My co-editor, Kim Paffenroth and I have approved the cover art for The Undead and Theology through Wipf & Stock. We are finalizing the manuscript and will discuss marketing considerations soon. Release date information to come in the near future.
Back cover blurbs:
“Both theologians and fans should appreciate this collection that explores the spiritual implications of society’s fascination with the undead and other monsters, providing valuable insights into human nature and theology. A notable contribution to pop culture studies.”
—Elizabeth L. Rambo
Associate Professor of English
Campbell University
“What can AMC’s popular television series, The Walking Dead, the mythical golem creature in Jewish folklore, and the demon ‘cenobites’ who rule hell in Clive Barker’s fiction tell us about pressing theological matters? This clever, insightful, and energetic collection of essays brings monsters into conversation with the resurrection of Jesus, and considers the eschatological implications of the return of the dead . . . An excellent resource for students who know these worlds all too well, as well as a general audience growing more and more curious about the religious dimensions of popular culture.”
—Gary Laderman,
Professor of American Religious History and Cultures
Emory University
William Shatner’s latest documentary was recently released, William Shatner’s Get a Life!. The title comes from the (in)famous Saturday Night Live episode in 1986 where Shatner poked fun at Star Trek fans and their devotion to the series and Trek universe. Yet with the passing of years the actors seems to not only have come to grips with his identification with Captain Kirk and the Star Trek series, but also that the fans and conventions represent something far more significant as well.
In a piece in Spinoff Online on the new documentary, Shatner reflects on his understanding of the meaning of conventions for fans, and shares the shift in his own assumptions on the subject. In his view, beyond friendships and community, something deeper is at work: “In fact, there is something very mystical, ritualistic, sociological about these conventions. They have a far deeper meaning then even the people themselves know.”
In my view this demonstrates an important insight on the part of Shatner that dovetails with the conclusion of my own research over the years on science fiction and related fandom and conventions. It may be that for many science fiction is understood as a new sacred mythology, and conventions function as transformational festivals that provide spiritual community.
William Shatner’s Get a Life! is currently available on Epix.
Steampunk Edited Collection: Call for Papers
Rachel Bowser and Brian Croxall
contact email: rachel.bowser@gmail.com
We are seeking abstracts for inclusion in a proposal for an edited volume on the subject of steampunk. The anthology will present a varied look at steampunk culture and criticism, presenting a comprehensive look at the genre’s impact and development in the fields of art and material cultural. Accordingly, we seek proposals that explore any of a range of iterations of the genre. These may include, for example, analysis of:
Steampunk fiction
Steampunk film
Steampunk visual art
Steampunk fashion
Steampunk performance
Steampunk fan culture
Steampunk in relationship to preceding science fiction and -punk genres
Steampunk and feminism
Steampunk and postcolonial paradigms
Steampunk and Victorian studies
Steampunk and technology studies
We hope to present this collection as of interest to both steampunk enthusiasts and non-specialists in the genre, as well as both academic and generalist readers. With this in mind, please submit proposals that are steeped in steampunk culture and criticism, that could be of interest to a generalist audience, and that have a strong sense of the stakes of steampunk analysis for broader cultural studies.
Submit 500 word proposals to Brian Croxall (brian.croxall@gmail.com) and Rachel Bowser (rachel.bowser@gmail.com) by 1 October 2012.
The 2013 Eaton/Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Conference
Riverside, CA
4/10/13-4/14/13
From reflection on species extinction in Silent Running (1972) and overpopulation and resource management in Soylent Green (1973) to the passing away of the last tree god in Hellboy 2 (2008) and the colonial acquisition and ecological devastation of Avatar (2009), science fiction film has engaged in a variety of ways with popular environmental concerns. Proposals are invited for papers that explore the ecological and environmental aspects of science fiction film from any period. What is the extent of their engagement with contemporary environmental issues? What is the role of the image in this engagement? What changes to the style and content of these films can be tracked across different periods of ecological and environmental awareness?
This panel is sponsored by ASLE and ASLE-UKI, professional affiliates of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). Please send 200 word proposals in the body of your email to Eric Otto (eotto@fgcu.edu) by 1st September, 2012. Visit the Eaton/SFRA conference website for more details (http://eatonconference.ucr.edu/).
Within moments of the Aurora, Colorado shooting at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, media speculation began as to alleged causes in popular culture that may have helped lead to this event. Some of the causes included aspects of fantastic popular culture, including The Dark Knight Rises, Batman, and dark fantasy films. But are such causal connections correct? Helping address these issues is a professor of psychology and comic book scholar.
Batman is one of the most compelling and enduring characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased through countless incarnations since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante, including: Does Batman have PTSD? Why does he fight crime? Why as a vigilante? Why the mask, the bat, and the underage partner? Why are his most intimate relationships with “bad girls” he ought to lock up? And why won’t he kill that homicidal, green-haired clown?
*Gives you fresh insights into the complex inner world of Batman and Bruce Wayne and the life and characters of Gotham City.
*Explains psychological theory and concepts through the lens of one of the world’s most popular comic book characters.
*Written by a psychology professor and “Superherologist” (scholar of superheroes).
In this podcast interview Dr. Langley touches on alleged connections between the Colorado shooting and Batman, and then discusses the significance of comic superheroes in popular culture.
CFP: Tim Burton: Works, Characters, Themes (collection)
Johnson Cheu, editor (cheu@msu.edu)
Deadline for abstracts: 1 October 2012
Mark Salisburry writes of Tim Burton:
“Burton’s characters are often outsiders, misunderstood and misperceived, misfits encumbered by some degree of duality, operating on the fringes of their own particular society, tolerated, but pretty much left to their own devices.” (Burton on Burton, xviii-xix)
Burton’s films have explored this theme of outsiders and many others over a wide array of genres. Scholarly essays are sought for a potential collection on the work and artistry of Tim Burton. All films and theoretical approaches welcome.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
• Outsiders, Misfits, and conformity/nonconformity
• Cyborgs, “Grotesquire/Freakery” and other bodily non-conformities
• Heroes/Villains
• Early work (Disney, “Frankenweenie,” Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure)
• Burton as Auteur
• Johnny Depp, and “Celebrity/Star” theory
• Adaptations (Dark Shadows, Sleepy Hollow, Alice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Planet of the Apes, James and the Giant Peach, Sweeney Todd, etc.)
• Ed Wood
• Sci-fi (e.g. Mars Attacks)
• Batman, Batman Returns!
• Burton and fairy tales; Burton as fairy tale
• Burton and “Beauty” (films, bodies, and otherwise)
• Death, Ghosts, Haunting
• Humor, Horror, Satire, Allegory
• Family, Fathers, etc. (Big Fish, etc.)
• Mixed-genre (comedy-horror, Beattlejuice, ormusical-comedy-horror, Sweeney Todd, etc.)
• Suburbia/”The City”
• Love, attraction, rejection, sexuality
• TV work: (Alfred Hitchcock Presents: “The Jar,” ; Cartoon-TV’s “Family Dog”)
Please note: A potential publisher has expressed possible interest; work on this project may be relatively swift.
By 1 October, 2012, please submit a 250 word abstract and one-page CV to Johnson Cheu (cheu@msu.edu).
CFP: Horror (as/is) Humor, Humor (as/is) Horror: sLaughter in Popular Cinema (collection)
Johnson Cheu (cheu@msu.edu) and John Dowell (jdowell@msu.edu), eds. Deadline: 15 September 2012
In his review of Tavernier’s Coup de torchon, David Kehr wrote in When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade,
Death, violence, and moral corruption aren’t just slapstick props … but agonizingly real presences, and their comedy isn’t a release from horror, but a confrontation with it.… [H]umor and horror exist side by side, they play on the very thin line that separates a laugh from a scream, touching the hysteria common to both.… The best black humor makes us feel the horror. (186) Scholarly collections in Humor and Horror Studies have largely conceived of them as separate genres and fields. Yet popular culture has increasingly seen a rise in the emotional and visceral confluence of humor and horror—from black comedies, dark fantasy and a renewed interest in fairy tale adaptations, to fresh literary works, graphic novels, and politics and satire.
Scholarly essays are sought for a potential collection on the nexus of humor and horror—sLaughter—in popular culture texts with a primary focus on film. Topics may include, but are clearly not limited to: Genre (e.g., parody, science/speculative fiction, thriller, dark fantasy, cyberpunk/splatterpunk, “classical” comedy/drama, post-humanism, terror/ism, apocalyptica and TEOTWAWKI); Creator/auteur (e.g., Joss Whedon, Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Mary Harron, Matt Groening, Seth McFarlane, the Soska sisters, the Coen brothers, Bret Easton Ellis, Charles Bukowski, Amy Lynn Best, David Cronenberg, Tim Burton, John Carpenter); or Theory/Theorist (e.g., structuralism, grotesquerie/freakery, transgressionism, attraction=repulsion, bodily mutilation/ablation, postmodernism, biomechanics/cyborg interfaces).
