A brief but interesting item in this post.
In keeping up with ongoing elements and developments in biblical studies I came across a blog I hadn’t read before. It included a post titled “Lilith in the Bible and Jewish Folklore.” Readers may have heard of Lilith from Jewish folklore with the idea that she was Adam’s second wife. But this post takes another approach after considering a mention of her in the book of Isaiah, chapter 34 (Jerusalem Bible translation):
Wild cats will meet hyenas there,
the satyrs will call to each other,
there too will Lilith take cover
seeking rest.
After some discussion of the various instances where Lilith is mentioned in different cultures and time periods, the author notes that she appears in ancient Babylonian and Assyrian contexts. The piece concludes with some interesting words that remind us that all religions, including the Judeo-Christian tradition, incorporate monsters and mythical creatures:
“The usage of Lilith in Isaiah 34 — as a nature spirit that haunts ruins and roams the uninhabited wilderness — might lie somewhere between its earlier stage as a Babylonian wind deity and its later stage as a mischievous demon that would haunt people’s homes and oppress them.”
Related posts:
“Jewish Monstrosity”
“J. Gordon Melton Interview on Vampire Mythology”
“Timothy Beal: Religion and Its Monsters”
In this writer’s estimation the second half of Season 4 of The Walking Dead television series has been rather slow. This is, of course, deliberate as the destruction of the prison and the fragmentation of the group allows for the development of back stories and an exploration of how the characters respond to their new situations. Last Sunday’s episode, “The Grove,” continued in this vein, but it included a darkness and emotional punch not seen since the mid-season finale with the death of Hershel.
Apart from the murder of Mika by her sister Lizzie, and the resulting death of Lizzie by Carol’s hand that served as the main elements of shock and tragedy for this episode, for me a line by Tyreese was especially significant. In a moving scene involving Tyreese and Carol, Tyreese shares how his murdered girlfriend Karen still appears in his thoughts, dreams, and nightmares. He realizes that everyone struggles with such memories, and then extends this to all of the dead in general, both those that live in the memories of the living, as well as the walkers in the woods. Tyreese describes this situation with sobering words:
“But that’s the deal, right? The people living are haunted by the dead? We are who we are. And we do what we do ’cause they are still here. The whole world is haunted now and there’s no getting out of that until we’re dead.”
I found that phrase, “the whole world is haunted now,” very interesting in light of the apocalyptic world that The Walking Dead has created, particularly considering its seeming nihilism and the related struggles of the characters to maintain hope. In my view Tyreese’s phrase could also be applied to horror in general in connection with our present zeitgeist. In the past various monsters and other horrors were limited to particular places, whether a haunted house or a European castle. As we developed our haunts changed with us. They moved from the external monster limited to specific spaces to the monster within us as Psycho hit American cinema. Then as the unrest of the counterculture surfaced in the late 1960s, George Romero unleashed the flesh eating ghoul. This would become known as the zombie, and a feature of Haitian folklore was changed forever. So was our understanding of the family and other institutions we had previously valued and trusted. Everything was now suspect. Horror with hope, where good always destroyed evil resulting in a happy ending, was now gone, and a nihilistic foundation of horror set forth in the past has continued into the present. It is perhaps best exemplified (and literally embodied) by our current fascination with the zombie in many levels of popular culture.
Tyreese is right. The whole world is haunted now. And its not be limited to horror entertainment.
2014 could be a great year for serious science fiction films. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes premiers July 18 in theaters nationwide, and even sooner than that Spring will see the release of Transcendence. Transcendence addresses transhumanism and artificial intelligence. Below is the film’s synopsis.
Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions. His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have also made him the prime target of anti-technology extremists who will do whatever it takes to stop him. However, in their attempt to destroy Will, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed—to be a participant in his own transcendence. For his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and best friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany), both fellow researchers, the question is not if they can…but if they should. Their worst fears are realized as Will’s thirst for knowledge evolves into a seemingly omnipresent quest for power, to what end is unknown. The only thing that is becoming terrifyingly clear is there may be no way to stop him.
