TheoFantastique » pop culture

Popular Culture Association: Graphic Novels, Comics and Popular Culture

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:35:22 +0000

Call for Papers: Graphic Novels, Comics and Popular Culture-SWTXPCA 2012

Please make plans to attend our 33rd Annual Conference
February 8-11, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center in

Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
330 Tijeras NW,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA 87102
Tel: +1 505 842 1234 or 888-421-1442

http://www.swtxpca.org

Proposal submission deadline: December 1st 2011

The SW/TX PCA/ACA area chair invites papers on Comics, Graphic Novels and Popular Culture.

Any Aspect of Comics and Graphic Novels in Popular Culture will be considered.

Possible panel/discussion topics

With the recent rise in the Superhero movies, a discussion of 2011’s summer of the superhero or superflop would be welcome eg., Captain America, Green Lantern, Thor, X-Men First Class. What is the future of the superhero based movie?

Pedagogical approaches to teaching graphic novel content. This has become an increasingly important part of comic studies and the area chair seeks those scholars who would like to present on this topic.

Zombies and Vampires in comics continue to rise in popularity. Why are these monsters ideally suited for four colored pages?

Christopher Knowles: Gods and Geeks in American Pop Culture

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:28:20 +0000

Patheos is a website that presents information on a variety of religious traditions. Over the course of the summer months the site has been looking at what the future holds for these religions, and in a recent focus on Paganism an essay was included that dovetails with the focus of TheoFantastique.

Christopher Knowles wrote a piece titled “Gods and Geeks in the Endless American Twilight.” It begins with a consideration of the popularity of conventions like Dragon*Con as part of what he labels our “rapidly-expanding Geek Nation.” Knowles notes that this convention includes not only Dungeon & Dragons fans, but also a number of tracks devoted to various facets of the fantastic in pop culture, from Star Wars and Star Trek to Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica. Knowles then considers why this convention, and others like it such as Comic-Con, are so popular.

Knowles suggests that our present cultural miseries fuel our desire to find the divine in fantasy realms, and many times we need look no further than comic books, and the pop culture phenomena they inspire, in order to find these deities. In his book Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes (Weiser Books, 2007), Knowles set forth a case for this which he echoes in the Patheos article: “superheroes are not so much like the heroes of the ancient world as they are like the gods — the savior gods, to be precise.” In his thinking, our movie and television screens portray “a new generation of gods..”.

Knowles also provides thoughts on “geek” culture, and in one of his more interesting insights on this subculture, he suggests that journalists make the mistake of assuming that this is composed primarily of “male, pale, sweaty, akward, antisocial” individuals. Instead, the late 1960s and early 1970s signaled a shift in both the quality of the fantastic in pop culture, as well as the demographics of those who consumed it, moving it beyond a 1950s paradigm which became the stereotype.

In one final observation about this essay, I found it interesting that Knowles sees Avatar as definitive in the context of an easily accessible fantasy. The film’s main character, Jake Sully, is seen as “a Superman in reverse” who comes to suffer with us, just “like the ancient gods of the Mysteries,” says Knowles. Of course Christianity has also presented a suffering god to humanity, and it is interesting to see “New Age,” ancient pagan, Western esotericism, and Christianity providing imaginative fodder for comics and the broader realm of the fantastic in pop culture.

Those interested in learning more about Knowles’s book on comics and their surprising religious sources of inspiration in esoterica can read the Preface to the book here, and the book can be ordered through the TheoFantastique Store here.

“B.J. Oropeza: Comics, Archetypes, and Superheroes”

“And the Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, or At Least Lead Pop Culture”

“Star Trek Fandom as a Religious Phenomenon”

“Star Trek Conventions as Sacred Pilgrimage”

Call for Papers on “Vampire Love”

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:44:04 +0000

The Popular Culture and American Culture Associations are issuing their last call for papers on the topic of “Vampire Love:”

2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television, November 11-14, 2010, Hyatt Regency Milwaukee, www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory

Third Round Deadline: June 1, 2010, AREA: Vampire Love.

The history of film is regularly punctuated by vampiric manifestations. From the earliest surviving film, 1922’s Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens, to the currently popular Twilight saga, cinematic vampires, by virtue perhaps of nothing more than the physical intimacy of their feeding habits and the exchange of bodily fluids, have been viewed as sexual creatures. Or is there more to it? Does the nature of this sexualization change over time? Does Max Schreck’s Nosferatu devise a complex metaphor for venereal disease? Does Bela Lugosi represent American fears about “decadent” European sexuality or Western fears about sexually predacious male behavior? How might vampirism in 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter be viewed as an expression of lesbian desire? Do the Hammer Studios Dracula films of Christopher Lee reflect cultural anxieties about juvenile sexuality? Are the lesbian vampire films of the 1970s a symbol of homosexual liberation or an expression of male anxieties about uncontrolled female sexuality? Does the post-millennial increase in sympathetic depictions of vampirism reflect a liberalizing shift in
cultural attitudes toward the erotic—or to something else?

Topics might include the following:

The sexual overtones of lost vampire films of the Silent Era (there are at least 22)

Comparisons of vampiric bloodlust to contemporary depictions of sexual
desire

Portrayals of women as victims or as predators

Femme fatales and lesbian vampires

Vampire film as index of changing sexual attitudes

Depression vampires, Cold War vampires, 21st century vampires

The vampire’s bite as sexual liberation or as curse

Influences from (and upon) romance genres

Vampire as sexual opportunists

Vampires as idealized lovers

Comical romance and vampiric lust

Family love and vampire love

Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the area chair:

Daniel Schnopp-Wyatt, School of Professional Counseling, Lindsey Wilson College, 210 Lindsey Wilson Street, Columbia, KY 42728, Email: daniel.schnopp-wyatt@lindseyspc.org (email submissions preferred)

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).

My hope is that the submissions and presentations will help generate new understandings of this long-explored facet of vampires in film. I would also like to see future conferences explore this topic in the zombie. To my knowledge this has yet to be considered, and only one film comes to mind where the topic is raised, and that is, believe it or not, the comedy-horror Fido. If this is correct we might ask why various issues surrounding late modern conceptions of the body do or do not lend themselves well to the exploration of romance and sexuality in connection with the zombie, particularly since filmmakers continue to produce zombie films. Romero himself is a one-man zombie film production factory who often incorporates social and cultural commentary in his films. Why not romance and sexuality in regards to these monstrous icons? After all, they are us, void of reason and operating on instinct and dim memories of life. Aren’t romance and sexuality an important part of human nature in this regard?

Related posts

“Mary Y. Hallab: Vampire God”

“Romance, Gender, and Horror Icons”

“Fido: Rewarding Zombie Comedy Provides for Social and Theological Reflection”

The Church of Jediism and Religious Conflict in the Workplace

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:46:33 +0000

While catching up on various blogs and websites dealing with the fantastic in the blogosphere I came across a news item at SF Gospel. It touched on a conflict between a religious group and an employer on appropriate attire in the workplace. What sets this conflict apart from others that have taken place in the past, as in the case of Muslim women wanting to wear coverings for their head and face, or Sikh men wanting to carry their ceremonial daggers, is that this particular conflict moves beyond the major world religions to involve a new religious movement. In this case it is a controversy involving the hyper-real spirituality of The Church of Jediism in the UK. Hyper-real spiritualities are those which draw upon aspects of pop culture, particularly science fiction, horror, and fantasy, as a metaphor in the construction of new religious identities.

This specific conflict is between Chris Jarvis, a member of the church and a practitioner of Jediism, and and the employer JobCentre. The issue of tension was over Jarvis’s refusal to remove the hood of his Jedi robes while at work.

Those interested in exploring hyper-real spiritualities in more depth should consult Adam Possamai’s Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament (Gods, Humans, and Religions) (P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2007), and his lecture proceedings article “Yoda Goes to the Vatican: Youth Spirituality and Popular Culture.” Possamai is also currently editing a multi-contributor volume on this topic, a handbook on hyper-real spiritualities for which I have written a chapter on Matrixism.

Previous discussions of these topics here in related posts include:

“Adam Possamai: Jediism, Matrixism, and ‘Hyper-Real’ Spiritualities”

“The Otherkin: Fantastic Texts, Pop Culture, and Neo-Religiosity”

“James McGrath on Religion in Science Fiction”

Themes of the Films of James Cameron: Call for Papers

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:11:24 +0000

The Popular Culture and American Culture Associations recently circulated a call for papers on the themes of the films of James Cameron:

With Avatar Canadian-born filmmaker James Cameron now has the top two all-time money making films in history, yet little in the way of critical attention has been paid to his work. His movies are often “the most expensive ever made,” and continually set new standards for special effects and the “movie event.”

Having received preliminary encouragement from an academic press we seek proposals for chapters for an edited volume of critical essays on Cameron’s work. We do not seek essays on individual Cameron films, but rather essays on the major themes of his work.

Proposals are encouraged from all disciplines. Final essays will be in the range of 7,000-10,000 words.

Proposals could include, but are not limited to:

The military
The female hero/heroine
gender
Special effects and filmmaking techniques
Corporate culture
Political culture
Ethnicity and “race”
Humanism and the humanistic impulse
Cameron’s documentary films
Dystopian imagery
Re-writing history

Proposals should be sent, by 15 March 2010, to the editors, Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Stephen McVeigh at: cameronthemes@googlemail.com.

We encourage general queries and questions concerning proposals and possible topics.

Preliminary decisions will be made by 1 April 2010.

Proposals should include:
An abstract of 200-400 words
A brief C.V.

Essays are expected by the end of July, 2010, with revisions due by the end of November. Dates are subject to change should the project move forward.

Whitt and Perlich: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Millennial Mythmaking

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:38:40 +0000

In the past I had an opportunity to interview David Whitt and John Perlich with the first book they co-edited, Sith, Slayers, Stargates and Cyborgs: Modern Mythology and the New Millennium (Peter Lang Publishers, 2007). Dr. David Whitt is Associate Professor of Communication at Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Dr. John Perlich is Associate Professor of Communication at Hastings College in Nebraska. Now they return to discuss their new book, Millennial Mythmaking: Essays on the Power of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Films and Games (McFarland, 2010).

TheoFantastique: John and David, thanks for coming back to discuss your latest exploration of myth and science fiction. This is your second exploration of this topic. What did you want to do differently, or perhaps expand upon, with this second foray into science fiction myth?

John Perlich: With each volume we’ve been slowly moving toward more unusual or unorthodox texts (films, programs, artifacts, etc). Because this project is post-structural in nature, it is important to look for subjects of analysis that can be “under the radar” per se. Usually the conventional ends up getting lots of acceptance and attention—so we’ve taken some interest in either deconstructing popular texts to illustrate a potential fly-in-the-ointment or analyzing a hidden-gem to reveal the inner beauty.

David Witt: I don’t see this volume being radically different from the first, but it is a little more unique. When the chapter proposals started coming in there were the popular mythic texts like The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the NBC TV show Heroes. However, I remember we were especially intrigued with texts like the videogame Second Life and the complexity of evil exhibited in the book and musical Wicked. So, the book just naturally gravitated toward including more unusual subjects.

TheoFantastique: Myth is studied at times in connection with ancient civilizations and religion, but you suggest there is something significant here in understanding the modern period. Can you say a few words about the significance of modern myth in your view, and why science fiction is an important expression of this?

David Whitt: In my chapter I quote French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau who said “One can easily classify all works of fiction as descendants of [Homer's] The Iliad or The Odyssey.” If he is correct then all genres, including science fiction and fantasy, have drawn upon Homer epic mythic poem for inspiration. In this way mythology, and certainly not just Greek mythology, is timeless and continually influential. For example, last week I read Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning “The Road” and was struck by how this post-apocalyptic story is a variation on the hero’s journey. Since being immersed in comparative mythology the past several years as an editor and writer I’ve seen mythic tropes in everything from comedy to drama.

John Perlich: It has been argued by Joseph Campbell himself that there are no new myths but that assertion is often taken out of context. In fact, myths are retold and reinvented—leaving the possibility for new myths (or at the very least a myth/tale/archetype that does not resemble established tales, stories, legends, and lore). You’ll often find that science fiction is a powerful medium for telling new tales while simultaneously challenging existing structures and templates. We’ve hit on this issue in the previous volume from a variety of angles ranging from the cyborg themes (in David’s chapter) to “new” heroes (and heroines). Fantasy and science fiction allow for an expansion (if not a reconfiguration) of old boundaries.

TheoFantastique: I’d like to ask a few questions from a sampling of the chapters by contributors that were of most interest to me. Planet of the Apes is my favorite sci fi film franchise so I was naturally attracted to Richard Besel and Renee Smith Besel’s chapter “Polysemous Myth: Incongruity in the Planet of the Apes“. While I greatly appreciate the body of Tim Burton’s work, I was less than happy with his 2001 reimagining of The Planet of the Apes. The Apes myth did not work as well in the new cultural context of the early 21st century as it did in the late 20th. Besel and Besel suggest that one of the reasons for the decline in popular and critical success in contrast with the original film was its lack of interpretive depth. In what ways have viewers found hermeneutical depth in the original film, and how was this different with Burton’s version?

John Perlich: As you quite accurately pointed out, the milieu surrounding the original film accounted for a tremendous resonance between the audience and the themes in the movie—and Rich and Renee have done a great job articulating this premise. As I read Rich and Renee’s chapter I found myself saddened by the opportunity that was squandered when this film was remade. I don’t want to give away too much of their chapter so I can’t say more.

David Whitt: Burton had the unenviable task of trying to remake a classic film which was a reflection of its time, the socio-cultural tensions of the 1960s. I was certainly intrigued by the idea of remaking Planet of the Apes for the new millennium, but as you said, the themes of race and social conflict just didn’t resonate as well thirty plus years later.

TheoFantastique: Besel and Besel comment on the confusing ending of Burton’s Apes film. As a viewer who has watched it several times in an effort to figure it out, but has still come up empty, can you shed a little light on it? Is this a case of trying to live up to the now iconic ending of the original but which fell short?

David Whitt: I remember walking out of the theater and saying “That ending makes no sense within the context of the film!” Nobody has convinced me otherwise. Clearly, Burton was trying to go for the shock value of the original ending, but came up with one that left the audience scratching their heads.

John Perlich: I don’t have any additional insight on that ending, John—but I cannot confess to spending much time trying to figure it out. It does say something in my opinion that I wasn’t committed to making sense of the text. Other films, for example Memento, have brought me back repeatedly to solve the puzzle of an unusual ending. I was not equally compelled by Burton’s work.

TheoFantastique: John, your chapter addresses one of the great fantasy films of the last few years in “Rethinking the Monomyth: Pan’s Labyrinth and the Face of a New Hero(ine)”. Can you share a few examples of how Guillermo del Toro has challenged or redefined the hero of myth and fantasy through Ofelia/Princess Moanna as the heroine in a new form of monomyth?

John Perlich: I am so absolutely delighted that you share my admiration for that film! I hope my piece compels every reader to watch del Toro’s work. By his own admission, Campbell’s work in articulating the monomyth often leaves a place of mutedness with regard to the female protagonist. Although Campbell contends that women can also travel the path of the heroic journey, his articulation of that process is vague and not well-defended. This is clear when you read his famous interview with Bill Moyers. Not only is Ofelia a willful and disobedient heroine, her age should preclude her from this epic adventure in many ways. Ofelia, as a girl, confronts challenges that resemble stages in the monomyth—but these stages must be recast as a result of the makeup of del Toro’s protagonist. Again, it is a fantastic film and I encourage your readers to check out both the film and my analysis of this fine work.

David Whitt: John’s chapter is a brilliant and incredibly thorough analysis of Pan’s Labyrinth. I think he could have easily written another twenty pages without even thinking about it.

TheoFantastique: What are the implications of del Toro’s depiction of the heroine for girls and young women looking to contemporary myth as inspiration?

David Whitt: Aside from John’s concern about violence, I think young girls can draw inspiration from Ofelia. In the face of great danger and horror, in both the real world and the fantasy world, she exhibits remarkable bravery and intelligence. What’s not be inspired by?

John Perlich: My concern, as mentioned in the chapter, is that the violence of the film might preclude them from seeing this fine work and thus drawing from both Ofelia’s journey and character for inspiration.

TheoFantastique: Jay Scott Chipman discusses myth and posthumanism in “So Where Do I Go From Here?: Ghost in the Shell and Imagining Cyborg Mythology for the New Millennium”. Why does Japanese culture express a great volume of cyborg mythology through various media, particularly in manga and anime as in Ghost in the Shell?

John Perlich: I’d hate to be stereotypical in a prognosis but it seems to me that each culture might dwell on some archetypal themes as a result of cultural and historical forces. It is well documented that the aftermath of World War II and the birth of the atomic age has had a profound impact on the literature and art produced in Japan. I think the proliferation of cyborg mythology is an extension of this milieu.

David Whitt: I was fortunate to visit Tokyo last spring and witnessed firsthand Japan’s celebration of technology. Certainly John is correct with the claim that the nuclear age had a great impact on the cultural consciousness of the country. However, it’s more than that. Chipman explains how the Japanese have historically embraced technology for centuries, tracing narratives about artificiality back almost 500 years. So, you could argue that appreciating the technology and the merger between humanity and machine is part of Japanese culture.

TheoFantastique: With the continued exploration of cyborg themes in science fiction, in Surrogates, for example, do you see a continuing need for the exploration of this mythic thread in the genre? If so, how might the cyborg myth help us understand ourselves, our increasing interconnection with technology, and the possibility of the posthuman?

David Whitt: I have yet to see Terminator Salvation or James Cameron’s Avatar but their box office popularity seems to suggest a public intrigued with posthuman existence (or perhaps audiences just like to see things blown up). The merger between technology and humanity is unavoidable, but what we should be concerned about is how this impacts our individuality, and those qualities which make us human. Besides, I believe that everyone already is a cyborg (in one way or another), and welcome any text which continues to explore our inevitable cyborg development.

TheoFantastique: Thank you again for delving again into the area of myth and science fiction. I hope that both books are successful, and that perhaps there might indeed be a future volume to complete a trilogy.

2012 and Mayan Calendar of the End

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:43:32 +0000

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 board narrowly escapes and weaves its way around falling debris.

For my tastes in storyline and special effects this was a little over the top. This film’s grandiose destruction is understandable in light of Hollywood’s preference for big blockbusters and special effects, and perhaps even more so from the involvement of co-writer and director Roland Emmerich who has penchant for large scale epics as in his previous works of Independence Day, 10,000 BC, and The Day After Tomorrow. Beyond my personal distaste for the level of destruction, I prefer my apocalyptic tales to move in different directions such as I Am Legend or Terminator Salvation.

Yet despite my film preferences 2012 is doing well at the box office as it rides the wave of media frenzy over an alleged prophecy in an ancient Mayan calendar that purports to predict the end of the world on December 12, 2012. An article from this spring in USA Today describes this phenomenon:

Since November, at least three new books on 2012 have arrived in mainstream bookstores. A fourth is due this fall. Each arrives in the wake of the 2006 success of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, which has been selling thousands of copies a month since its release in May and counts more than 40,000 in print. The books also build on popular interest in the Maya, fueled in part by Mel Gibson’s December 2006 film about Mayan civilization, Apocalpyto.

2012 taps into the long undercurrent of millenarianism and apocalyptic thought in Western culture. This overlaps with environmental concerns, prophets and prophecy, ancient civilizations (with the Mayans being of special interest as 2012 and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull indicate), and especially the Mayan calendar. The Mayans used several calendars, and the one that has captured the imagination of many in popular culture is the Long Count calendar which was popular in Mesoamerica between 300 and 900 CE. This calendar was cyclical, providing a time frame lasting 5,000 years after which it would reset.

But does the Long Count calendar really predict the end of the world in 2012? Apparently not, again citing USA Today:

“For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle,” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”

One particularly egregious example of wanting to cash in comes in the form of a disappointing program on the History Channel that I watched a couple of weeks ago. It is called the Nostradamus Effect, and it incorporates the statements and rationales from a number of “experts” in various prognosticators, from Nostradamus to the Book of Revelation to the Mayans, whose prophecies and warnings are strung together to reach the conclusion that allegedly various cultures and their religions have foreseen the end of the world in 2012, and they are trying to send us a message. If this is representative of the History Channel’s scholarship then caveat emptor.

Human beings produce stories and mythic narratives within which they situate their lives. These narratives have origin stories, and stories of ending as well. In 1999, and again nearing 2001, panic swept much of the globe over fears of a Y2K computer failure that would lead to an apocalypse. Our present apocalyptic fears related to 2012 haven’t yet reached the fever pitch of Y2K, but at least the public is entertained, and doomsday entrepreneurs are making the most of a misunderstanding of a Mayan calendrical cycle that has been fashioned into a contemporary myth of the end.

Addendum: The May 21, 2011 edition of The Wall Street Journal included a review of The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth About 2012, by David Stuart. Reviewer Gerard Helferich summarizes: “In The Order of Days, a leading scholar exposes this cosmic conspiracy theory for what it is. It’s ‘all complete nonsense,’ David Stuart assures us, perpetrated by ‘gurus and spiritualists who wouldn’t know a Maya glyph if one hit them on the nose.’ But more than a rebuttal of the apocalypse-pushers, The Order of Days is a broader (and more interesting) consideration of the role that time played in Maya culture. …

“For the Maya, Dec. 21, 2012, would have been a red-letter date, the completion of a 144,000-day (or nearly 400-year) period called a bak’tun, and it would have been marked with ceremonies presided over by their kings. But the milestone – known as ’13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahaw 3 K’ank’in’ on the Long Count calendar – would not have signaled the end of the world. Rather, it would have heralded the beginning of a new bak’tun, a resetting of the cosmic odometer analogous to the one we marked on January 1, 2000. …

“If the Maya never predicted that the world would end on next year’s winter solstice, why do so many people believe they did? According to Mr. Stuart, the 2012 phenomenon tells us more about ourselves than about the Maya – about our attitude toward supposedly mystical cultures, our quest for spiritual meaning and the anxieties provoked by modern life. …

“Mr. Stuart brings to his task considerable intellectual heft. The son of two scholars of Maya civilization, he has traveled on archaeological digs since the age of 3 and has deciphered Maya hieroglyphs since he was 8. He delivered his first academic paper at 12, and at 18 he received a MacArthur ‘genius award.’ [H]is passion is contagious, and the more-than-casual reader will find The Order of Days an authoritative study of an fascinating and timely topic.”

The Old West Meets the Undead: PCA/ACA Call for Papers

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:14:38 +0000

The combination of certain genres don’t work for me. In this case the Old West connecting with horror, specifically in the form of cowboys combined with zombies, vampires, and other horror icons, but apparently they work for some people and have become the focus of academic consideration. Following is a call for papers from the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association on the topic:

Call for Papers: Undead in the West
PCA/ACA National Conference
March 31-April 3, 2010
St. Louis, Missouri
Deadline: December 1, 2009

Co-presenters are being sought for a panel on the “Undead in the West,” as part of the Westerns and the West area at the PCAs.

The frontier has long been framed as a landscape of life and death, but few scholarly works have ventured into the realm where the two become one, to explore portrayals of the Undead in the West – the zombies, vampires, mummies, and others that have lumbered, crept, shambled, and swooped into the Western from other genres. This sub-genre, while largely a post-1990 phenomenon, traces it roots to much deeper hybrid traditions of Westerns and horror or science fiction, and yet, shows ties to the recent A-Western renaissance. What happens when traditional frontier figures, settings, symbols, and ideologies encounter these characters that defy the laws of nature? How are Western archetypes subverted or accentuated when confronted by the undead? How do zombies, vampires, and the like, affect our understandings and interpretations of the West, and vice-versa?

Might these hybrid Westerns function as the new anti-western, or do the undead facilitate a return to tradition?

Other possible issues include, bur are not limited to:

– Do vampires and zombies map on to traditional Western “bad guys,” such as Indians, Mexicans, and outlaws? Have zombies become a “safe” substitute for Indians as aliens have for foreign soldiers in stories of war and invasion?

– How do the conventions of the Western intersect with the conventions of the Undead movie . . . Do the movies play with either set of conventions for dramatic effect (James Woods’ character Jack Crow as a vampire-hunting version of Clint Eastwood’s amoral Western avengers) or comic relief (the zombie sheriff and prostitute in Deadwalkers)?

– Do undead Westerns consciously use the Undead elements of the plot to comment on the nature of traditional Western heroes and villains?

These questions and more may be asked of films of the Old West, or the new, such as Bubba Ho-tep (2002), when a Stetson-wearing mummy menaces a nursing home in the East Texas backwater; From Dusk ‘til Dawn (1996), when vampires prey on unsuspecting patrons of a Mexican bar; It Came From the West (2007), the puppet zombie Western from Denmark; or Purgatory (1999), where the frontier town of Refuge serves as liminal space between
heaven and hell; and numerous other tales of the Undead in the West.

Papers presented in “Undead in the West” at the PCAs may also be considered for a larger post-conference project.

Please send your 250-350- word abstract to both co-organizers, Cindy Miller (cymiller@tiac.net) and Bow Van Riper (bvanriper@bellsouth.net). Deadline for submissions is December 1, 2009.

Cynthia Miller
cymiller@tiac.net

Art accompanying this post by Richard Pince.

Horror, Pop Culture, and Current Events

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:17:59 +0000

In the past I’ve connected aspects of the fantastic to popular culture and current events. With this post I do so again, first in serious fashion, and second with tongue in cheek.

In a recent post I asked readers to consider America’s continuing struggles with the legacy of racism through reflection on Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. With this post I direct readers to the comments of the late, great Vincent Price on racism and religious prejudice. His words are as important for us today as when he uttered them years ago:

And on a lighter note, a while back President Obama took some heat from animal rights groups over the swatting of a fly during a television interview. New footage has become available on this incident:

The Otherkin: Fantastic Texts, Pop Culture, and Neo-Religiosity

admin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:17:59 +0000

At times the lines between fact and fiction are blurred when it comes to the fantastic in popular culture and identification with the various characters and creatures that inhabit it. At times the lines are not so much blurred as they are dissolved. Christopher Partridge speaks of “fact-fiction reversals” that exist, and that as a result various influences in entertainment have such a strong influence that they begin “to have a shaping effect on Western plausibility structures.” This is particularly the case with popular sacred narratives that are informed by what Partridge calls “popular occulture” with its exploration and celebration of fairies, vampires, werewolves, orcs and Jedi knights. Adam Possamai has discussed the significance of these characters and their accompanying myths as well in his exploration of “hyper-real religions” devoted to myths such as Matrixism and Jediism. Given the impact of the literature and films of the fantastic on popular culture and its participants, scholars like Partridge conclude that it represents a phenomenon that “is socially, psychologically, and spiritually consequential.”

Within the context of the nexus of the fantastic and popular culture one of the more interesting expressions of this is the Otherkin. Danielle Kirby has written on this fascinating community in Frances Di Lauro, ed., Through a glass darkly: reflections on the sacred (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2006). She also presented a paper on this topic at a conference titled Exploring the Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age in the U.K. in 2007. The paper was titled “Pulp fiction and the revealed text: an inquiry into the treatment of fantasy and science fiction narratives within the Otherkin community.” This paper was revised to become a chapter contribution as part of a forthcoming book to be published by Ashgate.

Kirby describes the Otherkin as “a loosely affiliated virtual community with an alternative metaphysical foundation” which can be found at websites such as www.otherkin.net. In her discussion of this community she notes that “The unifying feature of the Otherkin community is a shared belief in non-human, often fantastic or mythological, souls and selves.” As noted above, this understanding of self-identity is forged through the “conscious integration of explicitly fictional narrative into a sacred or spiritual context.” Here the fictional texts of the films of Star Wars informs Jediism, H.P. Lovecraft’s writings inform the Church of All Worlds, and the corpus of vampire mythology in literature and film informs vampires within the Otherkin.

One of the striking features of the Otherkin community is how their interaction with narrative fiction informs a sense of self-identity that goes much further than those involved with Jediism or various aspects of Neo-Paganism. Kirby says that the Otherkin “believe, primarily, that they are in some way other than human. The non-human aspects appear to have been largely drawn from mythology and fantasy literature,” and “[t]his relationship to the fantastic takes a variety of forms and can mean a non-human soul in a human body, multiple souls residing within the same person or inter-species reincarnation.”

In my exploration of the fantastic in popular culture as an academic, the existence of subcultures like the Otherkin with their neo-religiosity represent a fascinating path for research and understanding.