bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Antisemitism and the Historical Memory of the Second World War
Authors: Weinberg David H.
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the west European Jewish response to antisemitism. Most observers in Europe and abroad assumed that the defeat of Nazism would bring an end to anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence. Although governments expressly banned overt antisemitic propaganda, neo-fascist groups continued to demonstrate on the streets of the major cities of western Europe, scrawl graffiti on walls, and disseminate tracts. Influenced by both Jewish resistance efforts during the Holocaust and later by the military triumphs of the Yishuv and then of the new Jewish state, French activists in particular insisted upon the need for a more aggressive and assertive response in the form of new defensive political organizations. Tensions between Jews and their fellow citizens in post-war western Europe were not always overt, however. The tensions between Jewry and the larger society could be seen in such issues as the treatment of Jewish deportees and the memorialization of Holocaust victims.
Postscript
Authors: Wiskind-Elper Ora
Published: February 2021

On the Mishnah: ‘Know what is above you: A seeing eye, a hearing ear, and all your deeds are written in the book.’ At the time of the First Temple they knew what was happening above by looking at the urim and tumim.1 By the time of the Second Temple they no longer had the ...
Jews in Lithuania between the Two World Wars
Authors: Polonsky Antony
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the position of Jews in Lithuania between the two world wars. Although the history of inter-war Lithuania reveals many political failures, it is clear that, even during the authoritarian period, civil society continued to develop. Illiteracy was largely eradicated and impressive advances were made in social and intellectual life. In addition, land reform created a prosperous farming community whose products made up the bulk of the country's exports. The first years of Lithuanian independence were marked by a far-reaching experiment in Jewish autonomy. The experiment attracted wide attention across the Jewish world and was taken as a model by some Jewish politicians in Poland. Jewish autonomy also seemed to be in the interests of Lithuanians. The bulk of the Lithuanian lands remained largely agricultural until the First World War. Relations between Jews, who were the principal intermediaries between the town and manor and the countryside, and the mainly peasant Lithuanians took the form of a hostile symbiosis. This relationship was largely peaceful, and anti-Jewish violence was rare, although, as elsewhere, the relationship was marked by mutual contempt.
God Protects Our Fatherland
Authors: Marks David Woolf
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a sermon unusual for David Woolf Marks, as a response to a specific historical event. The background to this address was the outbreak of violence on the Indian subcontinent in May 1857, soon called the ‘Indian Mutiny’. The chapter compares the content of Marks' sermon to that of the Christian preachers of the day. Conversely, it shows how Marks emphasizes a theme that is understandably missing from the Christian preachers, who took it for granted: solidarity with Christian neighbours and the patriotism of the Jews of Britain. The other polemical thrust of the sermon is the reference to ‘whatever opinions we may entertain with respect to the causes which have produced this serious rebellion’. And throughout the text, there are passages that reveal the rhetorical power for which Marks was known.
The Plague of Inconsistency
Authors: Mendes H. Pereira
Published: February 2021

This chapter takes a look at H. Pereira Mendes's opposition to armed conflict in a sermon called ‘The Plague of Inconsistency’. This sermon was a call for arbitration. He previously urged that the United States submit its claims against Spain, following the sinking of the USS Maine in the harbour of Havana on 15 February, to a court of arbitration to be composed of professors of international law in distinguished universities of various countries. Six weeks later, on the sabbath, when the war officially began, as patriotic fervour began to sweep along even strong opponents of American intervention Mendes reiterated his call for arbitration through his ‘Plague’ sermon. Despite certain rebuttals against his sermon, Mendes would remain staunchly committed to the principle of arbitration rather than war as a way of solving conflicts between nations.
Blackout: How Long, O Lord, How Long?
Authors: Eisendrath Maurice N.
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a sermon by Maurice N. Eisendrath, delivered on the third Rosh Hashanah of the war. The situation of Canadian rabbis was precariously positioned between those of American preachers to the south and British preachers to the east. Canada, as part of the British Commonwealth, had long been part of the war effort, so the debate over whether or not to enter the war was not an issue, as it still was for colleagues in the United States. On the other hand, Canada was not directly affected by the war as was Britain, where one year earlier London had suffered a sustained air attack unprecedented in its devastation (a situation that certainly affected the mood in Toronto on the previous Rosh Hashanah, as the preacher reminds his listeners). Now, although the battles on the recently opened Eastern Front were of almost unimaginable ferocity, to many Canadians the war seemed distant; life at home seemed almost normal, as it did to many in the United States. This was precisely the mindset that Eisendrath set out to censure.
The United States is at War
Authors: Isserman Ferdinand M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter follows Ferdinand M. Isserman's sermon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Here, he insists that America's war now is not against the culture of Germany, Italy, or Japan, but against the tyrants who have abandoned that culture; not against the peoples of these countries, but against ruthless dictators from whom these peoples must be liberated. The war must be fought without yielding to the seductions of hatred, especially against Germans, Italians, and Japanese in America. Though acknowledging the difficult military situation at present, the sermon is extremely optimistic about the efficiency of freedom in preparing the materials for war, the potential of the American people to draw together, the economic prosperity that will follow the inevitable victory of the Allies, and America's role to liberate the victims of fascism not only from political but from economic tyranny, through ‘the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Europe’. It is a sermon that leaps ahead from a bleak present to a powerful vision of the future.
Testimonies
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on four Hebrew texts that mention the Ba’al Shem Tov and were written during his lifetime by people who knew him personally. It emphasizes on how the texts prove that he actually did live and contain information about his role, activities, and character. The first of the testimonies is the responsum of Rabbi Meir of Konstantynow, which contains remarks addressed to the Besht. There can be no doubt that Israel from Miçdzyboz, addressed by Rabbi Meir, the man who “provides balm and medicament to the person without strength” and is associated with the sage Gershon, is the Besht. The chapter evaluates the tone of Rabbi Meir’s remarks that implied that the Besht was respected and famous. Yet what Meir chose to single out in praise of the Besht were his healing abilities.
The Land of Israel in Pre-Modern Jewish Thought: A History of Two Rabbinic Statements
Authors: Saperstein Marc
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the history of interpretation of two well-known talmudic statements about the diaspora. The first has practical, legal, and financial consequences, pertaining to the right of a husband to be freed from the financial obligation stipulated in the ketubah (marriage contract) if he divorced his wife because she refused to accompany him to live in the Land of Israel. The statement of the Talmud is clear, but the responsa literature reveals that in real-life cases, justifications were frequently found to protect the rights of the divorced wife against enforcement of the talmudic principle. The second statement is of powerful theological significance, addressing the relationship between God and the Land of Israel. It asserts that God may not be accessible outside the Land of Israel, implying that the possibilities for legitimate religious life in the diaspora were extremely limited. Here too exegetical literature sometimes explained the statement but frequently dissented from it, showing that diaspora Jews often refused to be bound by the more extreme anti-diaspora sentiments of their classical texts.
The Narrative of Acculturation
Authors: Viragh Daniel
Published: February 2021

SINCE the French Revolution, the modern state has had a definite stake in creating citizens who participate in civic life with vigour and ‘patriotically’ support the state’s policies in military, political, and economic contexts. Feelings of patriotism are best developed in elementary and secondary school through the incorporation of teaching materials that expand the pupil’s natural sense of attachment to the birth environment into an abstract feeling of love for the ‘imagined community’...
Clothes Make the Man
Authors: Adler Eliyana R.
Published: February 2021

IN ONE of his beloved short stories, ‘On Account of a Hat’, Sholem Rabinovitz, better known by his pen name, Sholem Aleichem, describes the tragi-comic mishaps of a ne’er-do-well would-be businessman on his way home for the Passover holidays.1 Because of the train schedule, Sholem Shachnah has to sleep at the station. Before lying down on a bench already occupied by a Russian official, he issues strict instructions to the porter to wake him for his train. At the appointed time, in his haste to catch the train, instead of grabbing his own hat, however, Sholem Shachnah inadvertently grabs the hat belonging to the still slumbering tsarist official. He boards the train only to walk past a mirror, where he sees, to his horror, the official:...
A Church Report from Poland for June and Half of July 1941
Authors: Szarota Tomasz
Published: February 2021

