Author: Malcolm Foley Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443802654 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
In 1999 the French bishops condemned the celebration of Halloween in France. In 2003 the Moscow Department of Education recommended the banning of Halloween celebrations in all educational institutions under its control. In 2008 a group of Catalan intellectuals launched an internet petition against the Halloween celebrations organised by the Port Aventura theme park, arguing that they were detrimental to long-standing Catalan traditions associated with 31 October. In the meantime children and young people all over Europe—and increasingly adults—are energetically adopting and adapting the American version of Halloween as a source of fun, community building and general revelry. So are we all being tricked by rampant cultural imperialism, or responding creatively to the arrival of Halloween as a welcome onset-of-winter treat? This book, which arose out of the first-ever conference on the topic of Halloween held in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31 October 2006, brings together a series of studies examining the phenomenon of Halloween from a wide range of perspectives: its origins; the ways in which it is now and has been in the past celebrated in the British Isles; its spectacular arrival in both Eastern and Western Europe over the last two decades; its links with tourism; and its multifaceted presence in the media. What emerges is a phenomenon of astonishing complexity, characterised by multiple meanings and intense battles over ownership.
Author: Rebecca Janicker Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476628920 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
Looming onto the television landscape in 2011, American Horror Story gave viewers a weekly dose of psychological unease and gruesome violence. Embracing the familiar horror conventions of spooky settings, unnerving manifestations and terrifying monsters, series co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk combine shocking visual effects with an engaging anthology format to provide a modern take on the horror genre. This collection of new essays examines the series' contribution to television horror, focusing on how the show speaks to social concerns, its use of classic horror tropes and its reinvention of the tale of terror for the 21st century.
Author: Lisa Morton Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1780230559 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 231
Book Description
Halloween has spread around the world, yet its associations with death and the supernatural as well as its inevitable commercialization have made it one of our most puzzling holidays. How did it become what it is today? Trick or Treat is the first book both to examine the origins and history of Halloween and to explore in depth its current global popularity. Festivals like the Celtic Samhain and Catholic All Souls’ Day have blended to produce the modern Halloween, which has been reborn with new customs in America—but there are also related but independent holidays, especially Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Lisa Morton lifts the cobwebs off everything from the explosion in popularity of haunted attractions to the impact of events like the global economic recession, as well as the effect Halloween has had on popular culture through literary works, films, and television series. Taking us on a journey from the spectacular to the macabre, this book is a treat for anyone who wants to peep behind the mask to see the real past and present of this ever more popular holiday.
Author: Ailsa Grant Ferguson Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135041849 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
Addressing for the first time Shakespeare’s place in counter-cultural cinema, this book examines and theorizes counter-hegemonic, postmodern, and post-punk Shakespeare in late 20th and early 21st century film. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, Grant Ferguson presents an interdisciplinary approach that offers new theories on the nature and application of Shakespearean appropriations in the light of postmodern modes of representation. The book considers the nature of the Shakespearean inter-text in subcultural political contexts concerning the politicized aesthetics of a Shakespearean ‘body in pieces,’ the carnivalesque, and notions of Shakespeare as counter-hegemonic weapon or source of empowerment. Representative films use Shakespeare (and his accompanying cultural capital) to challenge notions of capitalist globalization, dominant socio-cultural ideologies, and hegemonic modes of expression. In response to a post-modern culture saturated with logos and semiotic abbreviations, many such films play with the emblematic imagery and references of Shakespeare’s texts. These curious appropriations have much to reveal about the elusive nature of intertextuality in late postmodern culture and the battle for cultural ownership of Shakespeare. As there has yet to be a study that isolates and theorizes modes of Shakespearean production that specifically demonstrate resistance to the social, political, ideological, aesthetic, and cinematic norms of the Western world, this book expands the dialogue around such texts and interprets their patterns of appropriation, adaptation, and representation of Shakespeare.
Author: Dina Khapaeva Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472122622 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 265
Book Description
The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity. Dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry. “Corpse chic” and “skull style” have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book breaks new ground by viewing these phenomena as aspects of a single movement and documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. This book links the mounting demand for images of violent death with dramatic changes in death-related social rituals. It offers a conceptual framework that connects observations of fictional worlds—including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, and the Harry Potter series—with real-world sociocultural practices, analyzing the aesthetic, intellectual, and historical underpinnings of the cult of death. It also places the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement in shaping the current antihumanist atmosphere. This timely, thought-provoking book will appeal to scholars of culture, film, literature, anthropology, and American and Russian studies, as well as general readers seeking to understand a defining phenomenon of our age.
Author: Derek Johnston Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1137298952 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
This book explores the literary and cultural history behind certain Christmas and Halloween traditions, and examines the way that they have moved into broadcasting. It demonstrates how these horror traditions have become more domestic and personal, and how they provide a necessary seasonal pause for reflection on our fears.
Author: Jacob L. Bender Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030509397 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
This comparative literature study explores how writers from across Ireland and Latin America have, both in parallel and in concert, deployed symbolic representations of the dead in their various anti-colonial projects. In contrast to the ghosts and revenants that haunt English and Anglo-American letters—where they are largely either monstrous horrors or illusory frauds—the dead in these Irish/Latinx archives can serve as potential allies, repositories of historical grievances, recorders of silenced voices, and disruptors of neocolonial discourse.
Author: Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192639307 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 625
Book Description
What does religion mean to modern Ireland and what is its recent social and political history? The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland provides in-depth analysis of the relationships between religion, society, politics, and everyday life on the island of Ireland from 1800 to the twenty-first century. Taking a chronological and all-island approach, it explores the complex and changing role of religion both before and after partition. The handbook's thirty-two chapters address long-standing historical and political debates about religion, identity, and politics, including religion's contributions to division and violence. They also offer perspectives on how religion interacts with education, the media, law, gender and sexuality, science, literature, and memory. Whilst providing insight into how everyday religious practices have intersected with the institutional structures of Catholicism and Protestantism, the book also examines the island's increasing religious diversity, including the rise of those with 'no religion'. Written by leading scholars in the field and emerging researchers with new perspectives, this is an authoritative and up-to-date volume that offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of the enduring significance of religion on the island.
Author: Julia Petrov Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1350036196 Category : Design Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
From Jack the Ripper to Frankenstein, Halloween customs to Alexander McQueen collections, Fashioning Horror examines how terror is fashioned visually, symbolically, and materially through fashion and costume, in literature, film, and real life. With a series of case studies that range from sensationalist cinema and Slasher films to true crime and nineteenth-century literature, the volume investigates the central importance of clothing to the horror genre, and broadens our understanding of both material and popular culture. Arguing that dress is fundamental to our understanding of character and setting within horror, the chapters also reveal how the grotesque and horrific is at the center of fashion itself, with its potential for instability, disguise, and carnivalesque subversion. Packed with original research, and bringing together a range of international scholars, the book is the first to thoroughly examine the aesthetics of terror and the role of fashion in the construction of horror.
Author: Malcolm Foley
Author: Rebecca Janicker
Author: Lisa Morton
Author: Ailsa Grant Ferguson
Author: Dina Khapaeva
Author: Derek Johnston
Author: Jacob L. Bender
Author: Richard J. Hand
Author: 
Author: Julia Petrov