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Reverse-mullet pedagogy: valuing horror fiction in the classroom

By Mathias Clasen

Are you familiar with the mullet? It’s a distinctive hairstyle—peculiarly popular in continental Europe in the 1980s—in which the hair is cut short on the top and sides but left long at the back. Whatever the aesthetic gravity of the mullet, it comes with a philosophy. The philosophy of the mullet is this: “Business in the front, party in the back.” I’ll argue that the reverse holds true for the horror genre, didactically speaking. Horror fiction is sexy. Horror has zombies. It has ghosts and vampires. It has Hannibal Lecter and Jigsaw, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Leatherface. It has cannibal hillbillies and crazed college kids.

Feminist themes in TV crime drama

By Gray Cavender and Nancy C. Jurik

The fictional world has always featured women who solve crimes, from Nancy Drew to Veronica Mars. Although men crime-solvers outnumbered women on TV, women detectives have increasingly become more commonplace. This trend includes the policewomen depicted on CSI and Law & Order: SUV as well as private detectives like Veronica Mars and Miss Phryne Fisher who are the chief protagonists of their series.

Music and touch in Call Me By Your Name

By Ivan Raykoff

A rich sensuality of touch permeates Luca Guadagnino’s new film Call Me By Your Name, based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name. This tactile quality comes through not only in its evocative visual imagery: close-ups of hands and fingers and feet, shoulder rubs, sweaty bare skin glistening in the sun, bodies lounging on lush grass or jumping into chilly spring-fed ponds, soft-boiled eggs and ripe fruits bursting with juices, the broken limbs and pitted patina of ancient bronzes.

Communist laughter

By Mark Steven

“History is thorough and passes through many stages while bearing an ancient form to its grave.” So wrote Karl Marx in 1843, as he reflected on the collapse of Germany’s old regime whilst looking toward a revolutionary horizon. “The last phase of a world-historical form,” he adds, “is its comedy.” According to Marx, comedy has revolutionary value in that it allows us to part happily with the superannuated ways of the past.

Ten facts about the evolution of Hollywood

By Stephen Mann

Movie-going has been an American pastime since the early 20th century. Since 1945 we have seen Hollywood rise to its apex, dominating movie theaters across the globe with its massive productions. It was not always this way, though. Below are 10 facts about the evolution of the American film industry after the Second World War.

A writer’s guide to witches in pop culture [timeline]

By Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies

From The Wizard of Oz to Harry Potter, witchcraft is a linchpin of contemporary fantasy writing—with each writer applying their own twist. Referencing The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, we’ve put together a timeline of pop-culture’s most well-known depictions of witchcraft.

What’s going on in the shadows? A visual arts timeline

By William Chapman Sharpe

Although cast shadows lurk almost everywhere in the visual arts, they often slip by audiences unnoticed. That’s unfortunate, since every shadow tells a story. Whether painted, filmed, photographed, or generated in real time, shadows provide vital information that makes a representation engaging to the eye. Shadows speak about the shape, volume, location, and texture of objects, as well as about the source of light, the time of day or season, the quality of the atmosphere, and so on.

Unanswered questions in Gone with the Wind’s main title

By Nathan Platte

If asked to recall a melody from Gone with the Wind, what might come to mind? For many, it’s the same four notes: a valiant leap followed by a gracious descent. This is the beginning of the Tara theme, named by composer Max Steiner for the plantation home of Scarlett O’Hara, whose impassioned misunderstandings of people and place propel the story.

Horror films reinforce our fear instincts: Q&A with John Carpenter

By Mathias Clasen

John Carpenter’s classic suspense film Halloween from 1978 launched the slasher subgenre into the mainstream. The low-budget horror picture introduced iconic Michael Myers as an almost otherworldly force of evil, stalking and killing babysitters in otherwise peaceful Haddonfield. It featured a bare-bones plot, a simple, haunting musical score composed by Carpenter himself, some truly nerve-wracking editing and cinematography

Doing the right thing: ethics in the Zombie Apocalypse [video]

By Greg Garrett

From popular television shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones to countless films, video games, and comics, stories of the Zombie Apocalypse have captivated modern audiences. With horror and fascination, we watch, read, and imagine the decimation of human society as we know it at the hands of the undead.

Would you survive the zombie apocalypse? [quiz]

By Rebekah Edwards

The zombie apocalypse presents many challenges – for both the prepared and unprepared. As if dodging an aggressive and cannibalistic undead horde constantly in pursuit of brains isn’t enough, you must also forage for food, find shelter, and brave the elements in a world growing more inhospitable by the minute. Technology is no longer reliable, the creature comforts that we take for granted are no longer guaranteed, and our sense of safety is completely compromised.

Smile like you mean it

By Murray Smith

“With a camera you can go into the stomach of a kangaroo,” mused Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. “But to look at the human face, I think, is the most fascinating.” It is hard to contest Bergman’s claim that “the great gift of cinematography is the human face” – or at least that it is one such gift.

Erich von Stroheim, the child of his own loins

By Fanny Lignon

Even though Erich von Stroheim passed away 60 years ago, it is clear that his persona is still very much alive. His silhouette and his name are enough to evoke an emblematic figure that is at once Teutonic, aristocratic and military.

Werner Herzog’s hall of mirrors

By Brad Prager

Werner Herzog turns 75 this September and remains as productive as ever. More than only a filmmaker, he directs operas, instructs online courses, and occasionally makes cameo appearances on television shows including Parks & Recreation and The Simpsons. He has been directing films for nearly six decades, and he released three feature-length films within months of each other in 2016.

PTL and the history of American evangelicalism

By John Wigger

Over the course of fourteen years, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker built their local TV broadcast into an empire, making them two of the most recognizable televangelists in the United States. But their empire quickly fell when revelations of a sex scandal and massive financial mismanagement came to light. In the following excerpt John Wigger demonstrates the power of religion on American culture by tracing the fall of the PTL.

What can the Zombie Apocalypse teach us about ourselves? [Video]

By Greg Garrett

Like war stories, like disaster films, like any kind of narrative that revolts and scares yet also delights us, the Zombie Apocalypse offers a laboratory for observing human emotion and experience. Its excess opens up a multitude of responses that don’t get explored in the course of our everyday lives, although these same choices lurk underneath the surface of all our lives.

In which decade was the Arbeiterfilm genre prevalent in Germany?