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"Horror plays History and criticism."
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Sleeping with the lights on : the unsettling story of horror
Fear is one of the most primal emotions, and one of the hardest to reason with and dispel. So why do we scare ourselves? Delving into the darkest corners of horror literature, films, and plays, Darryl Jones explores its monsters and its psychological chills, discussing why horror stories disturb us, and how they reflect society's taboos
Book
The American musical and the performance of personal identity
The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project.
eBook
Horror : a very short introduction
Four o'clock in the morning, and the lights are on and still there's no way we're going to sleep, not after the film we just saw. The book we just read. Fear is one of the most primal human emotions, and one of the hardest to reason with and dispel. So why do we scare ourselves? It seems almost mad that we would frighten ourselves for fun, and yet there are thousands of books, films, games, and other forms of entertainment designed to do exactly that. As Darryl Jones shows, the horror genre is huge. Ranging from vampires, ghosts, and werewolves to mad scientists, Satanists, and deranged serial killers, the cathartic release of scaring ourselves has made its appearance in everything from Shakespearean tragedies to internet memes. Exploring the key tropes of the genre, including its monsters, its psychological chills, and its love affair with the macabre, this Very Short Introduction discusses why horror stories disturb us, and how society responds to literary and film representations of the gruesome and taboo. Should the enjoyment of horror be regarded with suspicion? Are there different levels of the horrific, and should we distinguish between the commonly reviled carnage of contemporary torture porn and the culturally acceptable bloodbaths of ancient Greek tragedies? Analysing the way in which horror manifests multiple personalities, and has been used throughout history to articulate the fears and taboos of the current generation, Darryl Jones considers the continuing evolution of the genre today. As horror is mass marketed to mainstream society in the form of romantic vampires and blockbuster hits, it also continues to maintain its former shadowy presence on the edges of respectability, as banned films and violent internet phenomena push us to question both our own preconceptions and the terrifying capacity of human nature.
Book
Swallow
A young housewife with a seemingly perfect marriage and life develops a disorder that gives her an irresistible urge to eat inedible objects.
Streaming Video
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
With its jagged, stylised sets, menacing shadows and themes of murder, madness and delirium, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) remains the source and essence of German Expressionist cinema. Fusing carnival spectacle with the paranoia of the psychological thriller, it centres on the haunting, sexually ambivalent presence of Conrad Veidt as Cesare the somnambulist exploited asan instrument by the sinister Dr. Caligari. David Robinson challenges long accepted versions of the history and reception of Caligari and redefines its relationship to the larger phenomenon of Expressionist art. His reassessment of the relative contributions of director, designers and writers becomes a fascinating detective story, as he investigates the status and significance of the single surviving copy of the original script, which came to light only in the late 1980s when almost all those involved in the production were dead. This second edition features a new introduction that considers the place of German Expressionist cinema within the European revival of Gothic at the turn of the twentieth century, and original cover artwork by Ben Goodman.
eBook
Crimes of the Future
A deep dive into the not-so-distant future in which humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings. This evolution moves humans beyond their natural state and into a metamorphosis, which alters their biological makeup.
Streaming Video
Breaking
On a hot summer day in 2017, Marine veteran Brian Brown-Easley walked nervously into a bank in the Atlanta area and handed a note to one of the employees. The note simply stated, “I have a bomb,” but the man explained that he was not intending to rob the bank. Instead, in an act of desperation, Brown-Easley was pleading to know why the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had withheld his monthly disability check of $892.
Streaming Video
Schizophrenic Twins: A Comparative Study of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Van Sant’s 1998 Remake
The main purpose of this article is to analyze the dialogue established between the old and the new text in terms of the tension between these repetitions and differences. Especially important in this dialogue are the differences between the two texts, since an analysis of these variations can become an instructive tool for exploring how the original was constructed and how the rewritten text updates it. To this end, an analysis of an extreme case of repetition is proposed: Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Although Van Sant’s Psycho has been considered a shot-by-shot copy of the original, when the remake is examined closely, it becomes apparent that this characterization is not as accurate as a more cursory analysis might suggest. The goal of this article is to identify the differences between the two films, to posit reasons for them, and to speculate on their implications, with a view to forming a better understanding of the remake and, consequently, of the original. This study will focus particularly on a close textual analysis of the famous shower scene,4 in view of the fact that Psycho’s status as a milestone in film history is due to a significant extent to this highly influential scene.
Journal Article
The lodge
This is a story about the first-of-its kind LGBTQ retirement community. Fountaingrove Lodge in Santa Rosa, California, is the nation's first state-licensed continuing care retirement community (CCRC) that's specifically for LGBTQ+ seniors and their straight allies. Today approximately 100 residents from all over the United States live at The Lodge. The average age is 75; the oldest person is 97. It offers a continuum of care from independent living to failing health. Filmmakers Pam Walton, 75, and Ruth Carranza, 70, are best qualified to make this film because we have unique access to it - we've been living at The Lodge since December 2017.
Streaming Video