In Violation of the Balance:

                                          Foreignness and the Post-9/11 Horror Film

  Immigrants in the United States continue to face a great deal of scrutiny and

  suspicion. In “Strangers To Ourselves,” Julia Kristeva discusses the notion of

  foreignness in contemporary French society, writing that “the foreigner lives

  within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our

  abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder.” The foreigner is

  something hidden within the self, beyond comprehension, and a constant,

  uncanny threat to one's home. The popular horror film has long functioned as

  a window into the cultural subconscious, and similar investigations of

  'otherness' surrounding the genre have been explored, most notably by Robin

  Wood in his “The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film.”

  Operating within the framework of these ideas is Francis Lawrence's

  Constantine. The thematic thread that resonates from Constantine is anti-

  immigration, and more specifically, anti-Mexican immigrant. The film is a

  meditation on the fear and anxiety projected upon Mexican immigrants by an

  American population, whose attitude towards 'the other' is a refusal to form

  relations, rejection, and annihilation. Constantine's project is revealed as an

  exploration of this anti-immigrant ideology that permeates the American

  psyche, and the ways in which it is exacerbated by 'family values' politics,

  religious fundamentalism, and post 9/11 hysteria. A link to the .pdf can be

  found here.