Four Issues of INTENSITIES: The Journal of Cult Media and a Call for Papers

Screencap from the credit sequence of Games (Curtis Harrington, 1967). Read Steven Jay Schneider's 2003 article for Intensities in which he discusses this and other cult psychological thrillers and horror films.

Film Studies For Free just bumped into the new online incarnation of Intensities, the wonderful journal of cult media studies. Oh yes!

Always a highly innovative and valuable project, Intensities was first launched at Cardiff University in 2001 under the editorship of Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones. As its new website tells us, it later moved to Brunel University, where it was edited by David Lavery. The journal has relaunched in 2013 with Leon Hunt as its new editor and will publish two issues a year. The journal addresses all aspects of cult media including cult television, cult film, cult radio, cult comics, literary cults and cult authors, new media cults, cult figures and celebrities, cult icons, musical cults, cult geographies, historical studies of media cults and their fandoms, cult genres (e.g. science fiction, horror, fantasy, pulp fiction, Manga, anime, Hong Kong film etc.), non-generic modes of cultishness, theorisations of cult media, relevant audience and readership studies, and work that addresses the cult media industry.

In addition to publishing refereed essays (of between 6000 and 8000 words), Intensities also features a non-refereed Cult Media Review section which will carry shorter speculative reviews, reviews of cult phenomena (e.g. cult TV series, cult films, cult novels, science fiction, comics), short critical essays, interview transcripts, conference and convention reviews and articles about aspects of industry, fan culture, production and authorship.

Intensities' latest calls for papers are reproduced below, as are the tables of (linked) contents from the excellent first four issues of this journal. Let's all wish Intensities a very happy and long online life at its new website. Its entry has been updated at FSFF's permanent listing of open access film and media studies journals.

Call for Papers
Intensities will publish two themed issues in 2013.  Essays should be between 6000 and 8000 words, referenced Harvard style and sent as a word document – a 200 word abstract should be sent as a separate document.
Issue 5 Comic Book Intensities – Comics and Cult Media
The first new issue seeks submissions dealing with comics as cult media.  Topics might include:

• Cult comic book auteurs – Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Joss Whedon.
• Cult films from comics – Cinefumetti, Manga and Anime, the Turkish KIlink films, Dredd 3D.
• National and international comic book cultures – French bandes dessinees, Italian fumetti, Japanese Manga.
• Comic book fan cultures – Cosplay and beyond.
• Underground and alternative traditions.
• Beyond the cape and mask – neglected comic book genres.
• From EC to Dark Horse – Horror comics.

Deadline extended to Friday March 1^st 2013

Issue 6 Historical Approaches to Cult TV
This issue seeks submissions examining TV shows that have acquired cult status at a historical distance – both established cult shows (The Avengers, The Prisoner, the ‘classic’ series of Doctor Who) and those that have received less (or possibly even no) critical attention.  In addition, the papers will locate those shows historically, either by drawing on archive materials or suggesting new cultural, historical or institutional contexts in which they might be understood. Deadline for submissions: May 31^st 2013

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 4 – Mysterious Bodies (2007)

Special Issue – Mysterious Bodies
Guest Editors: Rayna Denison and Mark Jancovich

• Rayna Denison and Mark Jancovich, ‘Introduction’ Jancovich_Intro
• Mark Jancovich, ‘An Unidentified Species: Horror, the Body and Early Television’ Jancovich, Unidentified Species
• Lincoln Geraghty, ‘Painted Men and Salt Monsters: The Alien Body in 50s and 60s American Science Fiction Television’ Geraghty, Painted Men and Salt Monsters
• Milly Williamson, ‘Television, Vampires and the Body: Somatic Pathos’ Williamson, Television, Vampires and the Body
• Matt Hills, ‘”Gothic” Body Parts in a “Postmodern” Body of Work? The Hinchcliffe/Holmes Era of Doctor Who (1975-77)’ Hills, Gothic Body Parts in Postmodern Body of Work
• Rayna Denison, ‘The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence: Investigating the Complexity of the Television Body’ Denison, The Muppet Show Sex and Violence
• Rebecca Feasey, ‘Investigating Angel: The Hair, the Car and the Wardrobe’ Feasey, Investigating Angel
• Peter Hutchings, ‘Welcome to Royston Vasey: Grotesque Bodies and the Horror of Comedy in The League of Gentlemen‘ Hutchings, Welcome to Royston Vasey
• Elke Weissman, ‘The Victim’s Suffering Translated: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the Crime Genre’ Weissmann, Victim’s Suffering Translated
• Julian Savage, ‘The Lost Cult of Wake in Fright‘ Savage, Lost Cult of Wake in Fright

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 3 – Horror Issue (Spring 2003)

Edited by Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones

• Steven Jay Schneider, ‘Murder as Art/The Art of Murder: Aestheticising Violence in Modern Cinematic Horror’ Schneider, Murder as Art
• I.Q. Hunter, ‘Even Baser Instincts: Notes on Hollow Man‘ Hunter, Even Baser Instincts
• Stephen Harper, ‘”They’re Us”: Representations of Women in George Romero’s ‘Living Dead’ Series’ Harper, They’re Us
• Kate Egan, ‘The Amateur Historian and the Electronic Archive: Identity, Power, and the Function of Lists, Facts and Memories on “Video Nasty”-themed Websites’ Egan, The Amateur Historian and the Electronic Archive
• Linda C. Badley, ‘Spiritual Warfare: Postfeminism and the Cultural Politics of the Blair Witch Craze’ Badley, Spiritual Warfare

