To start off the semester we have two required films:
1) A metafictional horror film that will hopefully provoke us to begin the semester by asking: "Why do we watch horror films?" I would recommend coming into this film with as little information as possible. Here is an archive of resources for after you watch the film:
The Cabin in the Woods (USA: Drew Goddard, 2012)
2) To get a bit more in-depth about the horror genre, choose one of these documentaries to watch:
Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of Horror (USA: Andrew Monument, 2009) This is available for free on Youtube (click on the link to watch). It is a look at the socio-political context of horror films.
Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (USA: Xavier Burgin, 2019) Description: "Delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them, this is the untold history of black Americans in Hollywood through their connection to the horror genre." Here is a collection of resources that go with the film: Horror Noire syllabus
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (USA: Kier-La Janisse, 2021) Description: "Explores the folk horror phenomenon from its beginnings in a trilogy of films – Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man – through its proliferation on British television in the 1970s and its culturally specific manifestations in American, Asian, Australian and European horror, to the genre’s revival over the last decade."
The American Nightmare (USA: Adam Simon, 2000) This is available for free on Youtube. How the horror genre changed post 1968.
3) Resources to help you with our other themes (in addition to the horror genre):
Weird Studies - my definition:
I classify "weird fiction" as not necessarily a genre-in-itself, instead it operates in the interstices of mainstream genres, creating through poetic prose, vivid imagery, hallucinatory experiences, existential angst, dream logic and shocking stories, a powerful effect upon the reader, provoking them to start to see the mundane world with a slant. If you look at the etymology of 'wyrd' it originates as the "power to control destiny" (no doubt in a magical or ritual sense) and morphs to the latter "weird" meaning of "unearthly" or strange. These stories stay with you, taking root deep inside your consciousness, reverberating like the ripples of a deep pond disturbed by a thrown rock and provoke you to rethink what you have always taken for granted. There is a commercial genre called "the new weird" (also an older pulp magazine "weird" usually involving cosmic horror) and some of these books/authors would be slotted into my broad genre classification here (many are not), but in the spirit of actual weirdness I include other books/films that operate under the aesthetic classification described above without being marketed as "new weird." The disturbance to perceived reality also may take place through a decoding/encoding process that challenge and restructure (exposing the myths and inconsistencies) dominant narratives/pathways (also see situationist détournement and derive). Often these weird narratives represent/present a dream logic as being just as important/relevant as our waking logic. The purpose is to expose the cracks in the foundations of controlling narratives, destabilizing them through weird narratives that shake the assured assumptions of its adherents. The concepts of carnivalesque revelry and the dialogic nature of consciousness as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin are equally important, in that they involve the reversal of a dominant order and/or an exposure of the fantasy of the controlling order, in the process revealing the many perspectives/voices that are silenced/masked. As disturbing as these can be for many, perhaps the most problematic aspect of many weird narratives would be the decentering of humans (as the center of the universe) and explorations/recognitions of non-human perspectives. Importantly, in the context of my own American culture, this also involves narrative & theoretical displacement of our particular hegemonic way of seeing & being as the baseline for thinking about and understanding the world. In film studies there has also been a classification of Mind Fuck films which would be included here. All of these can provide a cathartic release from the anxiety/terror of the really weird situation we are living through and the twisted creatures that our at the helm of planet earth. [Editorial note: my definition was originally written during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic]. Under no circumstance is weird meant in a derogatory way. Anyone who does a deep dive into science, especially theories of consciousness and reality, knows that science is seriously weird. I appreciate works that challenge our constructed reality, pushing us to see that there is not just one way. Also it should be understood that what seems weird to some may seem obvious and normal to others. One of the great benefits of learning across time and space/places is that it can, following Bertolt Brecht, "make the familiar strange." Michael Dean Benton (May 2020; revised July 2022)
Monster Theory:
"Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (1996)
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