We are not interested in Abbot and Costello, “camp,” or anything else offering the audience a chance to be “psychologically distanced” from mortal terror—beyond the fact that they are viewing images on a screen. Though we are interested in zombies, lycanthropy, vampirism, and that lot, we envision a much broader and more scholarly collection than the fanzone tends to produce—much scarier than Twilight, etc.—that addresses the intersection of humor/horror. We want you to make us feel it, and tell us why it’s important.
By 15 September 2012, please submit a 250 word abstract and one-page CV to both Johnson Cheu (cheu@msu.edu) and John A Dowell (jdowell@msu.edu)
Venture inside UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection for a peek at some of its science fiction and fantasy treasures — including fanzines, manuscripts, first editions, posters and more — and an assessment of the collection’s significance within popular culture and academia.
This UCTV Prime original series ventures inside UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection, the world’s largest collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and utopian fiction, for a peek at some of its treasures and conversations with writers and professors who offer up some intriguing ideas on science fiction’s expanding role in popular culture and growing acceptance in literary and academic circles.
A while back I came across an independent horror film, Midnight Son. I was intrigued by the different take on the vampire story, and that certain aspects of it reminded me of George Romero’s “vampire” film Martin from the 1970s. Today I received an update from the makers of the film letting me know that it is now available on DVD and Digital Download in the U.S. & Canada. (Image Entertainment is handling U.S. distribution, while Mongrel Media is handling Canada.) The DVD should be available in Walmart stores across the U.S., and also online at Walmart.com, Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, Frys.com, and more. Digital Downloads are available from iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Instant Video, CinemaNow, Playstation Store, Xbox Marketplace, and YouTube.
The media kit includes a synopsis of the film:
MIDNIGHT SON is the story of Jacob, a young man confined to a life of isolation, due to a rare skin disorder that prevents him from being exposed to sunlight. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bartender, and falls in love. Tragically, Jacob’s actions become increasingly bizarre as he struggles to cope with the effects of his worsening condition. Forced by the disease to drink human blood for sustenance, he must control his increasingly violent tendencies as local law enforcement narrow their focus on him as a suspect in a series of grisly murders.
The kit also includes an interview with the writer/director Scott Leberecht. Following are excerpts from that interview:
Tell us a little about the origins of MIDNIGHT SON, from concept to financing.
When I lived in San Francisco, there was an old house I walked past every day that was boarded up and seemingly abandoned. The odd thing was that someone had covered the windows (from the inside) with whimsical paintings of trees and rainbow landscapes. I imagined a person trapped inside that could not come out, trying to connect with people passing by– someone who perhaps could not be exposed to sunlight, and was very lonely. At that point I realized I had never really seen a vampire film that depicted the physical condition as something debilitating and tragic, as opposed to empowering or romantic.
Vampire films have been the “IT” topic on the big and small screens these days, with much criticism of certain sparkly vampires. You return the genre to its original horror, but how would you say MIDNIGHT SON is different from any other vampire film out today?
One aspect I struggled with was explaining the origin of his condition. Contracting the disease by being bitten felt cliché and derivative of other vampire movies. I wanted my character to be the victim of his own body. Congenital illness, puberty, sexual attraction, and love are all things that happen to us from the inside out. We generally dislike being at the mercy of anything, but when the thing we don’t want emanates from within, our self-image shatters. We must cope with a new set of rules, and our identity is temporarily on hold. These are very scary moments in life. I think the mysterious origin of his illness makes MIDNIGHT SON unique.
In your own words, why should people see MIDNIGHT SON?
MIDNIGHT SON is what I would call a “thinking man’s horror film”. I can’t enjoy movies targeted to teens, so it’s hard for me to find anything that plumbs the depths of human fear in a way that moves me. People should see it if they are looking for a mature, sensitive story that also appeals to the monster-movie-loving kid inside us all.
A piece in this weekend’s Los Angeles Times website holds dire implications for classic fantastic films. It is titled “Perspective: Millennials seem to have little use for old movies” by Neal Gabler. The point of departure for Gabler’s essay is the release of the new Spider-Man film, just a decade after the release of the film that started the franchise. According to those quoted in the article, such a period of time is an eternity for millennials, a major viewing demographic. Beyond this, it also demonstrates something significant about young people and their relationship to film. Gabler writes,
Young people, so-called millennials, don’t seem to think of movies as art the way so many boomers did. They think of them as fashion, and like fashion, movies have to be new and cool to warrant attention. Living in a world of the here-and-now, obsessed with whatever is current, kids seem no more interested in seeing their parents’ movies than they are in wearing their parents’ clothes.
