Rebooting Death: Wes Craven’s Scream 4 as Testament Film

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

As part of a special issue on 'testament films' I would recommend this draft, though with minor revisions. These revisions do not concern the main argument, for the idea that the first movies of the Scream franchise are 'cinematic enactments of Baudrillard's progression' is both interesting and convincing. Here are my critical notes (which I think can be quite easily solved):

The paragraph in which it is presented how the paper proceeds is way too elaborate (lines 32-45). My suggestion is to restrict this paragraph to two sentences at the most so that it becomes much clear what the author is aiming at. Restrict yourself to explaining what the main motive of this article is.

The article addresses the Scream franchise, but in part 2 the Nightmare franchise is discussed. Craven complains about the lack of creativity in the sequels he did not direct himself (although I think there is quite some critical consensus that the third film - Dream Warriors - is actually quite good ...). But then the author dedicates some lines to New Nightmare (lines 87 - 95), and this is too brief to really understand how 'the problem of the franchise' is turned into the subject of this film. There is a quite general, and therefore imprecise, transition to 'Scream 4 does something similar ...' but I do not really get how New Nightmare criticizes the commercial exploitations of a creative work. From lines 95-109 the author extends the analogy to the Scream franchise, but the sketch in this paragraph is discussed at greater length later in the article. If the author really wants to discuss the function of New Nightmare within the franchise, I would suggest to dedicate the final paragraph of this section to Nightmare (for a more elaborate account) and not to Scream.

lines 115-116: The killer is typically a male in some form of ... it is bit unfortunate that the next line mentions 'the mother of Jason Voorhees ...'

lines 145-147: it is mentioned that Randy is placed simultaneously in three representational layers. This point is more or less repeated in lines 266-269. Find a way to avoid the repetition.

Lines 368 - 387: I think the use of such terms as 'real' - ' the real thing'- 'truth' - 'authenticity' - 'original' - 'the real final girl' - in a text in which Baudrillard takes up such an important position, it a bit awkward. Even the first Scream movie is embedded in a network of (genre) conventions that all these terms should not be taken too straightforward. I do not know whether the use of inverted commas really solves the matter, but I think the distinction between notions of real / authenticity and the like create too much of a false divide with the entire concept of simulacrum.

Author Response

Comment 1: The paragraph in which it is presented how the paper proceeds is way too elaborate (lines 32–45). My suggestion is to restrict this paragraph to two sentences at the most so that it becomes much clearer what the author is aiming at. Restrict yourself to explaining what the main motive of this article is.

Response: Thank you for this observation. The roadmap paragraph has been condensed. It now communicates only the paper's central motive without detailing each section in sequence.

Comment 2: The article addresses the Scream franchise, but in part 2 the Nightmare franchise is discussed. Craven complains about the lack of creativity in the sequels he did not direct himself (although I think there is quite some critical consensus that the third film — Dream Warriors — is actually quite good...). But then the author dedicates some lines to New Nightmare (lines 87–95), and this is too brief to really understand how 'the problem of the franchise' is turned into the subject of this film. There is a quite general, and therefore imprecise, transition to 'Scream 4 does something similar...' but I do not really get how New Nightmare criticizes the commercial exploitations of a creative work. From lines 95–109 the author extends the analogy to the Scream franchise, but the sketch in this paragraph is discussed at greater length later in the article. If the author really wants to discuss the function of New Nightmare within the franchise, I would suggest to dedicate the final paragraph of this section to Nightmare (for a more elaborate account) and not to Scream.

Response: The passage on New Nightmare was always doing more argumentative work than its length warranted, and the transition to Scream 4 was understandably felt as abrupt. In the revised version, the final paragraph of Section 2 is now dedicated fully to New Nightmare, developing more precisely how it turns the problem of the franchise into the film's own subject. Regarding the reviewer's note on Dream Warriors, the paper's focus is Craven's own stated dissatisfaction with the sequels he did not direct, which is documented and directly relevant to the auteurist argument. This is clarified briefly in a footnote.

Comment 3: Lines 115–116: The killer is typically a male in some form of... it is a bit unfortunate that the next line mentions 'the mother of Jason Voorhees...'

Response: The reviewer is right that the juxtaposition is awkward. Mrs. Voorhees is an exception. The passage has been reordered.

Comment 4: Lines 145–147: it is mentioned that Randy is placed simultaneously in three representational layers. This point is more or less repeated in lines 266–269. Find a way to avoid the repetition.

Response: The two passages were serving different functions (the first introduces the formal mechanism, the second applies it within the broader Baudrillardian analysis) but the formulation was too close to justify the repetition. In the revised version, the first occurrence retains the full description of the three layers, while the second occurrence removes the restatement and moves directly to its interpretive consequence: that the editing makes it impossible to locate a stable representational base, which is the step the Baudrillardian argument requires.

Comment 5: Lines 368–387: I think the use of such terms as 'real' — 'the real thing' — 'truth' — 'authenticity' — 'original' — 'the real final girl' — in a text in which Baudrillard takes up such an important position, is a bit awkward. Even the first Scream movie is embedded in a network of (genre) conventions that all these terms should not be taken too straightforward. I do not know whether the use of inverted commas really solves the matter, but I think the distinction between notions of real / authenticity and the like create too much of a false divide with the entire concept of simulacrum.

Response: The revised passage reframes the distinction in Baudrillardian terms. The claim is now that Sidney occupies an earlier position in the Baudrillardian progression, one in which the process of simulation has not yet fully consumed its referent, rather than that she is simply "real" in some pre-theoretical sense. The term "original" is retained but used in the sense Baudrillard employs, as the first term in the sequence of simulation. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an excellent discussion of Wes Craven's four Scream films, and especially of the final entry in the franchise, Scream 4. The essay considers how "meta-" issues are central to contemporary cinema, especially with the spending of enormous amounts of production money on sequels and reboots, how horror films in particular,  address these issues explicitly, and how the Scream cycle, all of whose films are directed by Wes Craven himself, give these questions an intense focus and work them through in depth. The cycles of simulation discussed by Jean Baudrillard are especially relevant in this essay's discussion. The first Scream film already addressed such issues in exacerbated form, as it was focused on characters who are self-consciously aware of the rules and cliches of slasher films, even as they find themselves within such a film. The subsequent entries in the franchise each raise this dilemma to a new, exponentially expanded level, until with Scream 4 we find ourselves, together with the characters whom we watch, within an endless hall of mirrors from which there seems to be no exit, except in the finality of death. Of course, no actors are killed in these films, even though numerous characters are; but the depiction of death within the films is correlated with a metaphorical death of creativity that is very evident in the industrial processes of Hollywood that produces the films in question, and is also poignantly echoed by the fact that Scream 4 was Craven's last film before his own death. All in all, this is a smart and accomplished essay that makes crucial points, not only in the interpretation of a series of films, but also with regard to the super-textual question of how such films are produced and marketed. 

Author Response

I have made some changes, highlighted in the document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf