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CRITICAL<br />
‘NEVER SLEEP AGAIN’ – HORRIFIC BEDS IN WES<br />
CRAVEN’S NIGHTMARES<br />
Katharina Rein, Humboldt-University of Berlin<br />
Katharina Rein holds an M.A. in Cultural History and Theory from the Humboldt-University of Berlin, where she<br />
currently works on her PhD dissertation concerning media and magic in the late 19th century. She is employed<br />
<strong>as</strong> a research and teaching <strong>as</strong>sistant at the Deptartment of Media Studies of the Bauhaus-University of Weimar.<br />
Katharina Rein published several articles on horror film and other topics of cultural history in German and<br />
English <strong>as</strong> well <strong>as</strong> a monograph on the horror cl<strong>as</strong>sic "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984) (in German).<br />
Website: http://katharina-rein.blogspot.de/<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In <strong>this</strong> paper, I analyse the motif of the bed in regard of its representation in two horror films directed by Wes<br />
Craven: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and New Nightmare (1994). The discussion of scenes in which beds<br />
play a central role in those two features reveals that beds are more and more detached from positive<br />
connotations <strong>as</strong> spaces of repose and safety, and charged with images of horror and violence instead. Moreover,<br />
beds are depicted <strong>as</strong> entry points into the realm of dreams, or in <strong>this</strong> c<strong>as</strong>e, nightmares. Thus they are connected<br />
to a mortal danger for their occupants, who are ch<strong>as</strong>ed and killed in their nightmares by Fred Krueger, a<br />
supernatural phantom of a murdered child molester and killer, haunting the teenagers’ dreams. In the<br />
Nightmare series, dream and reality are often difficult or impossible to tell apart – for the viewers <strong>as</strong> well <strong>as</strong> for<br />
the characters themselves. The films thus hint at a problem philosophy h<strong>as</strong> been linking to dreaming for<br />
centuries – the difficulty to distinguish the two states of existence and to decide which of the two is ‘real,’ or<br />
perhaps ‘more real’ than the other. In the Nightmare series, <strong>this</strong> border is often blurred <strong>as</strong> the teenagers’<br />
nightmares often appear to be no less ‘real’ than their waking existence, sometimes the former are even more<br />
exciting and adventurous than the latter (especially in the sequels). Finally, especially New Nightmare reflects<br />
on the production of horror films itself, <strong>as</strong> it, first, revolves around characters involved in film production and,<br />
second, depicts horror plots <strong>as</strong> (at le<strong>as</strong>t sometimes) originating from nightmares.<br />
---<br />
Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 1 is today regarded <strong>as</strong> an indisputable cl<strong>as</strong>sic of the horror genre.<br />
However, compared to other milestones of modern horror like The Tex<strong>as</strong> Chainsaw M<strong>as</strong>sacre 2 , Halloween 3 or<br />
Friday the 13th 4 , the Nightmare series received relatively little academic attention. The success of the first<br />
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