بازنمایی بصری امر غریب؛ تحلیل زیبایی‌شناختی عروسکِ قاتل در سینمای وحشت

The horror genre stands as one of the most resilient yet remarkably transformative cinematic forms, consistently providing a platform for the representation of latent cultural and social fears, anxieties, and tensions. By depicting monsters, supernatural entities, and animated objects, this genre crafts an emotional and cognitive experience for the audience, wherein the boundary between the familiar and the unfamiliar is systematically destabilized. In everyday discourse, the doll is typically perceived as a symbol of innocence, play, and the realm of childhood. However, within the landscape of horror cinema, the doll is often transfigured into a threatening, murderous entity that evokes the experience of the “Uncanny” (Unheimlich) in the spectator. This semantic shift serves as the catalyst for fear and anxiety, rooted fundamentally in the metamorphosis of a domestic, familiar object into a source of dread. The present research adopts an applied objective and utilizes a qualitative methodology with a visual-critical approach. It conducts a case-study analysis of seminal films ranging from the 1970s to contemporary cinema. The analytical framework is grounded in Gillian Rose’s tripartite model of visual materials, which examines the technological, compositional, and social-cultural modalities. Theoretically, this study draws upon Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “Uncanny” and contemporary discourses on representation within the horror genre. The findings reveal that the manifestation of the uncanny is the result of a dynamic interaction between these three modalities. Within the technological modality, the evolution from mechanical puppetry and animatronics to advanced digital technologies has transitioned the root of fear from the “unreality” of the object to the existential anxiety of it being “hyper-real.” In the compositional modality, the strategic orchestration of mise-en-scène, chiaroscuro lighting, and claustrophobic framing creates a perceptual dissonance that elevates the doll from a passive prop to an active, menacing subject. In the social-cultural modality, the representation of killer dolls has evolved in tandem with historical shifts in human apprehension; while earlier works focused on psychological and supernatural terrors, contemporary films increasingly reflect anxieties regarding modern technological encroachment and the blurring of boundaries between the organic and the synthetic. In conclusion, the killer doll in horror cinema functions as a profound aesthetic and cultural construct. By intertwining the formal language of film with collective social anxieties, it effectively alienates the familiar, turning it into the uncanny. This process reveals how cinema utilizes everyday objects to mirror the evolving landscape of human vulnerability, demonstrating that as our tools and societies change, so too do the forms through which our deepest fears are represented.