Call for Papers: Elder Horror on Screen

1 | March 28th, 2017 | Posted in call for papers, horror

FINAL DAYS!
Call for Contributors
Elder Horror on Screen: Hermits, Harbingers, and Hags
(4/1/17 Abstracts; 10/1/17 Essays)

As the baby boom generation grays, representations of the elderly on screen are receiving significant scholarly attention. Cinematic depictions of aging as a degenerative process, the othering, marginalization, and victimization of the elderly, and fears of the finality of death have all been increasingly highlighted and analyzed as we attempt to sort out the complex social, psychological, economic, and emotional consequences of—and responses to—growing old.

Absent from these considerations, however, is a genre in which our fears of growing and being old, and of the elderly, take on fantastic proportions: Horror. Here, the threats of aging are made manifest and bloody—by the eccentric harbinger of doom, the crone who seeks to restore her vitality, the pensioners who bargain with the supernatural to cheat death, and ancestors who return from the grave to curse the living—as well as threats to the aged, whether cast as frail victims or as stalwart gatekeepers and repositories of Old World knowledge.

This collection seeks essays on films in which these horrors of aging are prominently featured. It will explore the ways in which these texts reflect—and shape—our ambivalent attitudes toward growing old, exploring cinematic presentations of aging as the ultimate, inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, as a terrifying time of reckoning with past sins, and as a portal to unexpected (even unimaginable) powers. It will also pose new questions about our complex relationship with the aged, whose role as keepers of wisdom and experience simultaneously intrigues and unsettles us.

We seek proposals for intelligent, accessible chapters—rigorous scholarship and innovative ideas expressed in clear, vigorous, jargon-free prose—that examine and critically analyze the relationship between aging and horror as it is portrayed across a range of films and eras. Proposals for both topical essays and close readings of a single text are welcome. Proposals on films produced outside the US are very welcome. Previously unpublished work only, please.

While genre horror is a ready vehicle for these images, proposals looking at terrors associated with aging and the elderly in other genres, such as melodrama, science fiction, and genre hybrids or mash-ups are also very welcome. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

* The elderly as harbingers of doom (Friday the 13th 1 and 2, Trolls 2, Krampus)
* The elderly as victims—or not (Breathe, Homebodies, Rabid Grannies, The Visit)
* Unholy alliances (Rosemary’s Baby, The House of the Devil, Paranormal Activity)
* Aging and revenge (Dead Silence, Drag Me to Hell)
* Chasing youth (Countess Dracula, Hocus Pocus, The Brothers Grimm)
* End-of-life reckoning (Ghost Story [1981], Bubba Ho-Tep)
* Bodies of horror (Psycho, Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice, Grandma’s House)

Please send your 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (abvanriper@gmail.com).

Publication Timetable:
Abstracts – Apr. 1, 2017
First Drafts – Oct. 1, 2017
Revisions – Feb. 1, 2018
Submission – May 1, 2018

Acceptance will be contingent upon the contributors’ ability to meet these deadlines, and to deliver professional-quality work. Contributors who, without prior arrangement, do not submit their initial draft by the deadline will, regrettably, be dropped from the project.

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Titles of Interest – Divine Horror: Essays on the Cinematic Battle Between the Sacred and the Diabolical

0 | March 23rd, 2017 | Posted in horror, sacred, Titles of Interest

Divine Horror: Essays on the Cinematic Battle Between the Sacred and the Diabolical
Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, eds.
McFarland, 2017

From Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to The Witch (2015), horror films use religious entities to both inspire and combat fear and to call into question or affirm the moral order. Churches provide sanctuary, clergy cast out evil, religious icons become weapons, holy ground becomes battleground–but all of these may be turned from their original purpose.

This collection of new essays explores fifty years of genre horror in which manifestations of the sacred or profane play a material role. The contributors explore portrayals of the war between good and evil and their archetypes in such classics as The Omen (1976), The Exorcist (1973) and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), as well as in popular franchises like Hellraiser and Hellboy and cult films such as God Told Me To (1976), Thirst (2009) and Frailty (2001).