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 2 (Autum/Winter 2001)

Edited by Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones

• Marie-Laure Ryan, ‘From The Truman Show to Survivor: Narrative versus Reality in Fake and Real Reality TV’ Ryan, From The Truman Show to Survivor
• William D. Routt, ‘Bad for Good’ Routt, Bad for Good
• Mark Jancovich, ‘Placing Sex: Sexuality, Taste and Middlebrow Culture in the Reception of Playboy Magazine’ Jancovich, Placing Sex
• Bertha Chin and Jonathan Gray, ‘”One Ring to Rule Them All”: Pre-Viewers and Pre-Texts of the Lord of the Rings Films’ Chin and Gray, One Ring to Rule Them All
• Will Brooker, ‘The Many Lives of the Jetman: A Case Study in Videogame Analysis’ Brooker, Many Lives of the Jetman
• Intensities interviews Henry Jenkins @Console-ing Passions, University of Bristol, July 7th 2001 Intensities interviews Jenkins
• Ben Talbot, Conference Review: Compete, Command and Conquer – Playing for Space at the International Games Cultures Conference Talbot, Compete, Command and Conquer

Intensities 1 (Spring/Summer 2001)

Edited by Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones

• Lynette Russell and Nathan Wolski, ‘Beyond the Final Frontier: Star Trek, the Borg and the Post-colonial’ Russell_Wolski
• Mark McLelland, ‘Why Are Japanese Girls’ Comics Full of Boys Bonking?’ McLelland
• Alan McKee, ‘Which is the Best Doctor Who story? A Case Study in Value Judgements Outside the Academy’ McKee
• Patricia MacCormack, ‘Becoming Hu-Man: Deleuze and Guattari, Gender and Third Rock from the Sun‘ MacCormack
• Annette Hill and Ian Calcutt, ‘Vampire Hunters: the Scheduling and Reception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the UK’ Hill_Calcutt
• Will Brooker, ‘Parallel Earths: Diana 2000 – a Review Essay’ Brooker_Earths

More about → Four Issues of INTENSITIES: The Journal of Cult Media and a Call for Papers

Film,Television and Media Studies articles in STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

Framegrab of Rooney Mara as 'final girl' Nancy Holbrook in the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010). Read Kyle Christensen's article on this film's source text ('The Final Girl versus Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema'), and also check out Film Studies For Free's entry of links to 'Final Girl' Studies

Below, Film Studies For Free links to the entire online contents, to date, of the excellent Open Access journal Studies in Popular Culture: a list of more than 60 great articles on film, television and media studies. 

The journal of the US Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association in the South, SPC dates back, in its offline, print version, to 1977, making it one of the oldest, continuously published academic journals to treat audiovisual media.  

SPC has been online since 2006 and is a wonderful example of how an online presence indicates no necessary lowering of the quality bar for a properly peer-reviewed journal. 


29.1 October 2006 [Go here for an online table of contents)

• "Reinventing the Hero: Gardner's Grendel and the Shifting Face of Beowulf in Popular Culture" -- Michael Livingston and John William Sutton 
• "Cowboys, Indians, and Iraq: Jessica Lynch, Loria Pestewa, and the Great American Makeover." -- Gioia Woods
• "Artistic Schizophrenia: How Fight Club's Message is Subverted by its Own Nature" -- Kyle Bishop
• "Michael, Are You Okay? You've Been Hit By a Smooth Criminal: Racism, Contraversy, and Parody in the Video Clips "Smooth Criminal" and "You Rock My World." -- Elenda Oliete
• "'Sigmund Freud, Analyze This': How Madonna Situates "Die Another Day" Beyond the Pleasure Principle" -- David Sigler 

30.2 Spring 2008 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]

• Little America: R.E.M., Howard Finster, and the Southern "Outsider Art" Aesthetic -- Matthew Sutton
• Brokeback Mountain: Masculinity and Manhood -- James R. Keller and Anne Goodwyn Jones
• Race, Crime, and Motherhood in George Pelecanos's Soul Circus -- Alexander Pitofsky
• The Politics of Talk: The Oprah Interview as Narrative -- Sarah Henstra
• Survival of the Stereotypical: A Study of Personal Characteristics and Order of Elimination on Reality Television -- Bryan E. Denham and Richelle N. Jones
• A Car of Her Own: Volvo's "Your Concept Car" as a Vehicle for Feminism? -- Roy Schwartzman and Merci Decker
• Trainspotting, High Fidelity, and the Diction of Addiction -- Scott Stalcup 

31.1 Fall 2008 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

• From the Editor: Popular Culture of the Past 
• From Apicius to Gastroporn: Form, Function, and Ideology in the History of Cookery Books -- Abigail Dennis
• Queer Investigations: Foxy Ladies and Dandy Detectives in American Dime Novels -- Pamela Bedore
• Literary Art in an Age of Formula Fiction and Mass Consumption: Double Coding in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Blue Carbuncle” -- Nils Clausson 
• Lost Girl: Diminishing Dorothy of Oz -- SydneyDuncan
• The Protean Character of Jello, Icon of Food and Identity -- Susan Grove Hall
• Gazing on Fu-Manchu: Obscurity and Imperial Crisis in the Work of Sax Rohmer -- Rebecca Wingfield
• “To Renew the Old World”: Record Collecting as Cultural Production -- Kevin Moist 

