Some recent research for new sources of material led me to the volume Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery (McFarland, 2011), edited by Regina Hansen. Hansen is is a senior lecturer at Boston University College of General Studies. This volume provides a helpful consideration of the important influences and contributions of Roman Catholicism to horror, fantasy, science fiction and other expressions of the fantastic. Following is our discussion of this book.
TheoFantastique: Regina, thank you for your time to discuss a great book. I’m not aware of previous treatments of this topic in book form which, if true, is curious given the prevalence of Roman Catholicism in horror and other genres of the fantastic. How did you come to develop this subject matter and these contributors?
Regina Hansen: I started planning for the book during discussions with friends at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (two of the book’s contributors, Christa Jones and Isabella van Elferen were part of those discussions). You’re right in that there hasn’t been much scholarly inquiry into this particular topic. There have been some terrific books on Catholicism in film, and Victoria Nelson’s essay on “faux Catholicism” in works like The Da Vinci Code was very helpful in our thinking about this book. The great thing is that many of the volume’s contributors wanted to be part of the project precisely because they’d always wanted to write on the topic of Catholicism in fantastic film but never had a chance. I came to the idea from both personal and scholarly interests. My family (at least my mother’s side) were very much steeped in the supernatural aspects of Catholicism: my great-grandmother really understood and studied the various devotions, to Mary especially. My grandfather read Aquinas and Francis of Assisi for fun. Being a part of that tradition really opened me up to the fantastic, to supernatural and metaphysical themes – in the stuff I like to write about, and in what I like to read and see in film. I think you’d find that to be true of many people actually. Still, in putting together the book, I didn’t need or want everyone to have the same point of view as I do. I love being a Catholic; I love everything about the practice of my faith – even though there’s also a lot that disappoints me on the social level. There’s plenty to question and a lot of that questioning has been done by filmmakers and critics in the fantastic. I wanted to have contributors who represented a spectrum of attitudes toward Catholicism and a spectrum of scholarly approaches as well. I think we really succeeded in that goal.
TheoFantastique: Can you comment on the various ways in which Roman Catholicism is uniquely suited to provide material for the fantastic in contrast with Protestantism?
Regina Hansen: The elements of Catholicism that make their way into films of the fantastic tend to be the ones that were rejected during the Reformation as idolatrous or pagan – devotion to Mary and the saints, the use of statues or other physical objects as a means of veneration or an aid to worship. But, I wouldn’t say it’s just a Catholic/Protestant thing. I think filmmakers are drawn to the non-Enlightenment, irrational aspects of Catholicism, in the same way that Gothic novelists used to be. Catholics are supposed to fully believe in a supernatural world, in supernatural events occurring on a daily basis – the priest actually turning bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, Mary and the saints as intercessors with God, angels, demons, all that stuff. Many Protestants are meant to believe in some of those things, too. The recent movie Exorcism deals with demons, etc. from a Pentecostal rather than Catholic perspective. Still, Catholicism has been around longer, and there is a Catholic presence in almost every country in the world. Catholic practice and iconography are weird and familiar at the same time, especially in the United States, where there weren’t really a lot of Catholics until the 1800’s.
TheoFantastique: Readers might first think of vampires and demonic possession in connection with Roman Catholicism, but while your book touches on these areas it also sketches broader areas of influence. Can you touch on the connection of this branch of Christendom to the broader realm of the monstrous and fantastic?
Regina Hansen: There are a lot of issues. For instance, in fantasy film and literature, so much of the traditional narratives grow out of Medieval romance, or have a Medievalist aesthetic that goes back to the pre-Raphaelites and the work of Morris and Rossetti. That kind of aesthetic is just not possible without dealing with the iconography of Catholicism, even if you end up changing it around a bit. Also, people don’t necessarily think about religious movies as movies about the fantastic, but of course they are. Traditional stories of saints’ lives are as full of that kind of stuff as anything from J.K. Rowling. In our book, Paulo Cunha and Daniel Ribas write about Marian apparitions in film – particularly Our Lady of Fatima. These are films about a supernatural personage appearing to a group of children and performing supernatural feats, like making the sun spin etc. That’s the fantastic right there. Also, one reason I wanted to do this book was to show how often entirely realist films create an atmosphere of the fantastic or uncanny simply by adding elements of Catholic religious practice or belief to the narrative. Kathleen Urda and Brett Gaul talk about this in their chapters, on the new Brideshead Revisited film and Gone Baby Gone respectively. A really great example (not in the book) is in The Godfather when Michael Corleone’s enemies are being slaughtered as he takes part in a baptism, and is supposedly rejecting Satan.
TheoFantastique: One of the chapters I connected with was the one by Christopher McKittrick in his analysis of the films of Terry Gilliam. I was surprised to learn of his being raised Protestant, and yet he has incorporated Roman Catholic elements in his films of the fantastic. How has this religious tradition impacted his work?
Regina Hansen: Again I see the impact in the Medievalist aesthetic of a lot of his work, from the interstitial cartoons he did for Monty Python’s Flying Circus to Monty Python and the Holy Grail to The Fisher King. At the same time, Gilliam/the Pythons pretty cleverly satirize some Catholic beliefs or doctrine, as in the song “Every Sperm is Sacred,” from The Meaning of Life. Chris McKittrick writes about all this but also suggests that the narrative arc of many of Gilliam’s films echoes theological questions that have often brought Catholicism and Protestantism into conflict: free will and the problem of evil, the importance of good works relative to faith. These are interesting things to think about.
TheoFantastique: I enjoyed Em McAvan’s exploration of The Lord of the Rings. How has Tolkien’s text come to involve multiple readings and layers in terms of Tolkien’s Roman Catholicism as well as New Age and pagan elements?
Regina Hansen: Tolkien was an observant Catholic; most people know that. At the same time, we don’t usually see LOTR as having much Catholicism in it. It seems much more based in Anglo-Saxon or Norse mythology, the kind of literature Tolkien studied and taught. Em sees the influence of Tolkien’ Catholicism in the novel’s sacramentality, its use of holy objects. She suggests that objects like “Galadriel’s phial of light and the elvish lembas bread” represent “the sacred embodied in the material.” (43) This idea is certainly central to Catholic practice, though not unique to it. Em also suggests that the films replace that element of sacramentality — of particular objects carrying particular holiness — with a more generalized New Age “reverence for all living things.” (49) So, if you look at the novel and films together, there really is the interplay among paganism, Catholicism and New Age thinking, and also, as Em reminds us, the danger of consumerism – taking objects so seriously, making them so holy that they become more important than what they represent, or just things to be acquired.
TheoFantastique: I’m finalizing some research for a chapter in the forthcoming book The Undead and Theology, so Jana Toppe’s chapter on zombie films and the Resurrection and Eucharist were of special interest. In what ways might zombie “resurrection” and the consumption of flesh and blood be read as a satire of Resurrection and Eucharist?
Regina Hansen: Christianity and Catholicism in particular make certain promises – people will achieve eternal life through the consumption of Christ’s body and blood; there will be bodily resurrection at the end of time. Zombie films sort of half fulfill these promises: Zombies eat flesh. Zombies live forever (or almost, until they get shot in the head) but they live forever without identity, without soul. Zombies are walking resurrected bodies, but just bodies and corrupt ones at that. The Zombie Apocalypse involves the resurrection of the body but, as Jana says, leaves out the promise for a better world. Interestingly, as Jana points out, early zombie films (like The White Zombie) were based on Haitian Voudoun, or a heavily exoticized version of it anyway. Since Voudoun has many Catholic elements, it seems as if Catholicism and movie zombies have been interacting since the early days of film.
TheoFantastique: I was pleased to see a discussion of The Others, a ghost story that was very well done. How does Roman Catholicism inform the identity and struggle of the main character, Grace, portrayed by Nicole Kidman?
Regina Hansen: Grace is obsessed with the “rules” of Catholicism, and her interpretation of them. She follows those rules obsessively, as a way to hide from herself the truth of her present situation (spoiler alert) that she’s dead and also killed her children, that she is the “other,” the ghost in the house. In their chapter, Anabel Altemir Giral and Ismael Ibanez Rosales suggest that in clinging to rules, to dogma, Grace not only blinds herself to her own state of being but to the potential for holiness all around her. They write about Grace’s denial of her “sacramental imagination,” her inability to see the objects and people in the house as potential “revelations of God’s grace.” (277) A full understanding of Catholicism includes the experience of a world alive with spirit and holiness. As happens with the character of Grace, blind adherence to rules for their own sake can cut one off from that world, that sacramental experience.
TheoFantastique: I would love to have seen someone grapple with the place of Roman Catholicism in the films of Guillermo del Toro. Are there any plans for a follow up volume that might include explorations like this?
