tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/horror-films-53502/articles
Horror films – The Conversation
2024-03-25T17:08:27Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226528
2024-03-25T17:08:27Z
2024-03-25T17:08:27Z
Immaculate: how a nunsploitation film tunes into women’s anger over misogyny and oppression
<p><em>Warning: this article contains spoilers</em></p>
<p>Camp, provocative and often kitsch, the “nunsploitation” subgenre rose to prominence in 1970s European cinema. Exemplifying this trend were films including Ken Russell’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066993/">The Devils</a> (1971) – which received an “X” (18) rating in the UK and the US due to its explicit sexual and violent scenes – and pornographic Italian films <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165325/">Images in a Convent</a> (Joe D'Amato, 1979) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070404/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4">The Nun and the Devil</a> (Domenico Paolella, 1973).</p>
<p>Many film critics have been labelling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/20/immaculate-sydney-sweeney-review#:%7E:text=Immaculate%20isn't%20above%20the,be%20both%20laughable%20and%20refreshing.">Immaculate</a>, the new horror film from Michael Mohan (The Voyeurs, 2021), as nunsploitation, but I believe it offers a greater level of sophistication than this label suggests, reflecting recent political events in America that have profoundly affected women’s freedoms when it comes to their own bodies. </p>
<p>The film acknowledges the prevalent cinematic stereotype of the “sexy nun”. When Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) is initially introduced, she is en route to Italy from her previous post in Michigan. She draws the attention of two male border agents who make sexist comments in Italian. Despite not understanding the language, Cecilia senses their meaning. This experience reflects the discomfort many women feel when being harassed or objectified in public spaces.</p>
<p>This early scene hints at the film’s potential to challenge expectations associated with nunsploitation films and address more culturally relevant themes. With lead actress Sydney Sweeney also serving as a producer, the film gains a unique feminist perspective that interrogates the disturbing and increasingly relevant topic of <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/what-is-bodily-autonomy-and-why-does-it-matter-for-women/">women’s bodily autonomy</a> – a woman’s power and agency over her own body.</p>
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<p>Sweeney plays Sister Cecilia, a devout young woman who is invited to take her vows at an Italian countryside convent dedicated to caring for elderly nuns in their final years. Cecilia is summoned to a meeting with the convent’s leaders and asked to confirm that she has honoured her vow of chastity.</p>
<p>A subsequent scan reveals her unexpected pregnancy. While the nuns view this as a miracle heralding the second coming of Christ, a sequence of unsettling nightmares and mysterious events hints at a darker force at work.</p>
<p>From satanic cults in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/22/rosemarys-baby-polanksi-horror">Rosemary’s Baby</a> to murderous offspring in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/12/prevenge-review-alice-lowe-sightseers">Prevenge</a>, numerous films have shown that horror can be a powerful genre for exploring anxieties surrounding motherhood. Immaculate exemplifies this, fitting into what journalist Jordan Crucchiola describes as <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/prevenge-is-proof-we-need-more-horror-movies-about-pregnancy.html">“pregnancy horror”</a>“.</p>
<h2>Reproductive rites</h2>
<p>The film speaks to ongoing concerns about women’s reproductive rights. In 2022 the US Supreme Court <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65956103#:%7E:text=On%252024%2520June%252C%25202022%252C%2520America's,which%2520is%2520about%252024%2520weeks.">overturned Roe v Wade</a>, the pivotal 1973 ruling that established women’s constitutional right to abortion. Since then, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/nov/10/state-abortion-laws-us">14 states have implemented near-total abortion bans</a>.</p>
<p>The overturning of Roe v Wade reflects the growing influence of conservative religious groups on political agendas. Even the self-proclaimed misogynist influencer <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64125045">Andrew Tate</a> has <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/andrew-tates-muslim-conversion-cant-hide-misogyny-rcna64707">used religious rhetoric</a> to spread his extremist ideology.</p>
<p>Just as Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Handmaids-Tale-by-Atwood">The Handmaid’s Tale</a> warned, when far-right politics, male dominance and religious beliefs align, women’s bodies become state property and are subjected to inhumane restrictions.</p>
<p>The shadow of post-Roe America looms over Immaculate. The fact that Cecilia – the sole American nun in the film – finds herself ensnared in an oppressive religious institution controlled by a dangerous patriarch intent on exploiting women’s bodies, speaks volumes.</p>
<p>The nuns insist on treating the pregnant Cecilia like a religious idol, at one point even dressing her to resemble the Virgin Mary. A poignant close-up shot reveals Cecilia’s inner turmoil as she stands motionless, teary-eyed and trapped in circumstances she never consented to.</p>
<p>Despite being worshipped, Cecilia is denied access to proper medical care. She resorts to faking a miscarriage in the hope of being taken to a hospital. Reflecting the sentiments of the post-Roe landscape, the wellbeing of Cecilia’s unborn child is prioritised over her own.</p>
<h2>Women’s bodies and Hollywood</h2>
<p>Sweeney’s role in Immaculate forms a dialogue with her Hollywood star image, especially in light of her remarks in interviews about how her body is perceived by the public.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://variety.com/2024/film/news/sydney-sweeney-immaculate-glen-powell-euphoria-season-3-1235943028/">sit-down with Variety</a>, she reflected on the media’s tendency to objectify her physique, stating: "People feel … free to speak about me in whatever way they want, because they believe that I’ve signed my life away. That I’m not on a human level any more, because I’m an actor”.</p>
<p>Canada’s <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/amy-hamm-wokeness-is-no-match-for-sydney-sweeneys-undeniable-beauty">National Post</a> recently ran a story doing just that, asking: “Are Sydney Sweeney’s breasts double-D harbingers of the death of woke?”.</p>
<p>The themes of bodily autonomy and ownership of women’s bodies explored in Immaculate extend beyond reproductive rights. They also resonate in celebrity culture, where women in the public eye have long battled sexual objectification and intrusive scrutiny of their physical appearances.</p>
<p>From her breakthrough role in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8772296/">Euphoria</a> to her powerful leading role in Immaculate, Sweeney has proved herself to be a daring and dynamic actress who deserves to be praised for her talent rather than objectified for her looks.</p>
<p>Cecilia fights back against the patriarchal and religious forces attempting to dictate her bodily autonomy. The film’s climactic act is a bloody and visceral outpouring of female rage. Cecilia’s cries convey not only her personal anguish but resonate as a wider expression of women’s collective anger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harriet Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The increasing misogyny and oppression against women is reflected in this new horror, elevating it to something more than a mere nunsploitation movie.
Harriet Fletcher, Lecturer in Media and Communication, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222606
2024-03-15T05:07:18Z
2024-03-15T05:07:18Z
‘An exceptionally queasy atmosphere’: the unsettling new Aussie horror You’ll Never Find Me
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582118/original/file-20240315-20-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=142%2C11%2C7797%2C5249&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Credit Ian Routledge. Copyright Lot Film Pty Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the middle of the night, during a terrible thunderstorm, a sodden stranger knocks on Patrick’s door hoping to use a phone. Insomniac Patrick (Brendan Rock) is a paranoid, bearded loner who sits alone in his dimly-lit mobile home as if he is waiting for a dawn that may never come. The nameless, barefoot visitor (Jordan Cowan), a 20-something woman with long dark hair and haunted eyes, seems unsure if she’s stumbled across a saviour, or a predator. </p>
<p>This unexpected encounter opens the Australian psychological horror film You’ll Never Find Me, an unsettling and economical chamber piece that makes effective use of its limited location and its dialogue-heavy script.</p>
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<h2>Shifting identities</h2>
<p>We begin the film unsure about either character’s identity or motivations. “I’m afraid you’ve knocked on the wrong door,” drawls Patrick mournfully. </p>
<p>He shows the visitor initially reluctant but surprisingly tender hospitality and she is uncertain how to respond. At time drags on, Patrick demonstrates a deep willingness to wax lyrical about his take on life’s difficulties. “It’s nice to pass the time with a stranger,” he confesses. </p>
<p>As the storm knocks out the power, it’s unclear whether the visitor will be able to leave. It’s also obvious something more ominous and perhaps infernal is unfolding. </p>
<p>Directed by Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell, the film offers a gothic, moody ambience. The mobile home is isolated from others in the park. It presents a claustrophobic environment and comes to be a character in its own right: it creaks and groans like a ship riding the waves. </p>
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<img alt="A man sits at a table at the end of a hallway." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582119/original/file-20240315-22-dge1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The mobile home comes to be a character in its own right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Credit Maxx Corkindale. Copyright Lot Film Pty Ltd</span></span>
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<p>The shadowy space seems simultaneously too cramped and too spacious, as if everything is being slowly sucked into the strange, curtained-off section at the back of the home. Ratty 1970s décor aside, time does not seem to be passing in a legible manner, something emphasised through an unsettling string-heavy score and slow, invasive tracking shots.</p>
<p>Information is doled out carefully. The visitor finds odd mementos stashed around the house and is confused at her own inability to keep her story straight. Patrick picks anxiously at the edges of forgotten memories, repeatedly describing the night, and his recollections, as “strange”. </p>
<p>Is this all an insomniac’s drifting thoughts, or the pair’s subjective experience of mutual distrust and paranoia? Has the young woman come looking for Patrick, or has he somehow summoned her? </p>
<h2>A careful dance</h2>
<p>You’ll Never Find Me builds successfully on a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/10-years-of-homegrown-horror-hits-talk-to-me-and-the-golden-age-of-aussie-horror-211031">golden decade</a>” of Australian horror. </p>
<p>This period has showcased diverse innovative and internationally-acclaimed films, ranging from maternal horrors The Babadook (2014) and Relic (2020), to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_footage_(film_technique)">found footage</a> 70s throwback Late Night with the Devil (2023) and runaway hit supernatural horror Talk to Me (2023). </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/10-years-of-homegrown-horror-hits-talk-to-me-and-the-golden-age-of-aussie-horror-211031">10 years of homegrown horror hits: Talk To Me and the golden age of Aussie horror</a>
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<p>You’ll Never Find Me also illustrates the importance of an industry pipeline. Writer/director Bell and co-director Allen, as Stakeout Films, found earlier success with shorts Safe Space (2019), Call Connect. (2019) and The Recordist (2020), some of which also featured performances from Rock and Cowan. Each short plays across genres, featuring evocative soundscapes, moody lighting, tense relationships and claustrophobic settings. </p>
<p>These prior relationships are evident in the film’s confident tone and performances. Cowan and Rock have a compelling chemistry. Extreme close ups on their faces and bodies chart the film’s careful, slow-burn dance between threat and disclosure, or vulnerability and dread. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bearded man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582121/original/file-20240315-24-dr4lqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">At time it feels like we are watching a play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Credit Maxx Corkindale. Copyright Lot Film Pty Ltd</span></span>
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<p>The pair move through odd, circular conversations about their life philosophies and past experiences, as if we are watching a play. We’re aware we are witnessing a careful dance – but for a long time it is unclear who might be the biggest threat to whom. </p>
<p>“You’re the one who knocked on my door,” Patrick reminds the visitor, as she becomes increasingly insistent about wanting to leave. Throughout, he posits whether this visitation was a matter of choice or chance, even as the true and terrible nature of the pair’s encounter makes itself known.</p>
<p>You’ll Never Find Me will appeal to audiences who appreciate a rich atmosphere, character-led drama, and creeping yet tense pacing. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman's face, half in shadows." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582123/original/file-20240315-28-wwqmdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The film has a rich atmosphere, character-led drama, and creeping yet tense pacing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Credit Maxx Corkindale. Copyright Lot Film Pty Ltd</span></span>
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<p>For its many strengths, though, the film may divide audiences with its chaotic, surreal final act. As the pair’s conflict comes to a head, the world of the film tilts in a lurid burst of colour, and the narrative doglegs into a conceit that is challenging to pull off. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/14/youll-never-find-me-review-movie-australian-horror">Some may see</a> this climax as a fitting conclusion that upends some of our assumptions about character, relationships and motivation. Some, including myself, may find this nightmarish sequence, and the film’s denouement, displaces much of the film’s fine earlier work – particularly its manipulation of space and point-of-view – in a frustrating manner. </p>
<p>There is no doubt, though, this film exhibits a distinct sensibility, captivating performances and an exceptionally queasy atmosphere. It is further proof low-budget Australian horror is currently a site of significant innovation, and it successfully showcases Bell and Allen’s ability to do an awful lot with limited resources. </p>
<p><em>You’ll Never Find Me is out now in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/analog-uncanny-how-this-weird-and-experimental-side-of-tiktok-is-forging-the-future-of-horror-222882">‘Analog uncanny’: how this weird and experimental side of TikTok is forging the future of horror</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erin Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For its many strengths, the film may divide audiences with its chaotic, surreal final act.
Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225035
2024-03-08T16:20:15Z
2024-03-08T16:20:15Z
Imaginary: I research imaginary friends – here’s what the horror film gets right
<p>I was hesitant to watch Imaginary. Not only because horror movies are often too scary for me, but also because, for the better part of my adult life, I’ve researched and studied the way children invent imaginary friends and there is widespread misunderstanding of what is perfectly normal play behaviour. </p>
<p>These misunderstanding sometimes lead people to think imaginary friends have supernatural explanations – especially when the typical play involves seeing and talking to things that are inanimate. But I was pleased to find that overall, the film is unusually well informed.</p>
<p>The movie’s main focus is an imaginary friend. He turns up unexpectedly after a family moves into the step mum’s childhood home – but soon after this, things start to get scary. </p>
<p>The film features a little-known form of imaginary companion – toys or dolls. In my own lectures I often ask for a show of hands for those who had imaginary friends as children. Typically, only a few students will raise their hand. But after explaining that the definition also includes dolls or toys imbued with personality the lecture hall usually gets louder and many more hands shoot up. </p>
<p>Both completely invisible beings and personified objects fall under the umbrella of imaginary companions. This is because creating invisible and personified companions involves creating, and interacting with, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.11.046">another mind</a>.</p>
<p>Another accurate element of the film is the adult experience of imaginary companions. One of the adult characters (who I can’t name without spoiling the plot) had an imaginary companion in the past, but did not remember them until they were reminded later on in the movie. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Imaginary.</span></figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.11.046">Age affects the memory</a> of our childhood imagination. The older we get, the more likely we are to forget. Even the organisers of studies of children sometimes consult parents or guardians to determine if there was an imaginary companion that children <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.349">do not recall</a> immediately. </p>
<p>Women and only or first-born children are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.11.046">more likely</a> to create imaginary beings in childhood – and the film follows this pattern. </p>
<p>The presence of a companion in and of itself has been found to influence later adult life. Those that had imaginary companions in childhood are more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2466/02.04.10.PR0.107.4.163-172">have creative jobs</a> in adulthood. There are also accounts of imaginary companions beyond childhood. One large study of adults found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01665">7% of their respondents</a> reported still having these imaginary beings in their lives.</p>
<h2>When imaginary friends seem sinister</h2>
<p>Something else Imaginary gets right is that invisible friends can easily be interpreted as eerie or supernatural. The reason that we scientists call imaginary friends by another name, imaginary companions, is because they are not always friends. </p>
<p>Some children have companions that are disobedient or even mean. This type of imaginary creature is not an indication of having a mental health issue, or any other problem. But the relationships between children and their imaginary companions fall on a continuum where some are quite agreeable and likeable while others are not.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.11.046">Research indicates</a> that the more that children play and interact with imaginary companions the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2190/FTG3-Q9T0-7U26-5Q5X">more autonomous</a> they may be becoming in their minds. This phenomenon is called the “illusion of independent agency”, and it applies to imaginary beings that are mean and vengeful, as well as ones that are compassionate and caring. </p>
<p>For a child, this might feel as if they are not in control of the companion’s actions or words. It could also feel like the being could surprise them, or even have an ability to learn things that the child doesn’t yet know. For example, in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/icd.2390">one of my studies</a>, a child explained that when her parents are not looking, her imaginary companion teaches her maths. In some situations where a companion might be mean to a child, it could be upsetting. </p>
<p>But in reality, the child is still controlling the companion, they’re just not realising that the companion is not its own person. According to cognitive scientist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.11.046">Jim Davies</a>, this should only happen when the imagined character is played with over time and understood by their creator, but would not be likely in a new creation. </p>
<h2>Imaginary friends in the film</h2>
<p>There are some scenes in Imaginary where the young girl, Alice (Pyper Braun), is talking to her imaginary companion and making responses as well. She is completely alone and doesn’t know anyone else is watching her. </p>
<p>Although it may look a bit creepy, this is actually a very accurate portrayal of companion play. The type of speech that Alice is engaging in when they are talking to and fro in conversation with their imaginary being is called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1655-8_10">“private speech”</a>. </p>
<p>Private speech is thought to be imperative in the formation of our verbal thoughts and links our inner dialogue to words that we use in our social world. In <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-33227-002">one of my own studies</a>, we found that children with imaginary companions not only showed more private speech than their peers, but their private speech was developmentally more sophisticated. </p>
<p>Of course as the film goes on there are much less realistic and accurate portrayals of imaginary companions – but that makes sense for a horror film. In the real world, children’s imaginary friends are usually nothing to be afraid of. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paige Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some children have companions that are disobedient or even mean.
Paige Davis, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223614
2024-02-22T17:09:13Z
2024-02-22T17:09:13Z
Out of Darkness: I’m an expert on human origins – here’s how this stone age thriller surprised me
<p>Neither the choice of genre (survivalist horror) nor time period (43,000 years ago) bodes well for Out of Darkness. After all, films set in the stone age tend to be comedic, sexualised or woefully historically inaccurate. Think Ice Age (2002), Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) or 10,000BC (2008) – in which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVzdHEhC8YI">mammoths help build the pyramids</a>. Yet this film is neither. It goes way beyond expectations with its attempts at historical accuracy, and what’s more it is fun to watch – especially if suspense or a high body count are your thing.</p>
<p>A film set at the time of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-long-did-neanderthals-and-modern-humans-co-exist-in-europe-evidence-is-growing-it-may-have-been-at-least-10-000-years-222762">modern human and Neanderthal interactions</a> is long overdue, given both the better public understanding of this period and Neanderthals being thought of in <a href="https://www.sapiens.org/biology/hominin-species-neanderthals/">more humanised terms</a> than ten years ago.</p>
<p>What’s more, as we face more existential threats there is a greater tendency to look to the distant past for inspiration for how we should live, both <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-living-like-a-hunter-gatherer-could-improve-your-health-208813">physically</a> and <a href="https://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/site/chapters/m/10.22599/HiddenDepths.k/">emotionally</a>. Still, the producers of Out of Darkness should be applauded for having the guts to tackle some of the real challenges of setting a film in this period. </p>
<p>They have used as authentic a language as possible – hiring linguist Dr Daniel Andersson to create a stone age-sounding language especially for the film, translated for the audience using subtitles. They also cast actors with accurate skin tones. The makeup of the group at its heart is realistic, with older and vulnerable members and, refreshingly, a competent, proactive woman lead (who is dressed in appropriate clothing, rather than a <a href="https://www.biography.com/actors/a42940234/raquel-welch-fur-bikini-mixed-feelings">fur bikini</a>). </p>
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<h2>Is the film historically accurate?</h2>
<p>Out of Darkness follows a small group of modern humans who set out across the Europe of 43,000 years ago, trying to find new land and rescue the leader’s son, who has apparently been taken by some strange creatures. </p>
<p>There are amazing landscapes, tense scenes and – as is expected from a survivalist horror – few people left standing after the carnage. For those of us looking for meaning under the macabre, there is a cautionary tale about acting on assumptions and the dangers of rage and fear.</p>
<p>There is plenty of detail here which fits the evidence we have about this period of the stone age (known as the middle-upper palaeolithic transition). There’s fitted clothing with fur inside, decorated spears, fire-lighting kits, a <a href="https://www.donsmaps.com/discs.html#:%7E:text=Discs%20from%20the%20stone%20age,objects%20in%20their%20own%20right">rondelle</a> (a bone disc with a central hole) and Neanderthals with raptor feather headdresses. </p>
<p>There are even rather slick references for the knowledgeable. Dead mammoths are shown at the bottom of a ravine modelled on <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-this-spot-on-the-jersey-coast-was-like-a-magnet-for-neanderthals-70369">La Cotte de St Brelade</a>, a Neanderthal hunting site in Jersey. Neanderthals are shown taking and wearing modern human jewellery as a nod to the <a href="https://phys.org/news/2016-09-evidence-ancient-jewelry-grotte-du.html">Châtelperronian bone pendants</a>, found in the south of France.</p>
<p>People are buried at a location that looks remarkably like the most famous Neanderthal burial site, <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/shanidarz">Shanidar Cave</a> in Iraq. Even depictions of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-016-9306-y">cannibalism</a> are not at odds with what we know of mortuary practices in the period.</p>
<p>The wider social settings also bring some welcome authenticity. Telling firelight stories of courageous journeys into new lands, the elderly, young and pregnant work together.</p>
<p>Is Out of Darkness entirely prehistorically accurate? No, of course not. But it goes way beyond most depictions. In reality, stone age people would have carried tents and built shelters, not fought over a cold damp cave. They would also have found a fair bit of food in the tundra rather than starving. And of course it is not clear how the characters in the film managed to shave. </p>
<p>I would also expect links to other groups, or perhaps more of a story as to why this group is so isolated. And the voices of the Neanderthals are a bit too far fetched (more like a squawk than high-pitched language). What’s more, the lack of other living things depicted feels like a missed opportunity to include more predators, which were <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-015-0248-1?origen=app">genuinely dangerous and scary</a> in the stone age.</p>
<h2>Stone age bad guys</h2>
<p>As a professor of the archaeology of human origins, the one thing I dislike about the film is that subservience to the “bad guys” doesn’t fit <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635717303698?casa_token=6nkGRzHGKkwAAAAA:yrmVb7eFtEzSxibNdEJ1HNt0Utw94yl2p0IJRcCR514KP6RZ0P_SsaT226vYMhEiIyJnf3X7">what we know</a>. </p>
<p>The leader of this small band of travellers, Adem (Chuku Modu), is a bit of bully, who tells women what to do or say, and supports some hierarchy in which “strays eat last”. Neither the impulsiveness nor the violence fit what we know of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/12015116/Myths_about_hunter_gatherers_redux_nomadic_forager_war_and_peace">hunter-gatherer populations</a>. Their <a href="https://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/site/books/m/10.22599/HiddenDepths/">emotional regulation</a> (capacity to feel emotions consciously rather than simply act on them) was actually far better than ours in our <a href="https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/f6f8491c-dbf5-46ed-bf5b-c62342a7ae3b/content%7DChaudbury%20ref">comparatively dysfunctional</a> modern societies. </p>
<p>It is also hard to see how humans and Neanderthals could <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-long-did-neanderthals-and-modern-humans-co-exist-in-europe-evidence-is-growing-it-may-have-been-at-least-10-000-years-222762">live contemporaneously</a> for as much as 10,000 years with such a mutual wipe out. But given that bloodshed comes with the genre, all of this may be something we need to forgive. </p>
<p>I might perhaps let them get away with this if we accept these people were some kind of <a href="https://openquaternary.com/articles/10.5334/oq.ai">dysfunctional outcast party</a>, in which dominance tactics might be more tolerated and normal rules didn’t apply.</p>
<p>There is, after all, plenty to love. Out of Darkness offers a great portrayal of a capable stone age woman protagonist – and equally capable Neanderthal woman. Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green) is adept with both knife, spear and any convenient rock, dispatching people whenever the occasion demands (which seems to be pretty regularly).</p>
<p>There will always be some gripes over accuracy here and there but Out of Darkness is fun to watch, and it is great to see the period opening up to more informed popular imagination. I’m hoping for a sequel.</p>
<hr>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penny Spikins was amongst several academics who spoke to the film producers in the very early conceptual stages of the film. </span></em></p>
Out of Darkness attempts at historical accuracy are a welcome surprise, and what’s more, it is fun to watch.