31.2 Spring 2009 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

• From the Editor: Popular Culture's "Material and Conceptual Conditions 
• Fast Food Frontiers: I've Got a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore -- Minjoo Oh
• Sexed Appeals: Network Marketing and Adult Home Novelty Parties -- Dawn Heinecken 
• Popularizing HIgh Culture: Zemeckis's Beowulf -- Kathleen Forni
• Fear and Loathing in Knoxvegas: Representations of the "Other" in the Official Press Before and During the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair -- Stephen Bales and Charlie Gee
• Paul Reveres of Early Radio: The Boy Scouts and the Origin of Broadcasting -- Noah Arceneaux 
• The Legend of Sacco and Vanzetti: Keeping the Story Alive on the Political Left in Literature, Song, and Film -- Ron BrileyTamenicia or Tammy; James or Jim Bob; Bessie or Heather: Patterns and Significance of Choosing Names for American Babies -- Claude J. Smith, Jr. 

32.1 Fall 2009 [Go here to find a PDF of the Entire Issue]

• From the Editor: Moral Choices in the Art of Popular Culture
• "Spiritual Warfare" and Intolerance in Popular Culture: The Left Behind Franchise, the Commodification of Belief, and the Consequences for Imagination -- Marnie Jones
• The Narcissism of Bipartisanship: Accessing Ann Coulter on the Internet -- Lindsey Ives
• "Not Like Other Men"?: The Vampire Body in Joss Whedon's Angel -- Lorna Jowett
• "...long before the stars were torn down ...": Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan's "Brownsville Girl" -- Katherine Weiss 
• Death and Magic in Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions: A Terror Management Perspective -- Jonathan Bassett
• Disneyfying Dickens: Oliver and Company and The Muppet Christmas Carol as Dickensian Musicals -- Marc Napolitano 
• Even a Tramp Can Dream: An Examination of the Clash Between "High Art" and "Low Art" in the Films of Charlie Chaplin -- Richard Ward 

32.2 Spring 2010 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

• From the editor: No Monoliths Here
• Striking Back Without Missing a Beat: Radical Responses to Domestic Violence in Country Music’s The Dixie Chicks and Salsa’s Celia Cruz -- Delia Poey
• “But This Is the South”: Ambivalent Regionalism in Jan Karon’s Mitford Novels -- Eleanor Hersey Nickel
• Adapting Shakespeare for Star Trek and Star Trek for Shakespeare: The Klingon Hamlet and the Spaces of Translation -- Karolina Kazimierczak
• The Jesus Fish: Evolution of a Cultural Icon -- Todd Edmondson
• The Politics of the "Open" Self: America in the Cinemas of King Vidor and Robert Altman -- Margaret Hrezo and William E. Hrezo
• Like a “Whopper Virgin”: Anthropological Reflections on Burger King’s Controversial Ad Campaign -- Ty Matejowsky 
• The Portrayal of Racial Minorities on Prime Time Television: A Replication of the Mastro and Greenberg Study a Decade Later -- Elizabeth Monk-Turner, Mary Heiserman, Crystle Johnson, Vanity Cotton, and Manny Jackson 

33.1 Fall 2010 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

• From the editor: Theory and Practice
• What's Entertainment? Notes Toward a Definition -- Stephen Bates and Anthony J. Ferri 
• Popular Fiction Studies: The Advantages of a New Field -- Matthew Schneider-Mayerson
• Interpretive Methodology from Literary Criticism: Carnivalesque Analysis of Popular Culture: Jackass, South Park, and ‘Everyday’ Life -- Gulnara Karimova
• The Cinematic and Historic Weight of Stone of Destiny -- Lynnette Porter
• Ken Follett and the Scribbler's Trade: A Midnight Train to Somewhere -- Carlos Ramet
• The “Aquatic Zionist” in The Yiddish Policemen's Union -- Bennett Kravitz
• “Tons of Useful Stuff”: Defining Wellness in Popular Magazines -- Carol-Ann Farkas 

33.2 Spring 2011 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]

• From the editor: Cultural Fragments, Cultural Flowers
• My Vampire Boyfriend: Postfeminism, “Perfect” Masculinity, and the Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal Romance -- Ananya Mukherjea
• “Thou Shalt Not Crave Thy Neighbor” : True Blood, Abjection, and Otherness -- Sabrina Boyer
• Mad Men's Color Schemes: A Changing Palette of Working Women -- Katherine Gantz
• The Revolution Will Be Soooo Cute: YouTube “Hauls” and the Voice of Young Female Consumers -- Laura Jeffries
• Outsider Nostalgia in Dazed and Confused and Detroit Rock City -- Carey L. Martin
• The Beatles and the Art of the Tambourine -- Steven Hamelman
• Outsourced: Crime Stories, New World Horrors, and Genre -- Jonathan L. Crane 

34.1 Fall 2011 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]

• From the editor: Art for Someone Else's Sake
• Protecting a City’s Image: The Death of Las Vegas Beat, 1961 -- Larry Dale Gragg
• The Final Girl versus Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema -- Kyle Christensen
• “And I Started Wondering . . .”: Voiceover and Conversation in Sex and the City -- Ashli Dykes
• Refrigerator Design and Masculinity in Postwar Media, 1946-1960 -- Paul Gansky
• Pop Culture, Politics, and America's Favorite Animated Family: Partisan Bias in The Simpsons? -- Kenneth Michael White and Mirya Holman
• Evaluating the Presence of Social Strain in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV -- Patrick Osborne

More about → Film,Television and Media Studies articles in STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

Young and Undead: On Child and Teen Vampire Movies

Images from Låt den rätte komma in/Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008 - above) and Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010)

Film Studies For Free loves a good vampire movie, like the two relatively unconventional examples of the genre pictured above. 

