The University of Hertfordshire in the UK is hosting an academic conference on the undead next week. The conference is titled “Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Human Culture.” The conference is described as follows:
The aim of the conference is to relate the undead in literature, art, and other media to questions concerning gender, technology, consumption, and social change. It will provide an interdisciplinary forum for the development of innovative and creative research and examine these creatures in all their various manifestations and cultural meanings.
The conference, scheduled for April 16-17, is bringing together a number of contributors who will address various facets of the undead in culture, including Victorian conceptions of the creatures, contagion, undead teens, politics of the undead, and undead romance, just to name a few. The conference schedule with a list of topics and presenters can be downloaded here.
My latest contribution to Cinefantastique Online was recently posted. Below is an excerpt:
In the post-Christendom context, this situation changes dramatically. I was reminded of this recently while watching 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. As the race of vampires continues its onslaught on the Alaskan town, they use an injured woman as bait to lure any humans out of hiding. When the ruse fails, the vampires turn on the woman instead. Realizing her impending fate, she falls to her knees and exclaims “Oh, God!” In response to her plea the lead vampire, Marlowe, mockingly looks up into the sky for any hint of divine rescue, only to look back at the woman and remark in matter of fact fashion, “No god.” In 30 DAYS OF NIGHT not only do we find an absence of the church, clergy, and Christian symbols, but the monstrous creatures deny the existence of God, or at least deny that a God is present who will provide any kind of deliverance to humanity from the forces of evil. The point to take away from much of contemporary horror is that, while it may be influenced by biblical and Judeo-Christian elements, the way in which these elements are treated is very different.
The entire article can be read here.
TheoFantastique wishes everyone a happy Easter.
Readers might be interested in the following previous posts that overlap with discussions of the fantastic, the horrific, Christianity, and the idea of rising from the dead.
Related posts:
“Reflections on a Zombie Supper”
“Philly Zombie Crawl and ‘Zombie Jesus'”
I came across a couple of items recently that encapsulate the feelings I have in my experiences with the fantastic. The first is a poster ad for The HMA.net Mask-Fest 2010. It is featured with this post to the left where the reader will see a young boy putting on his Halloween costume. As he contemplates the final step in putting on his mask his face comes to life as his sense of imagination is kindled. He is about to become the character he is costumed as. I remember this precise feeling on many Halloweens as a child as I became a pirate, Frankenstein’s creature, the vampire from London After Midnight, and any number of other monsters.
The second item I identified with came as I watched an interview with Rick Baker by Mick Garris as part of his “Post Mortem” series at FearNet.com. At one point in the interview after describing his lifelong love for many horror films and monsters Baker states that the attraction for him is not the gore, but rather the sense of wonder that comes with it all. I deeply resonate with Baker’s feelings on this. After a lifelong journey into the fantastic of my own, whether horror, science fiction or fantasy, it is not the gore and violence that I find attractive, but rather, the sense of wonder that is connected with my experiences with the creative expressions of these genres. Perhaps other readers share the feelings I have in the experience of such things.
My satirical post comparing Obama’s health care legislation to The Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” led to my surfing the Internet for how the President has been depicted in science fiction imagery. I found several examples from my favorite sci-fi films and television that speak for themselves without any need for written commentary.
My friend Dave Canfield is a fellow fan of horror and all things fantastic. He explores our common passion in a variety of forums, including as a Chicago film critic writing for Twitch, and as a writer for Fangoria online. His blog at Fangoria, Beyond the Pale, recently featured my thoughts on horror and spirituality in an interview. Here is an excerpt:
CANFIELD: From a spiritual focus, what were your favorite horror films of this last decade?
MOREHEAD: I am very picky about the horror that I find notable, and within that collection we find even fewer that include a spiritual focus. But a few come to mind. I was pleasantly surprised by THE MIST. I appreciated that film’s exploration of religious zealotry, and how religion, politics and law function to restrain human evil. But what if these elements disappeared? Would we be able to act humanely in the midst of an inhumane situation? And the ending is gut-wrenching—great stuff that raises important spiritual and cultural questions. [REC] and 28 DAYS LATER are important expressions of the apocalyptic from contagion. Although these are expressions of secular apocalyptic, they shed light on concerns over the end of human civilization which dovetail with religious expressions of this same concern.
The interview can be read here.
As the nation continues to debate the health care reform bill, now the law of the land, it is interesting to recall one of the more curious aspects of the legislation. During the debate as Democrats rallied votes within their own party to pass the bill, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made the strange claim that in order to know what was in the bill we’d have to pass the bill. Now that the bill is passed, people are working their way through its massive number of pages to find out everything that it entails.