IN 2004 I was honoured to be invited by Father Julian Warzecha to contribute to the Festschrift for Father Michal Czajkowski.1 The book was partly intended to serve the cause of ‘rapprochement between various Christian denominations as well as between Poles and Jews’. In my opinion this cause is best served by speaking the truth—even if this truth is painful, bitter, and shameful. The national debate around the mass murder of Jews in Jedwabne in the summer of 1941 has shown that Poles have the courage to discuss the crimes committed by their compatriots. Faced with the sins of their forefathers, they asked for forgiveness, but the discussion of Polish—Jewish relations did not end there—in fact this was only the beginning....
Depictions of Childbirth in Rabbinic Literature: The Innovation of a Genizah Midrashic Text
Authors: Schick Shana Strauch
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses an early medieval midrashic text, Midrash had shenati, which is unique in its depiction of childbirth. It looks at rabbinic texts that marginalize women's experience of childbirth in which midrash grants subjectivity to the physical experience of the labouring mother through its depiction of Rebekah's birthing of Jacob and Esau. It also reframes Rebekah's birth story and transforms it from its common cultural signification of the nation of Israel and its eternal struggle with the Other. The chapter demonstrates a mothers' physical pain during labour and childbirth, making the birth experience itself culturally visible. It talks about pregnancy and childbirth that rank among the most extraordinary experiences of their lives.
Revelation
Authors: Feldmann Kaye Miriam
Published: February 2021

This chapter internalizes the postmodern critique of religion and explores the potential for a new theology of revelation. It integrates cultural particularism by maintaining the concept of revelation at the heart of Jewish theology, while recasting it as a non-metaphysical experience. It also tackles the problem of language through its textual manifestations and explores linguistic functions or 'signifiers' that reflect a communal reality. The chapter illustrates how language is used as an instrument to designate a variety of conflicting and complementary narratives rather than as a description of a metaphysical truth. It discusses Tamar Ross's non-realist application of mysticism to religious truth statements and Rav Shagar's denial of language's ability to refer to anything beyond itself.
‘Building Bais Yaakov’
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the crucial transition of the movement from its charismatic beginnings to the institutionalization of Bais Yaakov. Bais Yaakov has frequently been called a revolution in Jewish education. The chapter proposes that Bais Yaakov was a particular kind of revolution: a charismatic social movement that followed the trajectory that is inevitable for such movements if they are not to fail, from charisma to institutionalization and routinization. It focuses particularly on the year 1925, which marked the shift from a movement still under the sway of its founder, Sarah Schenirer, to one dominated by its Central Offices and the larger organizational framework of Agudath Israel, the political organization of Orthodox Jews. This shift was accompanied by a burst of literary creativity centred on the Bais Yaakov Journal.
‘So Shall You Say to the House of Jacob’
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates how Bais Yaakov was able to forge an Orthodox discourse designed to attract young women, producing a long-running journal that featured a wide variety of articles of Jewish and general literary interest as well as other books and publications for a female readership. This enterprise began in 1923, when the young Po'alei Agudah (Agudah Workers' Organization) activist and writer Eliezer Gershon Friedenson decided to support Bais Yaakov by publishing a periodical with that name. The first issue of the Bais Yaakov Journal set the basic template, serving as the movement's primary mouthpiece by spreading word of its sacred mission and its remarkable accomplishments. A secondary goal was to bolster support for the Agudah among girls and women; the paper later endorsed Agudah candidates for national elections and called on its readers to vote. Ultimately, Bais Yaakov forged a rhetoric which celebrated girls' Torah study and religious activism, uncovering traditional resources that could be mobilized for these new purposes.
Pages from My Life
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter sheds light on Sarah Schenirer's childhood and on the beginnings of the Bais Yaakov movement. At first, Schenirer was not entirely happy with her newly founded Orthodox Girls' Union. Its activities were impressive enough, and the members listened to her lectures with enthusiasm and took an interest in the ideas she expressed. However, the girls still could not bring themselves to submit to the commandments of Jewish law and fulfil the obligations of Torah. This is because most of them were young women already, and it was not easy to persuade them to take on a new, truly Jewish life, with all its customs and traditions. Thus, Schenirer decided to start schools for young girls, truly Jewish schools, where the educational spirit would be in accordance with the perspectives of Israel of old.
From Ladies’ Auxiliary to Shluchos Network: Women’s Activism in Twentieth-Century Habad
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