This is very different than my experience, and perhaps the generation in which I was raised. I remember watching films as a kid with my dad, and even without him when my local Fox station held its annual summer film festival which played titles like King Kong, Dracula, The Caine Mutiny, and The Maltese Falcon. As a result I was familiar with stars and films from my parents and even my grandparents generations, a phenomenon which continued as I built upon this with the addition of successive aspects of cinema history. From time to time in the past my now grown children would find me watching black and white films, whether horror films from the 1930s and 1940s, or science fiction-horror from the 1950s, only to ask what obscure films these were, and demonstrating not only no awareness of such things, but no interest as well. In their thinking, surely only current films were worth watching and appreciating. With this in mind it would seem that Gabler’s perspective may be correct, and that millennials do indeed view film not so much as art or history valued in its past expressions as much as in the present, but rather as a trend as fleeting as today’s fashion.
But perhaps such attitudes to film may not be as widespread as Gabler fears. He notes that scientific studies on such questions have yet to be undertaken:
There are, unfortunately, no studies of which I am aware that examine the relationship of millennials to old movies. At best we have dated surveys about the antipathy of young people to black-and-white films. But MTV did conduct a study recently of how young people relate to contemporary films, which found that movies are deeply embedded in the social networking process. Young people begin tweeting about films in anticipation of their release and continue discussing them after the release so that the buzz is now more sustained than it has been. In effect, movies, new movies at least, create an occasion for an ongoing conversation.
But the fodder for conversations on Facebook or Twitter are hardly the stuff of depth in cinematic appreciation, and Gabler’s comments earlier in the essay on millennials and their stance on “old movies” should raise concerns. He writes,
They find old movies hopelessly passé — technically primitive, politically incorrect, narratively dull, slowly paced. In short, old-fashioned. Even Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man is a Model T next to Andrew Garfield’s rocket ship of a movie. And Model Ts get thrown on the junk heap.
This also raises the question about how millennials define “old movies.” From someone my age this might be understood as films in the 1920s or 1930s, but from a millennial perspective it would appear that any film with a shelf life beyond ten years is in danger of begin cast aside for the latest cinematic fashion update.
I would also suggest that Gabler’s essay poses dire implications for the future of classic fantastic films of the silent era and on into the Universal films of the 1930s and 1940s, and beyond that the horror-science fiction films of the 1950s (and possibly even later films in following decades depending upon how older films are defined). These films, and others, have been extremely influential on a previous generation of filmmakers, and much of contemporary horror, science fiction, and fantasy, has come about as a result of the influence of this body of material. What forces will influence the preservation of these films, not only as entertainment, but also as art, and the foundation of a variety of subcultures? Presently their continued financial value is a sustaining force, as studios release new versions of these films on Blu-ray for contemporary audiences. The forthcoming release of Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection is a welcome example of this. They will also survive in terms of homage, and a contemporary example of this is reflect forthcoming comedy-horror animated films, including Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie. But beyond this, if millennials and their attitudes toward “old movies” represent one of the primary forces that shape how film is not only produced for the future, but also how it is remembered and taken care of from the past, then it may be that a vast array of horror, science fiction, and fantasy films are in danger of loss in the following decades. Gabler recognizes this potential for older films in general. He concludes his essay with these sober words:
All of this makes it tough not only for old movies to survive but for movie history to matter. There is a sense that if you can’t tweet about it or post a comment about it on your Facebook wall, it has no value. Once, not so long ago, old and new movies, middle-aged audiences and young audiences, happily coexisted. Movies brought us together. Now a chasm widens between the new and the old, one aesthetic and another, one generation and another. It widens until the past recedes into nothingness, leaving us with an endless stream of the very latest with no regard for what came before. Old movies are now like dinosaurs, and like dinosaurs, they are threatened with extinction.
I have raised this concern previously and wondered what might be done as a result. How might fans and the organizations and networks they have created work together with film and popular culture historians and scholars to preserve older fantastic films? And how might older generations of fans work with those in younger generations to educate and inspire them about their value? Perhaps we can find ways to build bridges across the chasm, and in so doing save our beloved cinematic dinosaurs from extinction.
