I will be one of the guests on the Encounter radio program out of Australia on the subject of “Sacred Horror: Zombie Resurrections and Vampire Souls.” The website description:
From the legends of Frankenstein and Dracula to films about zombies, witches and vampires, supernatural horror has always captured the popular imagination. Fictional horror scares us because they confront us with our deepest fears about death and the unknown. They make us tremble, but they also act as catharsis. So it’s no wonder then that the horror genre often intersects with religion.
The lineup of guests includes:
Jana Riess
Author of What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide
Douglas E. Cowan
Professor of Religious Studies, Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Canada
John Morehead
Co-editor of The Undead and Theology and creator of website TheoFantastique
Mike Duran
Christian novelist, California
Ashley Moyse
Research Affiliate, Vancouver School of Theology, Canada
Philip Johnson
Theologian
My interview will be broadcast this Saturday, 20th July at 5:00 p.m. (AEST) and repeated Wednesday, 24th July at 1:00 p.m. (AEST). The program is approximately 53 mins, and begins just after the news. It will also be available for download shortly after the first broadcast from the Encounter website: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/vampires-with-souls2c-zombie-resurrections/4773674
Previously I interviewed Kuchta on his forthcoming documentary, FANTASM, that looks at the fandom at horror conventions. They have now released a poster for the film, and this comes by way of the press release:
Director Kyle Kuchta is excited to reveal the official theatrical poster for his forthcoming horror convention documentary, Fantasm. The film explores the bonds formed by the close-knit community of fans who attend horror conventions. A high-resolution version of the poster is attached for your use.
In addition to a variety of devoted genre fans, Fantasm features insight from several popular horror actors and filmmakers, including Tom Atkins (Escape from New York), Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Amanda Wyss (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger), Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2) and more.
After being shot at six different conventions throughout the country, Fantasm is currently in post-production. “The film is being submitted to festivals and conventions,” Kuchta elaborates. “We’re really excited to be releasing it in the fall when the convention season and the horror community are thriving full-force.”
The new issue of Paranthropology officially launches tomorrow, but is available now in Vol. 4, No. 3. I am pleased to have a contribution in the form of “From Sleep Paralysis to Spiritual Experience: An Interview With David Hufford.” The essay can be found on pages 21-28, and the whole issue can be downloaded here.
An excerpt:
John Morehead: What are the various interpretations that are brought to the phenomenon [of SP] in the cultures in which it is found?
David Hufford: That’s a really interesting question. There is variety, but a constrained variety. The interpretations center, as you might imagine, on the intruder. In almost all cases this entity is described as evil or at least threatening. It may be interpreted as a sorcerer or a ghost or demon or some other kind of supernatural, such as a vampire. In many locations it is assumed that more than one kind of creature can do this, such as both sorcerers and ghosts. The definitive characteristics of these categories, of course, are not unambiguously presented in the SP experience. If the intruder is recognized as a particular living person (which seems rare) then it is understandable that it will be interpreted as a sorcerer. If the attack is sexual, which seems infrequent but it does happen, and if there is a term such as incubus or succubus, that will be applied. If the attack occurs in a house believed to be haunted, which is common, then the intruder is generally assumed to be a ghost. When features of an attack do not obviously suggest one kind of entity or another, then local categories fill in, such as the aswang (Tagalog) in the Philippines. This remarkable consistency and similarity across cultures is a product, obviously, of the robust and consistent cross-cultural pattern of the phenomenology of SP.
Related posts:
“Sleep Paralysis, Neurotheology, and Spirits”
“Louis Proud – Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis”
“Sleep Paralysis Documentary: Your Worst Nightmare”
“The Old Hag, Sleep Paralysis, and Pop Culture”
“Paul Meehan: Alien Abductions and Sleep Paralysis”
Corvis Nocturnum made a copy of his new book available to me, Zombie Nation: From Folklore to Modern Frenzy (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2013). I am featured in an interview in the first part of the book where I discuss the religious aspects of zombies.
From the publisher’s website:
Go on a hunt for the facts, folklore, and fiction about zombies from the 1800s to popular culture. The evolution of the zombie is explored in depth and includes historic accounts as well as a peek into the current craze. From whispered stories in voodoo legends and experiments in reanimation performed in the 1800s to recent events that elude to the scary possibility that such creatures really exist, you are in for a wild ride. Take a look at George Romero’s many contributions to the popularity of the living undead, with films such as Night of the Living Dead. Go inside with the incredibly popular AMC television series, The Walking Dead. Read interviews from people who are involved directly with zombie-mania, such as those who sell themed goods, ranging from bleeding mannequin zombie targets to Zombie Max ammunition. Visit with frenzied groups like the Zombie Squad featured on the History Channel or take a stroll in Zombie Walks taking place around the world. You can even learn to use makeup to become a zombie yourself! All in all, it’s a good day to be undead.
