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Posted on February 14, 2019

Queering the Family in The Walking Dead

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From the first, Rick Grimes’ role as a father has occupied a central place in The Walking Dead franchise. Initially, his quest to find his family drives both him and the narrative onward. Later, he competes violently for the status of sole patriarch of his family (a role that overlaps significantly with his role as leader of his group of survivors), forms new nuclear family units after his wife, Lori, dies, and consistently frames his decision-making as oriented towards making a future for his son, Carl. Perhaps his focus on the family does not seem surprising. Perhaps it even seems “natural.” Perhaps, however, it should not.

My essay, “‘We can’t just ignore the rules’: Queer Heterosexualities,” in the collection The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead, proposes that both The Walking Dead comics and television show overwhelmingly present, in their narratives, language, and visual representations, the dominance of the heteronormative nuclear family, the ideology that underlies it, and the mechanisms through which that ideology is enforced and naturalized.

Posted on February 12, 2019

Mixed Media in Velvet Buzzsaw

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The trailer for Velvet Buzzsaw is a chimerical thing. The first half sells a delicious send-up of the art scene. The “coastal elites” that America loves to hate lean toward expensive art. They murmur terms like “mesmeric” as they nibble their Armani frames. Halfway through the clip, the trailer rears its second head, revealing the campiest of horror as the apparently possessed paintings deliver unto these moneyed elites their bloody comeuppance.

The only through line, stitching these two movies together with Dr. Frankenstein’s hand, is thumping techno. The music, transitioning from sexy electro to dread-inducing industrial, convinces us that either of these movies would be a good time. But can they work together? Velvet Buzzsaw is true to the luxurious bite of its incongruous title. Like Frankenstein’s monster, animated by who-knows-what, pieced together from who-knows-who, this thing is alive, and it’s worth a look. Read more

Posted on February 1, 2019

Ten Women Authored Ghost Stories from the Gilded Age

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If you’re like me, you love a good ghost story in the dead of winter. The season commands all that is spooky, desolate, and lonely. Fortunately, American literature is rife with ghostly stories written by women, the Gilded Age being an era when the genre was particularly enjoyed, highly published and serialized in magazines like Harper’s, Scribner’s, and New England Magazine. Topics range from marriage, motherhood, to unruly women, but all retain an unerring sense of the otherworldly. I highly recommend curling up with these stories on a cold winter’s night.

Below is a ranking of some of the best ghost stories of the Gilded Age (and some from just slightly after it, too). If you’re a fan of the era, you’ll recognize some of the more famous names, but there are some hidden gems, too. By no means is this list exhaustive, and I encourage you to find your own favorite stories from the era, as well! Read more

Posted on January 22, 2019

Cosmic Horror in Lost Carcosa: True Detective as the Ultimate Weird Tale

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True Detective, an American anthology of self-contained stories created and written by Nic Pizzolatto, exploded onto television screens in 2014. It has since developed into two further standalone series (2015; 2019) that failed to reach the same levels of critical acclaim. The initial eight-part mini-series starred Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as a pair of former homicide detectives in rural Louisiana embroiled in the hunt for a mysterious and murderous far-reaching Southern syndicate. Fans of straight police procedurals soon found themselves caught in a captivating Southern Gothic tale that spanned several years and incorporated distinctly supernatural elements. In fact, with its direct references to the lost city of Carcosa from Robert Chambers’ seminal collection of short horror stories, The King in Yellow (1895), itself subsumed into H. P. Lovecraft’s literary canon of cosmic horror, one could argue that the series staked its place in mainstream popular culture despite its horror roots, and as a true example of Lovecraft’s philosophical and existentialist ‘weird tale’ (Lovecraft, 1973, p. 15).

The series begins with the pair being questioned, individually, by the Louisiana State Police Department in the present day: Hurricane Katrina destroyed the majority of evidence files relating to the investigation of the murder of a sex worker seventeen years prior. The interviews serve as a formal device for flashbacks, revealing key information about the men, the case, and their relationship. McConaughey’s Rustin (Rust) Cohle, a nihilistic alcoholic, is now a bartender. In his detecting days he was referred to as the ‘Taxman’ by colleagues, due to the large black notebook he carried everywhere, diligently and dispassionately working his way through successful cases. Harrelson’s Martin (Marty) Hart is a masochistic idealist, now a private investigator, who lives alone after neglecting his wife and daughters in favour of his workload and younger women. Read more

Posted on January 19, 2019

Have Recent Horror Films Accurately Captured Grief?

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From societal issues to internal psychological havoc, horror has historically painted our micro and macro humanistic torments on the big screen. It creates new thruways for an alternative method of confrontation with what troubles us. However, there’s a particularly sinister and damaging emotion that each and every one of us likely has to meet with at some point in our life: grief. And grief hasn’t always been effectively depicted in film. There are tremendously individualized intricacies associated with grief that make it difficult to depict the introspective experience of grief rather than a voyeuristic expression. However, the horror genre is certainly one that has the capability to do so. While the complexities of grief stray far outside of fear, there are plenty who argue that horror should be defined by much more than how much it scares viewers.