Premier issue of “The Journal of Gods and Monsters”: The Monstrosity of Displacement

0 | July 20th, 2020 | Posted in displacement, Journal of Gods and Monsters, monsters, monstrous

I’m pleased to announce the first issue of The Journal of Gods and Monsters is now available.
Monsters are often defined as those unfortunate beings displaced from the “normal,” and in the inaugural issue of The Journal of Gods and Monsters, we are exploring this displacement and the role of religious traditions in its construction, maintenance, and complication. Such beings labeled as monsters might be displaced from biology, such as the cynocephalic protagonist of the Greek Life of St. Christopher. Then again, a monster’s displacement could be cultural, as seen in contemporary efforts by some Burmese Buddhists to displace and monstrosize the Rohingya minority. Or it could be soteriological, like the transhistorical phenomenon of Jews and Muslims being made into monsters via their exclusion from some structures of Christian salvation.
In this special issue, we present three methodologically-diverse submissions that tackle the issue of monstrosity and displacement from a wide range of regional and temporal arenas, including 1960s West Virginia, 16th-century France, and 1940s science fiction literature. We also present reviews of new and important materials in the field of Monster Theory.
Published: 2020-07-20
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Recommended Reading on World War I, Horror and the Supernatural

0 | July 6th, 2020 | Posted in horror, horror studies, supernatural, World War I

I’ve read and watched a lot on World War II over the years, since I was a child actually, watching films with my dad growing up. World War I is another story. I’ve only recently have I taken a closer look at the Great War in more depth. In addition to recommending a viewing of 1917, there are some resources I’d like to recommend that explore World War I in connection with horror and the supernatural. These include:

A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War
by Owen Davies

It was a commonly expressed view during the First World War that the conflict had seen a major revival of “superstitious” beliefs and practices.

Churches expressed concerns about the wearing of talismans and amulets, the international press paid considerable interest to the pronouncements of astrologers and prophets, and the authorities in several countries periodically clamped down on fortune tellers and mediums due to concerns over their effect on public morale. Out on the battlefields, soldiers of all nations sought to protect themselves through magical and religious rituals, and, on the home front, people sought out psychics and occult practitioners for news of the fate of their distant loved ones or communication with their spirits. Even away from concerns about the war, suspected witches continued to be abused and people continued to resort to magic and magical practitioners for personal protection, love, and success.

Uncovering and examining beliefs, practices, and contemporary opinions regarding the role of the supernatural in the war years, Owen Davies explores the broader issues regarding early twentieth-century society in the West, the psychology of the supernatural during wartime, and the extent to which the war cast a spotlight on the widespread continuation of popular belief in magic. A Supernatural War reveals the surprising stories of extraordinary people in a world caught up with the promise of occult powers.

Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War
by Anton Kaes

Shell Shock Cinema explores how the classical German cinema of the Weimar Republic was haunted by the horrors of World War I and the the devastating effects of the nation’s defeat. In this exciting new book, Anton Kaes argues that masterworks such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Nibelungen, and Metropolis, even though they do not depict battle scenes or soldiers in combat, engaged the war and registered its tragic aftermath. These films reveal a wounded nation in post-traumatic shock, reeling from a devastating defeat that it never officially acknowledged, let alone accepted.

Kaes uses the term “shell shock”–coined during World War I to describe soldiers suffering from nervous breakdowns–as a metaphor for the psychological wounds that found expression in Weimar cinema. Directors like Robert Wiene, F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang portrayed paranoia, panic, and fear of invasion in films peopled with serial killers, mad scientists, and troubled young men. Combining original close textual analysis with extensive archival research, Kaes shows how this post-traumatic cinema of shell shock transformed extreme psychological states into visual expression; how it pushed the limits of cinematic representation with its fragmented story lines, distorted perspectives, and stark lighting; and how it helped create a modernist film language that anticipated film noir and remains incredibly influential today.

A compelling contribution to the cultural history of trauma, Shell Shock Cinema exposes how German film gave expression to the loss and acute grief that lay behind Weimar’s sleek façade.