Regina Hansen: Del Toro’s work is fascinating in this regard. He very much rejects organized religion and some of his nastiest characters are Catholic clerics. At the same time, he often portrays people of simple faith, who happen to be Catholics, in a very appealing way, and his work seems to find some kind of real power/value in Catholic objects and images. I’m working on a single author volume right now that will continue some of the work started in Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film, and I do plan to include Del Toro.
TheoFantastique: Regina, thank you again for a great book, and for your time in discussing aspects of this volume.
The documentary Trek Nation debuted on the Science Channel on November 30, presenting an interesting personal quest to understand the life and legacy of Gene Roddenberry. While many books and television programs have been done exploring Roddenberry and the Star Trek phenomenon he created, the unique aspect of Trek Nation comes in the form of its producer and perspective. This program is done from the perspective of Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of Gene Roddenberry, who died when Rod was only 17. By his own admission, Rod was not close to his father and experienced teenage rebellion, and although Star Trek impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people around the world, Rod was not a fan of the show while his father was alive. This documentary details the struggles of a son to understand a father through the eyes of those who knew and worked with him, and the fans who continue to venerate him.
Given the high esteem in which Gene Roddenberry is held by his fans, and the place he holds in pop culture history, one might expect that Trek Nation would present a glossy picture of its subject matter, but this is not the case. He is presented with all of his faults as well as his successes, even if at times members of the Roddenberry family and his former working colleagues are reticent to discuss the challenges of living and working with the television visionary and writer.
Two of the interviews in the film were especially noteworthy. In one instance Rod sat down with George Lucas to ask about the possible influences of Star Trek on his Star Wars phenomenon. Portions of this segment seemed a little awkward as Lucas acknowledged commonalities but emphasized vast differences between the two franchises, with one a science fiction television program emphasizing thoughtful storylines, and the other a space opera emphasizing action. At the conclusion of this interview Rod asked Lucas about his thoughts on the Star Trek vs. Star Wars battles that fans wage on the Internet (perhaps taken to new extremes with the web video battles between William Shatner and Carrie Fisher). Lucas downplayed such conflicts, said that he did not follow fan websites, and that the outcomes of such disputes are purely subjective. Another interesting segment came with the concluding interview with J.J. Abrams on his Star Trek film franchise reboot. Like Rod, Abrams was not a fan of the original series or the franchise which it birthed, and it was only after taking on the project that he discovered the significance of what it represents. Here both Abrams and Rod Roddenberry came to an appreciation of Roddenberry and his creative legacy decades after many in popular culture had found something significant in the work.
An interesting tension is described in the documentary that arose as a result of the death of Roddenberry in 1991. During this time Star Trek: The Next Generation was in production, and it fell upon Rick Berman to assume the creative mantle for the program. During his work on ST:TNG, Roddenberry’s optimistic humanism demanded that the future portray characters who had evolved beyond the conflict that had plagued much of human history. This presented a great challenge to writers since stories often revolve around the conflict among its characters. After Roddenberry’s death the writers for ST:TNG hoped that this restriction would be lifted, but Berman felt compelled to maintain Roddenberry’s initial vision. Yet even with Berman’s creative control giving deference to Roddenberry’s vision, eventually the writers were given room to explore conflict between characters and new subject matter that made for a very different, and some would say better, ST:TNG post-Roddenberry.
One of the elements that Roddenberry wanted to develop in the ST:TNG series was his distaste for various “superstitions” or religions which have so often been the source for conflict and war in human history. This is perhaps best exemplified in the ST:TNG episode “Who Watches the Watchers” where Captain Picard says, “Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? NO!” Yet despite Roddenberry’s strong disapproval of religion, ST:TNG was often ambiguous about its portrayal of religion and culture, demonstrating a shift from Star Trek‘s original cultural context of modernity and the shift to postmodernity in ST:TNG. With each succeeding series in the Star Trek franchise spirituality would continue to play a part, perhaps best exemplified in the religion of the Bajorans in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. (See Douglas Cowan’s discussion of this in the chapter “Heeding the Prophets’ Call: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” in Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television [Baylor University Press, 2010]).
Unfortunately, Trek Nation only briefly touches on elements that could have been explored in more depth in an effort to understand why Star Trek‘s philosophy has struck so deep a chord with many fans. At one point mention is made of the optimistic vision of the franchise as crystallized in the IDIC ethic, which stands for Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination. Scholars like Jennifer Porter have argued that this is the “root paradigm” of Star Trek wherein a cosmos of diverse beings with differing practices, beliefs, and perspectives are valued and co-exist in harmony (though this ethic frequently fails to play out practically in any number of episodes of Star Trek in its various manifestations). Trek Nation could have explored the significance of the IDIC ethic in more depth, and how some have argued that this functions as a secular form of spirituality or religion (as argued by Michael Jindra) with many fans undergoing the ritual of pilgrimage through convention attendance experienced as transformational festivals. Had this aspect of Roddenberry’s legacy been explored in more depth it would have made for a fascinating piece of television as viewers wrestle with how a noted secular humanist has left a pop culture phenomenon that functions as a piece of sacred mythology for thousands of people.
Trek Nation is a documentary that adds to our exploration of a piece of pop culture that wile seemingly out of energy a few years ago with the cancellation of Enterprise, now has new life and a new generation of fans with Abrams’ Star Trek film. In 2011, Having celebrated 45 years of adventure and exploration of the universe, Trek Nation helps reinforce the significance of Star Trek as a major television and pop culture influence of the 1960s, rightfully enshrined with The Twilight Zone as some of the best television writing of the period that holds up decades later.
After Frank Darabont’s unexpected and sudden departure from The Walking Dead at the beginning of production for Season 2 many fans wondered and worried whether the quality of the writing for the program would be compromised. Although some have expressed concerns about the allegedly slow pacing of this season in contrast with the first (a curious criticism in light of the nature of episodic television and the ability to explore characters, relationships, and other aspects of story in a protracted fashion unavailable in film) the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead should have removed any doubts about whether the series could continue in a quality fashion without Darabont’s creative input.
I would argue further that the program has continued to wrestle with a major concern of Darabont, one that he has dealt with in a previous horror film of his own, and which other horror directors have explored as well. That is that the real threat is posed not by the monsters on the outside wanting in, but rather by the fellow human beings one is locked up with in any number of apocalyptic scenarios in an attempt to survive. This is exemplified in what I think is the key scene in Darabont’s The Mist where several of the characters meet in the back of a store and strategize about the need to escape their temporary sanctuary and risk death from the various monsters inhabiting the mist. This is viewed as a more tolerable option than waiting for an increasingly popular religious fanatic in their midst to exercise her judgment in human sacrifice to appease her god. In the dialogue that ensues among the characters in this scene a decided lack of trust in human nature is evident:
DUNFREY: You don’t have much faith in humanity, do you?
MILLER: None whatsoever.
DUNFREY: I can’t accept that. People are basically good, decent. My God, David, we’re a civilized society.
DRAYTON: Sure, as long as the machines are workin’ and you can dial 9-1-1, but you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them, no more rules, and we’ll see how primitive they get.
MILLER: You scare people badly enough and you can get ‘em to do anything. They’ll turn to whoever promises a solution, or whatever.
DUNFREY: Ollie, please, back me up here.
WEEKS: I wish I could. As a species we’re fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us into a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?
According to several participants in this dialogue it is only social order, and with it the conventions of law, politics, and religion, that keep human beings from reacting in their most base manner and turning on one another, all in an effort to survive the challenges that come with the arrival of the “monster(s)” and the breakdown of that social order. This same major theme is prevalent in The Walking Dead, perhaps more so in Season 2 than in the first, and embodied in the battle between Shane and Rick Grimes. The zombies have overrun society and in the new social order questions have arisen as to who is best suited to lead the group of survivors. In addition, each member of Grimes’ group must ask themselves about what kind of ethical choices and actions are best in this new “survival of the fittest” reality.
So while some may lament the current season of The Walking Dead, I am enjoying its slower pace up to this point in that it provides more opportunities to reflect on the human condition in greater depth. In my view, fast pacing, extreme gore, and the zombie kill of the week is only so entertaining, and many viewers want more “meat” from the monsters they love in this groundbreaking zombie television program.
Paul Meehan has been the focus of interviews here previously on the subject of UFOs and the paranormal in cinema. He has also contributed his own written articles from time to time, and below you will find his latest essay touching on phantom clowns and the paranormal.
Phantom Clowns, Bogus Social Workers, and Men in Black
by Paul Meehan
Silent horror film star Lon Chaney, Sr. once famously observed that a clown may be funny in a circus ring, but imagine if your doorbell rang in the middle of the night and upon opening the door you found a clown standing before you in the moonlight. Chaney’s notion of “the clown at midnight” as an incongruous image of terror was put into practice in the carnival of grotesques he portrayed on the silent screen in movies like The Unholy Three (1925), The Unknown (1927) and West of Zanzibar (1928). Strangely, Chaney’s notion of the midnight clown would replicate itself into the enigmatic phenomenon of “Phantom Clowns” decades later.
