Elizabeth Erwin At first glance, Ashley Hutson’s One’s Company: A Novel resists the classic definition of the haunted dollhouse as it neither centers on uncanny miniatures nor is the intended plaything of a child. And yet, the replica physical environment leveraged in the novel mines similar themes of trauma negotiation and spectres of the past, […]
Laura Wright About midway through Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) stands above a diorama of the Overlook Hotel’s giant hedge maze. As he looks down at the model, the camera follows his gaze as he seems to watch his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and […]
Linda Ganus In 1963, Rod Serling’s popular series The Twilight Zone was renewed for a fourth season with a few formatting conditions: renaming the series (dropping “The” from the title); hiring a new producer, Herbert Hirschman, who also designed the new surrealistic titles; and moving the 30-minute show to a 60-minute time slot the network […]
Sarah Fevri From traditional wooden houses to Barbie Dreamhouse, dollhouses are often assumed to be children’s playthings. However, dollhouses are not mere toys, but also used as symbols and signifiers of class, gender roles, and societal norms. In media, dollhouses serve as metaphors of multiple things: the unfamiliar, domestic virtues, control, girlhood, and familial intimacy […]
Raquel Souza Few films announce their intentions so loudly. “Wuthering Heights” directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi was released to a furor. My use of inverted commas around the title hints that this is less an adaptation than a challenge to Emily Brontë’s original 1847 novel. In this 2026 adaptation, […]
NelRae Toler With films such as The People Under the Stairs (1991), Candyman (1992), and Tales from the Hood (1996), the 1990s served as a cultural renaissance for Black horror cinema. While influential in their own right, both The People Under the Stairs and Candyman were films about Black characters from white directors and writers. […]
Tess Ezzy Mary Katherine Blackwood, called Merricat by everyone who matters, walks the perimeter of her family’s property burying objects. A box of silver dollars in a hole by the creek. A doll wrapped in oilcloth, hidden in the long meadow. A book nailed to a pine tree. These are her safeguards, the talismans that […]
Charlotte Yule Christie’s childhood dollhouses Throughout her childhood Agatha Christie was fascinated with houses, especially dollhouses. Writing in her memoir, she describes her dollhouses as her “principal source of indoor amusement” (An Autobiography 60). Christie’s first dollhouses were “odd rolls of wallpaper . . . cut and pasted over boxes” and houses fashioned from “the […]
Lindsey Scott Anyone who loved the iconic ABC television sitcom, The Addams Family (1964–66) will remember Wednesday’s headless doll, Marie Antoinette. In episode one, six-year-old Wednesday (Lisa Loring) is shown guiding a truant officer around the house when her brother Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax) enters with her doll, saying, “I fixed it for you” (“The Addams […]