Then there’s a volume by my friend and colleague who has been interviewed a few times here at TheoFantastique on the following volume and more:

Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror
by W. Scott Poole

Historian and Bram Stoker Award Nominee W. Scott Poole traces the confluence of military history, technology, and art that gave us modern horror films and literature.

From Nosferatu to Frankenstein’s monster, from Fritz Lang to James Whale, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War. Bram Stoker Award nominee W. Scott Poole traces the confluence of military history, technology, and art in the wake of World War I to show how overwhelming carnage gave birth to a wholly new art form: modern horror films and literature.

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Two items on horror and psychology

0 | July 6th, 2020 | Posted in evolutionary psychology, games, horror, horror studies

A couple of items have appeared over the last week or two that are worth noting in regards to horror and psychology. The first is “An Infectious Curiosity: Morbid Curiosity and Media Preferences During a Pandemic” published in Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. This article was picked up by a lot of popular media outlets, such as the Consequences of Sound website, who summarize the academic article in the following terms:

The best way to prepare for a pandemic is to go through a different pandemic, and it doesn’t hurt to participate in some alien invasions or the odd zombie apocalypse. According to a new study, horror fans and “morbidly curious” people have shown “greater resilience during the pandemic.”

The research into psychological coping was conducted by scientists at the University of Chicago, Penn State, and Denmark’s Aarhus University. It hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, but a preprint has been giving the internet goosebumps. By looking at 310 individuals, researchers came to the conclusion that “exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.” They wrote,

“We found that fans of horror films exhibited greater resilience during the pandemic and that fans of “prepper” genres (alien-invasion, apocalyptic, and zombie films) exhibited both greater resilience and preparedness. We also found that [the] trait morbid curiosity was associated with positive resilience and interest in pandemic films during the pandemic.”

The second item comes from the journal Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, in a piece titled “Grotesque Gaming: The Monstrous in Online Worlds.” This essay notes the similarities between gaming and religion, and has been discussed in places like Big Think, which wrote:

A befuddling trend in the world of gaming culture has emerged in the coronavirus era. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, economic decline, social injustice, and the resulting social unrest, some of the most downloaded video game genres in recent months have been horror games designed to inspire terror and anxiety. For example, “Resident Evil 3,” “The Last of Us Part 2,” “Nioh,” and “Doom Eternal” have all seen a spike in downloads.

As it turns out, there may be a psychological explanation. Some researchers think that inserting yourself into a virtual horror anti-fantasy could offer relief during times of stress.

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Scientific journal article: “Possession myth as a lens for understanding cultural and psychological evolution”

0 | April 21st, 2020 | Posted in cultural studies, evolutionary psychology, possession

Boutwell, Brian B., Mathias Clasen & Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen. 2020. “We are legion”: Possession myth as a lens for understanding cultural and psychological evolution. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
doi:10.1037/ebs0000197.

In most religious traditions, there exists the conception that human beings can lose their freedom of will to an invading consciousness. We argue that possession myths emerge from evolved mental architecture and reflect a constellation of deep-seated beliefs about cognition, consciousness, and mind−body dualism. We also consider why possession is almost always considered frightening and aversive, thus explaining why the horror genre, and audiovisual horror in particular, has embraced the trope of possession. We analyze how possession works in 2 examples: The Exorcist and Supernatural. Finally, we conclude by briefly discussing the possibility that possession mythology represents an interesting test case for examining the origins of culture in general. Culture, as others have also suggested, exists first as an outgrowth of human psychological faculties but can then come to exert top-down causal influence on those same
faculties.

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Theme of Monsters and the Bible in Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

0 | April 20th, 2020 | Posted in Bible, monsters, theology

Monsters and the Bible

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/INT/current

Vol. 74, No. 2 (April 2020)

On the Impossibility and Inevitability of Monsters in Biblical Thought
Kim Paffenroth
After general considerations of what constitutes a “monster,” this essay examines the examples of “monsters” in the Bible, showing that the Bible does not as frequently depict such beings as do other mythologies. The implications of this for understanding the biblical outlook on creation in general are considered, leading to the conclusion that in fact, in the Bible, it is God who is a monster, or at least, on the side of monsters, and is not to be relied on to eradicate them.