The previous chapter focused on changes in the education and roles of women in early twentieth-century eastern Europe and on later developments in the West. We considered the women and girls of Satmar, Bais Yaakov, and Habad, with some attention to the Habad sheluḥah, the empowered woman who, with her husband, was sent by Rabbi Menachem Mendel to strengthen Judaism and create a Habad outpost in a locale often far from the organized hasidic or haredi community where she was brought up.
In this chapter I examine some of the details of this process, in which young hasidic women are transformed into charismatic sources of Jewish inspiration for their communities and sometimes further afield.
Habad, the Rebbe, and the Messiah in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

We have looked at a number of aspects of the Habad-Lubavitch movement in their historical context: its relationship with general Jewish society, the theme of outreach, including beyond the Jewish community, rationalism, the role of the individual, contemplation, women, the messianic idea, and the fact that Rabbi Menachem Mendel passed away without a successor. This concluding chapter explores some further theological questions: What are the positions within Habad in relation to the teachings of the last Rebbe and his messianic thrust? What might the contemporary movement have to say for the future?
Between Poland and Hungary
Authors: Miron Guy
Published: February 2021

IN THE WAKE of the First World War Poland and Hungary became independent states. Poland, which for some 130 years had been partitioned between its neighbouring empires—Russia, Austria, and Prussia—now gained independence, including in its territory some predominantly Ukrainian and Belarusian areas which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Hungary, which had enjoyed extensive autonomy since the Ausgleich (Austro-Hungarian Compromise) of 1867, was now severed from the defunct Habsburg empire and became independent, but its boundaries were dramatically reduced as a result of the Treaty of Trianon. The two states, whose independence was part of a new European order based on the principle of national self-determination, were supposed to function as democracies and respect the rights of their minorities. In the immediate aftermath of 'the war to end all wars', there was reason to hope that the recognition of the Jews as equal citizens would lead to a golden age of Jewish integration. In practice, the reality was different. Both Poland and Hungary were established as independent states amidst violent internal and external conflicts over their boundaries and the nature of their regimes. In both states, these struggles, which continued throughout the whole interwar period, increasingly led to the dominance of an exclusionary nationalism. Jews were the central, although not the only, minority targeted by this policy of exclusion. Of course, the anti-Jewish violence that occurred during the struggles for the independence of both Poland and Hungary and the anti-Jewish policies and legislation of the 1920s and especially the 1930s should not be regarded as foreshadowing the Nazi catastrophe—which was primarily the result of actions by an external force—however, there is no doubt that in both countries Jewish integration was seriously endangered during the interwar period....
Cabaret Nation
Authors: Holmgren Beth
Published: February 2021

Kabaret literacki—’literary cabaret’, a specific form of cabaret consisting of comedy sketches, monologues, and songs with satirical social and political content—was a revolutionary phenomenon in terms of Polish culture, Jewish culture, and notions of Polish national identity. It flourished mainly in Warsaw between the world wars —that is, in the capital of a newly independent nation that was also a great Jewish metropolis with a third of its residents identifying themselves as Jews or ‘of Jewish background’....
Placing the Ghetto
Authors: Cole Tim
Published: February 2021