Related posts:
“Cyborg Singularity: Charting the Intersection of Humanity and Superintelligent Machines”
“Terminator Salvation: Apocalypse and Transhumanism”
“Surrogates: Sci-Fi Thriller’s Reflections on the Self and the Synthetic”
“Robert Geraci: Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction”
This looks like a promising series airing on BBC America, The Real History of Science Fiction. The first episode airs April 19. The description from the website:
OVERVIEW
BBC AMERICA delves into the real history of science fiction with filmmakers, writers, actors and graphic artists looking back on their experiences and on how their obsession and imagination has taken them into the unknown. The new original documentary series is a BBC AMERICA and BBC Two co-production. The Real History of Science Fiction premieres Saturday, April 19, 10:00pm ET.
From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors behind these creations and traces the developments of Robots, Space, Invasion and Time. Narrated by Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer, actor and co-creator of the BBC’s Sherlock, the series determines why science fiction is not merely a genre… for its audience it’s a portal to a multi-verse – one that is all too easy to get lost in.
Among those taking part are: William Shatner (Star Trek), Nathan Fillion (Firefly), Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Richard Dreyfuss (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Chris Carter (The X-Files), Ronald D Moore (Battlestar Galactica), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, Schlock),David Tennant (Doctor Who), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner), John Carpenter (Dark Star, The Thing), Karen Gillan (Doctor Who), Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Stardust), Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy), Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, Star Trek: Enterprise), Ursula K Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness), Syd Mead (Blade Runner), Kenny Baker (Star Wars), Anthony Daniels (Star Wars),Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek), Peter Weller (Robocop), Edward James Olmos (Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica) and many more.
On one level, sci-fi can deliver a ‘white knuckle-ride’ – jaw-dropping special effects, and thrills that have cinemagoers flying out of their seats. But also, it is possibly the only area of pop culture that engages with big ideas. Good science fiction engages audiences on a deeper level than mere spectacle; it becomes a place to discuss not just the universe and how it works – but what it means to be emotional, sentient human beings.
Pat Robertson is known for theological gaffes over the course of his televangelist career. In this video he warns about the possibility of demonic possession by watching horror films. I must admit I’ve had some conservative Christians accuse me of suffering from this malady given my interests in the fantastic and the macabre, but I’m reasonably sure I’ve falsified Robertson’s claims over the years.
See my past blog post on knee-jerk reactions by conservative Christians in relation to horror here.
One of the highlights and early kickoff of each Halloween season is the release of Lemax Spooky Town items that arrive in Michael’s stores nationwide in August each year. In the Spring the preview for each new annual release of pieces is made available, but this year we are in for a treat in that the 2014 Lemax Spookytown line is available for preview already.
The photo above is the 2014 “All Hallows Mausoleum” #35491.
You can look at the 2014 series and place your pre-orders here.
CALL FOR PAPERS ON “CHARACTERS OF THE WALKING DEAD“
This volume is currently under contract with McFarland & Company Inc. Publishers and is co-edited by Kim Paffenroth and John Morehead. As the title indicates, we are seeking chapter submissions that focus on the characters of The Walking Dead television series and uses the characters as springboards into discussions of larger themes developed within the character, the television series, and connected to the broader culture. Several essays are already in hand, but we need another six quality essays of 6,500 words. A firm deadline is in place for chapter draft submission by August 1. Abstracts of 200 words or further inquiries on this volume should be sent to kimpaffenroth@msn.com and johnwmorehead@msn.com.
Tags:
Dark Horse Comics designated March 22 Hellboy Day to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the comic. Read more here.