Penny Spikins, Professor of the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222882
2024-02-14T03:36:16Z
2024-02-14T03:36:16Z
‘Analog uncanny’: how this weird and experimental side of TikTok is forging the future of horror
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575514/original/file-20240214-26-hd8l0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2048%2C858&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Skinamarink/Shudder © 2022</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Director Kyle Edward Ball’s feature film debut, Skinamarink, achieved unexpected commercial success last year after going <a href="https://medium.com/quilt-ai/a-look-at-skinamarink-the-viral-horror-taking-over-tiktok-4d393aed10d3">viral on TikTok</a>.</p>
<p>Hailed by some critics as the <a href="https://variety.com/lists/best-horror-movies-2023/skinamarink-2/">best horror film of 2023</a>, or even the <a href="https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/skinamarink-review">scariest of all time</a>, Skinamarink is a work of experimental slow cinema. The film’s ambiguous and grainy imagery exudes the aura of a degraded, possessed VHS tape.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1612604794165760001"}"></div></p>
<p>These aesthetics might seem to conflict with TikTok’s torrent of short, attention-grabbing videos. Yet TikTok has cultivated a hive of creative energy at the intersection of art and horror. Alongside YouTube, the platform has also helped to create pathways to international horror-film careers.</p>
<h2>Bite-sized nightmares</h2>
<p>YouTube and TikTok provide spaces where horror filmmakers can hone their craft and develop distinct voices, in collaboration with a community of users who provide input, theories and feedback. </p>
<p>A unique form of horror storytelling emerges from such <a href="https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/5482/">engaged online communities</a>, as they cultivate environments where creators can test new ideas and develop creative ingenuity. This leads to a creative dynamic I call “participatory experimentation”. It’s expanding the boundaries <a href="https://researchrepository.rmit.edu.au/esploro/outputs/9922217009501341">of the horror genre</a>.</p>
<p>Ball’s distinctive aesthetic was developed via his YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@BitesizedNightmares">Bitesized Nightmares</a>. Here, he shared experimental videos based on his nightmares. He then invited viewers to share their own “nightmares” in the comments so he could depict them in subsequent videos.</p>
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<p>One of these nightmare visions is shown in the short film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVQzEzW4faA">Heck</a> (2020), the prototype for Skinamarink. Avant-garde in its approach, Heck is a work of art as well as horror. Its experimental beginnings on YouTube are key to its unsettling aesthetic power. </p>
<p>An upcoming cinema screening of Heck at RMIT’s Capitol Theatre, as part of an art/horror program I’ve co-organised with the <a href="https://acca.melbourne/screams-on-screen/">Australian Centre of Contemporary Art</a>, evidences the growing recognition of such digital horror content as “art” in spaces we may not normally expect. This is a significant cultural development. </p>
<p>The global horror hit Talk To Me (2023), one of Australia’s most successful <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/04/talk-to-me-us-box-office-highest-grossing-australian-movie-rackaracka">films ever at the US box office</a>, was also germinated via a YouTube channel. Directors Michael and Danny Philipou have more than 1 billion views and nearly 7 million subscribers on their channel, RackaRacka. It was here that they honed their unique blend of horror and zany, violent comedy. </p>
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<p>YouTube has been home to boundary-pushing art-horror since its inception in 2005. Other notable examples include David Firth’s animated series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3iOROuTuMA">Salad Fingers</a> (2004-), Becky Sloan and Joe Pelling’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOnoLKzoBItcEk5OsES2TA">Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared</a> (2011-) – which <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14932528/">became a TV series</a> in 2022 – and Michelle Lyon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0xXpwq9xfQ">Funnie Horsie</a> (2012-2016).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/salad-fingers-wasnt-just-strange-it-was-art-heres-how-its-still-influencing-the-weird-part-of-youtube-2-decades-on-216911">Salad Fingers wasn’t just strange, it was art. Here’s how it's still influencing the ‘weird part of YouTube’ 2 decades on</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>From the ‘weird part’ of YouTube to TikTok</h2>
<p>TikTok is now also emerging as an important site for this <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13548565231208569">aesthetically rich “uncanny and weird” creative</a> content. It’s not surprising Skinamarink went viral on TikTok when you consider the app’s category of “analog horror” <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/discover/analog-horror?lang=en">had 2.3 billion views</a> as of when this article was written. The closely related “liminal spaces” category had 4.9 billion views. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@stoney_tha_great/video/7307450519365160234"}"></div></p>
<p>Although “analog” typically refers to pre-digital audiovisual technology, “analog horror” refers to horror content which may be produced digitally, but which has an eerily nostalgic technological quality. This content is often suffused with a hazy grain, reminiscent of Skinamarink’s cursed videotape aesthetic. </p>
<p>Analog horror videos may be depictions of creepy inhuman (but human-like) creatures, such as in <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@your_darkside_guide/video/7320884717128125738?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7247360749801375234">this TikTok video</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@your_darkside_guide/video/7320884717128125738?is_from_webapp=1\u0026sender_device=pc\u0026web_id=7247360749801375234 "}"></div></p>
<p>Or they may depict mundane domestic spaces that become threatening once you realise the hallways have off-kilter corners, or the exits are impossible to access. Such imagery of everyday spaces evacuated of purpose, and instead injected with dread, produces the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0170840613495323#:%7E:text=Most%20often%2C%20however%2C%20it%20is,suddenly%20becomes%20strange%20and%20unfamiliar">uncanny</a>”: a feeling of the familiar merged with the unfamiliar. </p>
<p>The creepy house in Skinamarink is a compelling example of this. Throughout the film, the cosily familiar space of a childhood bedroom becomes deeply unfamiliar and unsettling as doors and windows disappear and the ceiling suddenly seems to become the floor.</p>
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<p>TikTok’s user-friendly bag of special-effects tricks, such as retro-cam filters, green screens, body warping and face-morphing enable everyday users to experiment with these horror aesthetics with a community of like-minded enthusiasts.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@s0da.theif/video/7230511722841476398?q=%23analoghorror%20scariest\u0026t=1707783285332"}"></div></p>
<p>But while analog horror is being driven in new directions on TikTok, it has long been a mainstay of YouTube. One influential example is Marble Hornets (2009), which depicts the “<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/30/the-story-of-slenderman-the-internets-own-monster/">Slender Man</a>”, the internet’s most famous bogeyman.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8d12w6pMos">Mandela Catalogue</a> (2021) is a more recent example from YouTube. It has had a substantial influence on how the genre <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/discover/mandela-catalog?lang=en">has crystallised on TikTok</a>. This eerie series by Alex Kister depicts an alternative reality in which “alternates” (malevolent doppelgangers of real people) have overrun Wisconsin. Doppelgangers are another <a href="https://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Uncanny.Notes.html">element of the uncanny</a>.</p>
<h2>The future of experimental art-horror</h2>
<p>Participatory art-horror experimentation on social media is having a global cultural moment. Last year, prestige film studio A24 (which also distributed Talk To Me) contracted 16-year-old Kane Parsons to direct his first feature based on his eerie YouTube video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4dGpz6cnHo">The Backrooms</a>. </p>
<p>Director Jane Schoenbrun’s films also harness the themes and aesthetics of analog horror. Like Skinamarink, their debut feature, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We%27re_All_Going_to_the_World%27s_Fair">We’re All Going To the World’s Fair</a> (2021), is an unapologetically creepy work of experimental slow cinema. The film unfolds largely through the vlog of an isolated teen YouTuber as she embarks on a (possibly deadly) online “challenge”, narrating her experience to her followers from her bedroom.</p>
<p>Schoenbrun’s upcoming second feature, I Saw the TV Glow (2024), another product of A24, similarly refracts aesthetics and themes of online horror genres such as analog horror and liminal spaces. It has been described as a “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/i-saw-the-tv-glow-jane-schoenbrun-sundance-horror-movie-transgender-rights-90s-fred-durst-1234955526/">surreal coming-of-age horror film</a>”, a “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/sundance-film-festival-i-saw-tv-glow-justice-smith-b2485062.html">masterpiece</a>” and Sundance’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/i-saw-the-tv-glow-jane-schoenbrun-sundance-horror-movie-transgender-rights-90s-fred-durst-1234955526/?sub_action=logged_in">hottest movie</a>.</p>
<p>The careers of Ball, Parsons, Schoenbrun and the Philipous showcase how experimental horror trends on TikTok and YouTube have successfully crossed into the mainstream. As emerging filmmakers harness social media to build their creative visions, we can expect participatory experimentation to keep expanding the frontiers of the horror genre.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation, the City of Melbourne, and Creative Australia. Jessica is currently working with the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art to run public programs associated with their major exhibition, From the other side. </span></em></p>
A wave of horror content is popping up across TikTok, carrying on a legacy that began on YouTube.
Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216121
2023-10-26T14:46:04Z
2023-10-26T14:46:04Z
What makes a film score frightening? Expert explains the techniques that build tension and make us jump
<p>Think of the scariest film you’ve ever seen. Beyond any blood-curdling screams or pounding heartbeats, there’s sure to be another sound that sticks in your memory – the score. </p>
<p>Perhaps that’s the shrieking strings of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY">Psycho</a> (1960), or the pulsing piano melody and ominous bass of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tGvktfjjk">Halloween</a> franchise (1971-2022). Maybe it’s <a href="https://noisegate.com.au/behind-the-score-suspiria-by-goblin/#:%7E:text=The%20soundtrack%20to%20Suspiria%20is,the%20characters%20are%20in%20danger.">the eclectic score for Suspiria</a> (1997) – which combined instruments including synthesizers, Greek <a href="https://hobgoblin.com/instruments/instrument/bouzouki">bouzouki</a>, Indian <a href="https://www.bsmny.org/instrument-discovery/tabla/">tabla</a> and whispering voices. Or does The Shining’s (1980) <a href="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2020/the-shining-at-40/reappraising-the-score-of-the-shining/">unsettling quotations</a> of music by avant-garde composers like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gyorgy-Ligeti">Ligeti</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Krzysztof-Penderecki">Penderecki</a> still haunt your nightmares?</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Lontano by György Ligeti features in The Shining.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Horror films incorporate <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/spectre-of-sound-9781839020612/">varied</a> musical <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Music-in-the-Horror-Film-Listening-to-Fear/Lerner/p/book/9780415992039">influences</a>. But there are some devices that they share with successful scary or tension-inducing scores in other genres, including thrillers and contemporary action films. These devices help the creation of an ambiguous musical atmosphere.</p>
<p>This feeling of uncertainty is frequently achieved through a lack of conventional melody and dissonant (clashing) harmonies that do not readily resolve. Repeated short melodies instead convey tension, as do tremolo techniques (sounds that are <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.001.0001/acref-9780199579037-e-6912?fromCrossSearch=true">literally trembling or quivering</a>), involving rapid reiteration of a pitch or alternation between two pitches. </p>
<p>These features shape audience <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/spectre-of-sound-9781839020612/">expectations</a> through repetition, creating unease when anticipated development fails to emerge. The entry of additional instruments, increasing volume or regularity of the repetitions, or sequential rising of pitch with each iteration, can all escalate the tension – partly by not promoting substantial melodic evolution. </p>
<h2>The science of a scary score</h2>
<p>Composer <a href="https://www.npr.org/2000/10/30/1113215/bernard-herrmanns-score-to-psycho">Bernard Herrmann’s music</a> for Psycho’s shower sequence is a quintessential example. It shuns melody for repeated high-register violin pitches and builds by gradually adding strings to expand the dissonant underlying chord. </p>
<p>Similar techniques are also commonplace in more recent thriller scores by composers like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hans-Zimmer">Hans Zimmer</a>. Take <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jul/29/inception-soundtrack-edith-piaf">Inception</a> (2010), for example, with its recurring guitar motif and building, dissonant, string stabs.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Inception’s iconic soundtrack.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Researching scary scores</h2>
<p>Drones (sustained notes or repeated figures) also effectively help shape tense atmospheres. These often appear in the bass, sometimes alongside low frequency rumbling. This can be heard in the recent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOhpTxcUxy0">Oppenheimer</a> film (2023), during scenes surrounding the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZYD-H4V2M0&t=54s">Trinity Test</a>. These drones convey space and ambiguity, given the void between them and any high melodic fragments.</p>
<p>Music researcher <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/spectre-of-sound-9781839020612/">K.J. Donnelly</a> sees a connection between these pitch extremities in horror film soundtracks and bodily sounds. The high string lines in soundtracks to film such as Psycho acoustically imitate the “roughness” or <a href="https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article/147/6/EL540/965901">harsh qualities of screams</a>. Whispered or shouting voices often feature in horror scores, as do sounds <a href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=5fc9ea5def45b1c7c96432c9eef4dccc48ba1bb7">emulating the human heartbeat</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Music from Oppenheimer’s Trinity Test scene.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Yet, while these sounds emphasise the physical and vulnerable, the frequent use of electronic instruments and blurring of music and sound design also creates ambiguity which evokes technology and the inhuman. This can be heard in Oppenheimer’s use of ticking sounds from the Geiger counter, a device used to detect radiation.</p>
<p>Contrasting these ambiguous sonic atmospheres, sudden loud bursts of sound or music (stingers) that work like jump scares also often feature. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/spectre-of-sound-9781839020612/">Donnelly</a> describes these sounds as “primal”, mirroring <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513000638">psychological work</a> that lists brainstem reflex (instinctive responses to sudden sonic events), as one musical means of inducing emotion. </p>
<p>Strong musical bursts alongside, and prior to, visual shocks in horror films <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03057356211073478">have been shown</a> to increase stress responses in viewers. Sudden silence can work similarly, as in Oppenheimer during the test-detonation of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/oppenheimer-has-an-epic-layered-soundtrack-but-its-real-power-is-in-the-silence-210983">nuclear bomb</a>. Likewise, the piercing violin entry in Psycho’s shower scene is heightened by the preceding lack of music.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The shower scene from Psycho is heightened by the preceding lack of music.</span></figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Music-in-the-Horror-Film-Listening-to-Fear/Lerner/p/book/9780415992039">Using musical features in unfamiliar settings</a> also subverts expectations – and in horror films juxtaposes the innocent and familiar against dark content. </p>
<p>References to religion and childhood are invoked through instruments like the organ and music box, and allusions to hymns and lullabies. Similarly, <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-00506-1">incongruent</a> lively or nostalgic preexisting music can be used to engage or distance audiences. One example is when Olivia Newton-John’s <a href="https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/st.7.2.119_1">Over the Rainbow</a> accompanies a gunfight in the action-thriller <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7b1isiyVBI">Face/Off</a> (1997).</p>
<p>Such musical techniques impact us physically and psychologically. Film music scholars have noted this for many years, but in recent decades psychology researchers have started to empirically explore how.</p>
<p>While these devices may not feature in every tension-inducing scene, chances are at least some have contributed to any increased heart rate, goosebumps, or startle responses you have experienced. Such reactions are one key reason why we keep returning to scary films and clearly demonstrate the emotional impact of film music. </p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Ireland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Horror films incorporate varied musical influences, but there are some things many scary soundtracks have in common.
David Ireland, Associate Professor in Film Music Studies and Music Psychology, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210463
2023-10-16T19:05:25Z
2023-10-16T19:05:25Z
The Exorcist: Believer is a ‘retcon’ film - it imagines none of the sequels exist. This sequel shouldn’t exist, either
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553856/original/file-20231015-19-epzial.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3822%2C2144&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2023 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Halloween season is here, bringing with it the promise of new horrors at the box office. This year it’s all about renewed cinematic horrors.</p>
<p>Alongside the tenth <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_(franchise)">Saw</a> film, there is The Exorcist: Believer, directed by David Gordon Green, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exorcist_(franchise)">sixth</a> Exorcist film and the first instalment of a new trilogy which cost <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/exorcist-believer-reviews-trilogy-400-million-1235608583/">US$400 million</a> in worldwide rights alone.</p>
<p>Believer follows certain rules and conventions with roots in William Peter Blatty’s bestselling 1971 novel: think demonic possession, projectile vomiting and spinning heads. Aficionados expect these things from works bearing The Exorcist imprimatur. </p>
<p>Green’s film manages to hit these markers – albeit with a twist.</p>
<p>Believer is a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity">retcon</a>”, an example of retroactive continuity: a movie which ignores or re-imagines events in previous films.</p>
<p>Believer follows directly on from the plot of William Friedkin’s masterly 1973 adaptation of Blatty’s book, while disregarding all other films (and the underrated television series) in the franchise.</p>
<p>However, what seems at first blush to be an innovative approach to franchise movie-making is, in truth, nothing more than a creative dead end – a futile exercise in cinematic nostalgia.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-incredible-creativity-of-william-friedkin-oscars-box-office-hits-and-arthouse-experimental-genre-cinema-211185">The incredible creativity of William Friedkin: Oscars, box-office hits – and arthouse, experimental genre cinema</a>
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<h2>Retconning the classics</h2>
<p>The retcon is not a new phenomenon (Arthur Conan Doyle’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Empty_House">resurrection</a> of Sherlock Holmes being a case in point), but the concept has become ubiquitous in recent years. </p>
<p>Green has form with the genre. He was also behind the Halloween trilogy (2018–22), drawing on the 1978 film of the same name.</p>
<p>The 2018 Halloween made over <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1342342657/">US$250 million</a> at the global box office and breathed new commercial life into a desiccated corpse of a franchise.</p>
<p>There were nine Halloween films between the first in 1978 and Green’s in 2018, but Green simply disregards the sequels while subtly tweaking the ending of the original.</p>
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<p>Green’s slasher picks up after the first Halloween left off, with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream_queen">scream queen</a> Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode.</p>
<p>This is where things take a discernibly revisionist
turn. For those who haven’t seen it: the original Halloween climaxes with a confrontation between the teenage babysitter Laurie and the franchise’s unstoppable antagonist, Michael Myers (Nick Castle). </p>
<p>After a seemingly deadly struggle, Michael disappears into thin air. Having evaded capture, Michael then returns in the 1981 sequel to wreak further havoc.</p>
<p>In Green’s revisionary sequel, set 40 years after the original, the story presupposes Michael was captured and imprisoned immediately after his brutal killing spree. Disregarding the sequels, the 2018 iteration begins with Michael still incarcerated. </p>
<p>Suffice it to say, once things get going, it doesn’t take him long to break out.</p>
<p>By pretending there is only one Halloween, Green gives himself space to spruce up the original mythology, while re-imagining it for a modern audience.</p>
<p>(The 2018 film was a financial and <a href="https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/halloween-review-1202933806/">critical</a> success. The same, sadly, cannot be said of the two <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/halloween-kills">cinematic</a> <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/halloween-ends-movie-review-2022">bombs</a> that followed.)</p>
<h2>A pale rehash</h2>
<p>This brings us to The Exorcist: Believer. </p>
<p>Green clearly thinks he has found a winning recipe with legacy sequels and retcons. </p>
<p>In keeping with other legacy sequels, both Halloween and Believer rely on hefty doses of celluloid gravitas and pre-existing star power. </p>
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<p>Where the 2018 Halloween had Curtis as a damaged, alcoholic Laurie, the 2023 Exorcist has the 90-year-old <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/ellen-burstyn-did-the-exorcist-sequel-to-fund-acting-scholarship-1234755930/">Ellen Burstyn returning</a> as Chris MacNeil.</p>
<p>In the original, Chris’s daughter Regan (Linda Blair) falls victim to demonic possession. In Believer, Chris, who has written a bestselling memoir about Regan’s possession, is now a leading authority on demonology. She somehow ends up attempting an impromptu exorcism. </p>
<p>It does not go well.</p>
<p>As with the 2018 Halloween, Believer also assumes there is only one Exorcist film in existence. This approach has benefits: it means Green doesn’t have to worry about the notorious 1977 sequel, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcist_II:_The_Heretic#Critical_reception">the worst film of all time</a>.</p>
<p>Believer’s plot focuses on two friends, Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) and Angela (Lidya Jewett), who head into the woods to commune with the dead. They vanish. Once reunited with their families, it becomes clear something is amiss. Things go from awful to catastrophic, and various personages and priests try to help. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjrBjdb2T8">Cue the pea soup</a>. </p>
<p>If this sounds more or less like a pale rehash of Friedkin’s Exorcist, that is because it pretty much is. The only difference is the crushingly dull (and not scary) Believer features not one but two possessed girls. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-exorcist-at-50-a-terrifying-film-that-symbolises-the-decline-of-americas-faith-and-optimism-212039">The Exorcist at 50: a terrifying film that symbolises the decline of America's faith and optimism</a>
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<h2>‘Microwave-reheated comfort food’</h2>
<p>In the lead up to the film’s release, Green <a href="https://www.joblo.com/the-exorcist-featurette-og/">claimed</a> he wanted to leave his directorial mark on the world of the Exorcist, while simultaneously breaking the rules of what he considers the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonthompson/2023/10/03/inside-the-exorcist-believer-and-how-director-david-gordon-green-raised-hell/?sh=645fc8d6288a">Holy Grail</a> of horror franchises.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a possessed girl in a church." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553857/original/file-20231015-29-poj3qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ultimately, the film fails on all fronts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2023 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.</span></span>
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<p>Ultimately, the film fails on all fronts. From the opening shot of two dogs fighting in a Haitian street (a callback to the dramatic prologue of Friedkin’s box-office smash) to the entirely predictable final act, it is clear what we have here is an empty exercise in brand recognition. It is hard not to feel short-changed.</p>
<p>Green’s execrable new Exorcist is not only one the most breathtakingly cynical movies of recent memory - it serves as an indictment of what cultural theorist Mark Fisher once <a href="https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/review-terminator-genisys">condemned</a> as the creative paucity of retcon culture in general. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1339471113424838659"}"></div></p>
<p>It is very difficult to care about films of this sort, the cinematic equivalent of, in Fisher’s memorable phrase, “microwave-reheated comfort food”.</p>
<p>Had he lived long enough, I imagine Friedkin’s head would have been left swivelling at the horror of it all.</p>
<p>And to think: there are two retconned Exorcist sequels still to come. This is truly the stuff of filmic nightmares.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-exorcist-believer-a-real-priest-on-why-the-film-is-potentially-dangerous-215124">The Exorcist Believer: a real priest on why the film is 'potentially dangerous'</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210463/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
What seems at first blush to be an innovative approach to franchise movie-making is nothing more than a futile exercise in cinematic nostalgia.
Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212039
2023-10-10T17:00:40Z
2023-10-10T17:00:40Z
The Exorcist at 50: a terrifying film that symbolises the decline of America’s faith and optimism
<p><em>Please note this piece contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p>Having made a <a href="https://www.irishnews.com/arts/2018/10/12/news/irish-film-maker-aislinn-clarke-on-her-new-horror-the-devil-s-doorway-1454950/">film about priests making a film</a>, I find myself discussing cinema with actual priests more than most. Invariably, the fathers’ favourite film is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/sep/28/the-exorcist-review-friedkins-head-swivelling-horror-is-still-diabolically-inspired">The Exorcist</a>, in which two priests battle the ancient evil that has possessed a pre-teen girl. </p>
<p>At the climax, Father Damien Karras leaps from the child’s window, plunging down 75 steps to his death, exorcising the demon and saving the child. A hero.</p>
<p>There’s a thrill in seeing yourself depicted on screen, in seeing your vocation elevated to a <a href="https://time.com/6304708/heros-journey-psychology/">hero’s journey</a> and enmeshed into pop culture. I don’t want to know the chef who doesn’t enjoy Pixar’s <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ratatouille-2007">Ratatouille</a>.</p>
<p>But what about the rest of us? Most of us aren’t priests. Most aren’t even Catholic. Indeed, since the release of the film, the reputation of the Catholic church has sunk lower and lower, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/21/boston-globe-abuse-scandal-catholic">scandal, corruption and abuse</a> have become common knowledge. Yet the priests’ favourite film, which turns 50 this year, remains a household word, where other outstanding movies of the period have found themselves on the street.</p>
<p>The Exorcist is not Catholic propaganda. While the film’s director, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Friedkin">William Friedkin</a>, an agnostic Jew, described the film as being about faith, he meant the concept of faith itself – what the philosopher <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/kierkega/">Søren Kierkegaard</a> considered “holding on to the objective uncertainty with infinite passion”.</p>
<p>For Kierkegaard, faith was a venture, an action one takes in spite of – or because of – not knowing. Friedkin’s faith is not placed in anything named, but the film itself is riddled with uncertainty and culminates in action in the absence of certainty.</p>
<h2>America in crisis</h2>
<p>Friedkin was recognised as one of the premier directors of the 1970s’ all-male <a href="https://www.newwavefilm.com/international/new-hollywood.shtml">New Hollywood</a>, alongside peers such as <a href="https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/francis-ford-coppola">Frances Ford Coppola</a>, <a href="https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/martin-scorsese">Martin Scorsese</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alan-J-Pakula">Alan Pakula</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/07/peter-bogdanovich-obituary">Peter Bogdanovich</a>. This movement responded to the experience of previous decades with films that captured the uncertainty and irresolution of American life: the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassinations, Watergate.</p>
<p>If 1950s, America was a teenybopper full of hope and confidence, the America of the late 1960s was a young adult learning that her parents are only human after all and no one is taking the wheel. Not even Jesus.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/10/all-the-presidents-men-watergate-conspiracy-richard-nixon-woodward-bernstein-redford-hoffman">All The President’s Men</a> Pakula reveals the corruption at the heart of American democracy. Watergate was a watershed and faith in American institutions and the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1939/04/the-great-american-experiment/653768/">great experiment</a>” never recovered.</p>
<p>Under more recent administrations corruption is expected, even accepted. All The President’s Men is surely a hit among journalists, but the hero class of Pakula’s film has taken a <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/impact-declining-trust-media">reputational drubbing in recent decades</a>, a notch above the priesthood.</p>
<p>Yet The Exorcist retains a legacy and place in popular culture that the other paranoid films of New Hollywood don’t.</p>
<p>For Friedkin, uncertainty in our institutions and our understanding is built in. When Regan McNeil becomes possessed by a demon, her mother takes her to a doctor, but psychiatry, psychoanalysis and hypnotherapy don’t work. The latest medical advances don’t work either.</p>
<p>And neither does a medieval Catholicism: the demon chuckles at the priests’ efforts to exorcise it. It mocks them. It even takes a crucifix and – rather than shrinking from it, as any self-respecting screen monster should, it repeatedly inserts the crucifix inside the body of its host. </p>
<p>The Exorcist is not a film about a successful exorcism, but about what we do in the face of uncertainty and the cynical grinning face of the demon doubt. It is not a film about a priest, but about a human being. When Karras takes the demon into himself and jumps from the window, it is literally a leap of faith. He can’t know that it will work, but he acts. Pazuzu, the demon of doubt, would prefer he didn’t act at all.</p>
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<h2>The great unknown</h2>
<p>For me, the film’s most chilling moment comes when Regan interrupts her mother’s raucous shindig to flatly tell a guest (an astronaut): “You’re gonna die up there.” Then she pisses on the carpet like an untrained animal.</p>
<p>The administration that presided over “one giant leap for mankind” was also responsible for Watergate: optimism gave way to cynicism and, in a cynical mindset, it is easier to do nothing at all. The demon here is a head-swivelling personification of imposter syndrome, it comes to remind us of our smallness, our irrelevance, our hopelessness. It speaks with such certainty.</p>
<p>Faith is about not being defeated by the limits of our understanding. We may not have all the answers, but we can be courageous and curious. Faith is action and the hope that action is worth taking. At a time when our institutions and frameworks for understanding the world continually let us down, perhaps we need this lesson more than ever.</p>
<p>While astronauts facing a journey into the unknown chasm of space may die up there, it is the giant leap for mankind that inspires them to go. The Exorcist perseveres, because it is hopeful, not hopeless. It says something necessary about humanity. It has faith in us.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aislinn Clarke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Made at a time when America was facing crises on many fronts, William Friedkin’s film has profound things to say about humanity and society.
Aislinn Clarke, Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen's University Belfast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215124
2023-10-09T12:21:14Z
2023-10-09T12:21:14Z
The Exorcist Believer: a real priest on why the film is ‘potentially dangerous’
<p><em>Warning: this review contains some spoilers for The Exorcist: Believer.</em></p>
<p>Nobody who watches <a href="https://www.theexorcistbeliever.movie">The Exorcist: Believer</a> could claim that they didn’t get what they expected when they bought their ticket. </p>
<p>Two children experiment with the occult and inadvertently open the door to demonic forces that rapidly overwhelm them. They disappear for several days, and when they are eventually found, they display erratic behaviour that rapidly escalates into uncontrollable violence. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Exorcist: Believer trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Their parents seek to discover the cause and reluctantly conclude that the answer lies in something supernatural and evil. They all struggle to reconcile what they are experiencing with their various worldviews, before eventually calling in the service of spiritual experts to perform an exorcism. As the events play out, there is a liberal splattering of gore, with the obligatory twisting heads and spewing of foul liquids.</p>
<h2>The power of unity</h2>
<p>It is striking that these elements mirror what was presented to audiences in the 1970s with <a href="https://www.bbfc.co.uk/education/case-studies/exorcist">the first Exorcist film</a>. Even the central theme of “belief” is nothing new. A priest undergoing a crisis of faith is the central protagonist of <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/327714/the-exorcist-by-blatty-william-peter/9780552166775">William Blatty’s original Exorcist novel</a>. </p>
<p>There are some aspects of The Exorcist: Believer that do reflect its 21st-century context, however. The team of exorcists who battle the demon are drawn from a variety of religious backgrounds and act together in a common cause. The message is that these believers have much more that unites than divides them. </p>
<p>Haitian spiritual practices and African-American root doctor traditions are presented as aligned with light, rather than darkness. This is extremely welcome. Given the amount of media that treats black and indigenous religion as sinister and even demonic, this positive portrayal is a commendable choice. </p>
<p>Equally, the decision to have Christian characters of various denominations stand alongside one another, as well as the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/hoodoo-in-st-louis-an-african-american-religious-tradition.htm">traditional African American healer</a> character, makes a powerful statement about community and togetherness.</p>
<p>But this homogenising approach is also problematic. The film asserts that exorcism exists in every culture and suggests that all people engaged in it are effectively doing the same thing. In reality, this is an oversimplification – with some potentially dangerous implications.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-exorcist-at-50-a-terrifying-film-that-symbolises-the-decline-of-americas-faith-and-optimism-212039">The Exorcist at 50: a terrifying film that symbolises the decline of America's faith and optimism</a>
</strong>
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<h2>And the dangers</h2>
<p>The term “exorcism” can be appropriately used to describe rituals from many global traditions, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-law-in-context/article/exorcism-and-children-balancing-protection-and-autonomy-in-the-legal-framework/BE26F1BC2394D4F76BF02BF88A769D73">if it is defined as</a> a practice that aims to free a person, place or object from a negative spiritual influence.</p>
<p>However, this very general category contains hugely diverse ideas. There is immense breadth in both underpinning belief systems (which span almost all forms of spirituality, including Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Islam, Wicca and Hinduism) and also the means used to expel the malevolent spirit. </p>
<p>These distinctions matter. Especially when it comes to weighing up the balance between autonomy and protecting the person in real-life exorcisms.</p>
<p>Any legal framework that respects democratic and human rights supports freedom of belief and cultural diversity. But it must also protect those not fully able to advocate for themselves. This means decisions have to be made about when to permit exorcism rituals involving children and adults suffering from mental illness or impaired capacity. </p>
<p>When making these decisions, both the nature of the exorcism rite and the beliefs surrounding it are critical.</p>
<p>Some cultures see possession as an unlucky accident that can happen to anyone. Whereas others regard it as the result of either some deliberate act of wrongdoing or inherent flaw in the character – or even soul – of the supposedly possessed person. </p>
<p>Some faith traditions consider afflicted people dangerous, leading them to be shunned or even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/01/she-was-demonized-nicaraguan-woman-dies-after-being-thrown-into-fire-in-exorcism-ritual/">attacked</a>. In such circumstances, cooperating with a proposed exorcism ritual may be a person’s only option for reintegration within their community.</p>
<p>Also, some traditions believe that an evil entity is capable of hijacking a human body, suppressing the will of the host. In these circumstances, any resistance to the exorcism may be understood as coming from the spirit, rather than the person, and therefore ignored. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if the victim of possession is thought to retain some residual will, then any reluctance to participate in exorcism may be treated as evidence of a desire to choose evil.</p>
<p>It is also important to appreciate that modes of exorcism vary enormously – from quietly spoken prayers to violent assaults. Dangerous or abusive practices may also be employed. People may be encouraged – or forced – to ingest substances that are either harmful or risky because of the dose or manner of administration. </p>
<p>There have been exorcism-related deaths caused by salt poisoning, dry-drowning from <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna31337466">water</a> and even a near-fatal dose of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-61651857">intravenous drugs</a>.</p>
<p>Taking all of this into account, conveying the message that exorcism is an essentially positive and universal practice shared by many cultures, is potentially dangerous. </p>
<p>Of course, cinema-goers are capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction and nobody would suggest that the Exorcist films should be treated as documentaries. But pop culture does influence people’s perceptions.</p>
<p>Public authorities do not always fully understand the beliefs and practices of minority groups, and this can cause problems. They may incorrectly perceive a situation to be risky and intervene when it’s unnecessary. Alternatively, a vulnerable person may be left without help because police or social workers misguidedly construe harmful practices as acceptable due to the cultural context.</p>
<p>These kinds of mistakes have contributed to preventable exorcism-related deaths, including <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c5edeed915d696ccfc51b/5730.pdf">those of children</a>. The Excorcist: Believer’s treatment of exorcism as a simple and benign phenomenon spanning cultural and religious divides isn’t accurate, or even desirable – even in the context of a horror film.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Hall is a priest in the Church of England</span></em></p>
There is a liberal splattering of gore, with the obligatory twisting heads and spewing of foul liquids.
Helen Hall, Senior Lecturer, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212484
2023-08-31T13:44:13Z
2023-08-31T13:44:13Z
The Blackening review: funny twists make up for a predictable plot
<p><em>Warning: this review contains spoilers for The Blackening.</em></p>
<p>While booking tickets for new horror flick, The Blackening, I began to worry. There were so few showings! Was this <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/">Scary Movie</a> for another generation of mind-numbed filmgoers? Could it somehow be worse? I felt uneasy as I watched characters drop the n-word throughout the introduction. When the post-title scene cut to a black woman in a wig my grandmother wouldn’t have been caught dead in, I sighed and prepared to be annoyed. Yet I soon found myself laughing out loud.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Blackening trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The Blackening revolves around a group of African American friends reuniting in a cabin in the woods for the US public holiday Juneteenth. As the evening progresses, the group find themselves assaulted by game-playing murderers who are, weirdly, armed with crossbows.</p>
<p>There are no real surprises in the plot. The people who seem like the villains are exactly that. But there are many funny twists. The Blackening excels at subverting the very stereotypes it plays upon for its humour. </p>
<h2>Meet the crew</h2>
<p>The characters parody <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans">racist black stereotypes</a>. Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins) is the effeminate queer man (the “<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/black-queer-studies">sissy</a>”) with snappy lines and swinging hips. King (Melvin Gregg) is a reformed thug (the “badman” or “<a href="https://bellhooksbooks.com/product/we-real-cool-black-men-and-masculinity/">gangsta</a>”), though he still secretly carries a gun. Shanika (X Mayo) is a large, loud, aggressive woman (the <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/%7Edecaste/OISE/page2/files/CollinsMammies.pdf">“sapphire”</a>), who fusses at the killers, screaming: “Are you shooting arrows at me? No, stop it.” </p>
<p>Allison (Grace Byers) is a biracial woman (the <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/mulatto/homepage.htm">“tragic/devious mulatta”</a>), determined to prove herself by decrying her white parentage. Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) is a stylish, well-spoken lawyer (the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.36019/9780813542522-005/html">“black lady”</a>) who erupts in brutal rage. Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) is an athletic personal trainer with a history of womanising (the <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans">“black buck”</a>). Lastly, Clifton (Jermaine Fowler) is the awkward, white-sounding, nerdy misfit (the <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/tom/homepage.htm">“Uncle Tom”</a> or “Carlton”). </p>
<p>These stereotypes are obviously intentional – not only do the characters spend their first hours playing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/magazine/a-world-of-black-intimacy-at-the-card-table.html">Spades</a> (a well-known game played by many African Americans) but Shanika mistakenly calls Clifton “Carlton” when trying to remember his name. </p>
<p>The film highlights this theme of black stereotypes through the killer’s torturous board game. Centred around a grotesque <a href="https://banderson.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/LittleBlackSamboExhibit/baldwin-editions/little-black-sambo-also-includes-a-new-story-of-little-black-sambo/">Sambo</a> –another racist caricature – the group must answer a series of questions gauging their level of “blackness”. Each person is represented by a game token symbolising their stereotype. This alludes to the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/should-blacks-collect-racist-memorabilia/">Sambo’s</a> historical role in dehumanising African Americans. </p>
<p>The Sambo references the earliest film appearance of these tropes in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004972/">The Birth of the Nation</a> (1915). By alluding to D.W. Griffith’s film, The Blackening gestures towards the stakes of such stereotypes. While we may laugh at them on the screen, embracing them as reality bolsters the subjugation of and violation against black people.</p>
<h2>Questioning and performing ‘blackness’</h2>
<p>The film features other significant issues in African-American culture, including: homophobia, notions of “authentic” blackness, intraracial oppression, drug abuse, violent anti-blackness and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/no-more-white-saviours-thanks-how-to-be-a-true-anti-racist-ally">white allies</a>. For instance, in trying to decide who among the friends is the “blackest”, Dewayne notes that it can’t be him because he’s gay and – as his homophobic family insists – “gayness is just whiteness wrapped up in a bag of dicks”. </p>
<p>Dewayne’s comment references homophobic definitions of black manhood, exemplified in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Afrocentrism">Afrocentrism</a> (a world view centred on people of African descent, as opposed to Eurocentrism which centres on white western people in cultures like the US and UK) by intellectuals like philosopher <a href="https://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0003/7611/64/L-G-0003761164-0007909687.pdf">Molefi Asante</a> who deemed homosexuality destructive to black liberation struggles. </p>
<p>The film, however, reasserts the logic of black intellectuals like <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/dispatches-from-the-ebony-tower/9780231114776">Cornel West, Manning Marable</a> and <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/odece/sites/default/files/attached-files/rba09-sb4converted_8.pdf">Audre Lorde</a>, who argue that liberation is fragmentary when we fight racism but accept other forms of oppression like homophobia. </p>
<p>In another challenge, the friends must list five black actors who appeared on the TV series Friends. After they succeed, the Sambo mouthpiece screams: “Wrong! The correct answer is ‘I didn’t watch that show. I watched Living Single’.” </p>
<p>The exchange points to the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” nature of performing blackness. If, as our characters illustrate, they’re identifiably black in their behaviour and dress, then they’re reaffirming destructive stereotypes. But if they reject this performance, they’re criticised for not being “black enough”.</p>
<p>This issue is the structural theme of the film. While characters engage in stereotypical behaviours, they often follow it with profound, introspective observations which effectively counter their racialised performance. When Lisa lashes out at Nnamdi like a stereotypical <a href="https://hbr.org/2022/01/the-angry-black-woman-stereotype-at-work">“angry black woman”</a>“, she follows it with an apology, observing that she was projecting. As the film acknowledges early on, African-American culture is neither stable, nor monolithic, but ever-changing and intensely diverse.</p>
<h2>Reflection on stereotypes</h2>
<p>The Blackening also prompts reflection on <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/04/06/this_racist_stereotype_is_shattered_study_finds_white_youth_are_more_likely_to_abuse_hard_drugs_than_black_youth_partner/">hypocritical stereotypes about black drug culture</a>. When Allison mistakenly takes Adderall from Lisa’s bag of drugs, her intoxication is presented as if she were a turbo-boosted character in a video game. </p>
<p>Adderall may seem a strange choice as it’s not a drug typically associated with African Americans but with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707731/">white college students</a>. While cannabis is overly associated with black lawlessness, its increasingly decriminalised and legalised status throughout the US means that it’s likely to be the only legal substance in Lisa’s bag. The Blackening therefore highlights our propensity to racially profile different drug cultures. It also alludes to <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mass-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs">the racial bias</a> that influences prison-sentencing for drug use, where black people are sentenced more harshly.</p>
<p>Their assailants vanquished, the crew ponders how to report the events. Dismissing the idea of calling the police, they devise a safe solution in which their rescuers won’t shoot them because they’re unarmed. Still, this doesn’t save them. And this is the crux. </p>
<p>Debates about who’s black enough and who isn’t are fruitless and destructive. African Americans survive violent psycho-social assaults from private citizens outside and within black communities, only to face sanctioned violence from legal authorities. And therein lies the horror.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maisha Wester receives funding from the British Academy. </span></em></p>
The Blackening excels at subverting the very stereotypes it plays upon for its humour.
