The Naked And The Undead

The Naked And The Undead PDF Author: Cynthia Freeland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429964781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Horror is often dismissed as mass art or lowbrow entertainment that produces only short-term thrills. Horror films can be bloody, gory, and disturbing, so some people argue that they have bad moral effects, inciting viewers to imitate cinematic violence or desensitizing them to atrocities. In The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Cynthia A. Freeland seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and nature of evil?both human and cosmic. In exploring these films, the author argues against a purely psychoanalytic approach and opts for both feminist and philosophical understandings. She looks at what it is in these movies that serves to elicit specific reactions in viewers and why such responses as fear and disgust are ultimately pleasurable. The author is particularly interested in showing how gender figures into screen presentations of evil.The book is divided into three sections: Mad Scientists and Monstrous Mothers, which looks into the implications of male, rationalistic, scientific technology gone awry; The Vampire's Seduction, which explores the attraction of evil and the human ability (or inability) to distinguish active from passive, subject from object, and virtue from vice; and Sublime Spectacles of Disaster, which examines the human fascination with horror spectacle. This section concludes with a chapter on graphic horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Written for both students and film enthusiasts, the book examines a wide array of films including: The Silence of the Lambs, Repulsion, Frankenstein, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Alien, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Frenzy, The Shining, Eraserhead, Hellraiser, and many others.

The Naked And The Undead

The Naked And The Undead PDF Author: Cynthia Freeland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429964781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
Horror is often dismissed as mass art or lowbrow entertainment that produces only short-term thrills. Horror films can be bloody, gory, and disturbing, so some people argue that they have bad moral effects, inciting viewers to imitate cinematic violence or desensitizing them to atrocities. In The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Cynthia A. Freeland seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and nature of evil?both human and cosmic. In exploring these films, the author argues against a purely psychoanalytic approach and opts for both feminist and philosophical understandings. She looks at what it is in these movies that serves to elicit specific reactions in viewers and why such responses as fear and disgust are ultimately pleasurable. The author is particularly interested in showing how gender figures into screen presentations of evil.The book is divided into three sections: Mad Scientists and Monstrous Mothers, which looks into the implications of male, rationalistic, scientific technology gone awry; The Vampire's Seduction, which explores the attraction of evil and the human ability (or inability) to distinguish active from passive, subject from object, and virtue from vice; and Sublime Spectacles of Disaster, which examines the human fascination with horror spectacle. This section concludes with a chapter on graphic horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Written for both students and film enthusiasts, the book examines a wide array of films including: The Silence of the Lambs, Repulsion, Frankenstein, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Alien, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Frenzy, The Shining, Eraserhead, Hellraiser, and many others.

The Naked And The Undead

The Naked And The Undead PDF Author: Cynthia Freeland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429975864
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Horror is often dismissed as mass art or lowbrow entertainment that produces only short-term thrills. Horror films can be bloody, gory, and disturbing, so some people argue that they have bad moral effects, inciting viewers to imitate cinematic violence or desensitizing them to atrocities. In The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Cynthia A. Freeland seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and nature of evil?both human and cosmic. In exploring these films, the author argues against a purely psychoanalytic approach and opts for both feminist and philosophical understandings. She looks at what it is in these movies that serves to elicit specific reactions in viewers and why such responses as fear and disgust are ultimately pleasurable. The author is particularly interested in showing how gender figures into screen presentations of evil.The book is divided into three sections: Mad Scientists and Monstrous Mothers, which looks into the implications of male, rationalistic, scientific technology gone awry; The Vampire's Seduction, which explores the attraction of evil and the human ability (or inability) to distinguish active from passive, subject from object, and virtue from vice; and Sublime Spectacles of Disaster, which examines the human fascination with horror spectacle. This section concludes with a chapter on graphic horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Written for both students and film enthusiasts, the book examines a wide array of films including: The Silence of the Lambs, Repulsion, Frankenstein, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Alien, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Frenzy, The Shining, Eraserhead, Hellraiser, and many others.

The Horror Film

The Horror Film PDF Author: Stephen Prince
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813533636
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Focusing on recent postmodern examples, this is a collection of essays reviewing the history of the horror film and the psychological reasons for its persistent appeal.

The Living and the Undead

The Living and the Undead PDF Author: Gregory A. Waller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252090330
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
With a legacy stretching back into legend and folklore, the vampire in all its guises haunts the film and fiction of the twentieth century and remains the most enduring of all the monstrous threats that roam the landscapes of horror. In The Living and the Undead, Gregory A. Waller shows why this creature continues to fascinate us and why every generation reshapes the story of the violent confrontation between the living and the undead to fit new times. Examining a broad range of novels, stories, plays, films, and made-for-television movies, Waller focuses upon a series of interrelated texts: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897); several film adaptations of Stoker's novel; F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922); Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954); Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot (1975); Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979); and George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1979). All of these works, Waller argues, speak to our understanding and fear of evil and chaos, of desire and egotism, of slavish dependence and masterful control. This paperback edition of The Living and the Undead features a new preface in which Waller positions his analysis in relation to the explosion of vampire and zombie films, fiction, and criticism in the past twenty-five years.

I'm Dreaming of an Undead Christmas

I'm Dreaming of an Undead Christmas PDF Author: Molly Harper
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147678454X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Experience the vampire world for the holidays through the eyes of Gigi Scanlon in this e-novella prequel to The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire from beloved paranormal romance author Molly Harper! College co-ed Gigi is headed home to Half-Moon Hollow for her first Christmas since her sister, Iris, was turned into a vampire by her beloved undead husband, Cal. Iris is working overtime to make this holiday as normal and special as possible. After all, it’s taken her months of working with Jane Jameson and the Hollow’s vampires to convince herself that she won’t bite her baby sister on sight. Gigi has her own worries. She’s falling out of love with her high school sweetheart, Ben, and has no idea how to tell him. She’s got a secret job interview with terrifying teen Council official, Ophelia Lambert. And there’s a handsome but cagey vampire following her around town and then disappearing before Gigi can confirm that he’s not, in fact, a figment of her fertile imagination. Holidays with family are complicated. Christmas with an undead family can be downright dangerous.

The Subversive Zombie

The Subversive Zombie PDF Author: Elizabeth Aiossa
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476666733
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Historically, zombies have been portrayed in films and television series as mindless, shuffling monsters. In recent years, this has changed dramatically. The undead are fast and ferocious in 28 Days Later... (2002) and World War Z (2013). In Warm Bodies (2013) and In the Flesh (2013-2015), they are thoughtful, sensitive and capable of empathy. These sometimes radically different depictions of the undead (and the still living) suggest critical inquiries: What does it mean to be human? What makes a monster? Who survives the zombie apocalypse, and why? Focusing on classic and current movies and TV shows, the author reveals how the once-subversive modern zombie, now more popular than ever, has been co-opted by the mainstream culture industry.

The Dominion of the Dead

The Dominion of the Dead PDF Author: Robert Pogue Harrison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226317927
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
How do the living maintain relations to the dead? Why do we bury people when they die? And what is at stake when we do? In The Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison considers the supreme importance of these questions to Western civilization, exploring the many places where the dead cohabit the world of the living—the graves, images, literature, architecture, and monuments that house the dead in their afterlife among us. This elegantly conceived work devotes particular attention to the practice of burial. Harrison contends that we bury our dead to humanize the lands where we build our present and imagine our future. As long as the dead are interred in graves and tombs, they never truly depart from this world, but remain, if only symbolically, among the living. Spanning a broad range of examples, from the graves of our first human ancestors to the empty tomb of the Gospels to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Harrison also considers the authority of predecessors in both modern and premodern societies. Through inspired readings of major writers and thinkers such as Vico, Virgil, Dante, Pater, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Rilke, he argues that the buried dead form an essential foundation where future generations can retrieve their past, while burial grounds provide an important bedrock where past generations can preserve their legacy for the unborn. The Dominion of the Dead is a profound meditation on how the thought of death shapes the communion of the living. A work of enormous scope, intellect, and imagination, this book will speak to all who have suffered grief and loss.

A History of Evil in Popular Culture

A History of Evil in Popular Culture PDF Author: Sharon Packer MD
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313397716
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 874

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Book Description
Evil isn't simply an abstract theological or philosophical talking point. In our society, the idea of evil feeds entertainment, manifests in all sorts of media, and is a root concept in our collective psyche. This accessible and appealing book examines what evil means to us. Evil has been with us since the Garden of Eden, when Eve unleashed evil by biting the apple. Outside of theology, evil remains a highly relevant concept in contemporary times: evil villains in films and literature make these stories entertaining; our criminal justice system decides the fate of convicted criminals based on the determination of their status as "evil" or "insane." This book examines the many manifestations of "evil" in modern media, making it clear how this idea pervades nearly all aspects of life and helping us to reconsider some of the notions about evil that pop culture perpetuates and promotes. Covering screen media such as film, television, and video games; print media that include novels and poetry; visual media like art and comics; music; and political polemics, the essays in this book address an eclectic range of topics. The diverse authors include Americans who left the United States during the Vietnam War era, conservative Christian political pundits, rock musicians, classical linguists, Disney fans, scholars of American slavery, and experts on Holocaust literature and films. From portrayals of evil in the television shows The Wire and 24 to the violent lyrics of the rap duo Insane Clown Posse to the storylines of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter books, readers will find themselves rethinking what evil is—and how they came to hold their beliefs.

Generation Zombie

Generation Zombie PDF Author: Stephanie Boluk
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786486732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Growing from their early roots in Caribbean voodoo to their popularity today, zombies are epidemic. Their presence is pervasive, whether they are found in video games, street signs, hard drives, or even international politics. These eighteen original essays by an interdisciplinary group of scholars examine how the zombie has evolved over time, its continually evolving manifestations in popular culture, and the unpredictable effects the zombie has had on late modernity. Topics covered include representations of zombies in films, the zombie as environmental critique, its role in mass psychology and how issues of race, class and gender are expressed through zombie narratives. Collectively, the work enhances our understanding of the popularity and purposes of horror in the modern era. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Transatlantic Zombie

The Transatlantic Zombie PDF Author: Sarah J. Lauro
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813568854
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Our most modern monster and perhaps our most American, the zombie that is so prevalent in popular culture today has its roots in African soul capture mythologies. The Transatlantic Zombie provides a more complete history of the zombie than has ever been told, explaining how the myth’s migration to the New World was facilitated by the transatlantic slave trade, and reveals the real-world import of storytelling, reminding us of the power of myths and mythmaking, and the high stakes of appropriation and homage. Beginning with an account of a probable ancestor of the zombie found in the Kongolese and Angolan regions of seventeenth-century Africa and ending with a description of the way, in contemporary culture, new media are used to facilitate zombie-themed events, Sarah Juliet Lauro plots the zombie’s cultural significance through Caribbean literature, Haitian folklore, and American literature, film, and the visual arts. The zombie entered US consciousness through the American occupation of Haiti, the site of an eighteenth-century slave rebellion that became a war for independence, thus making the figuration of living death inseparable from its resonances with both slavery and rebellion. Lauro bridges African mythology and US mainstream culture by articulating the ethical complications of the zombie as a cultural conquest that was rebranded for the American cinema. As The Transatlantic Zombie shows, the zombie is not merely a bogeyman representing the ills of modern society, but a battleground over which a cultural war has been fought between the imperial urge to absorb exotic, threatening elements, and the originary, Afro-diasporic culture’s preservation through a strategy of mythic combat.