinch—sometimes, the medical procedures come off as more scary,” Andrews said. Finding no medical explanation but suspecting something deeper and perhaps more sinister, Linda Blair in The Exorcist, (1973) (above and right).
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