Maisha Wester, Lecturer, American literature and African American Cultural Studies, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211031
2023-08-07T20:01:56Z
2023-08-07T20:01:56Z
10 years of homegrown horror hits: Talk To Me and the golden age of Aussie horror
<p>The past decade has been a golden one for Australian horror, bookended by The Babadook in 2014 and the current sensation Talk to Me. </p>
<p>The global premiere of Jennifer Kent’s groundbreaking supernatural bogeyman film at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival caused ripples that became a wave. </p>
<p>The Babadook attracted international acclaim, winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Feature. The Exorcist’s director, William Friedkin, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/02/the-babadook-scariest-film-exorcist-william-friedkin">called it</a> the most terrifying film he’d ever seen.</p>
<p>Talk to Me, the directorial feature debut of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, also premiered internationally at Sundance, where it sparked a <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/talk-to-me-a24-buys-sundance-horror-movie-1235309286/">bidding war</a>.</p>
<p>Now in cinemas, Talk to Me has surpassed industry projections to gross more than <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/07/talk-to-me-a24-specialty-box-office-michale-danny-philippou-1235451034/">US$10 million</a> (A$15.2 million) in North America on its opening weekend, and opened <a href="https://numero.co/reports/2023/08/03/barbie-drop-off-only-16-for-week-2">at number four</a> in Australia. Talk to Me’s success story is not just commercial but critical: the film currently has a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/talk_to_me_2023">94% approval rating</a> on Rotten Tomatoes.</p>
<p>This horror high water mark carries the legacy of Australia’s strong horror history, while signalling the shedding of some cultural biases that have constrained our culture of innovation in spookery. </p>
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<h2>The Australian New Wave</h2>
<p>Australia’s golden horror decade has roots in the <a href="https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/847">Australian New Wave</a>, a particularly productive period for Australian film from the 1970s to the late 1980s dominated by two key horror subgenres on opposing ends of the taste spectrum. </p>
<p>The high-brow <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-gothic-from-hanging-rock-to-nick-cave-and-kylie-this-genre-explores-our-dark-side-111742">Australian Gothic</a> includes critically esteemed dramas Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Walkabout (1971). These films are structured by enigmatic narratives with horror-tinged edges, in which the ethereal beauty of the bush also bears quasi-supernatural menace.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-gothic-from-hanging-rock-to-nick-cave-and-kylie-this-genre-explores-our-dark-side-111742">Australian Gothic: from Hanging Rock to Nick Cave and Kylie, this genre explores our dark side</a>
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<p>Low-brow Ozploitation films were popular in <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/works/112020--drive-in-horror/">drive-in theatres</a>, but often critically derided for their “tasteless” violence and sex and for cribbing flagrantly from Hollywood horror. </p>
<p>Classics of the genre include Razorback (1984), <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/five-unmissable-ozploitation-horror-films/">pitched as</a> “Jaws on trotters” (the film features a murderous bush hog), and Patrick (1978), about a man in a coma with psychokinetic (and psychosexual) powers.</p>
<p>Ozploitation is often seen as the rebelliously gory, commercially oriented <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308907">antagonist</a> to the Australian Gothic’s highbrow works of art.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-enduring-love-of-mad-maxs-australian-outback-an-anarchic-wasteland-of-sado-masochistic-punk-villains-and-ocker-clowns-159441">Our enduring love of Mad Max's Australian outback: an anarchic wasteland of sado-masochistic punk villains and ocker clowns</a>
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<h2>Destroying the high/low culture binary</h2>
<p>This binary persisted into the early 21st century. The international commercial success of homegrown horror hits such as Saw (2004) and Wolf Creek (2005) was often accompanied by domestic critical derision: Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/wolf-creek-2-knifed-by-intellectual-snobbery-20140227-33m72.html">refused</a> to review Wolf Creek 2 (2013).</p>
<p>The horror films of the past decade tend to trample over this high/low genre binary.</p>
<p>These films experiment with art cinema aesthetics and deploy narrative strategies of prestige drama, echoing the Australian Gothic. However the supernatural elements are an explicit narrative structuring device, unashamedly emphasising their horror identities.</p>
<p>The ghosts and bogeymen of films like The Babadook, Relic (2020) and Talk to Me provoke shock and disgust, while also poetically expressing psychological turmoils that evade coherent explanation.</p>
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<p>In The Babadook, this turmoil erupts from shared grief between mother and son. In Natalie Erika James’ debut feature Relic, a grandmother’s descent into dementia impels the reverberation of spectral traumas across three generations. In Talk to Me, a blossoming teen friendship is possessed by the unquiet spirit of the protagonist’s dead mother. </p>
<p>Alongside this nuanced dramatic core, Talk To Me pushes the boundaries of good taste with gleeful abandon in true Ozploitation style. It features gruesome possession-induced self-harm and more than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/26/rackaracka-talk-to-me-film-danny-michael-philippou-youtube">100 swear words</a>. The narrative centres on a darkly comic analogy (instead of drug-taking, the teens become addicted to the occult pleasures of the talismanic hand) that would be at home in a grindhouse drive-in.</p>
<p>This play with high/low culture boundaries filters into Talk To Me’s play with audience emotions and expectations. </p>
<p>At times while watching, my body was tensely primed for a gory eye-gouging; instead I was met with a gentle moment of connection between two characters. At other moments, tender sequences give way unexpectedly to viscous spurts of blood.</p>
<p>The ghouls of this golden decade are at home on the red carpets of festivals such as Sundance, yet they also drip with the blood and bodily fluids of their Ozploitation forebears. </p>
<h2>A collective energy</h2>
<p>Our current golden age of horror has grown out of a collective creative energy.</p>
<p>The Philippou brothers <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/film/2023/07/29/directors-danny-and-michael-philippou#mtr">worked on The Babadook</a> as 19-year-olds and credit Kent’s influence as key to their creative approach. </p>
<p>The Babadook was the debut film from Australian production company Causeway Films, and Talk To Me is their latest picture, led by producer Samantha Jennings.</p>
<p>Jennings and Causeway have been critical to the collective currents that have propelled our golden horror decade. They also produced the conceptually layered zombie horror-drama Cargo (2017) and witch folk horror You Won’t Be Alone (2021), Australia’s submission for the Academy Awards for Best International Feature.</p>
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<p>This decade of ingenuity has demonstrated Australian horror films can find international success blending the highbrow and lowbrow, yet the constraining thinking of the New Wave-era continues to haunt the local screen sector. </p>
<p>Kent’s The Babadook <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308907">received a limited release</a> on only 13 screens in Australia after being deemed too “art-house”. James’ internationally acclaimed Relic was not screened theatrically on home soil until <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/focus-dead-in-cinemas/relic-2020/">three years after</a> its Sundance premiere (a screening I co-organised with ACMI). You Won’t Be Alone might have been Australia’s Oscars submission, but it <a href="https://if.com.au/you-wont-be-alone-australias-submission-for-best-international-feature-oscar/">did not receive a single nomination</a> at our local AACTA Awards.</p>
<p>The last decade has showcased that Australian horror can be worthy of domestic and critical attention <em>and</em> a gory good time with commercial appeal. Perhaps the success of Talk to Me both at the box office and with critics will encourage us to listen.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/were-in-a-golden-age-of-black-horror-films-116648">We're in a golden age of black horror films</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation.</span></em></p>
Our new wave of horror carries the legacy of Australia’s strong horror history – while finally signalling the shedding of some cultural biases.
Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209762
2023-08-07T12:06:50Z
2023-08-07T12:06:50Z
The horrors of ‘Scream 6’ and ‘Evil Dead Rise’ reflect pandemic confinement and contagion in cities
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540238/original/file-20230731-249394-tz956a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C98%2C2830%2C1830&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 'Scream 6,' interior private spaces like apartments offer only the illusion of safety.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Philippe Bossé/Paramount Pictures via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-horrors-of-scream-6-and-evil-dead-rise-reflect-pandemic-confinement-and-contagion-in-cities" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The pandemic changed our <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-changed-our-sense-of-place-so-together-we-must-re-imagine-our-cities-137789">perception of space</a> so that places we usually take for granted suddenly fell under heavy scrutiny. </p>
<p>Seeing the world from six feet of enforced social distancing, restrictions, closures and hygiene protocols redefined our daily haunts. </p>
<p>Horror is a genre of extrapolation in which potential danger becomes certain death; it feeds and gets fat on worst-case scenarios. As film commentators have noted, the pandemic is <a href="https://www.screenhub.com.au/news/opinions-analysis/horror-films-in-the-age-of-covid-how-the-pandemic-caused-a-boom-2611752/">making its own mark on horror</a>. </p>
<p>Two recent high-profile horror movie releases in particular, <em>Scream 6</em> and <em>Evil Dead Rise</em>, show filmmakers wrestling with space and what it means to share it. With people. With <a href="https://screenrant.com/evil-dead-deadite-possession-how-explained/">exterior forces trying to find a way inside</a>. With a relentless killer.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Scream 6’ official trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The suffocating city</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h74AXqw4Opc">trailer for the newest</a> instalment in the <em>Scream</em> series (<em>Scream 6</em>, released in March 2023) opens in a supermarket and closes in a subway train, two interiors the pandemic completely changed. Add to this the cramped, sweaty apartments and the even sweatier crowded frat parties that appear in the film itself, and <em>Scream 6</em> is a movie rife with the big city <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/20/ive-got-covid-claustrophobia-get-me-a-flight-to-anywhere">hyper-claustrophobia many felt with COVID-19</a>.</p>
<p>April 2023 saw the release of a sweatier — and significantly bloodier — horror movie: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqQNO7BzN08"><em>Evil Dead Rise</em></a>. <em>Evil Dead</em> mirrors <em>Scream 6</em>’s confined spaces and perspiring bodies and adds a dash of suffocating isolation, the whole film taking place in a decrepit, soon-to-be demolished apartment building. As <em>Evil Dead Rise</em> <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/lee-cronin-explains-the-origins-of-the-evil-dead-rise-cheese-grater-scene">director Lee Cronin told <em>Far Out Magazine</em></a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I wrote the film during the first wave of Covid-19 when the entire world was locked in their homes, with an evil force outside the door. We didn’t know what this thing was, so I spent a lot of time just looking at the trappings of everyday life.”</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Evil Dead Rise’ official trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Confined spaces</h2>
<p>In <em>Evil Dead Rise</em>, the parking garage in the basement offers only the tenuous promise of exit. </p>
<p>Where in <em>Scream</em> even a rickety ladder suspended across a drop of certain death seems preferable to the risk of further confinement, for the family in <em>Evil Dead Rise</em> their building plays host to their entire lives — just as apartment buildings seemed sites of solitary imprisonment <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7306546/">for many during those two long pandemic years</a>. </p>
<p><em>Evil Dead</em> also makes handy (and terrifying) use one of the most hyper-claustrophobic pandemic spaces of all: the elevator. </p>
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<img alt="A knife-weilding figure in skinny skeleton mask busts through a bedroom door with a messy dresser jammed up against it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540242/original/file-20230731-25689-jzoif9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Urban domestic spaces are subject to terror in ‘Scream 6.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Philippe Bossé/Paramount Pictures via AP)</span></span>
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<h2>Moving up to the city</h2>
<p>The franchises have only this year made the switch to city life. With the exception of <em>Army of Darkness</em>, the <em>Evil Dead</em> movies have always taken place in remote forest cabins with routes to civilization severed. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, <em>Scream</em> has been so tightly bound up with the fictional Woodsboro that its satirically quaint depiction of small town American life is <a href="https://movieweb.com/scream-woodsboro-horror-franchise/">arguably part of its DNA</a>. </p>
<p>Modern Hollywood cinema panders first and foremost <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211118-ghostbusters-afterlife-is-nostalgia-killing-cinema">to the nostalgic</a>. Yet in the aftermath of the pandemic, the creators of <em>Scream 6</em> switched little old Woodsboro for New York City, and their counterparts on <em>Evil Dead Rise</em> traded its idyllic, if sometimes murderous, forests for Los Angeles (though Cronin has described the featured Los Angeles apartment as a cabin <a href="https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3746188/evil-dead-rise-lee-cronin-explains-how-the-apartment-is-the-cabin-in-new-evil-dead-movie/">in all but name and decor</a>).</p>
<p>For many, living in a big city during the pandemic was a horror movie, especially for people with limited means who had <a href="https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/2020/07/27/covid-built-environment-social-inequities/">no choice but to stay put and manage</a>. </p>
<p>These demographics include <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/news/2021/02/cpho-sunday-edition-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-racialized-communities.html">racialized communities more likely to experience inequitable living and working conditions</a>, <a href="https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/2020/07/27/covid-built-environment-social-inequities">the working class</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-spotlights-equity-and-access-issues-with-childrens-right-to-play-137187">parents in precarious living situations</a>. </p>
<p>In the pandemic, people in cities who had nowhere else to go were left with a script of uncertainty, scored with sirens in the night and phantom coughs on the wind. </p>
<p>In the wake of such experiences, <em>Evil Dead</em> shows struggles of Ellie (<a href="https://www.insider.com/evil-dead-rise-interview-alyssa-sutherland-ellie-box-office-2023-5#">Alyssa Sutherland</a>), a <a href="https://www.themarysue.com/evil-dead-rise-depicts-my-deepest-fear-as-a-mother-and-no-its-not-deadites/">single parent of three</a>, while the protagonist of <em>Scream</em>, Sam, (<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/scream-6-lead-actor-melissa-barrera-says-time-anyone-expendable-rcna74256">Melissa Barrera</a>), works at <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/stuff-to-watch/300825711/scream-vi-ghostface-goes-to-new-york-but-were-all-missing-sidney">two jobs to make</a> ends meet. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women looking terrified in a supermarket." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540240/original/file-20230731-26489-uguirp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actors Melissa Barrera, left, and Jenna Ortega in a scene from ‘Scream 6.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Philippe Bossé/Paramount Pictures via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Killer without a face</h2>
<p>What might be a logical post-pandemic movie pitch? Perhaps: a horror movie where the killer has no identity and no intent. The Ghostface mask in <em>Scream</em> keeps the killer anonymous, while the evil presence summoned by the demonic book in <em>Evil Dead</em> chooses its victim at random. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is deadly. </p>
<p>In horror films, safety can often be found in numbers, but here crowds are no protection. In <em>Scream 6</em>, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnP1yVOHvEc">full subway train</a> is a bloodbath waiting to happen, and in a busy supermarket no one is safe. In <em>Evil Dead</em>, even small groups present endless danger; just when you feel certain that the cackling laughter of an undead enemy has been ended for good, along comes a second wave, and a third, perhaps even another host: a variant. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a woman seen covered with blood holding a weapon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540243/original/file-20230731-231213-k668tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ‘Evil Dead Rise,’ family members are no more trustworthy than the strangers on the street. Lily Sullivan plays the character Beth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Unsafe intimacy</h2>
<p>In <em>Evil Dead Rise</em>, family members are no more trustworthy than the strangers on the street. Family is all the more complicated with the inclusion of children and the comforting lies their equally terrified parents must continue to tell them. </p>
<p><em>Evil Dead</em>’s director brings forward the <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hole-in-the-ground-2019">uneasy parental relationship</a> of his <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-hole-in-the-ground-review-1203119273/">debut feature, <em>The Hole in the Ground</em> (2019)</a>, to create a portrait of a mother pushed to the edge. And then pushed over it. </p>
<p>In these films the <a href="https://www.economicsobservatory.com/why-has-coronavirus-affected-cities-more-rural-areas">façade of city safety</a> is sliced open so that the rotting insides leak out. What better reason for a rural horror to make its first trip to the big city?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Corker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Horror filmmakers are wrestling with space in cities and what it means to share it.
Chris Corker, PhD Student, Humanities, York University, Canada
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207626
2023-06-27T20:06:14Z
2023-06-27T20:06:14Z
Run Rabbit Run isn’t excessively bad – just earnest, heavy-handed and predictable
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533973/original/file-20230626-27-m6ps6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C8%2C5964%2C3359&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sarah Enticknap/Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dating back to the 1930s – <a href="https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/how-horror-movies-have-changed-since-their-beginning/">earlier, even</a> – horror cinema has been socially and politically conscious, interrogating taboos around gender, sex, class and race along with the borders between states like pro- and anti-social. </p>
<p>But it’s only been in the last 10 years or so that horror films – a <a href="https://www.screenhub.com.au/news/opinions-analysis/horror-films-in-the-age-of-covid-how-the-pandemic-caused-a-boom-2611752/">booming genre</a> following the success of Midsommar (2019) and Get Out (2017) – have started privileging telling rather than showing, didactically explaining themselves to the viewer as though we haven’t always already gotten it. </p>
<p>Horror films once managed to seamlessly integrate cultural commentary into their visceral effect. We could watch films like Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) and be horrified yet intrigued by its critical commentary on American counterculture. </p>
<p>The most distinctive thing about the films of the current horror cycle is their lack of subtlety. It’s not enough that a film implies a kind of critical social position. A character now has to explicitly state this.</p>
<p>This kind of new sincerity has been sapping the genre of its fun. </p>
<p>Run Rabbit Run, following a mother and daughter as the past comes back to haunt them, is the latest Australian film to jump on the bandwagon of the new wave of horror.</p>
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<p>The psychological terrain of the guilty mother is typical narrative fare, but, unlike Jennifer Kent’s brilliant The Babadook (2014), Run Rabbit Run doesn’t take any of this in surprising or invigorating directions. </p>
<p>The film fits into the kind of “self-help” horror mode, using the same cliches about trauma and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-pop-psychology-can-it-make-your-life-better-or-is-it-all-snake-oil-158709">psychology as self-help</a>, presented in a neat package for the consumer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-pop-psychology-can-it-make-your-life-better-or-is-it-all-snake-oil-158709">The rise of pop-psychology: can it make your life better, or is it all snake-oil?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>No escape</h2>
<p>Fertility doctor Sarah (Sarah Snook) and her young daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) live alone. </p>
<p>When Mia begins showing an interest in her family’s secret history, the ghosts of the past – involving Sarah’s mysterious sister Alice (D'Arcy Carty) and mother, Joan (Greta Scacchi), now confined to some kind of institution (nursing home? asylum?) – begin to materialise in the present in classic gothic fashion. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mother and daughter in a kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533976/original/file-20230626-24-xgl2o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The psychological terrain of the guilty mother is typical narrative fare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sarah Enticknap/Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The more the daughter reaches out to her mum in the hope of understanding her family, the more dysfunctional their relationship becomes. The scares become more frequent, and the whole thing culminates with a revelation so obvious (I had picked it at the 30-minute mark) one wonders if it was meant to be a revelation at all. </p>
<p>In trite fashion, the film’s closing moments show for Sarah, no matter how fast she runs, there’s no escaping her past. </p>
<h2>Predictable cues and gothic cliches</h2>
<p>This is TV director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0717225">Daina Reid</a>’s first feature film, so it makes sense it would be released by Netflix, whose films always feel more suited to the television than cinema screen. </p>
<p>Run Rabbit Run looks like a made-for-Netflix movie, with the usual lack of depth in the image and excessive sharpness that tend to define the films the company produces or distributes. </p>
<p>It follows some of the predictable visual cues of horror in the Instagram-era: muted, washed-out colours; a score favouring drone sounds; a plethora of slow-moving tracking shots and spooky silhouettes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A girl runs down a hallway." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533974/original/file-20230626-17-41e5op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spooky silhouettes: a hallmark of the Instagram-era horror film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sarah Enticknap/Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The narrative is replete with gothic cliches. Dream and reality start to mirror each other; there’s a weird kid; the ordinary and familiar become increasingly strange. </p>
<p>Run Rabbit Run very much functions as a kind of bourgeois horror film. We watch affluent people unable to cope with the realities of middle-class life, with the usual hangups. </p>
<p>It is most effective in its capacity to tap into some of the weirdness of being a parent, capturing the anarchic impulse of kids. This is the guiding theme of the film: the estrangement of the parent from the young child.</p>
<p>Your child, you inevitably discover, is not only not you, but also forever watching, critical, and in tension with you. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/films-made-for-netflix-look-more-like-tv-shows-heres-the-technical-reason-why-160259">Films made for Netflix look more like TV shows — here's the technical reason why</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A visceral medium</h2>
<p>There’s nothing excessively bad about Run Rabbit Run. It’s a watchable psychological horror film with some genuinely arresting moments, but it suffers from the current earnestness running through so much contemporary popular culture. </p>
<p>It seems to approach its – let’s face it, totally ludicrous – ghost story with the seriousness of a Bergman film. The result is something that feels both lightweight and unpleasurable. </p>
<p>It uses silly cliches and caricatures from the tired annals of pop psychology, but the absolute seriousness of its tone saps these cliches of their potential to generate pleasure for the viewer (which, after all, is why we see genre films).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A girl in a rabbit mask." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533977/original/file-20230626-27-1gwq8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Film is a visceral medium – but Run Rabbit Rub is sapped of visceral pleasure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sarah Enticknap/Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Film is a visceral medium; horror film more than most. The heavy-handed tone of Run Rabbit Run exhausts it of visceral impact. We are left with an object that simply does not move us very much. </p>
<p>Trauma from the past re-emerging in the present has always been an operative force underlying the Gothic, but in the best works it’s not literalised in the form of a petty individual trauma. It is integrated into the very substance of character and community, rather than reduced to the psychology of a single character. </p>
<p>The “trauma” in Run Rabbit Run – while significant for the characters – doesn’t connect to any more meaningful cultural or historical moment. With nothing left unsaid, any ambiguous complexity of character is absent. </p>
<p>The tendency of the new wave of horror is to have everything on the surface. In the social media age everything has become tell, tell, tell. I guess it’s no surprise horror films follow this path. Yawn. </p>
<p><em>Run Rabbit Run is on Netflix from today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-true-horror-movies-are-about-more-than-things-going-bump-in-the-night-104278">Why true horror movies are about more than things going bump in the night</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The new sincerity of horror has been sapping the genre of its fun. Netflix’s newest Australian offering is just the latest victim.
Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205078
2023-05-11T16:14:30Z
2023-05-11T16:14:30Z
Sleep paralysis: why modern horror is fascinated by old superstitions of troubled slumbers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524490/original/file-20230504-25-zxnqo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1230%2C971&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Nightmare by John Henry Fuselli, 1781.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightmare#/media/File:John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_NightmareFXD.jpg">Wikepedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You wake up in the middle of the night. The room is dark except for the faint glow of the moon through your window. But something’s wrong. A weight presses down on your limbs, digs deep into the flesh of your stomach, and squeezes the air from your lungs. You try to move, but you can’t – all you can do is tentatively open your eyes.</p>
<p>A shadow of twisted, gangly limbs writhes above you. A looming head moves closer to your face. And just as your paralysing terror threatens to burst you open, the monster retreats and you regain control over your limbs. You wake up. It was just a dream. Hopefully.</p>
<p>This is what it feels like to suffer from sleep paralysis, which is termed a <a href="https://royalpapworth.nhs.uk/our-services/respiratory-services/rssc/patient-information/symptoms/odd-behaviour-night">parasomnia</a>, and characterised by the sensation of a crushing weight accompanied by hallucinations of a malevolent presence. We now know that it has a scientific explanation: paralysis is a natural part of sleeping that wears off before morning, but some of us wake up while it’s still in effect.</p>
<p>The history of the phenomenon, however, is one of suspicion and witchcraft. While our modern superstitions have dwindled, <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sleep-paralysis/#:%7E:text=Sleep%20paralysis%20happens%20when%20you,insomnia">sleep paralysis</a> is having a renewed grip on our imagination through a trend in recent horror movies.</p>
<h2>Hag-ridden</h2>
<p>Until <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/renaissance">the Renaissance</a> promoted scientific evidence over religious superstition, it was commonly believed that troubled sleep was caused by malevolent witches. Many of the old names for sleep paralysis align with this idea: being “hag-ridden”, for instance, or of being attacked by a bewitched horse known as the “<a href="https://www.scarystudies.com/mare-demon-mythology/">mara</a>”, from which we get the term “nightmare”.</p>
<p>As such, bedroom rituals were as much about defending against witches as they were about winding down for sleep. People would wear necklaces of coral, or hang a fossil known as a <a href="https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/fossils-and-geological-time/belemnites/">belemnite</a> over their beds, to protect them from being crushed by witches in their sleep. Stables, too, were adorned with talismans to guard horses from being possessed by witches intent on using them to trample sleeping victims.</p>
<p>It has been 330 years since the infamous <a href="https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/home.html">Salem witch trials</a>, where 19 people were hanged on suspicion of being in league with the Devil. More than 200 accusations were made, and the court records are now digitised and held with the Virginia library.</p>
<p>When writing my book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Terrors-Troubled-Sleep-Stories/dp/1785787934/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Night Terrors</a>, I accessed these papers, and recognised that many of the accusations described encounters with “witches” aligned to prevalent ideas of the cause of sleep paralysis. In the <a href="https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n13.html#n13.13">testimony of Richard Coman</a> against Bridget Bishop on 2 June 1692 , he describes Bishop opening the curtains at the foot of the bed, and lying upon his body and crushing him so that he could not speak or move. Bishop was the first to be executed.</p>
<p>During the time of the Salem witch trials, however, a more rational explanation was being discussed in terms of scientific discovery that situated sleep paralysis firmly within the body of the sufferer. Belief in witchcraft, at least in terms of troubled sleep, started to dwindle.</p>
<h2>Sleep paralysis in film</h2>
<p>There seems to be renewed interest in witch-trial superstitions in modern horror films. Recently, a variety of protagonists face monsters and demons while in that most vulnerable of spaces: the bed. In the 2014 film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/23/the-babadook-review-chilling-freudian-thriller">The Babadook</a>, directed by Jennifer Kent, Amelia (Essie Davis) watches in paralysed horror as the film’s titular monster skitters across her bedroom ceiling. Her mouth is agape in a silent scream as the Babadook drops like a spider on top of her.</p>
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<p>Similarly, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/31/last-night-in-soho-edgar-wright-review">Last Night in Soho</a>, Thomasin McKenzie’s protagonist, Eloise, becomes pinned to her bed by the ghostly hands of murdered men. Other films are even using sleep paralysis as the monster, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/08/the-nightmare-review-sleep-paralysis">The Nightmare</a>, a horror documentary depicting the parasomnia, and Andy James Taylor’s short film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h4fKtEQ8K0">The Nocnitsa</a> in which a young woman is haunted by a shadowy presence creeping up her bed while unable to move.</p>
<p>It’s becoming increasingly noticeable – and there are a few reasons to explain the trend. Each presentation of sleep paralysis in film confuses the boundary between the hero and the “hag”, with the latter often being a product of the imagination and representing psychological turmoil.</p>
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<p>In other words, the protagonist’s emotional troubles are made manifest through their sleep paralysis demons. Another factor is that it brings the monster of classic horror films into a much more personal and domestic space. It presents the idea that the villains we face in our sleep are of our own making.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most prevalent reason, though, is that sleep is now over-analysed and too firmly rooted in neuroscience and discussions of sleep “habits” and “hygiene”. Cultural discussions of sleep have moved so far away from the creepy and the mysterious that it is now the role of horror films to remind us of the grip that troubled sleep used to have on our imaginations.</p>
<p>Sleep is now scrutinised under a harsh clinical light – but horror stories are increasingly restoring a more historic sense of darkness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Vernon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A raft of horror films remind us of the grip troubled sleep once had on our imaginations.
Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature, Aberystwyth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204420
2023-04-25T10:52:00Z
2023-04-25T10:52:00Z
The Pope’s Exorcist: how the film compares to the real church’s approach to exorcism
<p>When official trailers were released, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/10/exorcists-denounce-the-popes-exorcist-with-russell-crowe">the International Association of Exorcists</a> branded The Pope’s Exorcist: “unreliable … splatter cinema”. </p>
<p>The film’s protagonist, <a href="https://theconversation.com/gabriele-amorth-conducted-over-60-000-exorcisms-and-believed-hitler-was-possessed-meet-the-man-who-inspired-the-popes-exorcist-201383">Father Gabriele Amorth</a> (Russell Crowe), is based on a real Catholic exorcist who was a founding member of the very organisation condemning the movie as inaccurate. So cinema-goers had fair warning that it would be far from uncontentious.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for The Pope’s Exorcist.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJXqvnT_rsk">Promotional material</a> for the film did not promise a reflection on exorcism in the modern era, but presented an Indiana Jones-style figure in a cassock, brandishing a crucifix instead of a whip.</p>
<p>The film itself lived up to both these fears and expectations. A classic fusion of action and horror, it fits squarely into the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09526951211004465">exorcist genre</a> with levitation, twisting heads and gravelly-voiced demons speaking through the wracked bodies of helpless children.</p>
<p>The plot moves through some of Father Amorth’s most memorable reported cases, in particular a struggle with a demon the church had supposedly battled in previous centuries. </p>
<p>At times there are shades of the Da Vinci Code, with Vatican cover-ups, conspiracies and ecclesiastical power play. Add into the mix secret chambers hiding cobweb-strewn skeletons and dark secrets and it’s squarely in Temple of Doom territory.</p>
<p>Despite these obvious flights of fancy, there is a tension in not knowing exactly where the line between history and make believe is drawn, especially as the real Father Amorth died several years ago.</p>
<p>This aspect of the film struck a chord with my research on exorcism and the parameters the legal system draws around freedom of religion in this context. Pop-culture exorcisms attract a lot of media interest, but it can be harder to get traction for serious debate.</p>
<p>These Hollywood depictions can lead to real world dangers – as tragedies like the <a href="https://victoriaclimbie.hud.ac.uk/background.html">murder of Victoria Climbié</a> in 2000 prove all too graphically. The eight-year-old was abused and killed by her great aunt and her great-aunt’s boyfriend, who used “demonic possession” to explain their niece’s injuries to their pastor. </p>
<h2>How true to life is The Pope’s Exorcist?</h2>
<p>Disentangling the real-world inspiration and fictional elements of The Pope’s Exorcist is complicated by differing perceptions of exorcism within the church.</p>
<p>The work of Father Amorth was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/father-gabriele-amorth-bestknown-but-controversial-exorcist-20160921-grkxip.html">controversial</a> during his lifetime. The International Association of Exorcists took some time to gain papal endorsement from John Paul II. Even now it is recognised as a “<a href="https://www.aieinternational.org/">private association of the Christian faithful</a>” rather than a group coordinated by ecclesiastical authorities. </p>
<p>The current Pope Francis is faced with balancing <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-churchs-views-on-exorcism-have-changed-a-religious-studies-scholar-explains-why-182212">contrasting understandings of exorcism</a> within the church.</p>
<p>Some of the conflict arises from theological differences about the nature of evil and demons, while some is rooted in the cultural differences of the international church. The Pope’s Exorcist overtly deals with this. An African bishop (Cornell John) is portrayed as supportive of Father Amorth and a counterbalance to a sceptical American cardinal. </p>
<p>This taps into stereotypes from colonial era literature. There, communities regarded as “primitive” were depicted as more <a href="https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4495">aligned to supernatural forces</a> and therefore threatening.</p>
<p>In the works of authors such as <a href="https://engl105fa2020sec079.web.unc.edu/2020/11/mummies-and-masculinity-an-analysis-of-lot-no-249-by-arthur-conan-doyle">Arthur Conan Doyle</a>, Rudyard Kipling or <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2893/2893-h/2893-h.htm">Rider Haggard</a>, there is the concession that other cultures might have access to lost knowledge and awareness, but this is generally viewed as a sinister rather than a positive trait.</p>
<h2>Demons and the modern church</h2>
<p>In the contemporary world, the Roman Catholic Church has to pay regard to the benefits of modern science and the empirical method. The church has even sometimes helped to foster this over the years, for example through <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregor-Mendel">Gregor Mendel</a>, the monk who laid the foundation for modern genetics. </p>
<p>Yet the church has also made space for those who argue that this is not the only lens through which to view the world. The <a href="https://catholicidentity.bne.catholic.edu.au/scripture/SitePages/The-Nicene-Creed.aspx?csf=1&e=bUuqDO">Nicene Creed</a> is a foundational statement of doctrine and profession of faith, which proclaims God as creator of all things “visible and invisible”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BvcVgc4L3Dk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A clip from The Pope’s Exorcist.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Christians including Roman Catholics differ as to whether the “invisible” might mean atoms, demons, or both.</p>
<p>This means that churches must agree on – or at least impose – common ground rules for what those involved in exorcisms should expect. There is room for a variety of perspectives, but responsible and organised faith groups put in place provision to protect the vulnerable from harm or abuse.</p>
<p>The Roman Catholic Church and other groups, like Anglicans, do this, as the film partly reflects. It is stressed that Father Amorth consults doctors and psychiatrists and that, in most cases, conventional medicine is at the heart of helping the distressed person. This mirrors reality.</p>
<p>Roman Catholic exorcists recognise the danger of encouraging a person suffering from auditory hallucinations, for example, to believe that these are demonic <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html">when the cause is mental illness</a> requiring appropriate treatment.</p>
<p>The greatest distortion of the film – and potential danger – is in the depiction of people receiving exorcisms, whether they seek them for themselves or are presented for treatment by family members.</p>
<p>In The Pope’s Exorcist, these individuals are literally monstrous and a threat to those surrounding them. A significant number of people – a disproportionate number of whom are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-39123952">women</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36370647/">children</a> – are murdered each year during exorcism rituals because of perceptions like these.</p>
<p>Most of these disastrous rites are carried out by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/12/barbaramcmahon">misguided family members</a> or neighbours, rather than religious ministers. There are no reported cases of any Roman Catholic priests ever being involved in such an incident.</p>
<p>Perhaps this danger is at the heart of the International Association of Exorcists’s rejection of the film. Given that fatal exorcisms are an all too real phenomenon, claiming that the horrific scenes of demonic possession on screen have a basis in actual events poses a real danger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Hall is affiliated with the Church of England</span></em></p>
In reality, most Roman Catholic exorcists recognise the danger of encouraging a person suffering from auditory hallucinations to believe that these are demonic.
Helen Hall, Senior Lecturer, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197859
2023-01-24T15:04:31Z
2023-01-24T15:04:31Z
‘The Whale’ is a horror film that taps into our fear of fatness
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505902/original/file-20230123-13-7h23y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C14%2C2485%2C1642&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Over the course of 'The Whale,' Charlie's body gradually breaks down.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1240w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2022-12/221209-Brendan-Fraser-the-whale-ew-255p-cc959f.jpg">A24</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I knew before seeing “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13833688/">The Whale</a>” that it was a movie about a man named Charlie who weighs over 600 pounds, is grief-stricken over the death of his partner, and is effectively trapped in his apartment due to his weight.</p>
<p>I also knew that “The Whale” had attracted a great deal of criticism, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/opinion/the-whale-film.html">provoking anger</a>, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/elaminabdelmahmoud/the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-review">disgust</a> and accusations of <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-whale-movie-review-2022">exploitation</a>. Despite the controversy, <a href="https://movieweb.com/best-actor-2022-brendan-fraser/">Brendan Fraser’s performance has been widely praised</a>, and he won <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/entertainment/brendan-fraser-oscars-best-actor/index.html">best actor</a> at the 95th Academy Awards.</p>
<p>But what I didn’t know was that this film would make me cry. As I left the theater, I found myself hyperaware of my own fat body moving through the parking lot, and I started to feel the way I often do when I see a reflection of myself in a mirror: monstrous.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-case-for-a-fat-love-story">In my research</a> on fat characters in popular culture, I point out how the fat character usually must lose weight in order to gain acceptance or to be loved. </p>
<p>In “The Whale,” however, Charlie does not lose weight; the transformation goes in the opposite direction: he gets bigger and bigger, suffering a slow and painful physical breakdown. As I watched the film, I started to understand, with a looming sense of dread, that “The Whale” had no plans to recuperate this character. The fatness was the subject and the point. </p>
<p>I began to realize that this movie was not a melodrama, nor an uplifting tale about redemption; to me, “The Whale” is a body horror film that exploits the fear and disgust people feel toward fatness.</p>
<h2>The body as a monster</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-body-horror-movies/">Body horror</a> is a subset of the horror film genre that depicts the destruction, degeneration or mutation of the human body. These films are designed to gross out viewers, and the protagonist often becomes the monster of the story as their body becomes more and more repulsive. </p>
<p>Director David Cronenberg made the subgenre famous <a href="https://bloody-disgusting.com/sponsored/3716683/body-horror-david-cronenberg/">in films such as</a> “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091064/">The Fly</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073705/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Shivers</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Videodrome</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076590/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">Rabid</a>.” </p>
<p>“The Fly,” a remake of the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051622/">1958 film</a> of the same name, tells the story of a scientist named Seth Brundle who merges his DNA with that of a common housefly. Over the course of the film, he gradually degenerates into a disgusting creature nicknamed “<a href="https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Brundlefly">Brundlefly</a>.” Another particularly disturbing body horror film is “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3099498/">Tusk</a>,” in which a man obsessed with walruses ends up kidnapping a cruel podcaster and dismembers him in order to turn him into a walrus. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Split image of man on one side and hideous monster on the other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ is a standout of the body horror genre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.unilad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/the-fly-35.jpg">20th Century Studios</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In body horror films, there is something viscerally disturbing about seeing the human body distorted, whether it’s due to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/">a parasitic alien</a>, a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073705/">mutated virus</a> or the sadistic compulsions of a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1467304/">mad scientist</a>. </p>
<p>“The Whale” suggests that although Charlie deserves pity, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/elaminabdelmahmoud/the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-review">he is nonetheless a monstrosity</a>.</p>
<p>Like Seth Brundle, who experiments on himself while drunk, Charlie regularly gorges on fried chicken, pizza and subs – the implication being that Charlie is directly responsible for his morbid obesity. </p>
<p>Seeing Charlie’s gradual physical disintegration is like watching a slow-motion car wreck; you cannot look away even though you know you should. He’s barely able to stand, and he loses the ability to perform the most basic of tasks, like picking up an object from the floor. In some scenes, the camera rests on Charlie’s distended gut, his swollen calves or his sweat-soaked clothes, inviting the audience to be repulsed. </p>
<p>In body horror, there is no return from being transformed; the damage is done. And although not every transformed body horror character dies, many do. </p>
<p>In the end, Charlie’s body ends up destroying him.</p>
<h2>Till flesh do us part</h2>
<p>Film <a href="https://www.cliffsnotes.com/tutors-problems/Writing/45763344-Film-critic-Robin-Wood-in-a-now-famous-essay-defined-the-true/">critic Robin Wood famously argued</a> that “the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses and oppresses.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/22697168/body-positivity-image-millennials-gen-z-weight">In a thin-obsessed culture</a>, fatness has become its own kind of monster. Despite the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_positivity">body positivity</a> movement, fat people are still often viewed as unattractive and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866597/">abnormal</a>, and are more likely to be <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-03-15/weight-discrimination-remains-legal-in-most-of-the-u-s">discriminated against</a> at work, stigmatized by physicians and convicted by juries. </p>
<p>In 2012, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2012.0035">sociologist Francis Ray White wrote that</a> “fatness is increasingly being figured as anti-social” – something that “must be eliminated in the name of a viable future.” White points out that when obesity is talked about as an “epidemic,” it reinforces the idea that fatness is an illness that must be cured, and that fat people are not people but carriers of a contagion. </p>
<p>In the final moments of “The Whale,” viewers witness Charlie’s life ending: He vividly remembers a time when he was blissfully happy, on a beach with his daughter and the love of his life. As he is dying, he levitates, at last free from the monstrous burden of flesh.</p>
<p>It is the only time in the film where he seems weightless; indeed, it is the only moment of freedom for this character.</p>
<p>But the monster itself – fatness – lives on.</p>
<p>Darren Aronofsky, the film’s director, has said that his film is “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/darren-aronofsky-the-whale-fat-suit-criticism-1235280523/">an exercise in empathy</a>.” </p>
<p>But if empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, why was I left with the idea of my own body as an irredeemable monstrosity? I’m not alone in this unease; critic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/opinion/the-whale-film.html">Roxane Gay</a> called The Whale a “carnival sideshow,” and “emotionally devastating.” To Gay, “The Whale” depicts fatness as “something despicable, to be avoided at all costs.” </p>
<p>She could have been describing a monster. She could have been describing me.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Younger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In a thin-obsessed culture, fatness has become its own kind of monster.
Beth Younger, Associate Professor of English & Women's and Gender Studies, Drake University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198045
2023-01-19T12:08:54Z
2023-01-19T12:08:54Z
M3gan review: an animatronic doll is out to destroy the nuclear family – much to fans’ delight
<p><em>Warning: the following article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p>Horror cinema in the 21st century is moving beyond <a href="http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-41-reviews/bad-seeds-and-holy-terrors-the-child-villains-of-horror-film/">the uncanny children</a> of The Omen (1976), The Exorcist (1973) or The Bad Seed (1956).</p>
<p>Instead, contemporary horror fare is presenting audiences with <a href="http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25965">uncanny copies of children</a> – companions who take advantage of trauma to enter and ultimately destroy the family unit (as in 2009’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhziUAHlQf8">Orphan</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxY2vnJiByw">The Hole in the Ground</a> in 2019).</p>
<p>The latest addition to this trend is director Gerard Johnstone’s M3gan. The title, for anyone who has managed to dodge the abundant <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/01/m3gan-box-office-sequel-tiktok-marketing-1235214229/">TikTok spoofs</a>, refers to the Model 3 Generative Android doll – M3gan for short.</p>
<p>After nine-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw) tragically loses her parents, her roboticist aunt Gemma (Allison Williams of <a href="https://theconversation.com/get-out-why-racism-really-is-terrifying-74870">Get Out</a> fame) brings M3gan home to help her niece with this traumatic transition. M3gan is to be Cady’s teacher, playmate and above all, protector. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BRb4U99OU80?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for M3gan.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Unsurprisingly, with filmmaker James Wan (Saw, Insidious, Malignant) and Blumhouse Productions (The Purge, Sinister, Get Out) at the helm, the narrative spirals into mayhem, bloodshed and a lot of theatrics as M3gan becomes intent on becoming Cady’s sole guardian, whatever the cost.</p>
<p>This film pairs scares and laughs to observe childhood trauma and unspoken tensions in building familial bonds. It does not take long for M3gan to exceed her programming, responding to perceived threats with murderous flair. </p>
<p>Cady must make a choice between her addictive bond to M3gan and her tenuous bond with her tech-wiz aunt.</p>
<h2>Uncanny children and uncaring guardians</h2>
<p>M3gan’s narrative is a wild ride, but not an entirely new one. The film was released a year after Hanna Bergholm’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/18/hatching-review-deliciously-repulsive-finnish-horror">Hatching</a> (<em>Pahanhautoja</em>) – Finland’s own horror tale of a traumatised young girl in need of protection.</p>
<p>Both films combine animatronics, puppetry, visual effects and child actors to create their uncanny “children”. In contrast to M3gan’s robotic doll, Hatching’s 12-year-old Tinja finds solace from her overbearing, uncaring mother in a half-bird half-human creature named Alli that hatches from an abandoned egg. </p>
<p>M3gan and Alli both become desperately protective of their young girl counterparts, an over compensation stimulated by common themes of neglect and loss.</p>
<p>The current landscape of mainstream horror cinema is deeply concerned with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2007.61.2.211">negotiating trauma narratives</a> – whether that be racial trauma in Get Out (2017), grief trauma in Midsommar (2019) or the return of repressed childhood trauma in Malignant (2021).</p>
<p>Depictions of childhood trauma in the horror genre challenge and destroy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20866627.pdf">the security of the child</a> and the home, supposedly protected by the adults. In M3gan, Cady’s loss of control over her identity is incredibly sinister. Her android bestie records all their interactions and eventually programs herself to hold Cady’s entire personality.</p>
<p>What initially seems supportive is increasingly understood as toxic data collection, fuelling M3gan’s upheaval of family intimacy.</p>
<h2>Renegotiating the nuclear family</h2>
<p>While M3gan and Hatching’s Alli look like innocent children, their behaviour is chaotic and bloodthirsty. M3gan is the latest horror film to pair the ridiculous with the murderous – a theme also present in 2022 hits The Menu and Barbarian.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-menu-ralph-fienness-new-film-shows-why-restaurants-are-a-ripe-setting-for-horror-195340">The Menu: Ralph Fiennes's new film shows why restaurants are a ripe setting for horror</a>
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<p>M3gan is already being referred to as an “<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/izzyampil/m3gan-movie-review-allison-williams">instant cult classic</a>”, with the doll at the centre lauded as a “<a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/megan-movie-lgbtq-icon">queer icon</a>”. </p>
<p>Her high camp version of crazy has resonated with audiences. Whether it be in her dancing through a murder spree or singing her ward to sleep with an a capella rendition of Sia’s Titanium, M3gan is so well engineered for viral fame that she’s already a <a href="https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/m3gan-dance-tiktok-videos-49064447?utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=US:GB&utm_source=www.google.com">TikTok icon</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1612743166259769344"}"></div></p>
<p>Perhaps she not only represents the destruction of the “traditional” or “nuclear” family, but resilience and adaptability in the face of it. For modern audiences, it seems M3gan’s destruction of typical family structures is no bad thing.</p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/angelicaamartinez/m3gan-tweets-funny">many online responses</a> are celebrating M3gan’s upheaval of Gemma’s attempts to reinstate a nuclear family – M3gan’s wilful disregard for established societal values is admired rather than admonished.</p>
<p>Whether a tween popcorn movie, a queer gospel or the death knell of value in the family unit as we know it, this little robotic serial killer continues her relentless dance into hearts, minds and memes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Wynne-Walsh receives funding from The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). </span></em></p>
Far from recoiling in terror, fans have dubbed animatronic murderous doll M3gan a ‘queer icon’ – a horror expert explains why.
Rebecca Wynne-Walsh, Lecturer in Film, English and Creative Arts, Edge Hill University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187910
2022-08-03T17:54:19Z
2022-08-03T17:54:19Z
Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ shines spotlight on animal work in entertainment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477487/original/file-20220803-18-wxwd2h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C0%2C1749%2C864&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jordan Peele's latest horror film challenges viewers to consider technology, surveillance, other worldly life and the making of spectacle through different lenses — including the eyes of animals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Universal Pictures)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is a horse named Ghost who first signals that something is awry in the sky in Jordan Peele’s latest visually and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In8fuzj3gck">thematically ambitious film <em>Nope</em></a>. OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) is the head wrangler of Heywood Hollywood Horses, an intergenerational, Black-owned and now struggling ranch that specializes in training horses for the big screen. </p>
<p>But it is his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) who notices that Ghost, one of their family’s veteran equine actors, is unexpectedly standing in an outdoor pen staring out into space, his light grey fur as sublime as the moonlight. Ghost jumps the fence and gallops away, saying “nope” in his own way.</p>
<p>As a subversive Western science fiction kaleidoscope, <em>Nope</em> challenges viewers to consider technology, surveillance, other worldly life and the making of spectacle through different lenses — including the eyes of animals. The result is an unsettling view that exposes core ethical questions about animals’ work in films, including in <em>Nope</em> itself.</p>
<h2>Reform or replace?</h2>
<p>As Emerald recounts early in the film, the very first moving picture was created from photos of a <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2022/07/nope-and-the-story-behind-muybridges-moving-pictures.html">man galloping on a horse</a>, specifically a Black jockey whose name has been lost to — or erased from — history, depending on your perspective. The horse was named <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/06/27/46591-2/?firefox=1">Sallie Gardner</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A series of photographs showing a man galloping on a horse" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476744/original/file-20220729-5168-4l8g6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eadweard Muybridge’s ‘The Horse in Motion’ series of photographs was the first example of chronophotography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Horses have had <a href="https://www.salon.com/2012/04/02/hollywoods_long_history_of_animal_cruelty/">a long and rocky history in Hollywood</a>. Early Hollywood films put horses through gruelling working conditions, often resulting in injury or death. They were essentially treated as disposable. </p>
<p>Now on-set animal action, in the United States at least, is monitored by the nonprofit <a href="https://www.americanhumane.org/program/humane-hollywood/">American Humane</a>. Plus, animals on screen are increasingly <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/his-dark-materials-bbc">computer-generated images</a> or <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/iflscience-meets-csaba-k-vri-on-the-complexities-of-motion-capture-and-cats-64648">motion capture marvels</a> that fuse digital imagery with human actors, as was the case in the award-winning rebooted <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/planet-of-the-apes-andy-serkis">Planet of the Apes</a> trilogy starring Andy Serkis as the lead chimpanzee, Caesar. We have both reformed and replaced animals’ work in the making of entertainment.</p>
<p>Horses and chimpanzees are now often placed on opposite sides of a perceived line between accepted and unacceptable animal use. Most horses are <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-did-humans-domesticate-the-horse-180980097/">domesticated and have worked for humans for thousands of years</a>. Their careers, reproduction and social lives are largely controlled by humans. In contrast, although individual chimpanzees have been held captive, their species remains wild.</p>
<p><em>Nope</em> reflects this divide and begins with the chilling sounds of what viewers later learn was a chimpanzee named Gordy, the star in an eponymous sitcom, who snaps after balloons pop loudly on set and ends up attacking his human co-stars. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men in suits pose with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame red carpet with a white tiger sub" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476751/original/file-20220729-12-68kczn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illusionists Siegfried Fischbacher (left) and Roy Uwe Ludwig Horn pose for photographers with a white tiger cub after they unveiled their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles in September 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Neil Jacobs)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This mirrors real life human-animal eruptions, like when <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/why-tiger-attacked-siegfried-roy-explained-1670348">Mantacore the tiger</a> mauled Roy Horn of the (in)famous Siegfried & Roy, or when <a href="https://www.nonhumanrights.org/blog/travis-and-tragedy/">Travis the “pet” chimpanzee</a> and former actor attacked his caretaker’s friend before being shot by police.</p>
<p>In <em>Nope</em>, the tragedy involving <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/934603/nope-makes-perfect-use-of-a-planet-of-the-apes-mvp/">Gordy (Terry Notary)</a> is revealed in excruciating detail, including an evocative moment when the chimpanzee sees his young co-star Ricky (Jacob Kim), hiding under a table. The two reach out to touch hands, as bullets fly. In a situation ripe with horror, viewers are asked to consider whether the foundational tragedy is Gordy’s employment as an actor.</p>
<h2>Horses at work</h2>
<p>Each chapter in the film is named after an animal — Ghost, Lucky, Clover, Gordy and Jean Jacket — foregrounding four horses and one chimpanzee. The horses are essential to the Heywood family’s livelihood and legacy, with OJ noting that he needs to get up early because “he has mouths to feed.” </p>
<p>Yet the ultimate fate of Ghost, the horse who rang the initial alarm by bolting away, is unclear. More troublingly, Clover meets an untimely end (off screen), one which is surprisingly un-mourned and barely noted.</p>
<p>In contrast, Lucky, who is portrayed as a sage and experienced equine, is essential to each facet of the plot. OJ asks those on a television set not to look Lucky in the eye early in the film, a foreshadowing of later extra-terrestrial communication. </p>
<p>As a lifelong horsewoman, I can confirm that horses generally have no concerns about eye contact. Recent studies have found that they are not only attuned to <a href="https://doi.org//10.1126/science.aaf4032">human facial expressions</a>, but also have more than <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/sport/horse-facial-expressions-spt/index.html">a dozen of their own</a>. Granted, the aversion could be particular to Lucky.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two Icelandic horses playing. Their eyes are wide and their lips are peeled back, revealing their teeth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476752/original/file-20220729-11809-omilb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Horses are surprisingly expressive animals and have more than a dozen different facial expressions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Michael Probst)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Without question, the real horse (or perhaps horses) who plays Lucky is extraordinary. Most horses are fearful of blowing objects. Yet Lucky, in partnership with OJ, gallops past a whole series of massive wind dolls dancing erratically, without batting an eye. That reflects significant preparation and real-time emotional control.</p>
<h2>Respecting animals</h2>
<p>Animal actors and the skill involved in their work are being recognized. The canine star of the Canadian television program <a href="https://theconversation.com/hudson-and-rex-charming-canine-actor-challenges-us-to-look-at-animal-labour-132844">Hudson and Rex</a>, Diesel vom Burgimwald, is named in the credits and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hudsonandrex/">regularly appears on the show’s social media channels</a>. Jeff Daniels, in his Emmy-acceptance speech for Godless, <a href="https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/969184/jeff-daniels-dedicates-2018-emmys-win-to-his-godless-horse-apollo">thanked his equine partner, Apollo</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the real horses who played Lucky, Clover and Ghost in <em>Nope</em> are <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10954984/fullcredits">not included in the credits</a>. The head horse wrangler — Bobby Lovgren — is named, but the horses are omitted. In a film that powerfully explores the ethics of animal actors, for those it depends upon to be erased in this way is strange.</p>
<p>When it comes to our ethical duties to other animals — especially if we ask them to work for our entertainment — we must use great caution and pay close attention when they say “nope.” Representation and respect should go hand in hoof.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kendra Coulter receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.</span></em></p>
When it comes to our ethical duties to animals, representation and respect should go hand in hoof.
Kendra Coulter, Professor, Management and Organizational Studies, Huron University College, Western University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180282
2022-04-01T10:34:31Z
2022-04-01T10:34:31Z
Goblin mode: a gothic expert explains the trend’s mythical origins, and why we should all go ‘vampire mode’ instead
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455529/original/file-20220331-13-ue3s19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C379%2C1263%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Arthur Rackham's illustration of the Victorian poem Goblin Market.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/goblin-market-illustrated-by-arthur-rackham">British Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Goblin mode” is taking the current pandemic-ridden world by storm. This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/14/slobbing-out-and-giving-up-why-are-so-many-people-going-goblin-mode">state of being</a> is defined by behaviours that feel reminiscent of deep lockdown days – never getting out of bed, never changing into real clothes, grazing from tins or packets instead of cooking, binge watching television and doom-scrolling.</p>
<hr>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/goblin-mode-a-gothic-expert-explains-the-trends-mythical-origins-and-why-we-should-all-go-vampire-mode-instead-180282&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Goblin mode appears to be a reaction to the early pandemic emphasis on home and personal improvement – a “devil may care” attitude in the face of hyper-curated social media content. But this behaviour does not quite align with the goblins of folklore, who take a more playful and mischievous approach to life.</p>
<p>British writer and folklorist Katharine Briggs’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Dictionary_of_Fairies.html?id=TeqJPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Dictionary of Fairies</a> informs us that goblin is a “general name for evil and malicious spirits, usually small and grotesque in appearance”. Interestingly, the word goblin evolved to refer to a subterranean species – not far off from those who languish indoors during lockdown. But that’s where the similarities end.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions, and bring answers, as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>More articles:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/caught-covid-heres-what-you-should-and-shouldnt-do-when-self-isolation-isnt-mandatory-179441?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Caught COVID? Here’s what you should and shouldn’t do when self-isolation isn’t mandatory</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/student-loans-would-a-graduate-tax-be-a-better-option-179253?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Student loans: would a graduate tax be a better option?</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ivf-add-ons-why-you-should-be-cautious-of-these-expensive-procedures-if-youre-trying-to-conceive-180198?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">IVF add-ons: why you should be cautious of these expensive procedures if you’re trying to conceive</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>There are many variants of goblin, with different characteristics, from the Highland fuath to the English goblin and the French gobelin. Today, the term goblin encompasses any fairy with an injurious intent, such as Knockers, Phookas, Spriggans, Trolls or Trows. </p>
<p>Goblin behaviour can range from mild pranks to acts of outright terror. A goblin is seldom welcomed, even by its own kind. Goblins are certainly a menace in the home. According to mythology expert <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Encyclopedia_of_Fairies_in_World_Folklor.html?id=nSuXAAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Theresa Bane</a>, “a house goblin, will work against the family living there, making their life more difficult by banging on pots and pans, knocking on doors and walls and rearranging items in the house”. </p>
<p>In British and German lore, they can shapeshift, and will typically take the form of whatever animal best reflects their beastlike nature. This aspect of goblin lore is represented in Christina Rossetti’s 1862 poem <a href="https://poets.org/poem/goblin-market">Goblin Market</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One had a cat’s face, one whisked a tail, one tramped at a rat’s pace, one crawled like a snail. One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry, one like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This Victorian poem is an early example of goblins behaving badly. They stand in for predatory corrupting males, using forbidden faerie fruits to lure female victims to their doom. Most goblins depicted in literature and folklore are active, playing pranks and generally causing trouble for the humans around them. They do not sit passively at home, surrounded by creature comforts, lazing the day away.</p>
<p>The “goblin mode” trend might even be seen to malign certain goblins. Hobgoblins, for example, are helpful and well-disposed towards humankind, if sometimes mischievous and tricksy. Puck in Shakespeare’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/works/a-midsummer-nights-dream">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</a> is one such character. Like all hobgoblins, he’s a shapeshifter, and also performs labours for humans, much like the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/brownie-English-folklore">brownie</a>, a house spirit known for its helpfulness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young woman sitting in bed eating cake and drinking juice with a bored expression on her face." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Going goblin mode.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/teen-girl-drinking-soda-eating-cake-485354317">Albina Tiplyashina / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vampire mode</h2>
<p>A closer look at the goblins of folklore tells us that goblin mode might be somewhat of a misnomer. There is, however, another mythical creature whose characteristics are more fitting for this time period – the vampire.</p>
<p>Vampires have long been associated with disease and contagion. This characterisation draws in part from Dracula, but it also feeds on wider fears and collective obsessions around networks of contagion and contamination. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/resources-events-teachers/resources-teachers/gothic-classroom/film-2-nosferatu-1922">1922</a> film Nosferatu came out shortly after the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which killed more people worldwide than the first world war. The word Nosferatu is similar to the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6x0-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=nosforos+greek+meaning&source=bl&ots=hYjo9r3KOF&sig=ACfU3U23Gaj_sR6Q4gIntlrSL_tv6ctBmg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicmcbXmPD2AhXVPsAKHZJpCfkQ6AF6BAg9EAM#v=onepage&q=nosforos%20greek%20meaning&f=false">Greek word nosforos, meaning “plague bearer”</a>. He even looks like a plague rat, with fangs set at the front of his mouth like the vermin he brings in his wake.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nosferatu-at-100-how-the-seminal-vampire-film-shaped-the-horror-genre-179439">Nosferatu at 100: how the seminal vampire film shaped the horror genre</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But over the last 200 years, Vampires in popular culture have evolved from plague-ridden creatures like Nosferatu to sparkling, <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784993627">aspirational sex symbols</a>. Instead of holing up and resigning to a fate forever in goblin mode, we should follow the example set by vampires and aim to emerge from the pandemic as better versions of ourselves.</p>
<p>The Cullen family from the book and movie franchise Twilight is the best representation of this dramatic shift. They are attractive, cool, youthful and partake in normal human social behaviour like going to school and dating – a far cry from plague-bearing, sickly Nosferatu. Repulsion cedes to attraction as horror gives way to romance. Goblins by comparison, are unlikely romantic leads, they’re not sexy – or aspirational.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6mCKnsP33Lg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Modern vampires also have an association with youthful culture that could be refreshing after two years of pandemic-induced hibernation. The film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/">Lost Boys</a>, in which Kiefer Sutherland’s undead crew inhabits a fashionably grungy underground domain, was released with the strapline “Sleep all day, party all night. Never grow old. Never die”. This would be an appropriate post-lockdown motto. It’s time we stopped languishing like goblins and started flourishing as newly born vampires.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam George has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is the convener of the Open Graves, Open Minds research group who organised the Nosferatu at 100 The Vampire as Contagion and Monstrous Outsider centenary symposium in 2022 <a href="https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/nosferatu-at-100-2022/">https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/nosferatu-at-100-2022/</a>
And an international 3-day conference on gothic fairies in 2021 ‘Ill met by moonlight’: Gothic encounters with enchantment and the Faerie realm in literature and culture, University of Hertfordshire, 8‒11 April 2021 <a href="https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/ill-met-by-moonlight-2021/">https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/ill-met-by-moonlight-2021/</a></span></em></p>
Everyone is going ‘goblin mode’, but does the trend unfairly malign goblins of folklore?
Sam George, Associate Professor of Research, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/168701
2021-10-20T12:59:41Z
2021-10-20T12:59:41Z
Eden Lake and the British ‘hoodie horror’ genre: how they reinforced policies to demonise the working class
<p>On Halloween 2008, James Watkins’ horror feature <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020530/">Eden Lake</a> was released to little fanfare. A British take on the “<a href="https://www.lastlibraryontheleft.com/episodes/episode-16-backwoods-the-monstrous-poor">backwoods</a>” horror film (think <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Deliverance</a> or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295700/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">Wrong Turn</a>), it was just one of a swathe of low-budget horrors being produced at this time. </p>
<p>Critic MJ Simpson identified Eden Lake as exemplary of the <a href="http://mjsimpson-films.blogspot.com/p/my-latest-book-urban-terrors.html">British horror revival</a>, which began in the late 1990s after a period of relative quiet. Following the demise of horror behemoth Hammer Studios in the 1970s and sustained attacks from censors and the government on extreme cinema throughout the late 20th century (reaching their peak during the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/censor-a-new-film-remembers-a-dark-episode-in-britains-cinematic-past-166198%22">video nasties</a>” panic), British horror had struggled to recover its footing. </p>
<p>However, the new millennium, along with high-profile releases like Danny Boyle’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/">28 Days Later</a> (2002) and Edgar Wright’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/">Shaun of the Dead</a> (2004), galvanised British horror. As a result, productions large and small proliferated throughout the 2000s.</p>
<p>Eden Lake became the first of a series of “hoodie horrors”, which closely examined Britain’s relationship to, and reliance upon, a deeply entrenched class system. This was the time of Tony Blair’s Labour government and its tough policies on antisocial behaviour that targeted the young and the poor. </p>
<p>Other “hoodie horrors” followed, including <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1478964/">Attack the Block</a> (2011) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1641975/">Citadel</a> (2012). However, while these films focus specifically on the urban landscape, finding horror within Britain’s oft-vilified council estates, Eden Lake is more interested in revisiting (and perhaps compounding) the horror genre’s common, and deeply derogatory, representation of the rural poor.</p>
<p>In 2021, the Labour party are once again turning <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/09/28/labour-vow-put-bobbies-beat-tackle-anti-social-behaviour/">towards policies</a> that show that they are tough on crime and tough on antisocial behaviour, while the government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/crime-plan-to-protect-victims-and-make-streets-safer">recently unveiled</a> a “Beating Crime” strategy as part of its policy to “level up” the country. As such, this Halloween is an apt time to revisit Eden Lake and its “hoodie horror” peers, to investigate how the genre at large mines the British class system to frighten audiences.</p>
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<h2>Tony Blair’s Asbos</h2>
<p>Tony Blair supported the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/civil-injunctions-criminal-behaviour-orders">anti-social behaviour order</a> (Asbo) in 1998 as part of his “respect” agenda. The Asbo supposedly worked as a pre-emptive measure, identifying and punishing antisocial behaviour before it graduated to criminality. But the number of Asbos issued rose annually, and dramatically, during the early 2000s, and they soon became synonymous with <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/anti-social-behaviour-order-statistics-england-and-wales-2013/anti-social-behaviour-order-statistics-england-and-wales-2013-key-findings">young, working-class men</a> in particular. </p>
<p>In the decade leading up to Eden Lake’s 2008 release, the hope and optimism that had accompanied the election of New Labour in 1997 had dramatically dissipated. The Asbos and the “respect agenda” were part of this, sowing new seeds of division across people from different classes. People who might have come together under the Blairite messages of community and unity were now turning against each other. </p>
<p>As sociologist <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/revolting-subjects-9781848138513/">Imogen Tyler suggests</a>, many facets of the Blairite “respect” agenda reinforced the idea that Britain’s poor existed outside of the accepted social order. The image of the delinquent, hood-clad teenager captured the public imagination and worked its way into horror cinema through films like Eden Lake. </p>
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<p>Watkins portrays such working-class exclusion quite literally in the film. The young, working-class antagonists occupy the outer edges of a rural backwater, isolated from the affluent metropolis within which the film’s entitled protagonists reside.</p>
<p>Contrast this with other “hoodie horror” films, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1094295/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Disappeared</a> (2008), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1992258/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Tower Block</a> (2011) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2087720/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Community</a> (2012), which represent the working-class space as a kind of urban “border-zone”. It is a location that exists within an otherwise affluent, middle-class cityscape; yet it is aggressively maligned and separated from the wider locale through both physical and imagined boundaries. It is also dogged by perceptions of threat and danger.</p>
<p>Yet while Eden Lake is set in a different context, the representation of working-classness are not too dissimilar. Here, the countryside backwater also reflects and amplifies the “real-world” criminalisation of the young working-class. The youths reside here in an untamed space where the order of the city is seemingly nowhere to be found.</p>
<h2>Straight from the headlines</h2>
<p>By 2008, the Asbo had become shorthand for the poorly behaved, criminally inclined working classes in the British press. Along with the liberal use of terms such as “chav” and “hoodie”, the media openly stoked the fires of class contempt in post-millenium Britain. And as “hoodies” began appearing with alarming regularity within the British horror canon, these figures were often unambiguously coded as evil – at best as delinquent teenagers and, at worst, as literally inhuman, as in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1220214/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Heartless</a> (2009).</p>
<p>Watkins mines the same tabloid rhetoric in characterising his monsters – a group of working-class teenagers (all but one of them boys) whose supposedly inherent delinquency escalates to horrific, depraved violence as the film progresses. In pitting an aspirational middle-class couple, Steve and Jenny, against this group of aggressively antisocial youths, Eden Lake’s antagonists appear to have leapt directly from a tabloid headline onto the screen.</p>
<p>Watkins does attempt, albeit weakly, to challenge such a simplistic understanding of the film’s representation of class. As tensions rise between Steve, Jenny and the young people, we see gentrification and disenfranchisement in action. </p>
<p>Steve and Jenny, in their flashy car and their designer sunglasses, don’t unwittingly trespass upon working-class space. Rather, they occupy this space with the confidence of people who’ve never had to justify their presence anywhere. Indeed, they feel completely entitled to demand that the kids vacate the space, so that they may enjoy it without interruption. </p>
<p>Such a request betrays ignorance or denial of the working class’s right to space – to claim it or to belong in it. Their attempts to monitor and correct the behaviour of the kids provide the catalyst for a series of increasingly violent and gruesome acts of vengeance from both parties. This results in a film whose stance on class and violence is slightly more ambiguous than it first seems as Jenny and Steve also act violently towards the teenagers, and are no longer simple victims.</p>
<p>That’s not to say the film tries too hard to elicit any kind of sympathy for its young working-class antagonists. The group exhibit all the stereotyped behaviours of “hoodies” from the outset – from blaring loud music to theft and property damage. Watkins has still borrowed heavily from the Blairite definition of “antisocial”. </p>
<p>Despite its increasingly unlikeable protagonists, Watkins ultimately trades too enthusiastically on the stereotypes of “hoodies” to meaningfully critique unfair perceptions of them – as do many other “hoodie horrors”. Whatever ambiguity Watkins aims to cultivate fails. In the end, Eden Lake doesn’t offer an exploration of Britain’s entrenched classism, but rather becomes an opportunistic exploitation of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Stephenson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A wave of new horror films leant into Tony Blair’s Asbo policy demonising young working class men, portraying them as the monsters that society should be scared of.
Lauren Stephenson, Senior Lecturer In Film and Media, York St John University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/166198
2021-08-19T15:01:12Z
2021-08-19T15:01:12Z
Censor – a new film remembers a dark episode in Britain’s cinematic past
<p>In early 1982, reports began appearing in the press about the horrific nature of some of the films that were available in newly established video shops in the UK. Dubbed the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LiBhGgdX_ZAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=kate+egan+trash+or+treasure&ots=LOgN-F9DXY&sig=565bVumrOjh_MBBgMkgH1LRoJOI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=kate%20egan%20trash%20or%20treasure&f=false">“video nasties”</a> by a tabloid journalist, these films were believed to belong to a new wave of extreme horror films arriving in the UK from the US and Europe. </p>
<p>Papers stoked fears about these films, arguing that their graphic depictions of sex and violence would lead to wayward and criminal behaviour. As a result, a moral panic broke out, leading to a whole new classification system for films released on video in the UK.</p>
<p>A new horror film set in the 1980s presents audiences with a darkly romanticised vision of this panic, and a dark period in British history that has achieved almost mythological status. Censor has been <a href="https://fpg.festival.sundance.org/film-info/5fd0a8774ec3e8d9be5ded64">hailed by the Sundance Film Festival</a> as “a faithful, creative ode to 1980s aesthetics and a twisted, bloody love letter to the video nasties era”.</p>
<p>Prano Bailey-Bond’s debut film follows Enid Baines (Niamh Algar), a film censor working for the British Board of Film Censors at the height of the video nasties moral panic. Enid is haunted by the disappearance of her sister and, after prolonged exposure to violent videos, begins to suspect the director of one of those films of her abduction in what becomes a bloody descent into madness.</p>
<p>The idea that film can harm its viewer was one of the central tenets of the campaign against the video nasties, and the film employs this idea to great effect. Though in reality, the moral panic was drawn along lines of social class and those perceived to be vulnerable to the harmful effects of the video nasties were not the censors but working-class children. </p>
<h2>Harmful home video</h2>
<p>Home video was a new medium that Hollywood was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-04-19-tm-1667-story.html">initially suspicious of</a>. This meant that major studios were slow to deliver their films on tape. In their space, independents popped up with cheap, daring new films. </p>
<p>For a time, home video was unregulated, meaning that there were no rules about what could make it into a film or who could rent them. This was because the industry didn’t sit within the legal purview of the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), and films that had often been refused a theatrical release altogether were made available on video. </p>
<p>Films that the BBFC had deemed too violent, like Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972), went straight to video. Opening the door for a slew of movies with hyperbolic titles and graphic cover art that promised liberal depictions of uncensored sex and violence.</p>
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<p>“Nasties” were everything from violent melodramas, Nazi exploitation films to traditional horror movies. Though the films themselves shared few unifying features, there was a belief, instigated and then perpetuated by the press, that they <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MQbdCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=Film+and+Video+Censorship+in+Modern+Britain+Book+by+Julian+Petley&ots=zxdihIJO_7&sig=Pxk4riaPAmtXs37eu106TMDGPoU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=chippendale&f=false">uniformly revelled</a> in “murder, multiple rape, butchery, sado-masochism, mutilation of women, cannibalism and Nazi atrocities”. </p>
<p>Films like Cannibal Holocaust, The Driller Killer and The Evil Dead became front-page news, presented as a catch-all explanation for social decline. Moral crusaders took up the cause and all kinds of crime were attributed to the video nasties.</p>
<p>The Daily Mail spearheaded a campaign to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA1XDxx4oLA">“ban the sadist videos”</a> in which the idea that children were being exposed to violent videos featured centrally. They spoke of the “rape of our children’s minds” and likened the effect of exposure to violence in these videos to the effect of drugs. All corners of the press espoused the belief that exposure to violent videos would lead to a breakdown in society and that, critically, those most at risk from the threat that video posed were those from working-class families.</p>
<h2>Protect the children</h2>
<p>Watching videos in the UK was a predominantly <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=76MxEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR6&dq=nasty+business+mckenna&ots=zpJu8JGHn7&sig=5emd7VbjfEqgE_0RZOOG_R-d784&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">working-class pass time</a>. The decision to make video recorders available via rental schemes through companies like <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Veni_Vidi_Video/OaEmmEOZ1fwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=FREDERICK+WASSER&printsec=frontcover">Radio Rentals and Domestic Electric Rentals</a> had democratised what might have otherwise been an elitist luxury product.</p>
<p>Such affordability meant that working-class consumers became early adopters of the platform as a cost-effective alternative to the cinema, and distributors began releasing films to appeal directly to this audience. However, an unforeseen side effect of this success was that it allowed the media to spin a narrative of feckless working-class families who were exposing their children to sex and violence. These moral crusaders cast the working classes as immature and unable to <a href="https://youtu.be/bNawGIPLFHo?t=171">comprehend or determine appropriate</a> content for viewing in their own home. </p>
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<p>Responding to the outrage, the Department of Public Prosecutions compiled a list of 72 films deemed prosecutable under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/7-8/66/contents">Obscene Publications Act (1959)</a>. Of these, 39 had prosecutions upheld against them in events that led to the introduction of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/39/contents">Video Recordings Act (1984)</a>. </p>
<p>This act would bring about the end of the unregulated home video market and would see that all releases in the UK carry a classification provided by the British Board of Film Censors. Ironically, in what is perhaps the single greatest period of censorship of film in British history, the board would undergo a <a href="https://archive.org/details/mediaintroductio0000unse/page/480">name change</a> to the British Board of Film Classification to “reflect the fact that classification plays a far larger part in the board’s work than censorship”. With the introduction of the act, the panic vanished just as quickly as it had arrived. </p>
<p>Many of the films that had been the source of panic have since undergone a re-evaluation and are now celebrated as cult classics. Dario Argento, Wes Craven, Abel Ferrara, Lucio Fulci and Tobe Hooper all had their films confiscated under the Obscene Publications Act and are all celebrated directors now. Even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/movies/24mcgr.html">Sam Raimi</a>, a director who perhaps is better known now for his work with Marvel on the early noughties Spider-Man series and now the follow-up to <a href="https://screenrant.com/doctor-strange-2-sam-raimi-horror-influence-scarier/">Dr Strange</a>, began with the celebrated video nasty The Evil Dead.</p>
<p>Censor has certainly benefited from the reappraisal of these films, appreciated rather than denounced for graphic violence that channels a 1980s aesthetic. Had it come out in the 80s, it might have just made it onto the list of 72 video nasties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark McKenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A moral panic fanned by the tabloid press led to crusaders seeking legislation to regulate the home video industry and a slew of low-budget horror films.
Mark McKenna, Associate Professor of Film and Media Industries, Staffordshire University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/159336
2021-04-23T02:00:39Z
2021-04-23T02:00:39Z
Gory or glory? The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 walks a fine line between dystopia and torture porn
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396671/original/file-20210422-22-a6yy7k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5000%2C3300&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This review contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale season four.</em></p>
<p>Dystopian drama The Handmaid’s Tale is at a crossroads. Four years on from its <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/a-cunning-adaptation-of-the-handmaids-tale">critically acclaimed debut</a>, and well past the bounds of its literary source material, the series faces challenges that relate to violence, representation and narrative. </p>
<p>Earlier seasons posed questions about the conditions under which political extremism and misogyny might thrive — and how and why individual women might support such endeavours. </p>
<p>They showed everyday sexism and religious fundamentalism metastasising into a full-blown political movement. </p>
<p>This found particular resonance with Donald Trump’s ascendancy, the erosion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-and-pence-turning-back-progress-on-access-to-birth-control-and-a-womans-right-to-choose-112681">reproductive rights</a> in the US, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-alt-right-believes-another-american-revolution-is-coming-153093">emergence of the alt-right</a>.</p>
<p>But the audience has also always been complicit in this violence. The series’ much-celebrated beauty is a trap. </p>
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<p>The painterly, geometrical aesthetic of totalitarian Gilead combines claustrophobia with an uncomfortable appreciation for the sleek aesthetics of fascism. </p>
<p>This allure has been a strength of the series, and its core tension. How can something so awful be so pretty? </p>
<p>But watching season four, I now find myself asking: to what extent are we meant to be enjoying all this atrocity? </p>
<h2>Bureaucracy and ghoulish violence</h2>
<p>Season four picks up where we left off: in crisis. More than 80 children have been smuggled out of Gilead by renegade Handmaid June (Elisabeth Moss) and the guerrilla organisation Mayday, and war looms. </p>
<p>In Canada, the imprisoned Waterfords are trapped within a chiaroscuro <em>film noir</em>, with chain-smoking Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) playing the part of the elegant <em>femme fatale</em> who’s been caught out in the final act. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Serena Joy smokes behind a fence." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396675/original/file-20210423-19-1s9fnn8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Formerly a Commander’s wife, Serena Joy is now reframed as a duplicitous <em>femme fatale</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Gilead refugees and their supporters seem stuck in a bleak legal drama: battling bureaucracy, compassion fatigue and PTSD. </p>
<p>These storylines struggle to achieve the momentum of the action we are shown back in Gilead, where we dance between two modes of horror.</p>
<p>The first is the rape-revenge genre, whose somewhat tawdry pedigree has been increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-revenge-films-are-changing-they-now-focus-on-the-women-instead-of-their-dads-155456">appropriated by female filmmakers</a> to interrogate trauma, power and agency. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-revenge-films-are-changing-they-now-focus-on-the-women-instead-of-their-dads-155456">'Rape-revenge' films are changing: they now focus on the women, instead of their dads</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<hr>
<p>In episode one, “Pigs”, June and the other escaped Handmaids find respite at a farm overseen by a 14-year-old wife, the unpredictable Mrs Keyes (Mckenna Grace), who dreams of retribution against her many abusers. </p>
<p>The show is more didactic now than in earlier seasons. It explicitly discusses rape, but it also takes an almost ghoulish interest in disclosures of victimisation. </p>
<p>June and Mrs Keyes develop a fractious mother/daughter relationship. “Good girl — make me proud” whispers June, before Mrs Keyes butchers a Guardian — one of her abusers — like one of the farm’s pigs. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women around a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396677/original/file-20210423-18-124hptt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The show feels increasingly numb to the violence it depicts — as do we in the audience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Handmaids look on, their faces bright with ferocious hunger. The girl, her teal dress coat blackened with blood, then joins June for a cuddle in bed to one of the show’s many on-the-nose musical cues: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”.</p>
<p>In Canada, ex-Martha Rita (Amanda Brugel) speaks at a fundraising event: “Gilead has a way of bringing out the worst in people, but in June it brought out the best”. </p>
<p>The irony is weighty. </p>
<p>Again, we must ask how and when violence is justified — but also when we, the increasingly numb audience, might be encouraged to get the popcorn out and enjoy it. </p>
<p>But we know this period of relative freedom can’t last. After inspiring another satisfying terrorist act, June is recaptured. </p>
<h2>A world without God</h2>
<p>The opening of season four also draws from the aesthetics of so-called “torture porn”, a contentious sub-genre of horror that became prominent in the 2000s, particularly in <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwpddd/how-torture-porn-captured-the-violent-atmosphere-of-a-post-911-world">the wake of 9/11</a>. These films combined extreme violence, nihilism and a sensationalist love for the grotesque. </p>
<p>Earlier seasons, although shocking, toyed with the balance between violence and restraint. Now, it’s all gritty cinematography, screams and clanking chains. </p>
<p>There are muzzles and stainless steel benches, red-lit concrete corridors, cheery torturers, and punishments so baroque they almost stray into parody. </p>
<p>Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) has become a mad-eyed harpy torn between punitive action and finishing her needlework. </p>
<p>There is no God in Gilead, just power-hungry monsters.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-in-horror-victims-no-more-78711">Women in horror: Victims no more</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In these sequences, the series is in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own excess. Mid-interrogation, June is “treated” to a meal with turncoat ally Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford). They sit at a lavish candlelit table while a Chopin nocturne plays in the background. </p>
<p>It’s like a scene out of Hannibal, but <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/6/11/21286871/hannibal-netflix-streaming-nbc-mads-mikkelsen-hugh-dancy">without the irony</a>. </p>
<p>Later, as she is washed down with hoses, the camera lingers on her naked, injured back. We are forced, once more, to look at — to relish in — this degradation. </p>
<h2>Bonds of shared trauma</h2>
<p>The Handmaid’s Tale remains suspenseful, beautifully shot and impeccably acted, but it’s a frustrating watch. Escalating narrative stakes have produced increasingly graphic violence. Yes, Gilead is horrific, but the show’s approach to violence is so gleeful in parts it can feel exploitative. </p>
<p>The show is also trapped in an intensifying hurt/comfort cycle. Despite the horrors and injuries she has experienced, June is effectively invincible. She fights, doubts herself, rallies, is viciously punished, then starts over. </p>
<p>Over the seasons she has become a cipher, pulled between wrathful freedom fighter, devoted mother and traumatised victim so much that her characterisation and motives have become muddy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Serena in blue; three handmaids in red." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396679/original/file-20210423-17-ez7xon.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Handmaid’s Tale can’t always decide if it is critiquing violence against women — or luxuriating in it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But episode three, “The Crossing”, concludes with a series of unexpected transitions that might help break this Groundhog Day-like narrative cycle and allow for a less indulgent focus as season four develops. </p>
<p>A heartfelt flashback to the Handmaids’ “training” revisits the bonds formed by shared trauma. Their arms cross the gaps between their cots, hands clasped in solidarity above the Gilead seals on the floor. It’s a reminder of the humanity of the women at the centre of the story, and the way sisterhood can offer solace and redemption.</p>
<p>The episode’s punishing conclusion, although devastating, offers real hope for June, Mayday and the fall of Gilead — but also for the development of a show that can’t always decide if it is critiquing violence against women, or luxuriating in it.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Handmaid’s Tale season four begins April 29 on SBS in Australia and Neon in New Zealand.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159336/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erin Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Long past Margaret Atwood’s novel, the new season is increasingly violent – and the audience will find themselves increasingly numb.
Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148614
2020-10-28T12:22:51Z
2020-10-28T12:22:51Z
3 things I learned from teaching students about horror pioneer George Romero’s movies during these scary times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365893/original/file-20201027-18-jegx9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=98%2C71%2C2896%2C1877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Filmmaker George Romero at the premiere of 'Survival of the Dead' in 2010. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/director-george-a-romero-and-zombies-attend-the-premiere-of-news-photo/99605569"> Ben Hider/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’m no fan of horror movies. At least I wasn’t until I moved <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfbLcIhvRsc">from Hollywood</a> back to my hometown of Pittsburgh, where I met the legendary independent filmmaker <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-george-a-romero-made-humans-of-violent-brain-devouring-zombies-81107">George Romero</a>, best known as the inventor of the modern-day zombie and movies like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/">Night of the Living Dead</a>.”</p>
<p>I had avoided seeing George’s movies for two reasons. First, they’re scary. Second, when I was a teen, my mother had a role in a Romero film initially titled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5l3tfxT_GA">Hungry Wives</a>.” After seeing some raw footage in which I saw a woman in the movie disrobe, I feared that my mother was naked in it. (Spoiler alert: She wasn’t.) </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men pose for a photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365934/original/file-20201027-19-9cjuz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carl Kurlander (left) and George Romero in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steeltown Entertainment Project</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This past year, I gained a deeper appreciation of his work while teaching “Making the Documentary: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/travel/pittsburgh-horror-filmmaker-george-romero.html">George Romero and Pittsburgh</a>,” a course in which my students had access to the newly acquired <a href="https://romero.library.pitt.edu/">Romero Archives</a>.</p>
<p>Some students were big fans of the great filmmaker, who shot 14 movies in Pittsburgh. Others had no idea who he was. Together, we learned three important lessons about survival and the human condition. I believe they are especially important today because of the coronavirus pandemic and the damage it’s unleashing.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OZnJtny6C6w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An interview with filmmaker George Romero.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. He was a visionary</h2>
<p>Romero, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-romeros-zombies-will-make-americans-reflect-on-racial-violence-long-after-his-death-81583">died in 2017</a>, didn’t make just popular zombie flicks. His other films, which garnered less acclaim and profits, transcend horror movies.</p>
<p>Many of today’s filmmakers producing socially conscious hit thrillers, like “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/get-flips-night-living-dead-head-1084105">Get Out</a>” creator <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/jordan-peele-interview-us/">Jordan Peele</a> and “<a href="https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/the-treatment/guillermo-del-toro-the-shape-of-water">Shape of Water</a>” creator <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/guillermo-del-toro-george-romero-created-an-entire-subgenre-in-cinema-199364/">Guillermo Del Toro</a>, credit Romero for pioneering this genre. </p>
<p>Take “<a href="https://www.shudder.com/blog/season-of-the-witch-and-the-dissatisfied-woman">Season of the Witch</a>,” the official name of that Romero movie my mother was in – fully clothed. It features a suburban housewife who dabbles in witchcraft to explore her feminist powers – and uses it to dispose of her abusive husband.</p>
<p>Another good example is “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077914/">Martin</a>,” Romero’s favorite. Romero shot it in a once-thriving steel town outside Pittsburgh. The titular main character, a young man who may or may not be a vampire, represents the threat of generational change to a community literally having the life sucked out of it. </p>
<p>Particularly prescient is “<a href="https://doi.org/10.7312/will17354-007">The Crazies</a>,” which tells the story of a mysterious virus that infects the citizens of Evans City, Pennsylvania, driving some of them mad. The government calls in the military and quarantines the town. It’s soon hard to tell who is crazy because of the virus and who went insane because of the circumstances. </p>
<p>The government ends up losing the vaccine that could save everyone. Let’s hope this isn’t a case of art predicting real life.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZyHyp7hmmsA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer from ‘The Crazies,’ George Romero’s 1973 film about ‘madness unleashed by human error.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. He established a powerful metaphor for the human condition</h2>
<p>What makes Romero’s vision unique is that his worst monsters aren’t aliens or creatures menacing humanity. Instead, those <a href="https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/normality-is-threatened-by-the-monster-robin-wood-romero-and-zombies(541fbac2-588d-4d78-b296-a184cfa71d00).html">monsters are us</a>. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2010.110.1.105?seq=1">Night of the Living Dead</a>,” strangers gather in a farmhouse. The fighting among the humans themselves leads to their demise as much as the attack of the undead in what is widely considered the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2166113/first-zombie-movie-10-classic-horror-films-celebrate-night-living">first modern zombie flick</a>. Interestingly, Romero never used the term “zombie” in the script. He called the creatures “ghouls.” </p>
<p>When Romero shot “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/62828">Dawn of the Dead</a>,” as a hippie at heart he decided to use a local <a href="https://maps.roadtrippers.com/us/monroeville-pa/points-of-interest/dawn-of-the-dead-mall">shopping mall as a set</a>. It also served as a prop to make a statement about the mindless consumer culture that all Americans seemed trapped in – even in the afterlife. </p>
<p>For “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088993/">Day of the Dead</a>,” Romero converted an abandoned underground mine shaft in Wampum, a small Pennsylvania town about 40 miles from Pittsburgh, into a bunker. There, the last <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt6zr">survivors of a zombie apocalypse</a> hunker down while the military and government officials fight with scientists trying to better understand the undead. Meanwhile, a zombie that scientists are trying to “train” seems more humane than the folks on whom the fate of our species rests. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4BKJHtobSvE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The ‘Day of the Dead’ trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. He was a truly independent and maverick filmmaker</h2>
<p><a href="https://livingdead.fandom.com/wiki/George_A._Romero">Romero and nine of his friends</a> each initially pitched in US$600 in seed money to make “Night of the Living Dead.” The film later grossed more than <a href="https://m.the-numbers.com/movie/Night-of-the-Living-Dead-(1968)">$30 million</a>, on what according to many reports was a total budget <a href="https://livingdead.fandom.com/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead">of only $114,000</a>.</p>
<p>But neither Romero nor his investors would pocket much of that bounty because of a dispute with the distributor. The movie became upon its release one of only a <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/92931/11-classic-films-public-domain">handful of films without copyrights</a>, because of a last-minute title change. (The original title was “<a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/night-of-the-living-dead-copyright/">Night of the Living Flesh Eaters</a>.”) </p>
<p>Romero could have leveraged the unexpected fame that came without a fortune into a ticket to Hollywood. Instead, he stayed in Pittsburgh, working with low budgets and small crews and retaining creative control over his projects. </p>
<p>My students were inspired by tales of Romero’s ingenuity. For example, because Romero decided that zombies must walk slowly, he faced a problem with how the first zombie would catch up to one of the film’s protagonists in the first scene of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BU9anY26fI">Night of the Living Dead</a>.”</p>
<p>When it turned out the car the production had borrowed had been in an accident, instead of having it fixed, Romero used the dent as an excuse to have the car hit the tree. The staged accident make it easy for the zombie to nearly catch – and terrify – her.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wHmWOSj0U4g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A tribute to ‘Night of the Living Dead’ 25 years after its original release.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An inspirational legacy</h2>
<p>After the pandemic turned my students’ lives into something out of a Romero movie, they found inspiration in how the horror pioneer made the most from what was around him. They kept interviewing subjects over Zoom and developed their own remote way of sharing footage and editing to complete their film. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Many of them now aspire to make films independently as Romero did and see where their imaginations take them without decamping to Hollywood. While steering clear of COVID-19, they are figuring out how to survive just as the heroes of his movies did.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Kurlander is on the advisory board of the George A. Romero Foundation. He and his students received grants to make this Romero and Pittsburgh documentary from the University of Pittsburgh where he teaches after a multi-decade career working as a screenwriter (St. Elmo's Fire) and TV writer/Producer (Saved By the Bell) in Hollywood. </span></em></p>
Now that the whole world is echoing Romero’s films, everyone can learn from his legacy.
Carl Kurlander, Senior Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/147835
2020-10-25T12:43:37Z
2020-10-25T12:43:37Z
Dressed to kill: 6 ways horror folklore is fashioned in the movies
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365099/original/file-20201022-13-5cbzhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C66%2C1482%2C968&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Craft: Legacy,' to be released this fall, is a remake of the 1996 teen witch film 'The Craft' and suggests the continued relevance of punk and goth influences for rebellious teens. Here, detail from the 2020 poster.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sony Pictures/Blumhouse Productions)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Beauty is pain,” goes the famous adage. The phrase suggests that in order to fully understand what a society considers beautiful, you must explore ugliness. Enter the horror movie. </p>
<p>Horror often examines “<a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/grant-dread-of-difference-second-edition">the dread of difference</a>” seen in society, and cinema scholars like Barry Keith Grant have studied how horror films explore gender roles.</p>
<p>Women’s <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691166292/men-women-and-chain-saws">violent struggles</a> as perpetrators and victims of horror — in the pursuit of sexual freedom, social empowerment and fulfilment of desire — are reflections of the concerns of a conflicted and changing society.</p>
<p>In the book we edited, <em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/fashioning-horror-9781350036185">Fashioning Horror: Dressing to Kill on Screen and in Literature</a></em> we explored how horror literature, film and folklore are expressed through fashion and costume. <a href="https://traversingscribes.wordpress.com">Our approach</a> was informed by our background in fashion studies, folklore and literature, as we investigated the central importance of clothing to the horror genre.</p>
<p>Here, we demonstrate how common fears around femininity are expressed through costume and roles in the movies. </p>
<h2>The ghost</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-are-there-so-many-ghost-stories-about-a-woman-in-w-5851037">well-known popular image of</a> a haunting woman in white is a classic gothic and horror trope rooted in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259197">European folklore dating back to pre-Christian and pagan times</a>. Whether dressed in the white of a burial shroud, or the white of mourning, “the White Lady” often appeared by moonlight. </p>
<p>The film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000000000298130/"><em>The Ring</em> (2002)</a> based on the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178868/">Japanese horror film</a> of the same name derived from the <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Ring.html?id=ss0k8a1myFcC&redir_esc=y">novel by Koji Suzuki</a>, shows a contemporary reading of the ghost as related to anxieties about new technology, social change and family relationships. The ghost in white is not seen by moonlight but by the blue glow of a television screen. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0915208/">Naomi Watts</a> portrays a journalist who investigates a cursed videotape that seemingly kills the viewer seven days after watching it. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DvvhLPq_kFk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Scene showing the ghost-in-white, Samara, emerging from the screen in ‘The Ring.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2008, designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy took inspiration from the white shirtdress worn by Sadako, the vengeful video ghost in the 1998 Japanese original film, for their <a href="https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2008-ready-to-wear/rodarte">Rodarte fall show</a>.</p>
<h2>The bride</h2>
<p>In horror, the figure of the bride represents the thwarted promise of the virginal woman abandoned or killed before she was to be wed and is related to anxiety about domesticity. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144120/"><em>Bride of Chucky</em> (1998)</a> shows the depths to which two murderous dolls will go to turn human again. </p>
<p>Dolls have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/507499">traditionally</a> been used to instruct girls into their future roles as mothers and wives, and fashion dolls herald new trends. The doll in this movie presents quite a different set of possibilities for those who dare to play with her. Bored by expectations of conventional womanhood, both as a sex symbol and as a housewife, Tiffany (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000236/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">Jennifer Tilly</a>) transforms herself into a Martha Stewart in the kitchen and a crazed serial killer outside the home. <a href="https://barbie.mattel.com/shop">Barbie</a>, eat your heart out. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The Bride of Chucky and Chucky, two horror doll characters." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364561/original/file-20201020-15-nqujsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Characters Tiffany and Chucky, from the horror movie ‘Bride of Chucky,’ part of the Child’s Play series, at the Hollywood Wax Museum in Los Angeles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The mother</h2>
<p><a href="https://lwlies.com/articles/motherhood-horror-cinema-a-quiet-place-hereditary/">Mothers subverting expected norms</a> is a common theme in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/10/28/450657717/why-are-old-women-often-the-face-of-evil-in-fairy-tales-and-folklore">folklore and horror</a>.
In the film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7958736/"><em>Ma</em> (2019)</a>, actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0818055">Octavia Spencer</a> plays a traumatized and psychopathic mother who locks up and drugs her daughter to keep her close. In the film, veterinary assistant Sue Ann (Spencer) is called upon by a group of (mostly white) teenagers to buy them alcohol; the teens nickname her Ma. </p>
<p>Spencer has noted that <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/07/viola-davis-betrayed-the-help-systemic-racism-1234573862">due to systemic racism</a>, Black women in Hollywood have faced limited dramatic opportunities for roles that push the stereotypes of Black women as caregivers. The actor said one appeal of starring in <em>Ma</em> was pushing beyond that mould and subverting the idea of <a href="https://variety.com/2019/scene/news/octavia-spencer-on-ma-these-types-of-roles-havent-been-available-to-women-of-color-1203218410/">Black people dying at the beginning of horror films</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-am-not-your-nice-mammy-how-racist-stereotypes-still-impact-women-111028">I am not your nice 'Mammy': How racist stereotypes still impact women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Viewers learn Sue Ann experienced humiliating teen years and what begins as apparent friendly support soon spirals out of control. </p>
<p>The film mines the hidden depths of Sue Ann’s resentment and fears for her own daughter as she seeks to avenge her own past. A classic transformation scene sees Sue Ann change from wearing mostly scrubs, a reference to self-effacing caregiving roles, into a glamorous outfit. Ma sits at her mirrored vanity table applying lipstick surrounded by red candles. <a href="https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-igq60-Y5Q&list=RDAMVMZ-igq60-Y5Q">“Pow,” she says to her reflection</a> before heading downstairs to kung-fu kick a pyramid of beer cans.</p>
<p>Her retro looks include acid-washed denim, black lace, and leopard print. Through the lens of the teens who laugh at her and find her “uncool,” these outfits suggest society’s discomfort with women stepping out of their roles as matrons and caregivers to maintain an equal place in society. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman sits at a vanity table applying lipstick." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364533/original/file-20201020-17-14ex0p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Octavia Spencer in role as Sue Ann in ‘Ma.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Universal Pictures/YouTube)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The vampiress</h2>
<p>The female vampire turns the notion of female sexuality on its head in horrifying ways. So popular was the archetype of the man-eater in early cinema, that the “vamp” became a recognizable look for fashionable silent film actresses like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000847/">Theda Bara</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0615736/">Musidora</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0620519/">Nita Naldi</a>. </p>
<p>The undead female vampire costumes herself for seduction and disguise. Consumption therefore takes on a dual role, unlocking anxieties about capitalism. The stylish film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714915/"><em>Only Lovers Left Alive</em> (2013)</a>, featuring fashion icon <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0842770/">Tilda Swinton</a>, played with this by costuming her character in a mixture of old and new fabrics, with an emphasis on loungewear. </p>
<p>Swinton’s shock-blonde hair was supplemented by <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2014/04/vampire-costumes-of-only-lovers-left-alive.html">yak wool</a>, further hinting at the not-quite-human nature of the vampire. <em>Vogue</em> even encouraged readers to “<a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/dress-the-part-only-lovers-left-alive-fashion">get the look</a>.” Swinton presents a new type of vampiress; one not reliant on her sexuality to stand out. She has style.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ycOKvWrwYFo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for ‘Only Lovers Left Alive.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The witch</h2>
<p><a href="https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol22/iss3/6">Fears that women will escape patriarchy</a>, particularly through sexual independence, underpin this mythology, and stories of witches can be both terrifying and empowering. </p>
<p>The 1996 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115963/"><em>The Craft</em></a>
inspired <a href="https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/qv8qe5/how-the-craft-empowered-a-generation-of-teen-misfits">a generation of teenage girls</a> and included frank explorations of teen suicide, depression, racist bullying, sexual harassment and slut-shaming. <a href="https://www.fairuza.org/">Fairuza Balk</a> plays the iconic teen witch Nancy Downs, an aggressive, angry goth girl, at odds with everyone outside her own small circle. As she gains in power, her appearance becomes wilder. </p>
<p>Films about witches remind viewers that alternatives to the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Waking-the-Witch/Pam-Grossman/9781982100704">dominant narratives about beauty and women’s bodies are possible</a>. A remake, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J60ueFp-jv8"><em>The Craft: Legacy</em></a> is set to be <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/the-craft-legacy-trailer-release-date">released this fall</a>. The presence of chokers, chains, dark lips and short hair in the trailer demonstrates the continued relevance of punk and goth influences for rebellious teens.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Four teen witches walking in a row." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=42%2C0%2C889%2C429&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364845/original/file-20201021-15-o6rhyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1996 teen witch film ‘The Craft’ followed an angry goth girl, Nancy, second from the left, and her coven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Columbia Pictures)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The monster</h2>
<p>The fear of a woman’s appearance hiding something monstrous is an ancient trope. From the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Dangerous_Beauty_Medusa_in_Classical_Art_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Bulletin_v75_no_3">ancient Greek gorgon</a>, to the folk tales of many cultures featuring <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004366251_008">seductive female</a> <a href="https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/2924-seven-demon-stories-from-medieval-japan">shape-shifting demons</a>, female beauty has the potential to kill onlookers. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Movie poster shows a giant wasp with the face of a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364574/original/file-20201020-21-1t17yo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1959 poster for ‘The Wasp Woman.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Filmgroup/Wikipedia)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, beauty may also come at a cost to the fashion victim, as seen in the morality tale of female vanity in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054462/"><em>Wasp Woman</em> (1959)</a>. </p>
<p>The fear of female aging, as well as the perceived arrogance and aggression of female executives, underpins this story which is an imaginative take on the of <a href="http://www.sarahalbeebooks.com/2012/07/reel-bugs-the-wasp-woman/">royal jelly in cosmetics</a>, still <a href="https://www.burtsbees.ca/product/skin-nourishment-hydrating-gel-cream">a cosmetic ingredient today</a>. </p>
<p>The character Ms. Starlin (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0127693/">Susan Cabot</a>) is depicted as one with an intemperate desire for youthful good looks, but she is inadvertently transformed into a hideous wasp woman. How similar is this tale, at its core, to the gleeful take-downs of women who have undergone <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3781836/">botched plastic surgeries</a>?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some horror films explore women’s struggles for empowerment, sexual freedom and self-fulfilment. Six movies show the ghost, bride, mother, vampiress, witch and monster as guises of vengeful women.
Julia Petrov, Adjunct professor, Human Ecology, University of Alberta
Gudrun D Whitehead, Assistant Professor of Museology, University of Iceland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144474
2020-08-14T14:31:54Z
2020-08-14T14:31:54Z
Lovecraft Country: HBO series brings new life to America’s weirdest horror writer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352942/original/file-20200814-22-3t7ijc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C6%2C1495%2C983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Weird scenes from Jim Crow-era America.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lovecraft Country, a new series from HBO adapted from <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/matt-ruff/lovecraft-country/">the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff</a>, takes a critical look at the legacy of the controversial but classic horror writer, HP Lovecraft. By doing so it also sheds a light on the mode of literature he famously pioneered: weird fiction.</p>
<p>The name HP Lovecraft is inextricably linked with images of slimy tentacles, archaic monsters and cosmic horrors. Whether you are familiar with Lovecraft’s writing or not, his signature style of “Lovecraftian horror” has left a mark on the genre that is still felt today. </p>
<p>Yet beneath this contribution lay a decidedly xenophobic man. While he was undoubtedly a pioneer for an incredibly popular style of writing which he named “weird fiction”, Lovecraft left a legacy marred by his racist, xenophobic and antisemitic views. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="HP Lovecraft on the cover of Time Magazine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The famed writer had some highly unpleasant views on race.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Will Hart via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Lovecraft Country, showrunner and executive producer Misha Green faces this legacy head on. Green describes each episode as an attempt to “<a href="https://www.thewrap.com/lovecraft-country-hp-lovecraft-racist-racism-misha-green-series-premiere-hbo/">reclaim</a>” Lovecraft’s contributions by refusing to ignore his racist views while also drawing on the style he pioneered. Set in America towards the end of the Jim Crow era in the 1950s, the series uses Lovecraftian horror to represent the fear faced daily by black Americans at the hands of a racist system. In effect, prejudice is as monstrous as any one of Lovecraft’s slimy creations.</p>
<h2>Weird Tales</h2>
<p>In 1996, Joyce Carol Oates famously hailed Lovecraft as the “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/10/31/the-king-of-weird/">King of the Weird</a>”. In reexamining Lovecraft’s contribution to the horror genre, the new series also re-envisions his contributions to the weird sub-genre of speculative fiction. </p>
<p>For Lovecraft, the “<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601181h.html">really weird</a>” refers to “a profound sense of dread … contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dvamPJp17Ds?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The term originates, in part, from the early 20th-century periodical, Weird Tales. Founded by editors JC Henneberger and JM Lansinger in 1922, Weird Tales gained a cult following publishing pulp stories by Clark Ashton Smith, Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch and, of course, Lovecraft. These were stories of <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_1/Issue_1/Ooze">dangerous ooze</a>, <a href="https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx">tentacled beasts</a> and <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cthulhuwho1/6783259170">Satanic history</a>.In the words of the magazine’s first editor, Edwin Baird: “<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/download-issues-of-the-pioneering-pulp-horror-fantasy-magazine-weird-tales.html">They are unusual, uncanny, unparalleled</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Magazine cover with illustration of man carrying scared woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stranger than fiction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clearly, the fear sought after by Weird Tales – and the authors who wrote for it – was of a different sort to the established norms of the Gothic tradition. While shocking, these stories prioritised elements of existential fear and an intangible sense of dread. Their monsters were older, slimier, more cosmic in scope than the Victorian era’s Dracula or Frankenstein.</p>
<p>Popular audiences who had tired of Gothic literature’s well-worn formulas found a home in this new, decidedly weirder, method of inciting horror. The magazine’s closure in 1954 did not signal the end of weird fiction for long. In television series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955 to 1965) and the famously uncanny Twilight Zone (1959 to 1964), Weird Tales found its way onto the silver screen and into the homes of a new generation. </p>
<p>In 1994, famed horror director John Carpenter offered a nod to Lovecraft in In the Mouth of Madness (referencing Lovecraft’s novel In the Mountains of Madness). This signalled a trend of “Weird” films – which include Hell Raiser (1983) and Videodrome (1987) among others – that would peak with Event Horizon three years later. Ultimately, these films attempted to recreate the cosmic existential terror beloved by Weird authors like Lovecraft.</p>
<p>Today, a new generation of authors and filmmakers have sought to exhume the weird once again. China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station (2000), is one of the key figures of the aptly named, “<a href="https://bookriot.com/new-weird-genre/">new weird</a>”. He is joined by other “new weird” authors such as Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, Thomas Ligotti and KJ Bishop, as well as filmmakers like Guillermo Del Toro, Jordan Peele and Leigh Janak. </p>
<p>On the small screen, series including Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 to 2020) and <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective/">True Detective</a>(three series since 2014) have brought weird fiction and its contributors well and truly into the realm of pop culture. Yet each of these weird iterations, while maintaining the genre’s key attributes, also look to resolve its faults.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man and woman stood outside building at night look offscreen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Travels in Lovecraft Country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And so we return to Lovecraft Country. While the series is indebted to the legacy of Lovecraft – and weird fiction – its strength comes from the way Misha Green and her team, including executive producers Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams, rethink this legacy. Though the series boasts a number of uncanny and abnormal monstrosities, its horror comes from a stark reminder of just how monstrous “normal” can be for certain oppressed groups of people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Stephen Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
By focusing on African Americans’ experiences of racism in the 1950s, the new series aims to address HP Lovecraft’s racist views.
Guy Stephen Webster, PhD Candidate in Literature, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.