The Good, the God, and the Ugly: The Role of the Beloved Monster in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible
Ryan S. Higgins Ancient
Near Eastern texts teem with horrifying and grotesque beings that pose some significant threat to the cosmos, humanity, and its institutions. Adopting Noël Carroll’s definition, such beings are monsters: interstitial not only physiologically and ontologically, but also cosmically and morally. This essay takes a comparative and literary approach to beloved monsters in Ugaritic, Mesopotamian, and Hebrew Bible texts. It suggests that in Ugarit and Mesopotamia, such monsters play a crucial role in advancing the goals of antipathic heroes while maintaining the integrity of sympathetic deities. It then considers the beloved monster in the Hebrew Bible and its interpretations. Finally, the essay makes note of the phenomenon’s transformation in contemporary speculative fiction. The essay argues that the beloved monster in Ugarit and Mesopotamia keeps together a fragmented cosmos, while in the Hebrew Bible it refracts through the cracks in a fragmented God.

Leviathan to Lucifer: What Biblical Monsters (Still) Reveal
Kelly J. Murphy
Monsters and the monstrous show up in Scripture and outside the pages of Scripture. Two of the most famous biblical monsters—Leviathan and Satan—appear and reappear in different forms, and, at times, their stories are merged into one. A focus on Leviathan and Satan in Scripture helps readers to see the different ways the biblical texts depict monsters and, especially, the relationship between humans, monsters, and the divine. As these creatures (re)appear in popular culture, often drawing on their scriptural representations, they continue to provide a space for audiences to ask: what makes a monster and what do these monsters reveal?

Constructing Imperial and National Identities: Monstrous and Human Bodies in Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees
Anathea Portier-Young
Monster theory illuminates the construction of imperial and national identities in the portrayals of monstrous and human bodies in three early Jewish texts: Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees. Book of Watchers expresses anxiety about Judean/Jewish identity in the shadow of empire through its portrayal of a vulnerable humanity terrorized by voracious giants and their demonic spirits. Daniel dehumanizes empire and its agents, imaging empire as a colossal statue, an animalistic were-king, and a series of monstrous beasts, while one like a human being poses an alternative to imperial rule. Second Maccabees, by contrast, demythologizes, decapitates, dismembers, and disintegrates the imperial body in order to portray the integral Judean political body (and soul) as mature, pure, capable, and ordered.

Holy Terror: Confronting Our Fears and Loving Our Movie Monsters
Craig Detweiler While the natural world may scare us, more frightening beasts arise when we neglect our calling to care for creation and “play god” via technology. From King Kong, Frankenstein, and Godzilla to recent films like The Babadook, The Shape of Water and Us, the most enduring monsters provoke humility, evoke empathy, and prompt us to love rather than fear. These holy terrors can offer an encounter with what Rudolf Otto famously called the mysterium tremendum.

Mapping the End: On Monsters and Maps in the Book of Revelation
Tina Pippin The Book of Revelation is a map of the end time. Its apocalyptic story is full of monsters, from the throne room to the abyss. Using new studies in literary cartography and spatiality studies, I argue that the text of Revelation can be read as a map, and is itself a monster.

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Graham Humphreys Horror Art and Stained Glass Windows

0 | April 1st, 2020 | Posted in art

The current edition of RUE MORGUE magazine, Issue 193 (March/April 2020), currently available on newsstands in the print edition, and free in digital format, caught my eye given the lead story titled “The Horror Art of Graham Humphreys.” I’m a big fan of horror, monstrous and fantasy art, and have a few books in my library on this topic. The article includes an interview with Humphreys, and he makes some interesting comments that draw upon religion in terms of the history and influences on horror art.

“I consider film posters to be an extension of the Old European theatre posters. I’d go even further and say that the stained glass windows in European churches were the origin of the modern film poster – brightly coloured advertisements for fantasy and horror. It’s no coincidence that my first true genre poster for the UK’s release of The Evil Dead looks like a stained glass window.”

A little later he refers to “the temple of poster art”.

Humphrey’s comments provide an interesting and perhaps unexpected insight into this art form.