In fact, FSFF doesn't turn its nose up at bad vampire movies, either. Let's face it: this blog is just not that fussy when it comes to vampire movies.

Both kinds of films are represented below, in a fairly short, but terrifyingly good, list of scholarly and other online studies of the recent flourishing of teen and pre-teen varieties of undead cinema (along with their literary sources). 

Please note that the list does not dabble in studies of the televisual versions of the genre. For those, you could no better than to visit the complete archive of Slayage articles on, inter alia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly.

• Stacey Abbott, 'Urban Vampires in American Films of the Eighties and Nineties, in Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Conference Proceedings Budapest, Hungary May 22-24 2003, ed. by Carla T. Kungl (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 2003) scroll to p. 133 
• Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, ' Contemplating the Franchise, the Fandom and the Celebrity Juggernaut of the Twilight Saga', In Media Res, July 2, 2010 
• Simon J. Bacon, 'Fangs for the memory': can the American cinematic vampire be equated with Pierre Nora's idea of the 'lieux de memoire' ? Masters thesis, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, 2009
• Courtney Brannon Donoghue, ' "Twilight is a license to print money": Selling the Female Film Franchise', June 30, 2010 
• Glennis Byron, '©Branding and Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture: the case of Twilight', The Gothic Imagination, December 31, 2010
• Melissa Click, '“Rabid”, “obsessed”, and “frenzied”: Understanding Twilight Fangirls and the Gendered Politics of Fando', FlowTV, December 18, 2009
• Martin Fradley, 'Review of Contemporary Gothic, by Catherine Spooner', Journal of Transformative Works, Vol. 4, 2010
• Rebecca Housel, ' Eclipsing the "Real": Twilight & Simulacra', In Media Res, July 1, 2010
  
• Erich Kuersten, 'Someone to Fight Over Me: Feminism, SandM, and the Daemonic in Twilight', Bright Light Film Journal, 68, May 2010
• Stephanie Leach, 'Vampires Go to University: Academic Fads and the (Non)Future of the Humanities in the Neoliberal Academy', Graduate Student Essay, McMaster University, 2010 (Word Document) (published by Dr David L. Clarke)
• Benny LeMaster, 'Queer Imag(in)ing: Liminality as Resistance in Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In', Summer 2009
• Anders Marklund, 'Old fangs into new viewers: the American poster to Let the Right One In', Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 1.1, 2010
• Pramod Nayar, 'How to Domesticate a Vampire: Gender, Blood Relations and Sexuality in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight', Nebula, 7.3, September 2010
• Maggie Park, 'Twilight: The Multi-Media Marketing Machine', In Media Res, June 28, 2010
• Julia Pearlman, 'Happily (For)ever After: Constructing Conservative Youth Ideology in the Twilight Series', Senior Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2010
• Leonie Margaret Rutherford, 'Industries, Artsists, Friends and Fans: Marketing Young Adult Fictions Online', First Monday, Volume 14, Number 4 - 6 April 2009
• Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Scene of the Year: Let Me In', Salon.com, December 31, 2010
• Kirsten Stevens,'Meet the Cullens: Family, Romance, and Female Agency in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight', Slayage, 29, 8.1, Spring 2010
• Catherine Strong, '“...it sucked because it was written for teenage girls” — Twilight, anti-fans and symbolic violence', Papers of The Australian Sociological Association 2009 Annual Conference
• Natalie Wilson, ' Twilight Fandom: Taking a Bite Out of Gendered Backlash', In Media Res, June 29, 2010 
• Michael Wood, 'At the Movies: Let the Right One In', London Review of Books, 31.9, 2009 
• Rochelle Wright, 'Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs: Let the Right One In and genre hybridity', Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 1.1, 2010

More about → Young and Undead: On Child and Teen Vampire Movies

"Any Zombies Out There?" Undead Film Studies

Image from I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)

The zombies in these films are a kind of revolutionary force of predators without a revolutionary program. Their only concern is to satisfy an instinctual drive for predation; a drive which, as is pointed out in Day of the Dead, serves no actual biological purpose. They appear and attack without explanation or reason, violating taken for granted principles of sufficient cause and rationality. Because of this, they are especially threatening to the surviving human beings. Enemies such as Nazis or Communists are comprehensible in terms of their historical backgrounds, economic interests, religious, political or philosophic beliefs. But these zombies are a new breed of enemy in that they do not operate according to the same underlying motivations human beings share in common. They are a nihilistic enemy which, as lifeless, spiritless automatons, exemplify the epitome of passive nihilism. They wander the landscape exhibiting only the bare minimum of power that is required for locomotion and the consumption of living flesh. They must steal life from the strong because they possess such a depressed store of innate energy. They are, literally, the walking dead. [John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996] 

