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A Scary Little Christmas
Controversial yet beloved among audiences, Christmas-themed horror movies emerged in the early 1970s and gained a notorious reputation with Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), depicting Santa as an ax-wielding maniac. Some parents and conservative groups condemned the film, while others embraced the portrayal of Yuletide as a backdrop for fear and dread. Drawing on interviews with directors, producers, special effects artists, photographers and actors, this book celebrates the sordid, colorful history of the Christmas horror subgenre. Psycho Santa films such as Christmas Evil (1980) and 3615 code Pere Noel (1989) are examined, along with "Yule-Die" slashers like The Dorm that Dripped Blood (1982), Black Christmas (1974) and Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972). Commercial successes like Gremlins (1984) and Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) are covered, as well as more recent releases such as Better Watch Out (2016), Red Christmas (2016) and Deathcember (2019). Rare photographs, promotional materials and an annotated filmography are provided.
Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture
Tropical Gothic examines Gothic within a specific geographical area of ‘the South’ of the Americas. In so doing, we structure the book around geographical coordinates (from North to South) and move between various national traditions of the gothic (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, etc) alongside regional manifestations of the Gothic (the US south and the Caribbean) as well as transnational movements of the Gothic within the Americas. The reflections on national traditions of the Gothic in this volume add to the critical body of literature on specific languages or particular nations, such as Scottish Gothic, American Gothic, Canadian Gothic, German Gothic, Kiwi Gothic, etc. This is significant ...
Post-Apocalyptic Patriarchy
Twenty-first century American television series such as Revolution, Falling Skies, The Last Ship and The Walking Dead have depicted a variety of doomsday scenarios--nuclear cataclysm, rogue artificial intelligence, pandemic, alien invasion or zombie uprising. These scenarios speak to longstanding societal anxieties and contemporary calamities like 9/11 or the avian flu epidemic. Questions about post-apocalyptic television abound: whose voices are represented? What tomorrows are they most afraid of? What does this tell us about the world we live in today? The author analyzes these speculative futures in terms of gender, race and sexuality, revealing the fears and ambitions of a patriarchy in flux, as exemplified by the "return" to a mythical American frontier where the white male hero fights for survival, protects his family and crafts a new world order based on the old.
Zombifying a Nation
The figure of the zombie that entered the popular imagination with the publication of William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929)--during the American occupation of Haiti--still holds cultural currency around the world. This book calls for a rethinking of zombies in a sociopolitical context through the examination of several films, including White Zombie (1932), The Love Wanga (1935), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). A 21st-century film from Haiti, Zombi candidat a la presidence ... ou les amours d'un zombi, is also examined. A reading of Heading South (2005), a film about the female tourist industry in the Caribbean, explores zombification as a consumptive process driven by capitalism.
Going Viral
Outbreak narratives have proliferated for the past quarter century, and now they have reached epidemic proportions. From 28 Days Later to 24 to The Walking Dead, movies, TV shows, and books are filled with zombie viruses, bioengineered plagues, and disease-ravaged bands of survivors. Even news reports indulge in thrilling scenarios about potential global pandemics like SARS and Ebola. Why have outbreak narratives infected our public discourse, and how have they affected the way Americans view the world? In Going Viral, Dahlia Schweitzer probes outbreak narratives in film, television, and a variety of other media, putting them in conversation with rhetoric from government authorities and news...
Red Dead Redemption
While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games’ Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history. Drawing on game studies, western history, American studies, and cultural studies, the authors train a wide-ranging, deeply informed analytic perspective on the Red De...
The Subversive Zombie
Historically, zombies have been portrayed in films and television series as mindless, shuffling monsters. In recent years, this has changed dramatically. The undead are fast and ferocious in 28 Days Later... (2002) and World War Z (2013). In Warm Bodies (2013) and In the Flesh (2013-2015), they are thoughtful, sensitive and capable of empathy. These sometimes radically different depictions of the undead (and the still living) suggest critical inquiries: What does it mean to be human? What makes a monster? Who survives the zombie apocalypse, and why? Focusing on classic and current movies and TV shows, the author reveals how the once-subversive modern zombie, now more popular than ever, has been co-opted by the mainstream culture industry.
Unraveling Resident Evil
Resident Evil is a multidimensional as well as multimedia universe: Various books, graphic novels, games and movies (the fifth one came out in 2012) all contribute to this enormous universe. The new essays written for this volume focus on this particular zombie manifestation and its significance in popular culture. The essayists come from very different fields, so it was possible to cover a wide range and discuss numerous issues regarding this universe. Among them are game theory, the idea of silence as well as memory, the connection to iconic stories such as Alice in Wonderland, posthumanism and much more. A lot of ground is covered that will facilitate further discussions not only among Resident Evil interested persons but also among other zombie universes and zombies in general. Most of these essays focus on the female figure Alice, a character revered by many as a feminist warrior.
The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, Volume 2: 2000-2010
This is a comprehensive overview of zombie movies in the first 11 years of the new millennium, the most dynamic and vital period yet in the history of the zombie genre. It serves not only as a follow-up to its predecessor (The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, McFarland 2001), which covered movies from 1932 up until the late 1990s, but also as a fresh exploration of what uniquely defines the genre in the 2000s. In-depth entries provide critical analysis of the zombie as creature in more than 280 feature-length movies, from 28 countries and filmed on six continents. An appendix offers shorter entries for more than 100 shorts and serials.
...But If a Zombie Apocalypse Did Occur
Part pop culture trope, part hypothetical cataclysm, the zombie apocalypse is rooted in modern literature, film and mythology. This collection of new essays considers the implications of this scientifically impossible (but perhaps imminent) event, examining real-world responses to pandemic contagion and civic chaos, as well as those from Hollywood and popular culture. The contributors discuss the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for actual catastrophes and estimate the probabilities of human survival and behavior during an undead invasion.