IN BOTH Warsaw and Budapest, fragments of the wartime ghetto walls survive in the heart of the contemporary city. In Warsaw, the best-preserved sections are reached through the courtyard of the apartment block at 62 Zlota Street where the red bricks of the wall contrast strikingly with the ubiquitous post-war grey, pebble-dashed facade of the surrounding buildings. In Budapest, a stretch of wall is much more immediately visible in the courtyard of the Dohány Street synagogue in central Pest where it stands as a very intentional communist-era memorial. The differing visibilities reflect the very different fates of these two ghettos. In Budapest, the ghetto walls and gates mattered in the post-war communist era due to the unique story of this ghetto being liberated—by the Red Army—rather than being liquidated and razed to the ground, as was the case in Warsaw. As the text of communist-era memorials reveals, in Budapest a story was told of the Soviets as those who broke down ghetto walls. The plaque close to one of the former gates of the Pest ghetto celebrated the moment when ‘the liberating Soviet Army broke down the ghetto walls on 18 January 1945 ‘, while a short distance away the plaque on the stretch of ghetto wall served ‘as an eternal reminder of the day forty years ago when the wall surrounding the only ghetto remaining in Europe was broken down by the Soviet Army, liberators of our homeland’....
Polish and Hungarian Poets on the Holocaust
Authors: Gömöri George
Published: February 2021

WHEN discussing Holocaust poetry two names usually spring to mind: Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs. There is, however, a large corpus of poems on the subject from two eastern European countries, both of which had large Jewish communities before the Second World War: Poland and Hungary. In what follows I shall discuss the best poetry on the Holocaust from both countries, excluding that written in Yiddish....
Holocaust Remembrance in Hungary after the Fall of Communism
Authors: Agora Zsuzsanna
Published: February 2021

MEMORY helps us to create our own continuity. Questions such as ‘Who are we?’, ‘Where do we come from?’, and ‘Where are we going?’ can only be answered if we know our past. We all belong to groups, but we all belong to ourselves as well. We try to create a continuous life-line from the stories that happened to us. The past is always adapted to the present, serving a teleological purpose. Trauma interrupts the life-line and the continuity of sense. Victims and also perpetrators, when confronted with their wrongdoing and shame, experience trauma. These are painful stories and they need time to heal. This is also the case in Hungary....
Polish National Antisemitism
Authors: Krzemlński Ireneusz
Published: February 2021

IN 2016 I published the results of three surveys, two on antisemitism and xenophobia in Poland and one on antisemitism and xenophobia in Ukraine, in Polin 29. The first of these was conducted in 1992, at the very start of Poland’s turn to democracy. The second, conducted ten years later in 2002, coincided with the end of the transition to democracy and just before Poland’s acceptance into the European Union. Shortly afterwards, in 2003, thanks to a grant from the Polish Committee of Scientific Research, we conducted a comparative study in Ukraine....
‘The Mother of God’:Frank and the Russian Sectarians
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter mentions the scholars of hasidism, the school of spirituality initiated by Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, that have occasionally noted certain parallels between the hasidic movement and the various sects that emerged in early modern Russia. It talks about the Old Believers' faction that seceded from the Russian Orthodox Church at the time of the schism of the second half of the seventeenth century. It also highlights the sects and others whose origins are obscure and independent of the Raskol, which proliferated in the course of the eighteenth century and spread primarily within the rural population of the Russian empire. The chapter discusses the Russian government that endeavoured to suppress Old Believers, making them leave their districts of origin in northern Russia and flee to the border regions of the empire. It recounts the sectarians that settled in Ukraine during the same time that the hasidic movement was getting under way.
Introduction
Authors: Waxman Chaim I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces Orthodox Judaism, which is viewed phenomenologically, defined broadly, and recognized in the systems of beliefs and practices maintained by Orthodox Jews. It mentions the halakhah or Orthodox religious law that conceives the ‘practices’ part of the Orthodox Jewish system. It also reveals Orthodox Jewish practices that are not pursued to accord with halakhah but can be characterized as minhag or custom. The chapter looks at Orthodox Judaism in America since the nineteenth century and examines a series of halakhic changes or changes in what is deemed to be proper Orthodox conduct. It explains the various directions in which ‘acceptable’ Orthodox behaviour is developing from a social and psychological perspective.
The Contemporary Orthodox Jewish Family In America
Authors: Waxman Chaim I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses discussions of the Jewish family that are based on the assumption that the stereotypical Jewish family in eastern Europe is the only single model. It mentions Shaul Stampfer, who rejects the notion that the east European family was patriarchal and demonstrates multi-generational families that were found among farmers. It also describes the American Jewish family in general and the American Orthodox Jewish family in particular. The chapter analyzes recent evidence that questions whether the values of the larger American Jewish community with respect to marriage and family remain as strong as they once were. It reviews the Pew Religious Landscape Survey in 2008 that showed that rates of marriage for Jews and mainline Protestants were identical, and only very slightly lower than that of Catholics.
Sixteenth-Century Jewish Makers of Printed Books and the Shaping of Late Renaissance Jewish Literacy
Authors: Sládek Pavel
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the medium of printed books that was introduced into Jewish culture soon after its emergence in the mid-fifteenth century. It discusses the arrival of the presses that were run by different members of the Jewish Soncino family in Italy and elsewhere at the beginning of the 1480s, wherein a wide variety of genres appeared in print. It also describes the Soncino editions that were distinguished among printers by the accuracy and beauty of their typefaces. The chapter mentions the early printed book that was seen as a radical innovation in the age of complex cultural transformations both within and outside Jewish society. It recounts how the 'knowledge explosion' that was spurred by the rise of the printing press was a key factor in the formation of early modern Jewish cultural history.
The Second Life of Judaism: A History of Religious Community and Practice in Virtual Spaces
Authors: Voloj Julian , Buccitelli Anthony Bak
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about San Francisco-based company Linden Lab who launched Second Life (SL), which is described as an online digital world that is built, shaped, and owned by its participants. It discloses how SL was seen as the next big internet phenomenon and was the focus of attention by investors and media alike for a short period of time. It also explains SL's complex relationship with 'real life', which is defined both by the encoded parameters of the virtual space and by the social and cultural practices of the people who use the platform. The chapter discusses SL as a broad platform that encompassed many cultural constructions and developed a rich and diverse set of religious cultures. It recounts how dozens of Jewish sites across the grid emerged and were created both by individual users and by offline institutions that established SL presences.
Tradition versus Traditionalism in the Contemporary Study of Maimonides
Authors: Kadish Seth Avi
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the premier debate in medieval Jewish philosophy about the God of Maimonides and the nature of the Torah. It mentions prominent rabbinic figures from modern times who echo mahloket rishonim, an argument among earlier post-talmudic authorities. It also emphasizes the medieval debate about the philosophy of Maimonides that was not just any mahloket rishonim but rather an argument about a particular law or principle within the Torah. The chapter talks about later thinkers who grapple with Maimonides and the debate that surrounded him who are forced to come to grips with his own fundamental views about the nature of the Torah. It explains how some thinkers try to liberate themselves from the influence of Maimonides' ideas.
Inception and the Arts
Authors: Carter David
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the specific artistic references in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). One artist is referred to by indirect reference and visual simulation of some of his works, and another is paid homage to by the inclusion of one of his works in a scene. The artists in question are M.C. Escher and Francis Bacon. The Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher, famous for his works featuring constructions which would be impossible in the real world, is not directly named in the film, but he is referred to indirectly by the mention of a phenomenon which he utilised in his work: the so-called 'Penrose Steps'. Meanwhile, in a sequence in which Cobb is talking to Mal, there is a painting visible on the wall of the room, Bacon's Study for a head of George Dyer, 1967. Nolan clearly shares some perspectives on the world with Bacon: a fascination with distorted reality, a sense of horror as in a nightmare, and, in some cases, the real world being actually torn apart.
Audiences
Authors: Redmond Sean
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at how audiences, through their choice of screenings and their response to films, can transform production trends and the decisions made about which films are made at the planning stage of film production. It analyses the production and early distribution history of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner that bear classification struggles encountered during its production, which were driven by a fear that it wouldn't be a suitable vehicle for mainstream audiences. It also confirms the way audiences are more active, appreciative, and diverse in their consumption of a film once the tag of mainstream flop has been removed by time, distance, and context. The chapter describes how Blade Runner audiences are sovereign and not purely connected to shaping production trends. It recounts how Blade Runner immediately found a cult audience on a late-night cable television, and in terms of video rental became a home box-office smash.
The Lasting Legacy of Cannibal Holocaust
Authors: Waddell Calum
Published: February 2021

This chapter mentions how Ruggero Deodato'sCannibal Holocaust was speculated to have inspired the film The Blair Witch Project merely on account of its use of found footage. It talks about Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, which shares its title with the moniker given to Cannibal Holocaust's Amazonian locale. It also points out how Roth gleefully condemns what he exploits and how his 'message' could be interpreted as similarly problematic as Cannibal Holocaust. The chapter discusses Cannibal Holocaust's extreme imagery that initiates an argument about censorship. It analyses the confrontational aspect of Cannibal Holocaust that comes from the audience's own spectatorship.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth – ‘This most bloody piece of work’
Authors: Owens Rebekah
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about William Shakespeare, who wrote Macbeth when he was already a successful playwright and was working at the Globe in London. It mentions the work ethic of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, such as the collaboration and co-operative of fellow playwrights who wrote for the stage. It also discusses the features of plays of the theatre group writers that would be recognise today as 'horror'. The chapter discloses John Webster as one of Shakespeare's colleagues who developed a reputation as an author of horror that has since been immortalised in popular culture, such as in the film Shakespeare In Love. It recounts One of Shakespeare's first works called Titus Andronicus, which has a description of human sacrifice at the beginning.
Violence in Macbeth – ‘Steeped in blood …’
Authors: Owens Rebekah
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses how William Shakespeare's Macbeth offered Roman Polanski scope for a realisation of the evil inherent in the human conditioning its setting of eleventh-century Scotland and the story of feuding, warlike tribes. It explores Polanski's idea of the underlying desire for power in the human condition that leads to evil in the film Macbeth by making extensive use of blood and gore. It also explains the sight of blood and gory effects that provide an unhealthy stimulus for the gratification of the coarser natures of the audience. The chapter mentions Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960) and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), which were introduced as a new type of horror that made full use of grisly effects. It reviews critical responses to the presence of violence in horror films that are dismissed as unaesthetic.
Flashback Face: ‘Do You Like Scary Movies?’ Scream and Revitalisation
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces Wes Craven, a film director who has an initial reticence against making one more to-the-wall horror film that was born of his enduring battle against genre typecasting. It describes the horror genre that was widely considered to be in a state of flux during Craven's time. It also analyses Craven's Scream, which experienced a more prestigious release than most from Dimension Films and had specialised in formulaic sequels to established horror franchises. The chapter recounts Dimension's faith in Scream that reflected the confidence in the material and script that possessed aspirations to commence a trilogy and deconstruct and revitalise a genre that was perceived as obsolete. It examines horror films that are renowned for being front-loaded in the realm of the American box office.
Craven Images: The Road to Scream
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter cites Peter Hutchings, who defines post-1972 American horror cinema as marking the advent of the horror-auteur director, believing horror to be the only genre that acquired its own 'customised movie-brats'. It talks about how Hutchings distinguishes the rising collective of horror 'brats' from the often-overlooked inadvertent 'specialists' as they were 'wholeheartedly committed to the genre as a suitable vehicle for the expression of ideas. It also talks about George Romero, who was universally acknowledged as the first of the 'brats' following his 1968 debut Night of the Living Dead. This chapter describes the marketing of Wes Craven's Scream that had to play to the strength of his core audience. It recounts how Craven as a veteran horror filmmaker cut together early footage of Scream as evidence that the complex tonal-combination was viable.
Characters, Conventions and ‘The Rules’: Creating Scream’s Thieving, Whoring Ensemble