Order your copy today from the TheoFantastique Bookstore.
I have just become aware of an interesting looking book by Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott titled TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen (I.B. Tauris, 2013).
From the description at Amazon.com:
Horror is a universally popular, pervasive TV genre, with shows like True Blood, Being Human, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story making a bloody splash across our television screens. This complete, utterly accessible, sometimes scary new book is the definitive work on TV horror. It shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability.The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children’s television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television. This book is a must-have for those studying TV Genre as well as for anyone with a taste for the gruesome and the macabre.
And a discussion from University of Roehampton where Dr. Abbott teaches:
The aim of the book is to demonstrate how the horror genre, perceived by some to be incompatible with television, has always had a place on our TV screens, from Quatermass and Boris Karloff’s Thriller in the 1950s and 1960s to 21st Century shows such as Dexter, True Blood and The Walking Dead.
The book also examines how the often contradictory relationship between horror and television has been fueled by changes within the broadcast landscape, and how the genre has repeatedly been re-imaged to suit our understanding of television, while continuing to unsettle audiences and push the boundaries of acceptability.
Jane Espenson, leading writer and producer of acclaimed horror, fantasy and sci fi television series, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time and the online series Husbands, describes the book as a ‘thorough, thoughtful and entertaining look at horror on television, deserv[ing] to be devoured by writers, analysts and fans. You will definitely find something in here to make your pulse jump and your eyes open wide.’
Since completing the book, Stacey, who is a Reader in Film and Television Studies, remains fascinated by TV Horror, a genre that seems more present today than ever before, and this topic remains the focus of much of her research, as evidenced by her recent blogs on TV Horror, The Walking Dead and Fringe for Critical Studies in Television Online.
Abbott and Jowett are also reuniting to co-organise, with Mike Starr of the University of Northampton, a conference on the televisual vampire. TV Fangdom: A Conference on Television Vampires will took place on 7-8 June 2013 at the University of Northampton.
The legend of horror and science fiction writing, Richard Matheson, has passed away. Matheson’s work included I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, Hell House, and several of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone. Arlen Schumer provided his own eulogy on the TheoFantastique Facebook page:
R.I.P. RICHARD MATHESON–the Lou Gherig of The Twilight Zone to Rod Serling’s Ruth–just passed away. He wrote the 2nd-most episodes after Serling in quantity, but their quality was more uniform than the erratic Serling’s, who wrote the best AND some of the worst episodes. Of all of Matheson’s great ones–from William Shatner in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” to Ages Moorehead in “The Invaders”–the one that is most ur-Twilight Zone to me is Matheson’s first-season “A World of Difference,” in which an actor (Howard Duff, husband of fellow TZ actor & director Ida Lupino, giving one of those stark-ravingly believable Twilight Zone performances) who believes he is the man he plays (while the movie crew thinks he’s off his rocker) discovers, “How thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind”–presaging the later-Sixties psychedelic reaction to life being like a movie, while raising age-old questions about destiny and pre-destiny, and about man’s free will in a benevolent or malevolent universe (and the basis for the 1998 film The Truman Show). Thank you, Mr. Matheson, for that and so much more! Your work will live forever!
See TheoFantastique’s past interview with Matthew R. Bradley on his book Richard Matheson on Screen for more on this great writer.
Given the immense popularity and box office success of science fiction and fantasy films in the West it might be natural to assume that these genres are also very popular in non-Western cultures. But that is not the case. A recent essay by Christine Folch in The Atlantic titled “Why the West Loves Sci-Fi and Fantasy: A Cultural Explanation,” explored this interesting question of science fiction and culture, looking at how American science fiction films fare far less well in India.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t folk tales with magic and mythology in India. There are. That makes their absence in Bollywood and their overabundance in Hollywood all the more remarkable. Whereas Bollywood takes quotidian family dramas and imbues them with spectacular tales of love and wealth found-lost-regained amidst the pageantry of choreographed dance pieces, Hollywood goes to the supernatural and futurism. It’s a sign that longing for mystery is universal, but the taste for science fiction and fantasy is cultural.