In [George Romero's films], antagonism and horror are not pushed out of society (to the monster) but are rather located within society (qua the monster). The issue isn’t the zombies; the real problem lies with the “heroes”—the police, the army, good old boys with their guns and male bonding fantasies. If they win, racism has a future, capitalism has a future, sexism has a future, militarism has a future. Romero also implements this critique structurally. As Steven Shaviro observes, the cultural discomfort is not only located in the films’ graphic cannibalism and zombie genocide: the low-budget aesthetics makes us see “the violent fragmentation of the cinematic process itself." The zombie in such a representation may be uncanny and repulsive, but the imperfect uncleanness of the zombie’s face—the bad make-up, the failure to hide the actor behind the monster’s mask—is what breaks the screen of the spectacle. [Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010] 

The fear of one's own body, of how one controls it and relates to it, and the fear of not being able to control other bodies, those bodies whose exploitation is too fundamental to capitalist economy, are both at the heart of whiteness. Never has this horror been more deliriously evoked than in these films of the Dead [Richard Dyer,  White: Essays in Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997)].

Film Studies For Free is quaking in its digital boots as a whole host of freely accessible zombie studies gathers menacingly on the online horizon and shuffles ever nearer.... No, no, no, nooooo...

Yes.

Resistance is futile on this the Night of the Living Links.

(The only comforting thought is that film zombies also grow old and win the undying loyalty of their fans...)

• Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010
• Sean Brayton, 'The Post-White Imaginary in Alex Proyas’s I, Robot', Science Fiction Studies, #104, Volume 35, Part 1, February 2008
• Diane Carr, 'Textual Analysis, Digital Games, Zombies', Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory, Proceedings of DiGRA, 2009
• John Cussans, 'Tracking the Zombie Diaspora: From Subhuman Haiti to Posthuman Tucson', First published in Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil edited by Paul Yoder and Peter Mario Kreuter, May 2004
• John Cussans, 'Voodoo Terror: (Mis)Representations of Vodu and Western Cultural Anxieties', paper presented for Feels Like Voodoo Spirit – Haitian Art, Culture, Religion, The October Gallery, London October 14, 2000
• Scott Darwick, 'Who’s Laughing Now?', Williams Prize, 2005
• Jennifer Whitney Dotson, Considering Blackness in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead: An Historical Exploration, MA Thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2006
• Robert J. Edmondstone, 'Beyond “Brutality”: Understanding the Italian Filone's Violent Excesses', PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008
• Darren Elliott, ‘"Death is the New Pornography!" – Gay Zombies in Queer Horror and Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or, Up With Dead People (CA/GE 2008)', Monsters and the Monstrous, Mansfield College, Oxford University, September 2009
• Phoebe Fletcher, 'Apocalyptic Machines: Terror and Anti-Production in the Post-9/11 Splatter Film', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 81 in pdf)
• Michael Grant, 'Clint Eastwood: Avatar of the Undead', Michael Grant, February 8, 2010
• Joshua Gunn & Shaun Treat, 'Zombie Trouble: A Propaedeutic on Ideological Subjectification and the Unconscious', first published in Quarterly Journal of Speech Vol. 91, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 144/174
• Stephen Harper, 'Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead', Americana, 1.2, Fall 2002
• Stephen Harper, '"I could kiss you, you bitch": race, gender, and sexuality in Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse', from Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007
• Stephen Harper,  “Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic”, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005
• Eric Hamako (University of Massachusetts) presents: '“The Yellow Peril rises from the grave…to get your White women!" Orientalist themes in zombie stories', In Media Res, Monday, September 28, 2009
• Philip Horne, 'I shopped with a zombie', Critical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 1992, 97-110
• Peter Hutchings, 'Uncanny Landscapes in British Film and Television', Visual Culture in Britain Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2004
• Phevos Kallitsis , 'Urban Fears and spatial transformations: the horror movie point of view', CityFutures '09, Madrid 2009
• Benjamin A. Lathrop, Cult Films and Film Cults: From The Evil Dead to Titanic, MA Thesis,Ohio University, June 2004
• Elizabeth MacLean Kent, Zombie as Parody: The Misuses of Science and the Non-Human Condition in Postmodern Society', MA Thesis, Auburn University, May 2009
• Mzilikazi Koné, 'Zombies, Haiti, and (Sex) Workers: On Relating to Modernity/Coloniality and Subalterity', Thinking Gender Papers, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UC Los Angeles, 2010
• Samantha Lay, ''Audiences Across the Divide: Game to Film Adaptation and the Case of Resident Evil', Particip@tions Volume 4, Issue 2 (November 2007)
• John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996
• Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan Univ.), '“Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Secular Messiahs"', In Media Res, Thursday, October 1, 2009
• Melanie McDougald, Where I am, There (Sh)it will be: Queer Presence in Post Modern Horror Films, MA Thesis, Georgia State University, August 2009
• Bert Olivier, 'Architecture as consumer space', SAJAH, volume 23, number 1, 2008: 93–106
• Kim Paffenroth, 'Religious Themes of George Romero’s Zombie Movies', Golem: Journal of Religion and Monsters, Spring 2006
• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', In Media Res, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 
• Mark Richardson, 'Where Can The Others Meet? Gender, Race and Film Comedy', Senses of Cinema, Issue 33, 2004 
• Janet G. Sayers, 'Emotional contagion and the infectious service smile: A response using parody', Notework [Museletter of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism], May 2007, pp. 20-26
• Steven Shaviro, 'Survival of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, September 25, 2010
• Steven Shaviro, 'Diary of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, April 26, 2008
• Steven Shaviro, 'Specters of Marx', The Pinocchio Theory, Feburary 8, 2006
• Steven Shaviro, 'Daniel Plainview', The Pinocchio Theory, Feburary 20, 2008
• Cathy Schlund-Vials (Univ. of Connecticut), 'Racism, Postcolonialism, and Neocolonial Zombies: Resident Evil 5', In Media Res, Tuesday, September 29, 2009
• De Villo Sloan, 'Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman as Post-literature', The International Fiction Review, 14, No. 1 (1987)
• Jasie Stokes, Ghouls, Hell and Transcendence: the Zombie in Popular Culture from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead, MA Thesis, Brigham Young University, April 2010
• Jesse Stommel, '"Pity Poor Flesh": Terrible Bodies in the Films of Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Romero', Bright Lights Film Journal, No. 56, May 2007
• Margaret Twohy, 'From Voodoo to Viruses: The Evolution of the Zombie in Twentieth Century Popular Culture', MPhil Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, October 2008
• Darrin Verhagen, 'Audiovision, psy-ops and the perfect crime: Zombie Agents and sound design', Scan: Journal of Media Arts Cultures, Vol. 6, Number 2 September 2009
• Mike Wayne, 'Theses on realism and film', International Socialism, Issue 116, October 2007
• Cameron M. Weed, 'The Zombie Manifesto: The Marxist Revolutions in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead', MA Thesis, Baylor University, May 2009
• Tony Williams, 'White Zombie: Haitian horror', from Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983, pp. 18-20