Sometime around 1990, my family was living in Ridgewood, a working class neighborhood in Queens, New York. Our daughter attended the local public school, and one day we received a notice about a mysterious man dressed in a clown costume who was reportedly seen in the vicinity of the school attempting to lure children into a waiting car. At the time, this frightening narrative seemed like just another bizarre ordeal to be endured in anarchic 1990s-era New York City, but, oddly, the story was never covered in the local media, and there were no reports of arrests or of children actually being abducted. Back then, I had no idea that Ridgewood had been visited by a Phantom Clown.
In the early 1980s, anomalist Loren Coleman began receiving reports from around the country about evil clowns stalking children, which he documented in his 1983 book Mysterious America, and currently on his website, www.cryptomundo.com The first reports came from Boston, Brookline, Charlestown, Cambridge, Canton, Randolph, and other communities in the area in 1981. On May 6, the Boston police department responded to several complaints about individuals dressed in clown outfits harassing schoolchildren at local elementary schools. In one report, the clown was nude from the waist down and drove a beat-up, black van. In Brookline, two clowns tried to lure kids inside their vehicle by offering them candy. he clowns reportedly drove an older model, black van with ladders on the side, a broken headlight, and no hubcaps. Oddly, although the reports were widely discussed between local newspapers, police and parents groups, and a number of “birthday clown” children’s entertainers were questioned in connection with the sightings, no child was ever physically attacked or kidnapped, and no trace of the evil clowns was ever found.
Later in the month, Phantom Clowns began to be reported in Pittsburgh and in Kansas City, Missouri. The Kansas City clown drove a yellow van and wore a black shirt with a picture of the devil on the front and black pants with candy canes on the sides. He reportedly threatened the children with a knife, and in one report, a sword. One mother described how she watched as a yellow van approached her daughter and a friend on their way to a school bus stop. The van stopped and someone inside spoke to the two girls, who screamed and fled, while the van sped away. There were also reports of an individual wearing a rabbit suit terrorizing children in the area, as well as mysterious would-be abductors dressed as a gorilla and Spider-Man.
Sightings spread to Nebraska and Colorado before slowly fading away, and were attributed to group hysteria. But Coleman observed that these reports were strictly local affairs, and that the phenomenon had never been reported in the national media. Oddly, the reports continued to spread from state to state. And years later, the Phantom Clowns made a comeback.
In October, 2008, reports of an evil clown trying to lure children into a van with balloons began to emanate from the Chicago area. The clown was described as wearing a wig and white face paint with teardrops drawn on his cheek He reportedly drove a white or brown van with the windows broken out. Some reports described him as wearing a multicolored clown suit. As in previous outbreaks, reports of the clowns persisted for a few days before petering out, no children were harmed or abducted, and the mysterious bozos seemed to vanish into thin air once more.
Do the Phantom Clown reports stem from localized outbreaks of hysteria, are they merely urban legends, or are they something more sinister? The evil clowns reported in America had an analog in reports of “Bogus Social Workers” (abbreviated as BSWs) from all across England during the 1990s. A typical case occurred on the morning of October 10, 1995, when Mark Dunn was alone in his home in Manchester, his wife and children out of the house, and a visitor came to the door. It was a well-groomed, official looking woman of about 35, who claimed to be a social worker with the Manchester City Council investigating alleged mistreatment of his younger child. When Mr. Dunn demanded to see her identification, the woman told him she had to retrieve it from her car. Dunn observed her retreat to a parked car in which two men were waiting. The woman then got in and the car raced off.
Another BSW case occurred in Leigh, Lancashire, when a well-dressed couple came to the door of one Mrs. Carter, a local nurse who had two daughters. The man, who had the air of a petty bureaucrat, produced a photo ID that identified him as a worker with the community’s social services department, while the woman wore a scarf emblazoned with the words, “Child Protection.” The “social workers” claimed they were there to investigate reports that Mrs. Carter was not feeding her children properly. The pair inspected the home’s pantry area, but Mrs. Carter balked when the man requested to examine her children and the visitors were asked to leave. Mrs. Carter noticed that a large van was parked outside their home, and the man explained to her that the van was used to remove children that were deemed to ber at risk. There were three women inside the van wearing similar “Child Protection” scarves, but the man informed her that it would not be necessary to take her children at this time and abruptly left with his female companion.
When Mrs. Carter’s husband returned after work, the matter was reported to the police. As reports of the BSWs proliferated, twenty-three local police forces combined to form “Operation Childcare,” a program dedicated to tracking down the enigmatic social workers. Hundreds of BSW incidents were reported, leading the police to believe that multiple pedophile rings were involved. Yet, as with the Phantom Clowns, children were not abducted or harmed, and the police were unable to apprehend any of the perpetrators. As the decade of the 1990s progressed, visitations by the BSWs quietly faded into nothingness.
The Bogus Social Worker phenomenon has affinities with reports of the notorious Men in Black (MIB), who have been associated with UFOs since the late 1940s. Like the BSWs, the MIB are reportedly well-dressed, officious-looking individuals who visit the homes of UFO witnesses, intimidate them, and confiscate photos and other evidence. The MIB are also prone to making threats that are never carried out. While government agencies are probably responsible for the majority of MIB reports, some of them are so bizarre that many ufologists believe they are carried out by human-alien hybrid beings.
Oddly, many UFO abductees suffer from “coulrophobia,” or fear of clowns. It’s possible that these fears derive from evil clown images presented in popular culture. John Leguizamo played a demonic clown from hell in Spawn (1997), while Heath Ledger’s performance as Batman’s harlequin nemesis the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008) garnered him a posthumous Oscar for best supporting actor. More recently, a coulrophobic Jesse Eisenberg faced off against a zombie clown in Zombieland (2010).
Clowns are more explicitly linked with aliens in a number of films dating from the 1980s. In the low-budget British saucer movie Xtro (1983) a boy (Simon Nash) is abducted by aliens and in the aftermath acquires the psychokinetic power to animate his toys. He turns his toy clown into an evil, dwarfish harlequin who harvests green alien eggs from a hapless woman in a nightmarish sequence. he demonic clown doll recalls a similar monstrous toy animated by a supernatural force in Poltergeist (1982).
Stephen King’s It! (1990), a four hour telefilm adaptation of King’s 1986 novel, featured the inimitable Tim Curry as the evil clown Pennywise. Thirty years after a homicidal clown attack, seven childhood friends are drawn back to the little town of Derry, Maine to combat the menace of the clown, who has returned to claim more victims. Pennywise, who inhabits a sewer below the town, uses his telepathic powers to manipulate reality and lure children to their deaths. In the end, the evil clown is revealed to be a monstrous spider-like entity concealing itself behind the facade of the circus disguise.
In Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), a sendup of alien invasion flicks, a flying saucer full of extraterrestrial bozos lands near the amusement park town of Santa Cruz, California. The Klowns wreck havoc in the sleepy seaside community, abducting residents and cocooning them in cotton candy, killing people with lethal shadow puppets and perpetrating various sadistic acts of circus mayhem. The invasion is thwarted when local law enforcement learns that the Klowns are vulnerable in their bulbous red noses. While the film’s bizarre premise is played mostly for laughs, the grotesque Killer Klowns are surprisingly scary. According to Internet rumors, the Klowns are set to return to planet Earth in a 3-D sequel in 2012.
Oddly, some UFO abductees claim to have colurophobia as a result of their experiences. Clown imagery is thought to represent “screen memories” that mask the true face of their abductors. In their 1997 book The Truth About Alien Abductions, British authors Peter Hough and Moyshe Kalman write that, “The clown is the happy, smiling face in the car that tries to entice children to take a ride by offering sweets. It has been used to great effect in horror films and books. Yet it also surfaces in the twilight zone of anomalous experience. It is a thread that runs through the UFO phenomenon.”
The authors cite the experience of “Stephanie,” who had an unusual encounter in 1960, when she was 10 years old and living in Merseyside, England. Stephanie and another girl were playing in a row of abandoned buildings awaiting demolition when they saw something that attracted them inside one of the ruined homes. Hanging in an alcove inside the drab, dusty structure was a brightly-colored clown costume. Fascinated by the sight, the girls entered the house to get a better look, but when Stephanie attempted to touch the suit it rippled like a disturbed reflection on the surface of water, causing the girls to flee. It’s possible that the gaudy image was a hologram designed to lure children to a deserted location where they could be abducted.
Abduction researcher Budd Hopkins relates another clown encounter in his 2003 book Sight Unseen. A abductee named “Edward” (a pseudonym) had contacted him concerning his experience with an unusual individual inside an Outback restaurant in a suburb of Chicago in 1999. Edward, who was dining with his wife and a friend, had finished having dinner when he became aware of a man seated at another table who was staring at him intently. The man was dressed in an outlandish fashion, in Hopkins’s words, “as if he were a clown from a circus or an actor or some sort.” He was wearing a brightly-colored plaid jacket with a circular collar and leather elbow patches. He sported a distinctive beard and had dark, bronze-colored skin like a Native American, and was wearing a brown fedora. When Edward and his party had paid their bill and exited into a large, mostly deserted parking lot, they were confronted by the man once more, who was now standing beside a bright red sports car. Upon reaching their car, Edward was abducted while his wife and friend were rendered unconscious.
Coleman reports on another Plantom Clown sighting that may be abduction related. On August 11, 2009, a man driving his truck along a deserted rural road near Ardmore, Indiana at 3 a.m. called 911 to report that his truck was chased by a man wearing a clown suit who emerged from a wooded area. After chasing the truck, the clown disappeared back into the woods. Police officers responding to the 911 call could find no trace of the mysterious clown at the scene. It would seem that this Phantom Clown was unusually fast on his feet, and may have been a screen memory for an abduction event, an experience that typically takes place in a deserted location in the dead of night.
Of course, evil clowns exist in the real world, apart from books, movies and the anomalous zone of UFO abduction reports. The notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who confessed to killing 33 people, was fond of entertaining at children’s parties as “Pogo the Clown.” Then there’s the strange case of Emmett Kelly, Jr., son of the famous Ringling Brothers clown, who was convicted of killing his gay lover while claiming he was under the influence of his clown persona. In a more jocular vein are the “Jugallos,” fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse, who wear old clothes and facepaint, and who occasionally commit antisocial acts.
Whether they are aliens, criminals or pederasts, urban legends or screen memories, evil clowns have become part of America’s mythic landscape. Moreover, the Phantom Clown phenomenon has proved to be a genuine anomalous mystery that has endured over decades. Lon Chaney’s creepy vision of the Clown at Midnight still has the power to shock and evoke terror.
It is a great privilege to read and reflect on horror in its multiple manifestations and layers of meaning. Not all of this is pleasant, but it is nevertheless enjoyable. This is the case with the book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (Routledge, 2011) by Robin R. Means Coleman. Coleman is Associate Professor in the Department of communication Studies and in the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.
A description of Horror Noire from the book’s back cover:
From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890’s to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself.
Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race.
Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian “Nollywood” Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.
Robin R. Means Coleman discusses this book with TheoFantastique in the following interview.
TheoFantastique: Robin, thank you again for helping me secure a copy of the book for review, and for making time in an academic schedule for an interview. I was pleased to read in the Preface about your interest in horror, and to see the mention of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, going back to your childhood. How did your childhood interests in horror combine with your academic explorations of the topic?
Robin R. Means Coleman: I am from Pittsburgh, which was not only home to George Romero and Tom Savini but, as you and your readers certainly know, the Pittsburgh area is the setting for the Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead films. The Dead films are fantastically political, and incredibly ideologically sophisticated. The films were my first textbooks, teaching me how to ask tough questions about race, class, and consumption. Only horror can interrogate such themes with real courage and honesty because the genre isn’t beholden to mainstream sensibilities.
TheoFantastique: I think I’m fairly well read in the academic study of horror and genre films, but I don’t recall seeing much by way of a focus on an exploration of race. Is this an accurate understanding, and what drew you to focus on the unfortunate depiction of race, racism, and White vs. Black in much of horror cinema?
Robin R. Means Coleman: Actually, there are several great scholarly articles out there on Blacks in horror films by folks like Harry Benshoff, Frances Gateward, and Ellen Scott. But, as far as I know, no one has attempted to take on a book-length, full history—from the 19th century to present — of Blacks’ participation in American horror films. Though an academic book, I wanted to be respectful of this fun, evocative genre by not sucking the life out of it with overly puffed up academese.
I wrote the book because there are two themes which emerge about Blacks’ participation in horror. The first theme focuses on unfortunate depictions. This includes an obsession with Blacks as savage jungle dwellers practicing voodoo while placing White women in peril. Think: King Kong or Black Moon. I discuss these films, and a host of others, in the book. In addition, I specifically cite the 1931 film Ingagi as one of the most grotesque films ever made for its disgusting treatment of Blacks. Ingagi was promoted as a real-life documentary (it really wasn’t) about Blacks in the Congo who engaged in bestiality and even procreated with apes. The film featured an actor in an ape costume and was shot in a zoo in L.A. Still, people believed it that the film was absolutely true. It was devastating to race relations.
The second theme I present in the book is one about empowerment, unity, and camaraderie. Horror is one of the few genres that has the capacity of shun stereotypes and clichés. This means we can get beyond stereotype spotting, and focus on the innovative representations. There are horror films, like Welcome Home Brother Charles which is an indictment against police brutality and the notion of the hypersexual Black man. Charles is a Black man who takes out rogue cops with his penis! Another example of more empowering films are Hellbound Train, Go Down Death, Def by Temptation, or Tales from the Hood that offer inspiring lessons on protecting Black communities from drugs, gangs, and other “sins,” while valuing Black life. Horror films such as Kracker Jack’d expose Black-on-Black or intraracial strife, like calling one another the n-word or dismissing someone for not being “Black enough,” while presenting a message of unity. There are horror films with integration themes like Omega Man. And, then there are the horror films that are cool because they are simply horror—no more, no less—like Holla, The Embalmer, or The Final Patient. The point is, horror has shown it can be trailblazing in its treatment of Blacks.
TheoFantastique: What are some of the earliest representations of the connections of various fears to Blacks in horror?
Robin R. Means Coleman: I trace the Black boogeyman back to 1915 with Gus in The Birth of a Nation. Gus is the unbridled Black male in the film who obsessively pursues a young White girl. She is so sickened and terrified by Gus that she throws herself off of a cliff, and to her death, to save herself from Gus who is depicted as grotesque and utterly repulsive. By way of comparison, Frankenstein’s Monster is similarly grotesque, but we are moved to feel sorry for him. When Frankenstein’s Monster accidentally kills the little girl he is playing with, we feel just as bad for him as we do for her. That isn’t the case with Gus. He is so monstrous that the audience is asked to side with the KKK in its hate for such a creature. The horror genre constantly reinvents Gus. You see him in a range of movies from King Kong to Candyman. Gus as a horror figure is even traded on in political campaign ads like the infamous Willie Horton commercial. Gus gives rise to the brutal buck stereotype, and unfortunately that stereotype is still with us in horror and beyond.
TheoFantastique: I was interested in your mention of the enjoyment of horror in the Black community for many years. Why do you think there is strong connection to horror in the Black community, particularly when negative representations of Blacks have been so prevalent in the genre?
Robin R. Means Coleman: Initially, the book was also going to include interviews with Black viewers about their experiences with the horror genre. When I would ask about horror viewing, many Blacks would declare that they never watch horror: “too demonic” was often the reason for swearing off the genre. Then, they would proceed to recount the plots of dozens upon dozens of horror films that scared them! Night of the Living Dead, Blacula, Sugar Hill, I Am Legend, Blade, Candyman, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, nearly every Vincent Price scary movie, the comic horror films like Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein…these were all cited as popular films among Blacks. My research reveals that films like these were less expensive to acquire for “nabe” or neighborhood theaters located in Black communities. More, the Black press had a hand in promoting films that included Black characters. Though the Black characters were at times stereotypical, sometimes the press celebrated the fact that the rare Black face could be seen on the big screen. Then, Black audiences worked to see moments of resistance — a fighting back against the stereotypes — embedded in the performances. However, with films like Blacula, which directly disparages racism and the slave trade, it is clear why such a film could be popular among Black audiences, even if cheaply made. More mainstream films simply don’t have the courage. For example, films such as Mississippi Burning or a Time to Kill deal with race hatred, but they become these odd ‘White savior’ films. Outside of horror, for example, Will Smith portrays a self-sacrificing ghost/caddy in service to Matt Damon’s character in The Legend of Bagger Vance. Michael Clarke Duncan is similarly sacrificing in the supernatural film The Green Mile.
TheoFantastique: You speak positively in the book about George Romero breaking through the problem of race in horror through his zombie films. Can you speak to what you see as his positive contribution here?
Robin R. Means Coleman: Indeed, Romero and his crew are presented as revolutionaries in the book. I have the greatest respect for what Romero has accomplished with Night of the Living Dead, and then with Dawn of the Dead. You see, much of the 1950s and 1960s, before Night, as it pertains to Blackness, horror hit a bit of a low. There were the science-fiction themed films of the 1950s in which no one could image Blacks (or White women for that matter) competently working in laboratories. Films like The Giant Claw and The Alligator People render Blacks nearly invisible, and that goes on for much of the decade. Spider Baby kills off a deliveryman played by Mantan Moreland in its first minutes. This is pretty much Blacks’ existence in horror in the 1950s and 1960s. They are either comic relief or are rendered invisible, that is, until Night of the Living Dead which presents a Black man—Ben — in a serious, complex, dramatic role. Before Ben, Blacks simply were not depicted as smart and, absent voodoo, they could not be resourceful (for example, could the Haitian people in The Serpent and the Rainbow be powerful without voodoo). It is important to remember that Romero was driving his film to New York for distribution on the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. That was a real life reminder of how intent society was on limiting Blacks’ status. Hence, Ben was behaving on the big screen in a way that some Blacks in real life could not. In Dawn, Romero depicts the Black SWAT officer, Peter, as surviving the zombies alongside a very pregnant White newscaster, Francine. A great number of films before Dawn exploited fears of miscegenation. But Romero didn’t go that route. Working against the conventions of social fears was truly heroic. I think Romero showed image-makers across genres what is possible in how to write a human story. I just wish more filmmakers would pay attention.
TheoFantastique: You discuss Black-produced horror films. How have these helped express forms of horror that articulate Black fears and social issues?
Robin R. Means Coleman: In Horror Noire, I give significant attention to horror films made for and by Blacks. One thing that Black filmmakers tend to have in common is a theme of religiosity and redemption. The films of Eloyce Gist, Spencer Williams, James Bond III all focused on succumbing to temptation, sin, and the struggle for salvation. They all root their stories in the history of the Black southern Christian church. The fear is falling into wickedness. You see similarly themed movies coming out of Nigerian Hollywood or “Nollywood,” and in Tyler Perry films. The cautionary tale is universal.
Rusty Cundieff as director of Tales from the Hood and Snoop Dog as producer and star of Hood of Horror extend these religious themes by going beyond stories of saving individual souls. They exploit fears of being labeled a sell out to your community. You can imagine what happens to the Black cop who keeps quiet about White police brutality, or the Black guy who works on the political campaign of a White supremacist, or the Black guys selling drugs in the ‘hood. These actions are all depicted as the ultimate sins, from which there can be no redemption. In short, these movies say that the thing that Blacks fear most is discrimination, inequality, and actions that keep their communities from thriving.
TheoFantastique: With the changes of depictions of Blacks vs. Whites in horror as the genre has developed, what do you see the future holding in this area?
Robin R. Means Coleman: Like any other genre, horror presents great diversity in form and quality. Some films are craptastic, some are wholly entertaining, and some are really smart and inspiring…some are all three simultaneously! Today, the genre displays a keen self-awareness of its past, as evidenced by the Scream and Scary Movie franchises. Horror continues to get smarter as it moves beyond negative stereotypes. Now, horror tales are not obsessively pitting Whites against Blacks over fears of integration or miscegenation. What you see at present are diverse, interracial teams fighting vampires or zombie-making plagues (e.g., Dracula 2000 or almost anything with the rapper/actor Coolio in it). Good horror does not sugar coat our social quandaries. Good horror is going to be honest about the fact that we are all not gathered ‘round singing Kumbayah. Really good horror is going to be imaginative in how it portrays evil. The future of horror will rise and fall on filmmakers’ imagination. But, if we keep being subjected to remakes and “reimaginings” — the genre is, regrettably, going to become stale.
TheoFantastique: Robin, again, thank you for this interview, and for a great book that explores an uncomfortable topic.
Robin R. Means Coleman: And thank you for letting me share. I want to impress upon your readers that the book is an interesting read, and while it exposes some poor treatments, it is not an uncomfortable read. I believe it will be a fun and enjoyable exploration for any fan of the horror genre!
Horror Noire can be purchased from the TheoFantastique Store.
‘Monstrophy’ is a term referring to the academic study of monsters as representational and conceptual categories, which has gained recent currency in several related fields of study (literary and cultural history, sociological theories of identity and difference, et al.), as well as in a number of recent books and articles about monsters as subjects of theoretical interpretation. Etymologically derived from Latin ”monstrum” (meaning prodigy, ominous sign, monstrous creature or person, abomination) and Greek ”sophia”(?????, wisdom), hybrid compounding of monstrophy is not uncommon in disciplinary names, e.g. [[sociology]], another Greek and Latin compound.) Monstrophy literally means “wisdom about monsters,” and in academic usage refers to the broader study of monsters in society and history.
Monsters have been widely catalogued in their historical and ethnographic contexts, and have been commonly included in cultural products such as epic, folktale, fiction, and film, but have only begun to be studied seriously as semiological markers indicating the seams of internal cultural tension. Interpreters commonly note the “monstrous” as occupying space at the borders of a society’s conceptual categories, such as those relating to sexual and behavioral transgression, or to inherent prejudice and internal conflict (for instance, in race, gender, politics, and religion). Monsters are rarely fully distinct from the “human,” but are often comprised of hybrid features of the human and non-human. This issue of Preternature invites contributions that explore how the category of “monster” is used to define and articulate what a certain group of people articulates to itself to be properly human.
Contributions are welcome from any discipline, time period, or geographic provenance, so long as the discussion highlights the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the topic.
Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words (with the possibility of longer submissions in exceptional cases), including all documentation and critical apparatus. If accepted for publication, manuscripts will be required to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing footnotes).
Preternature also welcomes original editions or translations of texts related to the topic that have not otherwise been made available in recent editions or in English.
Queries about submissions, queries concerning books to be reviewed, or requests to review individual titles may be made to the Editor: Kirsten C. Uszkalo: kirsten@uszkalo.com
Inquiries about book reviews should be sent to the Book Review Editor: Richard Raiswell: rraiswell@upei.ca
In many ways, twentieth-century America was the land of superheroes and science fiction. From Superman and Batman to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, these pop-culture juggernauts, with their “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,” thrilled readers and audiences—and simultaneously embodied a host of our dreams and fears about modern life and the onrushing future.
But that’s just scratching the surface, says Jeffrey Kripal. In Mutants and Mystics, Kripal offers a brilliantly insightful account of how comic book heroes have helped their creators and fans alike explore and express a wealth of paranormal experiences ignored by mainstream science. Delving deeply into the work of major figures in the field—from Jack Kirby’s cosmic superhero sagas and Philip K. Dick’s futuristic head-trips to Alan Moore’s sex magic and Whitley Strieber’s communion with visitors—Kripal shows how creators turned to science fiction to convey the reality of the inexplicable and the paranormal they experienced in their lives. Expanded consciousness found its language in the metaphors of sci-fi—incredible powers, unprecedented mutations, time-loops and vast intergalactic intelligences—and the deeper influences of mythology and religion that these in turn drew from; the wildly creative work that followed caught the imaginations of millions. Moving deftly from Cold War science and Fredric Wertham’s anticomics crusade to gnostic revelation and alien abduction, Kripal spins out a hidden history of American culture, rich with mythical themes and shot through with an awareness that there are other realities far beyond our everyday understanding.
TheoFantastique: Jeff, thanks for coming back a second time to discuss your research and writing on the paranormal and popular culture. What kind of reception has Mutants & Mystics gotten from reviewers, and particularly among those working in religious and cultural studies?
Jeffrey Kripal: It’s hard to say, as it just came out, but there was a fairly substantial Roundtable Discussion of it on Patheos, which included, of course, a response from you. The respondents were generally enthusiastic, though some expressed reservations about some of my claims and readings. I think what they really meant is that I take the paranormal too seriously. But they were all kind, professional, and humane. And, besides, I appreciate their reservations. Heck, I don’t even believe myself sometimes.
TheoFantastique: I was struck early on in your book where you encourage the “deep reader of science fiction and superhero comics” to consider the influence of gnostic and esoteric literature. Yet curiously, we often hear the argument made that science fiction is incompatible with religion and spirituality. Given what you’ve argued in your book, what do you think about the influence of religion in general in science fiction and comics, and why do you think the gnostic and esoteric has been overlooked in particular?
Jeffrey Kripal: I think the influence of Gnostic and esoteric ideas on science fiction is patently obvious, and that this is only resisted by readers who are invested in some sort of materialist or scientistic worldview. “Science” is really a kind of code for the “supernatural” in much of this literature. Certainly not all of it. Sci-fi culture, like any culture, is radically plural.
TheoFantastique: I think many are used to thinking of science fiction as having more secular origins, and yet you speak of the role of certain schools of thought in “the occult origins and historical developments of fantasy literature and science fiction.” Are we talking about divergent streams of development, and how have Rosicrucianism and Theosophy played a part in the occult aspects of this?
Jeffrey Kripal: If you look at the reverence and wonder with which science is imbued, say, in early pulp fiction, you cannot help but see a certain religiosity at work here. You also see, by the way, a whole bunch of Rosicrucian ads advertising booklets on how to develop one’s own superpowers. This is not speculation on my part. Geez, just open almost any volume of AMAZING STORIES, and there are the Rosicrucians.
The manifest means of human or cosmic transformation in sci-fi, of course, are framed as scientific, but these means and methods are often indistinguishable from magic. That is their latent meaning. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous line about how any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic was more insightful than probably even he recognized.
I also think something else is at work here. What cutting edge science does so well is show how “the impossible is real,” that is, it demonstrates that the universe is far, far weirder than we thought, and that this weirdness is not simply a function of our imaginations. It is the real. That’s so mind-blowing.
TheoFantastique: How significant have Stan Lee and Jack Kirby been to the development and exploration of esoteric mythemes in comics, and now by extension, in cinematic treatments of these comics?
Jeffrey Kripal: It was this team that created so many of the standard Marvel superheroes we see today on the silver screen. I remember Lee well as a kid. His chatty, friendly, playful way of interacting with his readers was just wonderful. We all felt like he was talking to us. That’s because he was. But it was Kirby who probably brought the real Gnostic and mystical sensibilities to these characters, mostly, I suspect, because he himself was so invested in these ideas and possibilities. He was fascinated by the ancient alien hypothesis, as well as by parapsychology, Kabbalah, psychical phenomena, and so on. Not that Lee has not also shown interest in such things from time to time. He sent a brief but lovely response to me years ago when I wrote him about my project. And his recent television series on “real superpowers” is a good example of his openness to this kind of approach. Thank you, Stan.
TheoFantastique: I was surprised to see you refer to Gene Roddenberry’s interest in psi phenomena and altered states of consciousness. It is well known that he was a secular humanist, and this comes through in the original Star Trek series. And yet as I consider your reference to his paranormal interests I recall many episodes where the paranormal surfaces, as in the second pilot episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” It features two crew members who encounter a phenomenon in space that gives them paranormal, almost godlike powers. Might this be an example of the “baptism” of the paranormal and esoteric in scientific guise so as to be more palatable to Roddenberry and other materialist-oriented science fiction fans?
Jeffrey Kripal: Exactly. I am not sure there is any real contradiction here. One has to keep in mind that the whole language of “the psychical” and “the paranormal” was developed by intellectuals and humanist scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as ways of talking about these things that was not “supernatural.” I mean, the paranormal is precisely that—“normal,” and yet something beyond or “para” what we consider at the moment to be normal. Most of these intellectuals believed that the supernatural was simply the natural that we did not yet understand. These terms, of course, have been re-deployed by our present media in highly undisciplined, and often frankly silly, ways, but their origins were quite serious and quite precise.
TheoFantastique: In your conclusion you refer to “our present mirrored cultures of religious fundamentalism and scientific materialism, which appear oddly united in their ferocious ‘damning’ of the paranormal.” What would you like to see by way of developments that might move us beyond this impasse? Including the paranormal on the research agendas of religious studies and cultural studies? Dialogue between the esoteric, religious and scientific communities? Other suggestions?
Jeffrey Kripal: We simply need to stop shaming, humiliating, demonizing, and dismissing individuals who come forward with heart-felt descriptions of their own encounters with the impossible. We also need to integrate these narratives and experiences into our models of the world, be these advanced in the humanities or the sciences. I am completely convinced that the cultural taboos around these things are really quite weak and basically insecure. They are basically bluffs. Or they are barks, not bites. If enough people stood up and just said, “Stop it,” it would, more or less, stop. The truth is that the vast majority of thinking individuals are utterly, and rightly, fascinated by these extraordinary events. Why do we have to be so damned boring? Why should we stay in our boxes?
TheoFantastique: Jeff, thank you again for the book, the interview, and the opportunity to be part of the discussion concerning it.
Jeffrey Kripal: Thank you, John. I always enjoy what you have to say. I think you are part of what makes our culture so interesting and so healthy. Thank you for saying “Stop” in your own way.
Vol. 1 – The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend
Vol. 2 – The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire
Editors
Barbara Brodman, Nova Southeastern University
James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University
Project Overview
For almost 200 years, since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early 19th century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure?
In Volume I, Part 1 of the collection, Origins of a Legend: Early Mythic Images of the Vampire, we hope to shed light on this question. By tracing the development of the early Norse draugr figure into later European lore, we may see the underpinnings of Dracula who, of course, first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The Romantic vampire, upon which we focus in Part 2 of this volume of the collection, first coalesced around the figure of Lord Byron and his associates in the early 1800s; but what were its earlier sources? Could these have included the legendary Spanish “lady-killer,” Don Juan? And did they constitute resistance to the dominant culture of the time? As several of the essays in this collection deal with these literary connections, others will move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual and the existence of similar or identical vampiric traditions in Asian and other non-European settings.
Volume I, Part II, A Tradition Takes Form: The Imprint of the Romantic Vampire, will focus on various aspects of the classic Dracula of Bram Stoker, including the author’s use of colonized language and colonial discourse and manifestations of the Stoker image in film, literature andlore around the world. This set of essays will also examine from various perspectives the relations between other hallmark works of 19th-century vampire literature, such as J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and modern films, including Interview with the Vampire and Let the Right One In.
Volume II of the Universal Vampire Series, The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire, will be an eclectic mélange of essays, including a discussion of evolution and atavism in the vampire film, The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998); critical pieces that examine the modern Asian vampire, on stage, in graphic novels and in film; images of the Vampire in contemporary Japan (where, according to its author, vampires should be “beautiful”); an analysis of the vampire in popular Russian culture; and the obligatory studies of vampires in The Twilight Saga and the True Blood series.
Each volume in the collection will contain 15 original, thought-provoking essays, chosen to both augment and challenge the classical vampire corpus and examine the evolutionary path the legend has taken in modern arts and letters.
Audience
The book is intended for an informed popular audience interested in the vampire legend and its manifestations in literature, film, visual arts and popular culture. Given the popularity of the vampire and the almost insane pace at which authors, artists and film makers strive to present newer and more innovative takes on the legend, we anticipate that the book will appeal to a broad readership throughout the English-speaking world. With the growing number of academic conferences that focus on the theme of the vampire, and the proliferation of courses dealing with the vampire legend in colleges and universities, we are confident that a large academic audience exists as well.
Competition
Two recent studies have endeavored to trace the development of the Vampire in literature, film and popular culture: John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart’s Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms: Essays on Gender, Race, and Culture (Scarecrow Press, 2009) and Matthew Beresford’s From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth (Reaktion Books, 2008). Both of these collections are devoted largely to the Dracula mythos, the subject as well of Elizabeth Kostova’s 2005 The Historian: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company). In our proposed collection, we plan to extend this discussion outwards from a focus primarily on Dracula to the notion that the vampire is truly universal, with the literary Count only one manifestation.
Anticipated date of completion: September 2012
About the Editors
Barbara Brodman is Professor of Humanities at Nova Southeastern University, where she teaches courses in international history and literature. With graduate degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the University of Florida in both literature and the social sciences, her research favors interdisciplinary studies of topics ranging from the Mexican cult of death to the Don Juan legend to the universal legend of the vampire.
James E. Doan is Professor of Humanities at Nova Southeastern University, where he teaches courses in literature, the arts, folklore and mythology. With an M.A. in Folklore and Mythology from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Folklore and Celtic Studies from Harvard University, he has long been interested in the relation between folklore and literature, including the development of
the vampire legend from its mythic origins to modern film and other cultural productions.
Both Brodman and Doan have published extensively in their fields of research and present fresh research regularly at conference. Their collaboration on this collection derives from a co-authored paper on the Don Juan and vampire legends, which they successfully presented at conference and to their peers in 2009.
TheoFantastique is pleased to announce a new contributor, and feature. Comic artist and historian Arlen Schumer, who has contributed here previously on The Twilight Zone, will be contributing essays known as the ComiColumn. Arlen’s website provides some background on his work and talents:
Arlen Schumer is an award-winning comic book-style illustrator for the advertising and editorial markets; an author/designer of coffeetable art books, including The Silver Age of Comic Book Art (Collectors Press), which won the Independent Book Publishers Award for Best Popular Culture Book of 2003; and a recognized expert on American popular culture—especially the legendary television series The Twilight Zone and the music of Bruce Springsteen—presenting his VisuaLectures on these and other subjects at universities and cultural institutions across the country since 1988.
Arlen’s ComiColumn’s will be posted on the main page of TheoFantastique, and will also be part of a new ComiColumn page all their own, thus giving this blog an additional dimension that explores comics as important cultural pieces of the fantastic from the unique perspective of Arlen Schumer. Below we are pleased to present the first ComiColumn essay.
“The Auteur Theory of Comics”
Text adapted from the visual presentation made by Arlen Schumer at the New York Comic Con panel, Saturday, October 15th, 2011.
The recent court loss for the Jack Kirby estate in its battle with Disney, Marvel’s corporate owner, over copyright/ownership of the Marvel characters, revealed Stan Lee’s testimony as being the usual lynchpin in deciding the case in his, and Marvel’s, favor, that testimony essentially promulgating the same misconception that he, not Kirby, was the true author of the Marvel Universe by dint of his salaried role as editor and writer, and Kirby’s professional status as a work-for-hire employee. This misconception ignores the actual role Kirby played in the actual creation of those seminal comic books, as the auteur—author in French—of their stories. “Auteur” in the way Franco-cinemaphiles in the 1950s—first Francois Truffaut in the journal Cahiers du Cinema, and then American counterparts like The Village Voice’s film critic Andrew Harris—postulated their Auteur Theory of Film, that a film’s director, and not the screenwriter, as was previously thought, was a film’s true author.
So too can the Auteur Theory of Film be accurately applied to the “Marvel Method” of comic book authorship, innovated by Lee, who gave his artists (originally and primarily Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) anything from a typed synopsis of a story to a verbal springboard of an idea—the equivalent of the screenplay in film—and the artists drew out/plotted/staged/paced the story visually to fill the page count given, using two-dimensional versions of the same tools and devices a movie director uses to craft a film: casting, editing, lighting, sound, choreography—after which Lee would add the dialogue and captions to the artists’ work.
Stan’s interviews from the ‘60s, which stand in contrast, and somewhat of a contradiction, to his testimony in this case, were submitted in documents—eventually thrown out by the judge—during the testimony of Kirby experts John Morrow (publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector) and Mark Evanier (Kirby’s biographer); here’s an example:
“I would tell Jack the main idea that I wanted, and then we would talk about it, and we’d come up with something. I would give him the outline for the story. As we went on, and we had been working together for years, the outlines I gave him were skimpier and skimpier. I might say something like: ‘In this story let’s have Dr. Doom kidnap Sue Storm, and the Fantastic Four has to go out and rescue them. And in the end, Dr. Doom does this and that.’ And that might have been all I would tell him for a 20-page story. If the book was 20 pages long, I’d receive back 20 beautifully drawn pages in pencil which told a story. Jack would just put in all the details and everything. And then it was—I enjoyed that. It was like doing a crossword puzzle. I get the panels back, and I have to put in the dialogue and make it all tie together. So we worked well together that way for years.”
Ergo it was the artists who were the actual storytellers, not “just” the artists, with Lee, of Marvel Comics, like the directors of films have been considered the true authors of their films for over 50 years now, entitled to the benefits of credit and copyright protection of their films.
At the same time, this is not to deny Lee’s co-authorship and creatorship of Marvel Comics—he deserves exactly 50% of the credit, for his absolutely crucial contributions as editor/writer/art director/salesman and spokesman—but not a percent more or percent less. The sad fact of the matter is that Lee has successfully campaigned throughout his post-working relationships with Kirby and Ditko to create the perception—and therefore the “reality”—that he was the 100%, primary, sole creator of the Marvel Universe, relegating Kirby, specifically, to the historically demeaning role of the artist as merely a “pair of hands,” a “wrist” who robotically drew up Lee’s scripts, the only “theory”/process of comic book creation the judge was presented with.
(Comic creators like Will Eisner and Jm Steranko, who both write and draw their own work, are not germane to this discussion; they’re already 100% creators of their works. The Auteur Theory in both film and comics, as I’m applying it, pertains to those directors and comic artists who did/do not write their movies or comics, but collaborate with screenplay writers or comic writers; by dint of the act of directing a film, and drawing a comic book story, the director and the artist are the true authors/auteurs of their respective final product. The comic book works of writers like Alan Moore and Harvey Kurtzman are trickier to evaluate; for who is the auteur of Moore and artist Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen? Who is the auteur of Two Fisted Tales/Frontline/Mad? Because both Moore and Kurtzman functioned as much as art directors as writers—Moore verbally with his notorious panel descriptions and Kurtzman visually with his layouts—they’re legitimate exceptions. The overarching concept of the Auteur Theory of Comics is that it applies to any artist who does the visualizing of a comic book story, because the act of illustrating a comic book script—whether old-school full-script “DC style,” “Marvel style,” or whatever style—makes that artist a de facto auteur of the final “product” and therefore a de facto 50/50 co-creator of the work.)
The Marvel Method comic-creation working relationship of Lee & Kirby operated, in actuality, more like the Beatles’ Lennon & McCartney songwriting team; just as the early Lee/Kirby Fantastic Fours were closer to true 50/50 collaborations (see Lee’s 1960’s interview recollections and typed script/synopsis for FF #1), so too were Lennon/McCartney’s initial songs together. But as the years went on, Beatles songs became more often de facto solo projects, like McCartney’s “Yesterday,” or his “Hey Jude,” in which Lennon’s lyric, “The movement you need is on your shoulder,” is his sole contribution—essentially no different than Lee suggesting to Kirby in ’65 to have the FF fight a really big villain, and Kirby coming up with the entire Galactus/Silver Surfer trilogy (as in penciling the entire story out, and writing dialogue bits and notes in the margins). Since every Beatle song could never be perfectly quantified as to who did what, John and Paul decided early on to credit their Beatles songs to an across-the-board 50/50 split, “Lennon & McCartney,” making it easier to share in the real world of publishing credit and royalties. That’s how Lee should’ve worked with Kirby, who did the heavy lifting of actually “telling” the stories so that Lee could “write” multiple comics—the practical, economic imperative behind perhaps the greatest storytelling breakthrough in comic book history.
“That whole thing that he and Jack started was strictly for expediency because he didn’t have the scripts ready. That’s the reason. It was not done out of any stroke of genius, it was done out of expedience. Jack would call up and say, ‘Stan, I didn’t get the story yet, or the script” and Stan would say, “Ok, what I’m going to do is describe the first five or six pages in action for you, do them without words and when you send them in I’ll put the words in.’ That’s how it grew into the Marvel method of art first and script second. It was like sunlight had come into the room because this was a visual medium that had become a verbal medium for fifty ears, and suddenly it was the visual medium that it had intended to be in the first place. I think that the biggest thing Stan and Jack contributed to the industry was that. Visual first was a huge step forward; it was like a quantum leap.” —John Romita
Yet despite this grand recollection, Stan always took full writer’s pay, while artists like Romita were never remunerated for their co-plotting and de facto writing. The most egregious example of this practice taken to an absurd degree is the famous Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #1 (June ’68) opening sequence written and illustrated by Jim Steranko, whom Stan didn’t want to pay as a writer because, according to Steranko, “…there were no words on the pages”! This myopia of Lee speaks not only to the primacy of word over image in both the lay public’s and the average comic reader’s—and creator’s—minds, but to the misunderstanding of the entire process of visual storytelling in comics, where the artist has control over sound as well as lighting and staging of a writer’s words; If he feels a sequence in the story can best be told silently, as in film or television, he has that paint in his palette. Theoretically, if Stan himself had written that SHIELD story—even traditionally, in full-script, with the dialogue he would’ve preferred—the auteurship of that sequence would still be Steranko’s!
Because the artist in comics has always been the auteur of the comic book reading experience, due primarily to the primacy of the visuals themselves; or, as artist Gil Kane put it once: “The only thing that makes comics worth reading is the art.” And Gene Colan said: “Every story I ever drew was like being the director of a film.” These simple statements are part and parcel of the Auteur Theory of Comics, the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge: that in the verbal/visual medium known as comic books, the visual creation of a story is a de facto act of co-creation (and therefore morally and ethically entitled to all the legal benefits of co-creatorship).
Take the origin story, probably the most important component establishing the legal provenance of a comic character. Lee has always maintained, in court and out, that he created the character concepts first, and thus “created” them fully. But there was a little-known “character concept” bandied about for 15 years, called “Spiderman,” that didn’t become a copyrightable/trademarkable/successful character until artist Steve Ditko put pencil to paper and created the “Spider-Man” we know of, of stage, screen, comics, merchandise and de facto logo of Marvel, as the mouse ears are to Disney. As Ditko’s iconic Spider-Man “self-portrait” implies, a comic book “creation” isn’t fully “created” until an artist visualizes his own or a writer’s idea/synopsis/script. Which begs the question: was Stan Lee’s verbal origin story of Spider-Man more “important” in the overall/eventual success of the character than the greatest costume design in the history of comic book superheroes by Steve Ditko?
Are Gaines’ and Feldstein’s overwritten captions and word balloons to those classic EC Comics more “important” to their renown than the golden-age-of-illustration artwork that conformed to their prepared panels?
Are Bob Haney’s great 1968-69 Brave & Bold stories more “important” than the auteurism of Neal Adams’ artwork/storytelling, in which he changed all of Haney’s daytime scenes to night, just as a director of a film might alter the screenplay to more effectively work on the screen, not the printed page as the screenwriter wrote it?