 

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Titles of Interest – “Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture”

0 | March 4th, 2020 | Posted in monsters, myths, pop culture, Titles of Interest

I learned about this volume from the blog of Steve Wiggins, a fellow monster scholar. The overall topic is very appealing to me, and the discussion of Harryhausen’s monsters (or creatures as he preferred to call them), make this a volume I must add to my library.

Tracking Classical Monsters
Liz Gloyn
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the modern world? In this book, the first in-depth study of how post-classical societies use the creatures from ancient myth, Liz Gloyn reveals the trends behind how we have used monsters since the 1950s to the present day, and considers why they have remained such a powerful presence in our shared cultural imagination. She presents a new model for interpreting the extraordinary vitality that classical monsters have shown, and their enormous adaptability in finding places to dwell in popular culture without sacrificing their connection to the ancient world.

Her argument takes her readers through a comprehensive tour of monsters on film and television, from the much-loved creations of Ray Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans to the monster of the week in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before looking in detail at the afterlives of the Medusa and the Minotaur. She develops a broad theory of the ancient monster and its life after antiquity, investigating its relation to gender, genre and space to offer a bold and novel exploration of what keeps drawing us back to these mythical beasts. From the siren to the centaur, all monster lovers will find something to enjoy in this stimulating and accessible book.

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Journal article explores the psychology of possession in connection with horror

0 | March 3rd, 2020 | Posted in horror, possession, psychology

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mathias Clasen, who has been interviewed here previously on his biocultural approach to the study of horror, is the coauthor of a journal article of interest. It appears in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and is titled “’We are legion’: Possession myth as a lens for understanding cultural and psychological evolution’. Here’s the abstract:

In most religious traditions, there exists the conception that human beings can lose their freedom of will to an invading consciousness. We argue that possession myths emerge from evolved mental architecture and reflect a constellation of deep-seated beliefs about cognition, consciousness, and mind−body dualism. We also consider why possession is almost always considered frightening and aversive, thus explaining why the horror genre, and audiovisual horror in particular, has embraced the trope of possession. We analyze how possession works in 2 examples: The Exorcist (Blatty & Friedkin, 1973) and Supernatural (Kripke et al., 2005–2020). Finally, we conclude by briefly discussing the possibility that possession mythology represents an interesting test case for examining the origins of culture in general. Culture, as others have also suggested, exists first as an outgrowth of human psychological faculties but can then come to exert top-down causal influence on those same faculties.

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Podcast with Brandon Grafius: “Reading the Bible with Horror”

0 | February 26th, 2020 | Posted in Bible, Bible as Horror, horror, podcast


I’m pleased to share a video podcast conversation I had with Brandon Grafius on his book Reading the Bible with Horror. We have been working together for a while co-editing the volume Theology and Horror, and we talk a little about this too, as well as our new project the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters. Here’s the description of Reading the Bible with Horror.

In Reading the Bible with Horror, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, he stops to place the monstrous Leviathan in conversation with contemporary monster theory, uses Derrida to help explore the ghosts that haunt the biblical landscape, and reads the House of David as a haunted house. Conversations arise between unexpected sources, such as the Pentateuch legal texts dealing with female sexuality and Carrie. Throughout the book, Grafius asks how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and he explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.
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Cronenberg’s THE FLY, Transporters, and Atheism

0 | February 21st, 2020 | Posted in Atheism, Body, science fiction, soul


I’ve never been a big fan of David Cronenberg’s The Fly, preferring the 1950s version, but when this video came across my YouTube feed I was intrigued. I enjoy the analysis of Rob Ager and Collative Learning, and his suggestion that The Fly should be understood as have an atheistic subtext is intriguing. Although Cronenberg is an atheist, I would question, however, whether the idea that human beings are monistic (solely material) rather than dualistic (body and soul) in their anthropology neccesitates atheism. There are Christians, for example, who are monistic, holding a view called non-reductive physicalism. It could be that this is just another example of Cronenberg’s exposition of mortality through body horror, but given his atheistic starting point this interpretation would flow naturally from that philosophy. At any rate, enjoy the video.

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