Typically on this blog, when I discuss monsters, I discuss them in the classic sense of the word. I analyze those horrifying aberrations that upend our sense of consistency and comfort, that unsettle norms with their often hideous and hybrid bodies. It is far less typical that I engage the reader in a discussion of a circa 1960’s childrens’ Christmas classic that’s become a staple component of the pre-holiday viewing canon. Alas, I aim to surprise, so that’s exactly what we’re doing today. I sat down tonight to watch the always fantastic original “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and was reminded of the so-famous-it’s-almost-a-cliché Milton quote: “The mind is its own place, and can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell.” You see, for perception to be this malleable, I think the mind must pick out—and emphasize, or diminish—details of its choosing. The details the mind focuses on may have some bearing on one’s perception of reality. Similarly, the Grinch is a very different movie watching it as a child and as an adult. Here, then, are some questions and problems my adult mind focuses on while watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” along with, perhaps, some shameless fangirling over this movie made for six-year-olds. Continue reading “Have a Monstrous Christmas: Part One: A Sort of Tribute to the Grinch”
Month: November 2017
My First Video Game Post: The Surprising Terror of Doki Doki Literature Club
Having not really immersed myself in the world video games since the days of N-64, I didn’t know what to expect when I sat down to play Doki Doki Literature Club – a game, admittedly, whose name doesn’t make it sound nearly as troubling as it is. And I’m not really sure what to say about it now, except to explain my experience playing the game and, maybe, why I think it has the effect on the player that it does. In doing so, I will be establishing a “first” on this blog – my first video game post. Woooohoooo! And I have absolutely no idea how to talk about the game without giving away the ending, so only click to continue reading if you’re comfortable with spoilers. I assume giving spoilers is a huge no-no in game land, but that’s why I’m warning you: I’m going to be very blunt about my experience playing this game, because I’m so fascinated with the process! Continue reading “My First Video Game Post: The Surprising Terror of Doki Doki Literature Club”
A (Perhaps) Unlikely Comparison: Suddenly Last Summer (1959) Meets American Horror Story Asylum (Episodes 1 & 2)
When I sat down to write my very first post for Just Dread-full (an event that took place over two years ago), I wrote about the first episode of American Horror Story: Haunted Hotel. Of course, I’d intended, at least perhaps, to watch more episodes than the first, but I found (as is often the case for me) that I was so excited to write, that I wrote my blog post after episode one had aired. Now, over two years later, another American Horror Story blog post is born from similar circumstances. I’m watching a variety of films and T.V. shows for my Independent Seminar, and after watching the first couple selections, the urge struck me. I thought: I should watch more shows on the list before writing my weekly response, but, I really want to write. And so, this post is born, and it should give me some ideas or preparation for my imminent writing assignment. I watched the 1959 film Suddenly Last Summer today, along with the first two episodes of American Horror Story: Asylum. Now it’s time to consider how madness is spatialized in this film. Some related questions might consider how space is organized in terms of “madness,” so-called, and what space reflects about our conceptions of madness. Continue reading “A (Perhaps) Unlikely Comparison: Suddenly Last Summer (1959) Meets American Horror Story Asylum (Episodes 1 & 2)”
Happy Death Day – A Pleasant Surprise
Michael and I decided to do a spontaneous Sunday night movie last week. Because of my urging, we ended up in the theater watching (of course) Happy Death Day, as opposed to Lego Ninjago or (another) viewing of Thor: Ragnarok – the two current most logical outcomes of letting Michael pick the movie. And while another viewing of Ragnarok or an initial viewing of Lego Ninjago wouldn’t have been completely insufferable, Happy Death Day turned out to be a really intriguing horror-movie going experience, if only because, well, it turned out to be a bit of an aberration. I was, I admit, underwhelmed by the previews of the cliché killer wearing a creepy mask and stalking a female college student. I didn’t think the film looked horrible, but it didn’t really look scary. And since the “re-live the same day over and over and over” trope is a horror off-shoot of Groundhog’s Day, I wasn’t expecting to be enamored (I mean, Groundhog’s Day is fantastic, but I didn’t think another film like it would work as well). And to be fair, I wasn’t enamored. But there were some surprising elements of the film that made it, well, entertaining to watch, and incredibly distinct from a lot of horror that’s currently out in theaters. Continue reading “Happy Death Day – A Pleasant Surprise”
The Shining: A Spacial and Temporal Examination of a Spectral Narrative
In the beginning of Place: An Introduction, Tim Cresswell describes the significance of placing a specific art exhibit, one foregrounding Bollywood movies, in an elite Swedish town where only the 1% tend to visit, in part because it’s difficult to get there. Cresswell includes the following quote in his introduction: “ ‘It’s difficult to get to,’ Mr. Wakefield added, ‘but because of that, it also demands a different kind of attention. You discover the art through the place and the place through the art.’ The exhibition at Gstaad reflects a wider interest in how art and place interact on the part of both the artists and art theorists” (2). This got me thinking that it might be intriguing to examine The Shining not just from a few lenses but – perhaps – from the intersection of a few lenses: Space or place, as its conveyed in the film, the cultural space in which the film is produced, and the current cultural space in which I, the viewer, am watching the film. This move, I think, is necessarily spectral, or turns the art under examination into a specter that disrupts linear time, since I become sort of engaged in this spectral moment, where I’m looking at the art forward, backward, etc – and this is especially true of The Shining, which situates its primary space, The Overlook Hotel, as a place that’s both mad and spectral, that consistently – if not constantly – manifests itself as a presence in the spectral moment by embodying both the past and the present – and, to the contemporary viewer, the more recent past (1921, 1980, 2017, but arranged as 2017 encompassing a film that shifts back and forth between 1921 and 1980, that begins by emphasizing 1980 but ends by emphasizing 1921). As a “cautionary note,” I found, as I was watching, that it was challenging to thread the entirety of this analysis throughout my interpretation of the film, especially for a blog post, but that’s the general angle I’m coming from when I look at the film. (As a sidenote, I wonder the extent to which we could deduce that all art is “spectral” – or maybe that’s what I’m getting at, but that seems like a sweeping argument for a later time). Continue reading “The Shining: A Spacial and Temporal Examination of a Spectral Narrative”
The Blue Man – Or, This is Not a Horror Story
True to the title of my piece, this is not a horror story. Although, what I see now that I didn’t see when things like this happened was just how much my friend and I wanted it to be a horror story, how much we enacted the things that we read in our Fear Street books and our horror movies, and made the world of horror come alive, if, simultaneously, to our delight and our chagrin. Again, this is not a horror story. This is a childhood memory – a childhood memory I share on an overcast day in early November, when my frenetic, two-and-a-half-month mania has dwindled and I’ve suddenly fallen into this shifting state that fluctuates between focused, positive energy and complete depression and self-loathing. This is not a horror story—at least, I hadn’t intended it to be so. But, maybe it will turn out that way as I keep writing. One never can predict the end of the story, after all—or, at least, I can’t—when one’s merely writing the beginning. Continue reading “The Blue Man – Or, This is Not a Horror Story”
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