One significant aspect of this subject is the disenchantment of the West, and how science fiction and fantasy helps re-enchant our arid secularism by providing a sense of wonder. Folch’s essay closes on this note:
Hollywood continues to make science fiction and fantasy movies because disenchantment creates a demand for these stories, but disenchantment predates Hollywood. We were journeying ten thousand leagues under the sea or scarcely surviving a war of the worlds before the film industry began. If the uptick of Hunger Games-inspired archery lessons and the CDC’s humorous-but-practical Zombie Preparedness Guide are any indication, this is not going away any time soon. Re-enchantment delivers something more important than escapism or entertainment. Through its promise of a world of mystery and wonder, it offers the hope that we haven’t seen all that there is.
For a while now I have been following the work of my friend and colleague, Kelly J. Baker, and she recently shared a copy of her new ebook with me on zombies and apocalyptisism. The book is titled The Zombies Are Coming!: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (Bondfire Books, 2013), and I highly recommend a download for anyone interested in probing the zombie in more depth.
Kelly is also the author of Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (University Press of Kansas, 2011), and a forthcoming cultural history of zombies from the University of Washington Press. – See more at: http://www.kellyjbaker.com/about/#sthash.JPSN01gs.dpuf
Kelly made time in her busy schedule to discuss aspects of her recent book.
TheoFantastique: As a scholar studying American religion and apocalypticism, when and how did zombies come across your radar and bring both of these areas together for you?
Kelly Baker: My first brush with the zombie apocalypse occurred while I was teaching a class called the Apocalypse in American Culture, which pretty much covered end-times theologies in Left Behind, The Turner Diaries, UFOlogy, environmental activism, Heaven’s Gate, Branch Davidians, and pop culture more broadly. What I discovered is that my students were far more interested in talking about zombies and the end than any other topic. They loved zombies. They recommended books, films, and graphic novels, and they wanted to strategize for a zombie apocalypse with me. I tried to convince that I am no help when it comes to preparing for doomsday. This passion my students had for a particular type of end made me very curious about zombies. Why zombies? Why did walking corpses have so much appeal? Why were zombies so popular? And why was this monster most often paired with the end of days? My students caused me to steer my research away from doomsday theologies into the cultural representations of zombie apocalypse and their possible consequences. I would have never imagined that I would write about zombies, but these monsters prove to be a fascinating case study that I can’t walk away from.
TheoFantastique: One of the main threads of your book’s thesis is the importance of apocalypticism in American thought. How might elements of the Christian “end-times” mythos continue to inform this, and how might this connect even to something as seemingly secular as the zombie?
Kelly Baker: The apocalypse is always with us. Americans find the end lurking around all kinds of corners, and we consume ends in theology, entertainment, and politics. Impending doom emerges as a familiar narrative that gets recreated, reimagined, and reassessed in both American past and present. So, yes, I do think apocalypticism is crucial component in American thought and life. More importantly, Christian end-times visions dominated American history and influenced the secular forms of apocalypticism, in which the world is torn apart not by divine force but by human hands. Religious and secular doomsdays are enmeshed in one another in ways that we might not expect. Much of the reason for this is that the apocalypse is a religious genre that voices documents the corruptness of a current moment and a hope for a redemptive future. Secular adaptations of doomsday cannot get away from its religious roots, even though they might try, but they are often more fatalistic in tone. Redemption disappears. The religious moorings of apocalypticism almost haunt secular renditions. Lingering traces of Christian end-times theologies pop up again and again.
What I am interested in, then, is the assumed secularity of the zombie and how the zombie apocalypse gets presented as somehow not, or even anti-, religious. Most often I get asked how a religious studies scholar can write about zombies or monsters, and I point out that I have plenty to write about depending upon one’s definition of religion. With my flip answer, I am not trying to say that these monsters are inherently religious, but these monsters become a way to communicate what is human and what is not. David Chidester defines religion as being human in a human place, and I think that zombies give us a way to think about the limits of what we want to call humanity. Additionally, I find the zombie’s relationship with apocalypticism utterly fascinating because it suggests that the boundaries we might imagine between religious and secular are neither firm nor unyielding. The merger of zombies and the end provide an excellent case study for thinking about how doomsday changes to meet the needs of our modern world as well as how we define “religion” and “human” as a categories in a supposedly post-secular age.
TheoFantastique: I remember being fascinated by many of the events in pop culture that you reference, such as the CDC’s use of zombies in disaster preparedness, and the panic among some segments of the population about alleged “zombie attacks.” Christopher Partridge has said the West now features “fact-fiction reversals” where aspects of fictional pop culture cross the blurred line into perceptions of reality. What do you see as contributing to this boundary blurring and crossover with this iconic monster of the day?