Romero's Zombies

View more presentations from Steen Christiansen.

More about → "Any Zombies Out There?" Undead Film Studies

Horror Studies, Issue 1 for free!

Image from The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

' There are [...] two significant [subliminal cuts] in The Exorcist [...] --- firstly during [Father Damien] Karras' [(Jason Miller))] dream of his mother, the screen is filled for two frames with a white-painted image of Jason Miller's leering face, appearing as a death mask; and during the exorcism itself, Linda Blair's tossing head is replaced momentarily with Miller's similarly deathly visage.'  Mark Kermode, 'Devilish Deceptions' (From Fear Magazine, Issue 24 December 1990)

'Only Father Karras, in a final, desperate act of self-sacrifice – of somatic and spiritual simpatico with the demon – comes to reconcile and transcend these extremes, thus restoring Regan to her former state of being.' Larrie Dudenhoeffer , ‘"Evil against Evil": The Parabolic Structure and Thematics of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist', Horror Studies, 1.1, 2010, p. 11 (pdf)

Film Studies For Free is trembling with delicious terror at the news of yet another freely accessible issue of a new journal from Intellect Press - there's just too much to read already... Aaaarrggghhhh...

But seriously, Horror Studies is a peer-reviewed, biannual, academic journal devoted to the study of the aesthetics of horror in all of its cultural and historical forms, from film and literature, music and dance, to fine art, photography and beyond: "With a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity, Horror Studies seeks to foster fruitful dialogue on horror between a wide range of different critical and scholarly traditions."

The first issue contains a good number of excellent film-related articles: on The Exorcist; abjection and masculinity in Todd Solondz’s Happiness; Werewolf of London (Walker, 1935); Dracula in early cinema; the submarine myth and its relation to the shark myth, as it has been propagated in film since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975); and a Deleuzian study of Michael Almereyda's horror films.

As usual, here at FSFF, links to all contents are given below.

Horror Studies 1.1, 2010

• Contents/Editorial/Authors: View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Karen E. Macfarlane , 'Mummy Knows Best: Knowledge and the Unknowable in Turn of the Century Mummy Fiction' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Gary D Rhodes, 'Drakula halála (1921): The Cinema’s First Dracula', View Header/AbstractView PDF
  

• Robert Spadoni, 'Strange Botany in Werewolf of London' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Larrie Dudenhoeffer , ‘"Evil against Evil": The Parabolic Structure and Thematics of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Linda Maria Koldau, 'Of Submarines and Sharks: Musical Settings of a Silent Menace' View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Tom O’Connor, ‘Uncontrollably Herself’: Deleuze’s Becoming-woman in the Horror Films of Michael Almereyda', View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Adam Wadenius, 'The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection and Todd Solondz’s Happiness',  View Header/Abstract   View PDF

• Catherine Spooner  Dark Looks: An Interview With Valerie Steele View Header/Abstract   View PDF

More about → Horror Studies, Issue 1 for free!

On fans and fantasy: Matt Hills online

Ana Torrent as Ángela in Tesis (Alejandro Amenábar, Spain, 1996)

While Film Studies For Free was researching material for its last post - In-between-isms: Winnicottian film, media, and cultural studies - in which the work of media theorist Matt Hills figured strongly, it came across quite a few other freely-acessible, scholarly essays by and interviews with Hills, the links to which had not yet been collected in an online webliography.

So, below you can find a follow up links-list that does just that. Hopefully, it will be of use to those of us who appreciate Hills' unusual (these days) combination of film and media studies approaches in his work, which brilliantly draws both on psychoanalytic and sociological theories to explore audience or consumer attachments to popular media.

