Monthly Archives: November 2009

Millennial Mythmaking

One of the great things about having a website like this is discovering people engaged in the same kinds of reflections on the fantastic in pop culture that I am involved in. It gets even better when I get to develop relationships with these people, and then discuss their thinking. This is the case with […]

Happy Thanksgiving

I would like to wish a warm Thanksgiving to all of the readers of TheoFantastique. I thought the disturbing picture accompanying this post depicting a twist on a classic Norman Rockwell painting of a family enjoying Thanksgiving transformed into a zombie gathering enjoying a giant brain was somehow appropriate for this blog on this day. […]

Skillet: “Monster” as Rock ‘n’ Roll Jekyll and Hyde

The figure of the monster surfaces in many ways in popular culture to serve us for good or ill. At its worst it becomes a way of conceiving of the “other” which provides us with justification for their eradication. At its best it helps us to look inside ourselves to see that many times the […]

SAW: Cultural Registers for Post-9/11 Anxiety?

In 2004 my brother encouraged me to watch a horror movie that had come out which he thought I would enjoy. He was referring to Saw, but given the trailers I had seen for the film I wasn’t interested. It seemed like it was going to be just the latest in the trend in horror […]

2012 and Mayan Calendar of the End

Several weeks ago I first saw the trailers for 2012 in movie theaters and on television. The trailer depicted a man and his family making a last second escape from apparently worldwide destruction as homes, buildings, freeways, and entire landscapes crumbled around them in a catastrophic upheaval. A small private airplane with the family on […]

New Moon, Monsters, and Mormons

I recognize that many horror fans are less than pleased with Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight creatures, whether vampires or werewolves, but as I’ve written previously, while they may not be the average horror fans “cup of tea,” their romantic elements places them within the spectrum of depictions of these creatures over their literary and cinematic history. […]

Fantastic Toys and More

The recession hit a little close to home yesterday, so today, rather than working like I should I took a little rest and relaxation time and retreated into the realm of the fantastic. I did this by picking up a copy of Spectrum 16 which includes a treasure trove of great fantastic art, and the […]

Sleeping with the Aliens: Weird Encounters of the Fourth Kind

TheoFantastique is pleased to present its first guest posting, a review of The Fourth Kind by Paul Meehan, author of several books including Tech-Noir: The Fusion of Science Fiction and Film Noir (McFarland, 2008), Cinema of the Psychic Realm: A Critical Survey (McFarland, 2009), and Saucer Movies: A UFOlogical History of the Cinema (The Scarecrow […]

Diary of a Madman: Neglected Price Classic, and Paranormal Connection

Over the last week two areas of interest came together to make for an interesting tale here at TheoFantastique. On Halloween, like many horror and Halloween fans, I spent a good portion of my day enjoying various horror films on television. I had several options to choose from, but one station did a better job […]

Scott Poole: Satan in America

I first heard of W. Scott Poole through the Religion Dispatches website that involves scholars interacting with pop culture and religion. Scott wrote an article on Jennifer’s Body that I commented on here, and which attracted a lot of interest at the now defunct HorrorBlips. Scott is associate professor of history at the College of […]

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