Kelly Baker: I wonder if those boundaries that separate fiction and reality were ever really boundaries at all. I am not sure that there is something about our particular moment that leads to “blurring,” but rather that the imagination creeps up on us when we least expect it. Sometimes unreality seems more believable than reality, and sometimes we just wish that reality contained more of the fantastic. My daughter is four, and she inhabits a world of enchantment and possibility, in which fairies can be real, Jack Frost guards children, and the Sandman brings good dreams. It is a lovely space that makes clear distinctions between good and evil with required happy endings. Sometimes, I envy the possibility and enchantment that she sees everywhere, but most often I want her to enjoy what the imagination can offer. The ambiguity of real life often lacks the order and ethics of fantasy. Maybe, we want that possibility and clarity even if we need a bleak zombie apocalypse to bring it. Maybe, we still want to believe in monsters in a world that seemingly lacks mystery, where everything seems known or knowable. Maybe, the arrival of zombies will prove that what we envision our lives to be are not what they actually are.
TheoFantastique: One particularly troubling aspect of your book is the discussion of the connection of American gun culture to the zombie. Can you provide a few examples of how this plays out? And from your research, might the living dead and dehumanized zombie through the prevalence of it in film, television and video games contribute to this connection?
Kelly Baker: The association between zombies and guns is one that troubles me too. To kill a zombie, the preferred weapon of choice appears to be a gun, and we see many examples of this in film, television, and video games. My husband tends to point out the uncanny aim of human survivors in The Walking Dead; guns become equated with safety and protection. There’s also a glorification of the murder of the undead without much engagement with the ethical concerns in zombie media. The relationship of fictional violence to real violence is complicated, and studies, particularly of video games, come to contradictory conclusions. What worries me is the glee that destroying zombies produces. What are the consequences? How does the destruction of zombies prime us for other forms of destruction and violence?
Crucially, imaginary monsters can lead to actual violence. Just last week, two Arkansas teenage boys were playing a zombie game, and one shot the other in the shoulder with a .40 caliber pistol. In the book, I discuss another incident where a man shot his girlfriend over an argument about The Walking Dead as well as the marketing of zombie guns, ammunition, and targets. Why are we so eager and excited to eradicate them? Why does zombification make destruction of human bodies okay? This process of dehumanization makes me nervous about the consumption and participation in zombie media. What does killing these monsters do for us? Cultural theorist Edward Ingebretsen notes that we “stake” the monster to define what is human. I just wonder what type of humanity we define in every zombie kill.
TheoFantastique: Can you give us a sneak peak of your forthcoming volume on a cultural history of zombies?
Kelly Baker: Of course, I can! The project is tentatively titled, Between the Living and the Living Dead, and it is an exploration of the place of zombies in American culture from White Zombie (1932) until today’s zombie moment. This is a history that seeks to explain how zombies shifted from religious origins to movie star to internet meme and rhetorical stand-in. This study revolves around two questions: What does this cultural nightmare, the zombie, tell us about American culture in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? Or to put the question more pointedly, what does the study of this monster show us about the character of American life and the nation’s relationship to religion, violence, war, and consumption? Representations of zombie apocalypses become commentaries on American ethics, globalization, and war, but also communicate visions of the human, the inhuman, and the humane. By tracking zombies, I hope to illuminate the fractures of American public life, both cultural and religious. The consumption of these monsters tells us much about what is valued and what is disdained in our culture at pivotal historical moments in the last ninety years of American history.
TheoFantastique: Kelly, thanks so much for discussing your book here.
Researching Identity Group Experiences & Perceptions Of Therapy
UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON
School of Psychology
Stratford Campus
Water Lane
London E15 4LZ
Would you like to take part in research about Otherkin, Vampires, and Therians/Weres and are over 18?
Ish’had Duncan (MA Student at University of East London) is seeking six self-identified Otherkin, Vampires and Therians/Weres to share their experiences for an interpretative phenomenological research project aimed at the education of therapists.
Exploring The Experiences Of Otherkin, Vampires and Weres and Their Perceptions Of Therapy
Project Description:
This research is aimed at using credible research methods to capture your experiences of what it is to be Otherkin and also introduce therapists who might come across Otherkin to what it is to feel non-human in spirit, psychologically or physically. This research is subject to ethical approval.
If you are interested in taking part in an interview please contact me below for more details:
Principal Researcher:
Ish’had Duncan
Ishhadduncan@yahoo.co.uk