Online works by

• Matt Hills, ‘Gothic’ Body Parts in a ‘Postmodern’ Body of Work? The Hinchcliffe/Holmes Era of Doctor Who (1975-77)', Intensities Four, December 2007

• Matt Hills, 'Essential Tensions: Winnicottian Object-Relations In The Media Sociology of Roger Silverstone', International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), Feature 37-48

• Matt Hills, Whose "postmodern" horror? Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis (Thesis, 1996)', Kinoeye, Vol 3, Issue 5, 10 May 2003

• Matt Hills, 'Review of Lawrence Grossberg (2005) Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers)', Culture Machine, 2006

• Matt Hills 'Recognition in the eyes of the relevant beholder: Representing ‘subcultural celebrity’ and cult TV fan cultures', Mediactive, Issue 2, 2003 (scroll down to p. 59)

• Matt Hills, 'Review of Horror: Special Issue of Film and Philosophy, Daniel Shaw, ed., (2001)', Aesthetics Online, 2002

Interviews with

• Catherine Driscoll and Matt Hills, 'Gender and Fan Culture (Round Twelve, Part One):', Confessions of an Aca Fan, August 23, 2007

• Henry Jenkins, 'Triumph of a Time Lord (Part One): An Interview With Matt Hills', Confessions of an Aca Fan, September 28, 2006

• Henry Jenkins, 'Triumph of a Time Lord (Part Two): An Interview With Matt Hills', Confessions of an Aca Fan, September 29, 2006

• Matt Hills, 'Intensities interviews Henry Jenkins @Console-ing Passions, University of Bristol, July 7th, 2001', Intensities Two,

More about → On fans and fantasy: Matt Hills online

Zombie Week at In Media Res

Image from Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)

Film Studies For Free today recommends an event at one of its favourite, and one of the most original, film and media studies websites -- In Media Res -- which is just concluding a special theme week devoted to Zombies! Below are the direct links to all the fun stuff, and below those you can find more information about the ethos and practicalities of the marvellous In Media Res site.

• Eric Hamako (University of Massachusetts) presents: '“The Yellow Peril rises from the grave…to get your White women!" Orientalist themes in zombie stories', Monday, September 28, 2009

• Cathy Schlund-Vials (Univ. of Connecticut), 'Racism, Postcolonialism, and Neocolonial Zombies: Resident Evil 5', Tuesday, September 29, 2009

• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', Wednesday, September 30, 2009

• Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan Univ.), '“Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Secular Messiahs"', Thursday, October 1, 2009

ABOUT IN MEDIA RES

In Media Res is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship.

Each day, a different scholar will curate a 30-second to 3-minute video clip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response.

We use the title "curator" because, like a curator in a museum, you are repurposing a media object that already exists and providing context through your commentary, which frames the object in a particular way.

The clip/comment combination are intended to both introduce the curator's work to the larger community of scholars (as well as non-academics who frequent the site) and, hopefully, encourage feedback/discussion from that community.

Theme weeks are designed to generate a networked conversation between curators. All the posts for that week will thematically overlap and the participating curators each agree to comment on one another's work.

Our goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst scholars and the public about contemporary approaches to studying media.

In Media Res provides a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media at a pace closer to how we typically experience media

In Media Res is a publication of MediaCommons. MediaCommons is a strong advocate for the right of media scholars to quote from the materials they analyze, as protected by the principle of "fair use." If such quotation is necessary to a scholar's argument, if the quotation serves to support a scholar's original analysis or pedagogical purpose, and if the quotation does not harm the market value of the original text -- but rather, and on the contrary, enhances it -- we must defend the scholar's right to quote from the media texts under study.

For more information, please contact In Media Res’ coordinating editor, Avi Santo at asanto@odu.edu

More about → Zombie Week at In Media Res

Vampires, Vamps, and Va Va Voom: Recordings and Abstracts

The ever-wonderful Adrian Martin made it all too easy for Film Studies For Free today and very helpfully pointed it in the direction of a wonderful online Film Studies resource: recordings and abstracts of the papers for Vampires Vamps and Va Va Voom: A Critical Engagement with Paranormal Romance, a Two-Day Symposium, organised by the Sìdhe Literary Collective, Monash University, 19 & 20 September 2008. Below are the all important links:

• Conference Opening Talk (Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario)
• Lenise Prater He is a Monster: Masculinity, Animalism and the Gendering of Power in Paranormal Romance
• Laura-Jane Maher Having it both ways: the queering of heteronormative romance
• Virginia Keft-Kennedy Fantasising Masculinity in Buffyverse Slash Fiction: Sexuality, Violence, and the Vampire
• Kirsten Stevens Conformity through transgression: An examination of the proliferation of vampires within online cultures
• Adrian Martin Playing Vampire Cool: The Strange Postmodern Romances of Michael Almereyda’s Nadja (1994) and Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction (1995)
• Evie Kendal Fangs and Phalluses: The Vampire as Sexual Deviant
• Philippe Met A Discussion of Horror Films with Adrian Martin
• Patrick Spedding Dracula (1979) as Paranormal Romance
• Sian Mitchell “I think the thrall has gone out of our relationship”: Buffy and Dracula - a parodic adventure in romance
• Odette Kelada Carmilla: corporeal integrity and reviving romantic bodies
• Melanie Burns Possessing and Consuming Desire: Vampire as Metaphor
• Deb Watson Consuming Passions: Vampires, Hunger and Sexuality
• Michelle de Stefani The Mother is a Vamp: explorations into the Mommy-lit faction of Paranormal Romance
• Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario Undead Romance Writers
• Panel Discussion An open discussion, with Narelle Harris, author of vampire novel set in Melbourne, The Opposite of Life; Laura Jane Maher; and Odette Kelada.