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Titles of Interest – Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us

0 | March 8th, 2017 | Posted in monster theory, monsters, monstrous, teratology, Titles of Interest

Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us
Edited by Adam Golub and Heather Richardson Hayton
Foreword by W. Scott Poole; Afterword by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
McFarland, 2017

About the Book

Exploring the pedagogical power of the monstrous, this collection of new essays describes innovative teaching strategies that use our cultural fascination with monsters to enhance learning in high school and college courses. The contributors discuss the implications of inviting fearsome creatures into the classroom, showing how they work to create compelling narratives and provide students a framework for analyzing history, culture, and everyday life. Essays explore ways of using the monstrous to teach literature, film, philosophy, theater, art history, religion, foreign language, and other subjects. Some sample syllabi, assignments, and class materials are provided.

Table of Contents

Foreword (W. Scott Poole)
Introduction: Monstrous Pedagogies
Adam Golub and Heather Richardson Hayton
Part I–Teaching Difference: The Monster Appears
Teaching Monsters from Medieval to Modern: Embracing the Abnormal (Asa Simon Mittman)
Gender, Sexuality and Rhetorical Vulnerabilities in Monster Literature and Pedagogy (Pamela Bedore)
Creating Visual Rhetoric and the Monstrous (Nancy Hightower)
Monsters as Subversive Imagination: Inviting Monsters into the Philosophy Classroom (Jessica Elbert Decker)
Part II–Transforming Space: The Monster Roams
Locating Monsters: Space, Place and Monstrous Geographies (Adam Golub)
White Settlers and Wendigos: Teaching Monstrosity in American Gothic Narratives (Bernice M. Murphy)
Meeting the Monstrous Through Experiential ­Study-Abroad Pedagogy
(Kyle William Bishop)
Using Zombies to Teach Theatre Students (Phil Smith)
Part III–Disrupting Systems: The Monster Attacks Studying Gods and Monsters (Joshua Paddison)
Monsters in the Dark Forest of Japanese Grammar (Charlotte Eubanks)
High School Monsters: Designing Secondary English Courses (Brian Sweeney)
The Monster Waiting Within: Unleashing Agon in the Community
(Heather Richardson Hayton)
Afterword: Monster Classroom (Seven Theses)
(Jeffrey Jerome Cohen)

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Titles of Interest: Strangers, Gods and Monsters

0 | February 16th, 2017 | Posted in monster theory, monsters, monstrous, teratology

Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness
Richard Kearney
Routledge, 2002

Strangers, Gods and Monsters is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters.

Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how Strangers, Gods and Monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them.

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Titles of Interest – At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture

0 | February 16th, 2017 | Posted in monster theory, monsters, monstrous, pop culture, teratology

The fine blog, Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, had an interesting post on a volume worthy of inclusion in the Titles of Interest recommendations. It’s subject matter and approach are particularly relevant to our times.

At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture
Edward Ingebretsen
University of Chicago Press, 2003

Anyone who reads the papers or watches the evening news is all too familiar with how variations of the word monster are used to describe unthinkable acts of violence. Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, and O. J. Simpson were all monsters if we are to believe the mass media. Even Bill Clinton was depicted with the term during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But why is so much energy devoted in our culture to the making of monsters? Why are Americans so transfixed by transgression? What is at stake when the exclamatory gestures of horror films pass for descriptive arguments in courtrooms, ethical speech in political commentary, or the bedrock of mainstream journalism?

In a study that is at once an analysis of popular culture, a polemic on religious and secular rhetoric, and an ethics of representation, Edward Ingebretsen searches for answers. At Stake explores the social construction of monstrousness in public discourse-tabloids, television, magazines, sermons, and popular fiction. Ingebretsen argues that the monster serves a moralizing function in our culture, demonstrating how not to be in order to enforce prevailing standards of behavior and personal conduct. The boys who shot up Columbine High School, for instance, personify teen rebellion taken perilously too far. Susan Smith, the South Carolinian who murdered her two children, embodies the hazards of maternal neglect. Andrew Cunanan, who killed Gianni Versace, among others, characterizes the menace of predatory sexuality. In a biblical sense, monsters are not unlike omens from the gods. The dreadful consequences of their actions inspire fear in our hearts, and warn us by example.

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DON’T BREATHE, God, and Morality

0 | February 13th, 2017 | Posted in ethics, horror, morality, nihilism, philosophy

I was finally able to watch Don’t Breathe and it’s a good horror or suspense film. I was surprised to find a line touching on religion in it: “There is nothing a man cannot do once he accepts the fact that there is no god.” Whether God is needed as a transcendent ground for morality has been debated by philosophers and theologians for years. Interesting to see it pop up in a horror film. For an article by a Christian philosopher and apologist’s view on this topic see this piece, and for a contrary view see this.