As I thought about this over the last few days it reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.” I’m not alone in making this connection, as illustrated by Gary Toms, an African-American writer:
On New Year’s Day, the popular channel ran its Twilight Zone marathon. As I sat in front of my television, in complete awe of how Serling used his creative genius to address many social and cultural issues, I began to realize the episode I was watching was chillingly similar to a current event in American politics: the meteoric rise of Senator Barack Obama. The episode was entitled “To Serve Man”, and it featured an alien, Kanamit, that came to Earth to convince humans that a far better life, a far better place, awaited them based on the futuristic content of a book called To Serve Man. All they had to do was place their faith in him and not fear the unknown. The alien, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, began to win them over through powerful speeches, immediately solving all the problems of the world, and his heartfelt pledge to serve man. Ultimately, despite his strange and unearthly appearance, the inhabitants of Earth became loyal followers and boarded hordes of spaceships for what they believe is The Promised Land. It is at this point when the awful and terrifying truth is revealed. A man, who was extremely skeptical of the claims being made by the alien, breaks the book’s code and frantically tries to warn the people boarding that the title of the book, To Serve Man, is actually…..a cookbook!
The video clip below is “To Serve Man,” and it is a perfect fit with this issue. As you click on it you will see that the Kanamits promise to cure all of humanity’s woes, and all they ask is that they be trusted. The response of humanity is to think of their new situation as Christmas, precisely the way a gentleman quoted in the media recently described his situation as a new Obamacare recipient.
As we continue to probe the depths of the mysterious health care legislation, one piece of proposed hope and change for all that ails us, let us hope that we don’t discover that it is a mysterious cookbook with us on the menu. Perhaps Serling’s moral for this story is beware of aliens, and politicians, promising utopia.
While catching up on various blogs and websites dealing with the fantastic in the blogosphere I came across a news item at SF Gospel. It touched on a conflict between a religious group and an employer on appropriate attire in the workplace. What sets this conflict apart from others that have taken place in the past, as in the case of Muslim women wanting to wear coverings for their head and face, or Sikh men wanting to carry their ceremonial daggers, is that this particular conflict moves beyond the major world religions to involve a new religious movement. In this case it is a controversy involving the hyper-real spirituality of The Church of Jediism in the UK. Hyper-real spiritualities are those which draw upon aspects of pop culture, particularly science fiction, horror, and fantasy, as a metaphor in the construction of new religious identities.
This specific conflict is between Chris Jarvis, a member of the church and a practitioner of Jediism, and and the employer JobCentre. The issue of tension was over Jarvis’s refusal to remove the hood of his Jedi robes while at work.
Those interested in exploring hyper-real spiritualities in more depth should consult Adam Possamai’s Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament (Gods, Humans, and Religions) (P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2007), and his lecture proceedings article “Yoda Goes to the Vatican: Youth Spirituality and Popular Culture.” Possamai is also currently editing a multi-contributor volume on this topic, a handbook on hyper-real spiritualities for which I have written a chapter on Matrixism.
Previous discussions of these topics here in related posts include:
“Adam Possamai: Jediism, Matrixism, and ‘Hyper-Real’ Spiritualities”
“The Otherkin: Fantastic Texts, Pop Culture, and Neo-Religiosity”
“James McGrath on Religion in Science Fiction”
Although Fall is my favorite time of year with the change of seasons and Halloween, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the first day of Spring. TheoFantastique welcomes the new season with an image called “Zombie Garden,” discovered at Zombie Info, but created by Shirt Woot where this design is available on a t-shirt. Enjoy nature’s transition from death to life.
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With all the national debate over healthcare in the United States these days it’s easy to forget the other national debate that will begin once the furor over healthcare legislation dies down, and that is the environment with cap-and-trade. Hollywood is fond of environmental apocalypse films these days, and while the reader is no doubt familiar with Wall*E and Avatar, you may not have heard of Battle for Terra. Joshua Bellin, author of Framing Monters, and a past guest here for two previous interviews, one on his book and the other contrasting the how the issue of race is treated in the original King Kong and in Peter Jackson’s remake, recently had an article posted online that addresses Battle for Terra and other films that touch on environmental apocalyptic. As he describes it
Terra tells the story of a winsome race of aliens whose planet is invaded by the last human survivors of an Earth our species has laid waste. In a particularly insidious form of colonization, the earthlings plan to oxygenate the aliens’ atmosphere–certain death for the Terrans. But thanks to one human dissenter’s friendship with a waiflike Terran revolutionary, the evil scheme is averted, its masterminds slain, and a permanent human colony erected on Terra to house the dissenting pilot’s peace-minded disciples.
In his article Bellin goes on to consider how well these films respond to our environmental challenges, and his verdict is not positive. For example, in discussing Avatar he writes that its
fundamental hypocrisy eclipses any putative environmentalist leanings: not only does Cameron’s film erase the historical fact that whites didn’t start to hanker for the Indians’ love of the land until they’d stolen and raped virtually all the land the Indians loved, but it reinforces the New Age belief that redemption from such historical sins can be earned through further consumption, the stockpiling of more commodified, otherworldly junk (faux dream catchers and sweat lodge ceremonies, Avatars on hi-def and Blu-ray). Rather than calling for true reform here at home, which might actually cost something, Avatar turns once more outward, seeking salvation from another alien culture whose wisdom and whose world can be snapped up for a song.
No doubt fantastic films will continue to find inspiration in environmental challenges, but the question remains as to how well they will incorporate realistic responses for our times.
The University of Hertfordshire in the UK is hosting an academic conference on the undead next week. The conference is titled “Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Human Culture.” The conference is described as follows:
