That the vampire epidemics caused great concern within European society in the Early Modern period, there is no doubt. As Rousseau (Masson, 1914) noted “for some time now the public news has been concerned with nothing but vampires… yet show me a single man of sense in Europe who believes [in them]”.
Culture
From the Entertainment Springs of Cinematic Horror Thrills
In his discussion of genre, Altman observes: “we cannot help but notice that generic terminology sometimes involves nouns, sometimes adjectives… Indeed, the very same word sometimes appears as both part of speech: musical comedies or just plain musicals, Western romances or simply Westerns, documentary films or film documentaries.” (Altman 1999, 50)
A Life of Crime and the Thriller as Horror Film
In his early writing on the genre, Neale suggests genres “differ from one another… in the precise weight given to the discourses they share in common” so that while narrative disequilibrium “is inaugurated by violence” in the western, the gangster film, the detective film and the horror film, the “specificity” of the horror film is not defined by “violence as such” but by its special emphasis on “discourses carrying the human/nature opposition in its discursive regime”, an emphasis that can even end up “relativising or even displacing entirely the Law/disorder dichotomy in term of which violence operates in the western, the detective and gangster films.” (Neale 1980, 21)
Vampires in the Early Christian Era
It is accurate to describe the clergy as disseminators of morality. After all, one of the primary functions of any religion is to legislate morality to both the elites and the commoners. However, the Catholic Church was not fortunate enough to be working with a tabula rasa.
Psychological Horror, and Body Horror
Perhaps the most frightening of all horror films are those where there are no monsters and no demons other than the psychological states of the characters.
Horror Cinema and the Mad Science of Nature
From as far back as ‘King Kong’ (1933), horror films have capitalized on human fears of the natural order turning on us, whether it be plants, monkeys, ants, leeches, sharks, birds, dogs, bats, rats, bees, fish, earthworms, alligators, spiders, snakes, cockroaches, dinosaurs, or even swamp bacteria.
The ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ Witching Evident Authority
It is thus that Henri Boguet introduces his ‘Examen of Witches’ (1602): a manual based upon his own experiences as a judge concerned with the trial, torture, and burning of numerous victims of the witch scare in Burgundy towards the end of the sixteenth-century. Boguet knows that witches exist because he can cite both learned authority and factual evidence to prove his case conclusively.
Myths as Gamming Encouragement to Experience the Real
Many myths, from all over the world, narrate the tale of an ancestor who stole fire from God’s hearth and gave it to man. Prometheus from Greece, Ilya from Brazil, Anansi from North America, Maui from Oceania, and Lucifer from the Middle East personify this hero. But let us take a closer look at the version of this myth from the Congo — the Africa of the Pygmies.
Criminal Queens: Foucault’s Royal Genealogies
In what ways do Victorian’s project negative images about Victoria through their representations of shadow queens? My method asks questions about the cultural dynamics and structures of thinking that allowed so many Victorians to write consistently horrific and hysterical accounts of queens such as Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, and Marie-Antoinette.
Description and Analysis of a Gardnerian Wiccan Ritual
According to many theorists, Contemporary Pagan rituals are the primary agent for cohesiveness in an otherwise individualistic and vacillating religious structure.