Are Marv Wolman’s Tomb of Dracula concepts/writing/dialoguing more “important” to that ‘70s success story than the auteurist, atmospheric artwork/storytelling of Colan/Palmer?
When I was reading those Batman reprints from the ‘50s in those eighty-page annuals during the ‘60s, I was entertained by a raft of reprints, all uncredited, as was the DC policy then. So why did the stories illustrated by (we later found out) the great Dick Sprang stand out from the surrounding hackwork of Bob Kane ghosts? Because, despite working from complete scripts and tight editorial control (just like that of the Hollywood movie studios) Sprang’s confident, direct, exaggerated qualities that we came to love about Sprang made every story he illustrated a “Dick Sprang story,” no matter whether Edmond Hamilton or Bill Finger or whomever wrote them, because Sprang was the auteur of those Batman stories—just as the great film directors Hitchcock, Hawks and Ford, who worked from others’ screenplays within an extremely collaborative/edited/oft-censored medium, with producer control no better or worse than comic book artists had to deal with (and are still dealing with), were later declared auteurs of their films by the French film theorists.
Like film, comics are a synchronistic collaboration of words and pictures, ergo any form of a verbal script is only half of the art form known as the “comic book”—whether it’s as brief as Lee’s capsule directives to Kirby, or as extensively detailed as Alan Moore’s panel exegeses for Gibbons to follow in Watchmen.
To those who still damn Gibbons with faint praise for Watchmen’s success because, to one online poster, “a raccoon could have drawn that story and it would have been awesome,”Watchmen is, indeed, a 50/50 collaboration no matter how you parse Moore’s and Gibbons’ individual contributions, and good luck to you if you’re going to try—it’ll always be purely subjective. Moore’s Watchmen script is only worth what someone’s willing to pay to read it in its original form, just like screenplays to films are available to those who want to read them—but neither are complete artistic entities on their own. Moore himself would be the first one to admit that all of his comic book collaborations, with a who’s who of artistic greats like Eddie Campbell, Brian Bolland and Bill Sienkiewicz are equivalent in their contributions of words and pictures (hence Moore’s equitable sharing of both the legal and financials of each property). And to further diminish the line of “reasoning” that Gibbons’ “contribution” to Watchmen was somehow minimized by Moore’s gargantuan talent, imagine what a less-cerebral 2000 AD artist than Gibbons would’ve done with Moore’s Watchmen scripts—or what an average Marvel artist like Don Heck would have done with Lee’s “Have the FF fight a really big villain” idea, or what kind of costume artist Larry Lieber would’ve designed for Spider-Man!
There is a reason that Alan Moore gets more credit from the general public for Watchmen than Gibbons does; it’s why Stan also gets more credit than Jack. Literary criticism far outweighs visual/art criticism in terms of both column inches and overall impact and ubiquity, with far more literature courses taught in universities than art history. And because the graphic novel and serious criticism of comics as a visual/literary hybrid are still relatively recent—and even then, because most comics fans are not visually literate enough to actually discuss the artistic merits (and faults) of comic book art to the same degree that they discuss story/character, comics criticism pretty much follows the standard story/characters discussion, with a backhanded compliment of the “art chores” usually falling to the penultimate paragraph of most comics reviews. Combined with the fact that both the lay and comic audiences know far more about traditional “art”—painting and sculpture, and now computer graphics—than they know about how comic book art is actually produced, and you have the current situation, in which Stan Lee is thought of as both the writer/creator and the artist of Marvel Comics! Want proof? From a recent issue of Comic Shop News (#1259), by Cliff Biggers & Ward Batty in cooperation with newsarama.com:
“Comics icon Stan Lee, creator of the Mighty Marvel Universe and characters such as Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, X-Men, and Iron Man…”
Think of this Auteur Theory of Comics being the testimony in defense of Kirby that could have/should have followed Lee’s entirely self-serving testimony, enlightening the court, the media covering the trial, comic book readers and the general public to truly understand, maybe for the first time, the role of the artist in the de facto co-creation of a comic book work, and to the truth of the Marvel Method in actual practice, asserting an artist of the magnitude of Jack “King” Kirby his morally and ethically rightful place as the auteur of the Marvel Comics Universe.
One of the books I’m reading and enjoying in preparation for an interview in the near future is Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (Routledge, 2011), by Robin R. Means Coleman. As the title indicates, the book looks at how blacks are represented in horror films, and how their portrayal often reflects America’s long history of racism. While the book includes a wealth of examples, at one point in the volume Coleman considers John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing and the character Childs. She notes that this character represents a departure from Black roles in previous horror films, and is largely a positive one as a counterpoint to MacReady. But the assessment of Black representation in the film is not completely positive in her view.
Looking at the final scene of the film where the Arctic camp has been blown to bits and only MacReady and Childs have survived, each skeptical of the other as to whether they are human or an alien, yet too tired and cold to do anything about it, Coleman considers this scene as a possible indicator of Black vs. White. Coleman quotes Edward Guerrero in a negative view of the final scene and what it allegedly says about race:
as the camera frames the survivors in medium close reverse shots of mutual suspicion, one can discern that the breath of the white man is heavily fogged in the Antarctic air, whereas the black man’s is not. The implication is subtle but clear. The Thing lives on and, interestingly enough, its carrier is yet another socially marginalized form, the black male.
I couldn’t disagree more with Guerrero’s reading of this scene. MacReady is framed with greater light from the surrounding fires of the camp than is Childs, and it is only natural that his breath would be more readily visible in the cold air. When this scene is compared with a previous one, the argument is weakened if not invalidated. Earlier in the film, after Bennings is taken over by The Thing he runs into the cold air and is surrounded by the members of the camp. As they confront him he runs and lets out a wail, and with it his breath is easily visible. Guerrero’s idea that we can discern the alien presence by noting which character’s breath is visible in the cold air breaks down with this contrast of one scene with another.
I believe that Coleman’s book is an important one as we grapple with the unfortunate depictions of racism in horror films, a topic which we will explore on this blog in greater depth in the future. But the case for racism in horror is weakened when forced readings see racism where none exists. Carpenter’s The Thing is to be commended for its inclusion of a strong Black character, bucking the trends of decades of prior horror films.
UPDATE 4/21/17
Collative Learning explored this topic and came to the same conclusion as mine previously discussed above. For that analysis see below. Collative Learning has a lot of great film analysis, including a substantial amount of interaction with genre films. Highly recommended.
Some recent research for new sources of material led me to the volume Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery (McFarland, 2011), edited by Regina Hansen. Hansen is is a senior lecturer at Boston University College of General Studies. This volume provides a helpful consideration of the important influences and contributions of Roman Catholicism to horror, fantasy, science fiction and other expressions of the fantastic. Following is our discussion of this book.
Regina Hansen: The elements of Catholicism that make their way into films of the fantastic tend to be the ones that were rejected during the Reformation as idolatrous or pagan – devotion to Mary and the saints, the use of statues or other physical objects as a means of veneration or an aid to worship. But, I wouldn’t say it’s just a Catholic/Protestant thing. I think filmmakers are drawn to the non-Enlightenment, irrational aspects of Catholicism, in the same way that Gothic novelists used to be. Catholics are supposed to fully believe in a supernatural world, in supernatural events occurring on a daily basis – the priest actually turning bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, Mary and the saints as intercessors with God, angels, demons, all that stuff. Many Protestants are meant to believe in some of those things, too. The recent movie Exorcism deals with demons, etc. from a Pentecostal rather than Catholic perspective. Still, Catholicism has been around longer, and there is a Catholic presence in almost every country in the world. Catholic practice and iconography are weird and familiar at the same time, especially in the United States, where there weren’t really a lot of Catholics until the 1800’s.
TheoFantastique: I enjoyed Em McAvan’s exploration of The Lord of the Rings. How has Tolkien’s text come to involve multiple readings and layers in terms of Tolkien’s Roman Catholicism as well as New Age and pagan elements?
Regina Hansen: Grace is obsessed with the “rules” of Catholicism, and her interpretation of them. She follows those rules obsessively, as a way to hide from herself the truth of her present situation (spoiler alert) that she’s dead and also killed her children, that she is the “other,” the ghost in the house. In their chapter, Anabel Altemir Giral and Ismael Ibanez Rosales suggest that in clinging to rules, to dogma, Grace not only blinds herself to her own state of being but to the potential for holiness all around her. They write about Grace’s denial of her “sacramental imagination,” her inability to see the objects and people in the house as potential “revelations of God’s grace.” (277) A full understanding of Catholicism includes the experience of a world alive with spirit and holiness. As happens with the character of Grace, blind adherence to rules for their own sake can cut one off from that world, that sacramental experience.
