Category: Papers

Horror, Nonfiction, Papers

Sauna and the Cartography of Swamps

OJ

I have a new chapter out! “The Cartography of Swamps: Making and Breaking Boundaries in Sauna” can be found in Baltic Horror in Film, Gaming and Literature, edited by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and published by the University of Wales Press.

I have to admit that, when I saw the call for papers for this, I didn’t send in an abstract because I knew a great deal about Baltic horror. I actually knew very little. What I did have was unbridled love for the 2008 Finnish film Sauna, directed by Antti-Jussi Annila. Now, a lot of my academic work is just me taking the chance to write about media that I really enjoy – this is my nerdy hobby, after all, and I’m not wasting time on work I don’t like! – so this was my opportunity to talk, at length, about Sauna. Why wouldn’t I take that up?

Sauna, if you haven’t seen it (and you really should) is a historical horror, set in the late sixteenth-century, which follows a map-making expedition along the border of Sweden and Russia. These two countries had just come out of a war, so setting up a mutually-agreed-upon border was a chance to try and limit future conflict. The expedition includes two brothers: one a cartographer, and one a former soldier deeply traumatised by the war. They discover an unmapped village in the centre of a swamp, and if you’ve any exposure at all to wetlands in narratives you’ll be familiar with how they shift and destabilise plot. How can anyone expect a reliable border in a place where land and water are constantly shifting? Answer: they can’t. Of course, given this is horror, geographical boundaries aren’t the only thing to be transgressed, and the brothers find themselves on opposite sides of moral boundaries which really should not be crossed. It’s cartography and ethical behaviour, essentially, and it’s fantastic.

Even if you don’t read my paper, the film is well worth watching. It’s slow, creeping horror and wetlands. What’s not to love?

Horror, Nonfiction, Papers, SFF

Lunar Gothic and Meredith Ann Pierce’s Darkangel Series

OJ

I have a new chapter out!

To be honest, it’s not really new. It came out last year and I missed it. Oh well, better late than never. “Sterility Across Chasms: Dead Worlds and Technological Imaginations in Meredith Ann Pierce’s Darkangel Series” is available to read in Lunar Gothic: The Influence of the Moon on the Gothic Imagination from Palgrave Macmillan, edited by Elana Gomel and Simon Bacon.

When I saw the call for papers for this, which really was years ago at this point – academic publishing is notoriously slow – I knew at once that I wanted to submit something. Lunar Gothic? That was too exciting to pass up. There was really only one choice of text for me, too.

I was obsessed with the Darkangel series as a kid. I can’t tell you how many times I took it out of the school library. It was vampires! On the moon! And the central romance fell apart because it turns out it doesn’t matter if you (literally) offer up your heart to a prince, he doesn’t have to love you for it and it doesn’t make him a bad person, it just means you get to transfer your previously rather limited ambitions to (literal) worldbuilding instead. The drama! The imagery! The dead Earth, hanging in the sky while gargoyles roamed a creepy lunar castle and a whole series of brides got their blood drained and hung around afterwards, whining. (To be fair, in their place I’d whine too.) Death! Rebirth! Fantastical creatures and artificial life!

That trilogy was weird as hell and I loved every page of it. Because I mostly write academic papers on my own time – it’s the world’s nerdiest hobby – I end up writing a lot about my favourite things and pieces of media over the years. And why not, I say. Any excuse to reread this series is a good one. And Gothic really can go anywhere…

Horror, Papers, Pop culture, SFF

Multiple Mortalities in Pretty Deadly

OJ

I have a new paper out! “Deathface Ginny (Kelly Sue DeConnick, 2014–20) – Death and #MeToo” can be read in Death in the 21st Century: A Companion, part of the Genre Fiction and Film Companions series from Peter Lang, edited by Katarzyna Bronk-Bacon and Simon Bacon.

I have to admit, though, I continue to think of this particular chapter by its subtitle: “Multiple Mortalities in Pretty Deadly.” That’s what it was all the time I worked on it, so that’s the way I remember it. You don’t always get to pick your titles, and when the editors have to stick to a particular format – there’s a lot of fascinating case studies in this book, so standardisation helps readers to keep track! – that’s when your original title gets bumped down.

I’m not primarily a comics critic, but very occasionally I do a paper on comics, whenever I find something I just can’t resist writing about. This time round it’s Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Ríos, which is a series I’m just fascinated by. It’s kind of weird western/historical, with a number of different reapers wandering around representing different types of death. The art is gorgeous, but what really interests me is how much of a puzzle it is – all these interlocking pieces fitting together in unexpected and thoughtful ways. It’s just a great read, and so when I saw a call for papers that was looking for representations of Death in 21st century pop culture I saw my opportunity and I pounced on it. Not sorry.

Horror, Papers, Pop culture, SFF

Monstrosity, Mutation, and the World without Us

OJ

I have a new paper out! “Monstrosity, Mutation, and the World without Us” can be read in Superheroes Beyond, recently published by the University of Mississippi Press.

This paper has been a long time coming. Back in 2018, I presented it at the Superheroes Beyond conference in Melbourne. The city was baking hot – I barely wanted to go outside – but the conference itself was fantastic, focused as it was on how superheroes were presented, in boundary-crossing ways, in popular culture. There was a lot of emphasis on comics, of course, but there were also papers on lots of other media as well, and on superheroes from all around the world. It was honestly one of the most enjoyable conferences I’ve ever been to!

The conference led to a book project. It was not quick. All credit to the editors – Cormac McGarry, Liam Burke, Ian Gordon, and Angela Ndalianis – for keeping the momentum going through the five plus years of the entire book-producing process. I’ve finally got the finished result in my hot little hands and it looks great. I can’t wait to read what everyone else from the conference has written!

My particular paper looked at nonhuman superheroes and eco-horror. There’s some discussion of Swamp Thing, of course, but also mutant bears and Godzilla, and how their creation, their actions (and their reactions) might allow them to be seen through a superhero lens. I’m so glad to see it finally out there!

Horror, Papers

Forensic and Experimental Estrangement

OJ

I have a new paper out! “Forensic and Experimental Estrangement: Investigating the Supernatural Body” is free to read in the latest issue of Supernatural Studies. It’s a special issue, devoted to one of my favourite films of all time, The Exorcist. I’ve written a paper on that film before, looking at the archaeological imagery of the film and how it relates to the presentation of medicine therein (that paper can be found in volume 7.1 of Horror Studies), and this new paper is a little related to that.

I happen to love horror films about exorcism and possessed or supernatural bodies, and I note that, in some of them at least, there’s a strong focus on medical examination of the body in question. Sometimes that examination is carried out on a living person, as it is in The Exorcist with little Regan, but sometimes the person is dead, and the examination shifts to autopsy. It almost never goes well.

In this paper, I look at four different films – The Exorcist, The Atticus Institute, The Possession of Hannah Grace, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe. I’m interested in how these films present medical science, both its practice and its efficacy… and, honestly, it’s not exactly a research hardship, sitting on my arse and watching horror films.

I’ll take any excuse for that.