Alexandre Aja: A Postnational Genre Auteur?

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines Alexandre Aja’s output across borders and explores whether questions of nationality are as important to understanding his filmography as is the issue of genre. It argues that by openly embracing a globally popular genre, working with culturally important horror figures and employing a highly allusive and intertextual style in his films, Aja’s international reputation is only truly attributable to his success with genre pictures. Aja has become known primarily as a genre director, with references to his French nationality largely downplayed, and although his work certainly engages with the national, his auteurial persona primarily frames him as the newest embodiment of an established and global popular mode. Aja, then, is a postnational auteur figure, whose generic associations have potentially superseded national identity.