Dawsferatu's House of Horrors

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), better known as M. R. James, was an English medievalist and scholar whose work, though primarily published in the early years of the twentieth century, remains highly regarded today. His distinction in the field secured him a position as provost at Eton and, later, at King’s College in Cambridge. In addition to his contributions to medieval studies, James is widely hailed as the progenitor of the “antiquarian ghost story”; a variation on the classic supernatural tale that updates traditional Gothic tropes and brings them into conversation with the trivial banalities of modern life, with predictably stange and horrific results. The haunted object is a recurring motif in James’ fiction. Rather than tethering his vengeful spirits and tormented souls to specific locations, James often opted instead to attach his ghosts to manuscripts, paintings, and other such objets d’art . His protagonists are almost invariably academics of some description: the curator...

To point out that every war movie, without exception, consists of several action set pieces strung together into a semblance of a plot is such a trite observation that I hesitate to open this discussion with it. But, if the following remarks are to make any amount of sense, I find that I must. So: every war movie, without exception, consists of several action set pieces strung together into a semblance of a plot. Where one war movie differs from another is not so much in which set pieces they employ (though this does obviously play a role), but rather in what these set pieces mean . Imagine the prototypical propaganda film: every firefight, every bombing run, and every ambush is justified. They are each and every one undeniably in service of the cause. In short, the violence is justified, and through this justification the audience is not only permitted to enjoy it, but encouraged to. Thus, there can be no ambiguity here: the enemy is the enemy is the enemy. Though this style of narrat...

     In the heady years of the early 2000s, the name Jean Baudrillard was practically synonymous with postmodernism in the public consciousness. With dozens of books on topics ranging from popular culture to the Gulf War to his name, Baudrillard’s primary theoretical project was describing the related concepts of simulation and hyperreality . Simply put, or at least as simply as such concepts can be put, Baudrillard teaches us what children intuitively understand: that the images we see on our television screens and in the cinema are real , perhaps more real than we would like to admit.      It should come as no surprise that Hollywood would be quite taken with Baudrillard’s theories. Perhaps the most famous example of Baudrillardian cinema is the Wachowskis’ Matrix franchise. However, Baudrillard actively distanced himself from The Matrix , stating in an interview with The New York Times that what the Wachowskis borrowed from his book Simulacra and Simul...

What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need to do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters. --Charles Baudelaire             That noir is an extension of the Gothic tradition ought to be obvious to anyone who has seen the cinematic iterations of either. Darkness--both literal and figurative--pervade, and, in fact, define both traditions. And while it may be cliché to begin by defining terms, it is necessary to do so before going any further. To that end, the Gothic constitutes that body of fiction created to evoke feelings of dread, mystery, and fear, typically--though not always--through the use of supernatural elements.      What, then, is noir? In his introduction to The Best American Noir of the Century collection, James Ellroy--the so-called Demon Dog of Crime Fiction--describes noir as “the long drop of the short pier, and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It’s t...