Brown University is presenting an upcoming conference titled “Beasts Monsters, and the Fantastic in the Religious Imagination.” The schedule from the website:
Friday, February 28, 2014
Keynote Address
6:30-7:30pm
Dinner Reception
7:30pm
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Breakfast
8am-9am
I. Morning Session: Doing Things with Demons
9am-10:45am
“When a Bad Being Does Good Things: The Demon as the Unsung Hero of the Mahabharata”
Vishal Sharma (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto)
“The Hellhound of the Qur’an: Investigations of a Dog at the Gate of the Underworld”
George Archer (Theology, Georgetown)
“Dangerous Demons and Savvy Sages: The non-human Other and rabbinic identity in Late Antiquity”
Sara Ronis (Religious Studies, Yale University)
“Mourning and the Malevolent: An Analysis of the Lament of Raksas Women in Valmiki’s Ramayana”
Grace MacCormick (M.A., Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto)
“Domesticating the Jinn: Sayyid Ahmad Kan’s Exegesis of the Quran”
Mian Muhammad Nauman Faizi (Ph.D., Scripture, Interpretation and Practice Program, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia)
Break
10:45am-11am
II. Late Morning Session: The Politics of Composite Creatures
11am-12:15pm
“The Sea Monster Ketos as Jonah’s ‘Great Fish’ in Early Christian Art”
Mark D. Ellison (Ph.D., Early Christianity, Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University)
“Demonizing Dissent in Medieval Japan: Tengu and Religious Rhetoric in the Konjaku Monogatari”
Benjamin D. Cox, (Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of Texas at Austin)
“Counterintuitive Mischwesen: A Cognitive Approach to the Iconography of Hybrid Creatures in the Ancient Near East”
Brett Maiden (Religion, Emory University)
Lunch Break
12:15pm-2pm
III. Afternoon Session: The Unnatural in Narrative and Art
2pm-3:30pm
“Tolkien’s Fairy-Stories and Desmond’s Metaxu: On Secondary Belief and the Primary Ethos”
Michelle J. Falcetano (Department of Philosophy, Villanova University)
“‘And I knew there was a dead man in my room’: Haunting and Modernity in Industrial Pittsburgh”
Andrew McKee (Department of Religion, Florida State University)
“The Disenchanted Gothic: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as Religious Declension Narrative”
Don Jolly (M.A., Religion, New York University)
“Monstrous Religious Authority in the films of Paul Thomas Anderson”
Dana Logan (Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of Indiana-Bloomington)
Break
3:30pm-3:45pm
IV. Late Afternoon Session: Bodies and Boundaries
3:45pm-5:15pm
“Barbarians Upon the Horizon: Ethnoreligious Difference in the Colonial Imagination”
Angel J. Gallardo (Ph.D., Relgion & Culture, Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University)
“Embodying Disordered Economy: A Study in Byzantine Theology”
Jessica Wong (Religion, Duke University)
“The Supernatural, Disability, and the Hermeneutics of Childbearing: Reading Martha Beck’s Expecting Adam”
Andrew Walker-Cornetta (M.A., Religious Studies, New York University)
“Reconsidering the Kapalika: Multiple Interpretations and Diversity in Hinduism Made Accessible by the Intriguingly Grisly”
Seth Ligo (Ph.D., Religion, Duke University)
Break
5:15pm-5:30pm
Closing Remarks
5:30-6pm
Dinner Reception
6pm
*Please note that this schedule is preliminary, and will be updated as additional information becomes available.
Seriously Staked Vampire Symposium
Look beyond the Twilight and True Blood frenzy and there is, and always has been, a serious study of vampires. Seriously Staked brings together a wide variety of subject experts and academics to talk about a range of questions concerning vampires. These include:
- Can science explain vampires?
- Do real vampire hunting kits exist?
- How have vampires impacted western culture?
- What is the crossover between vampires and other anomalous phenomena?
- Was Transylvania vampirism a communist trick to attract tourists?
- What is the London vampire community today?
- Do real vampires exist?
Seriously Staked is taking place at Goldsmiths College on 8 March 2014 and is co-organised by ASSAP (the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) and the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Seriously Staked is the latest is a series of paranormal conferences organised by ASSAP, following in the footsteps of Seriously Strange and Seriously Unidentified. ASSAP is a registered charity and learned society that has been studying the weird seriously (and the seriously weird) since 1981.
Seriously Staked promises a serious but entertaining look at the vampire phenomena.
A brief but interesting item in this post.