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Titles of Interest: The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas

0 | December 27th, 2016 | Posted in 1980s, Christmas, Krampus, Titles of Interest

51kIoHv5YhL._SX348_BO1,204,203,200_The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and the Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil by Al Ridenour (Feral House, 2016)

With the appearance of the demonic Christmas character Krampus in contemporary Hollywood movies, television shows, advertisements, and greeting cards, medieval folklore has now been revisited in American culture. Krampus-related events and parades occur both in North America and Europe, and they are an ever-growing phenomenon.

Though the Krampus figure has once again become iconic, not much can be found about its history and meaning, thus calling for a book like Al Ridenour’s The Krampus: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil. With Krampus’s wild, graphic history, Feral House has hired the awarded designer Sean Tejaratchi to take on Ridenour’s book about this ever-so-curious figure.

The Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas_Video Book Trailer from Feral House on Vimeo.

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Titles of Interest: The Psycho Records

0 | December 27th, 2016 | Posted in Psycho, Titles of Interest

9780231181136The Psycho Records by Laurence A. Rickels (Columbia University Press, 2016)

The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called “psychos” if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase for a range of psychotic and psychopathic symptoms or dispositions. They transferred a war disorder to the American heartland. Drawing on his experience with German film, Hitchcock packed inside his shower stall the essence of schauer, the German cognate meaning “horror.” Later serial horror film production has post-traumatically flashed back to Hitchcock’s shower scene. In the end, though, this book argues the effect is therapeutically finite. This extensive case study summons the genealogical readings of philosopher and psychoanalyst Laurence Rickels. The book opens not with another reading of Hitchcock’s 1960 film but with an evaluation of various updates to vampirism over the years. It concludes with a close look at the rise of demonic and infernal tendencies in horror movies since the 1990s and the problem of the psycho as our most uncanny double in close quarters.

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Titles of Interest: The Laughing Dead

0 | December 27th, 2016 | Posted in comedy, horror, Titles of Interest

9781442268326The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and Bowdoin Van Riper (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)

Hybrid films that straddle more than one genre are not unusual. But when seemingly incongruous genres are mashed together, such as horror and comedy, filmmakers often have to tread carefully to produce a cohesive, satisfying work. Though they date as far back as James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935), horror-comedies have only recently become popular attractions for movie goers.

In The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, editors Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have compiled essays on the comic undead that look at the subgenre from a variety of perspectives. Spanning virtually the entire sound era, this collection considers everything from classics like The Canterville Ghost to modern cult favorites like Shaun of the Dead. Other films discussed include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, House on Haunted Hill, ParaNorman, Scream, Vampire’s Kiss, and Zombieland.

Contributors in this volume consider a wide array of comedic monster films—from heartwarming (The Book of Life) to pitch dark (The Fearless Vampire Killers) and even grotesque (Frankenhooker). The Laughing Dead will be of interest to scholars and fans of both horror and comedy films, as well as those interested in film history and, of course, the proliferation of the undead in popular culture.

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Titles of Interest: Irony in The Twilight Zone

0 | December 27th, 2016 | Posted in Titles of Interest, Twilight Zone

9781442260313Irony in The Twilight Zone: How the Series Critiqued Postwar American Culture by David Melbye (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)

Rod Serling’s pioneering series The Twilight Zone (1959 to 1964) is remembered for its surprise twist endings and pervading sense of irony. While other American television series of the time also experimented with ironic surprises, none depended on these as much as Serling’s. However, irony was not used merely as a structural device— Serling and his writers used it as a provocative means by which to comment on the cultural landscape of the time.

Irony in The Twilight Zone: How the Series Critiqued Postwar American Culture explores the multiple types of irony—such as technological, invasive, martial, sociopolitical, and domestic—that Serling, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and other contributors employed in the show. David Melbye explains how each kind of irony critiqued of a specific aspect of American culture and how all of them informed one another, creating a larger social commentary. This book also places the show’s use of irony in historical and philosophical contexts, connecting it to a rich cultural tradition reaching back to ancient Greece.

The Twilight Zone endures because it uses irony to negotiate its definitively modernist moment of “high” social consciousness and “low” cultural escapism. With its richly detailed, frequently unexpected readings of episodes, Irony in The Twilight Zone offers scholars and fans a fresh and unique lens through which to view the classic series.

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