FSFF says Fangs Adrian!

More about → Vampires, Vamps, and Va Va Voom: Recordings and Abstracts

'Final Girl' Studies

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the final girl of Halloween

Film Studies For Free loves plucky female film protagonists (and false protagonists, for that matter) still fighting on in there at "The End".

It also loves Carol J. Clover’s 1987 essay 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,' (Representations [Number 20: Fall 1987, pp. 187-228] - later included by Clover in her hugely influential book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1992]), which was the first work to coin the resonant phrase 'Final Girl' to name climactic female survivors of slasher/horror/fantasy-sci-fi-horror films.

Clover's essay asked the following, rather fascinating, question: why, in these films which are supposedly principally aimed at male spectators, are the surviving heroes so often women characters?

It's a question that has been frequently addressed, since, in film, television, and now videogame studies, many of them freely available online. So here's Film Studies For Free's not-so-weak-and-feeble list of terribly-brave-and-resilient links to open-access "Final Girl" Studies, beginning with Clover's key essay, and then proceeding in an orderly alphabetical direction, by author surname:

• Carol J. Clover, 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film', in Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, e-Book, Edited and with a New Introduction by R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 continues here and here
• Holly G. Barbaccia, 'Buffy in the “Terrible House”', Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy Studies, 1.4, December 2001
  
• Arial Yuan-Jie Chou , 'On Horror Films: A Psychoanalytic Approach On A Nightmare On Elm Street Series' E-Thesis Providence University July 2006
• Celestino Deleyto Alcala, 'Masochism and Representation in Modern Horror: The Case of Alien 3' , Atlantis VVIII (1-2) 1996
• Sérgio Dias Branco, 'Being Her/She in ‘Who Are You?’”. It’s the End of the World. Again?!?: Why Buffy Still Matters, Conference at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, March 16, 2007
• Elizabeth Ezra, 'Resurrecting the Alien Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Hollywood', Stirling Online Research Repository, originally published in New Cinemas volume 1, no. 1 (2002): 54-60
• Robert Genter, 'Imagining murderous mothers: male spectatorship and the American slasher film', Studies in the Humanities, June 1, 2006
• Sara M. Grimes, '"You Shoot Like A Girl!”: The Female Protagonist in Action-Adventure Video Games', Digital Games Research Association - Level Up Conference Proceedings, November 2003
• Andrew Grossman, 'Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part One)', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 47, February 2005
• Andrew Grossman, 'Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part Two)', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005
• Tamiko Southcott Hayter, 'Perverse Pleasures: Spectatorship, The Blair Witch Project,' E-Thesis, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2005
• Lacy Hodges, '"Scully, what are you wearing?": the problem of feminism, subversion, and heteronormativity in The X Files', e-Thesis University of Florida, 2005
• Irene Karras, 'The Third Wave's Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Thirdspace, Vol. 1, Issue 2, March 2002
• Mikel J. Koven, 'The Terror Tale: Urban Legends and the Slasher Film', Scope, May 2003
• Jenni Lada, 'Feminizing the Final Girl', Cerize Magazine, October 2007
• Colin Le Sueur, 'Misogynism and the Macabre: An Analysis of the Representation of Women in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses', Film Fortress, June 9, 2006
• Uel McMahan, 'The Alienation of Ripley and the Maturation of the Final Girl', Wiggledog's Song, June 21, 2008
• 'Mittens', 'Feminist Horror Film Theory', Everything2, [date unknown]
• Victoria Newsom, 'Young Females as Super Heroes: Superheroines in the Animated Sailor Moon', Femspec, ('Girl Power' Issue) 5.2
• Marc Ouellette, '"When a Killer Body Isn't Enough": Cross-Gender Identification in Action-Adventure Video Games', Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)
• Iva Radat, 'Haute Tension: Lesbian Audience and the Slasher Film', Transgressing Gender Conference, Zagreb, Croatia, 2005 (scroll down to page 20/262)
• David Robinson, 'The unattainable narrative: identity, consumerism and the slasher film in Mary Harron's American Psycho', CineAction, January 1, 2006
• Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, 'Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism's Third Wave: "I'm Not My Mother", Genders Online Journal Issue 38 2003
• Steven Jay Schneider, 'Introduction - Psychoanalysis in/and/of the Horror Film', Senses of Cinema, July 2001
• Shweta Sharma, 'The Killer Father and the Final Mother: Womb-Envy in The Cell' Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 1, No 2 (2007)
• Elizabeth J. Silas, Abstract Themes of Awakening in Mainstream Films: Female Subjects and the Lacanian Symbolic, E-Thesis, Miami University, 2005
• Anneke Smelik, 'Feminist Film Theory', from Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink, (eds), The Cinema Book, second edition. London: British Film Institute, 1999, pp 353-365
• Ashley Lorrain Smith, 'Girl Power, feminism, girlculture and the popular media', E-Thesis, University of North Texas, August 1999
• Donato Totaro, 'The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror', Offscreen Journal, January 31, 2002

FSFF also highly recommends that you visit Slayage: International Journal of Buffy Studies for lots of other relevant studies.

More about → 'Final Girl' Studies