Supernatural Studies

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.

I have a new paper out! Something very appropriate for the times, too, in that it deals with infection and disease. The paper’s called “Inoculation and Contagion: The Absence of Vaccination in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and it’s free to read at Supernatural Studies. If you go to the table of contents for the issue you can also download a free pdf of the paper, which is great.

I love Dracula. I really do. It’s one of the great horror stories of all time, and yet when I reread it again a couple of years back, I began to wonder. Why is there no mention of vaccination in it? Two of the main characters are doctors. They treat vampirism as a contagious disease, and vaccination was, at the time of Stoker’s writing (and at the time the novel was set) an accepted medical practice. It was even a compulsory practice when it came to smallpox. And yet… nary a mention. Not even to say that it wouldn’t work so no use trying. Now, Stoker is long dead and so can’t be asked, but still… can a bit of research find a reason for this curious omission? It just might, I thought, and it has. Without verification from Stoker we can’t be sure if it’s the right reason, of course, but it’s certainly a plausible one.

And honestly, for me, plausibility is enough. My curiosity is satisfied. I would say, however, that just because you can’t vaccinate yourself against vampirism doesn’t mean you can’t vaccinate yourself against a number of other diseases. You can, and you should.