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews the scene from Wes Craven's Scream that establishes the heroine, Sidney, and her unconsummated relationship with boyfriend Billy Loomis. It recounts the traumatic backstory of the murder of Sidney's mother and her inability to sacrifice her virginity that reflect the film's reverential tone and provide the first hint of Billy's psychotic detachment from reality. It also talks about the immediate positioning of Sidney as a sensitive virgin with a tragic backstory that conveys to the audience that she will be the 'final girl' or heroine. The chapter discusses how Scream is about knowledge of the movies, in which the characters have seen so many horror films that they know what to do and what not to do. It points out how casting and characterisation played a major part in Scream's marketing and success in a way that performers and characters of a typical 1980s slasher film did not.
Scream and Scream Again: The Legacy of Scream
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter recounts the release of Scream 2 in American theatres less than a year after the counter-programming Christmas unleashing of Wes Craven's Scream. It discusses how Scream 2 took the self-reflexivity to the logical next level by commentating on the first film's success. It also analyses Craven's parody for his own Scream prologue that amounts to a renowned, proficient horror filmmaker masquerading as a trashy one for the purpose of a gag. The chapter illustrates the scenes from the film Stab that represents a typical 'bad' horror film, with crude shock effects, gratuitous shower scenes, hammy acting, and character behaviour that would have prompted derision from the real Scream audience had it been the first film's opening scene instead.
Nature of the Curse – Analysis
Authors: Hayes Marisa C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of Ju-on: The Grudge (2002). The film's links to the revenge hauntings outlined in onryō tales are undeniable, yet it is also true that Kayako's angry ghost does not always adhere to the formula outlined in folklore for tormented spirits of her kind. In the most traditional sense of the term, Ju-on: The Grudge is a kaidan film: few would deny that a strange and ghostly tale is central to its plot. However, the film's contemporary setting and integration of various national and international cinematic influences make it much more than a straightforward period kaidan. As a result, Ju-on: The Grudge leaves an exciting trail of themes and visual motifs to explore, not least of which is a nonlinear narrative for viewers to untangle. By confounding several subgenres of horror and expanding the established codes of familiar tropes, Takashi Shimizu renders the possibility of neatly classifying the film null and void. To further complicate matters, alongside elements of American slasher films and the bakeneko genre, Shimizu expertly revisits the haunted house archetype and morphs it into a contagion narrative that features shades of Japanese disaster films, expanding the story well beyond the limits of the home, and symbolically, that of the haunted house genre.
Introduction
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on The Company of Wolves, as a dark fantasy film about the horrors of the adult world and of adult sexuality glimpsed through the dreams of an adolescent girl. It analyses how The Company of Wolves amalgamates aspects of horror, the Female Gothic, fairy tales, werewolf films and coming-of-age parables. It also illustrates how The Company of Wolves is drenched in atmosphere and an eerily sensual malaise that boasts striking imagery immersed in fairy-tale motifs and startling Freudian symbolism. The chapter mentions Neil Jordan as the director of The Company of Wolves, his second film and his first foray into the realms of Gothic horror. It cites several short stories from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber from 1979 as the basis for The Company of Wolves.
Red Hoods, Dark Woods
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as one of the most enduring and provocative of all the fairy tales ever told. It discusses the plight of the red-hooded girl who encounters a ravenous wolf as she wanders cautiously through the deep, dark woods on an errand to her Granny's cottage, which has haunted popular culture for centuries. It also reviews how Red Riding Hood has been told and re-told for centuries with its meaning interpreted and reinterpreted to reflect changing social values and attitudes. The chapter explores the scene of Rosaleen's encounter with the lycanthropic huntsman in the woods in Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves, which essentially provides an elaborate preparation for the central story. It analyses how folk and fairy tales were used to civilise listeners and readers in the ways of their communities and convey to them an understanding of acceptable conduct and behaviour.
The Big Bad Wolf
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the stories and myths regarding humans turning into wolves that have fascinated and terrified people for millennia and continue to speak of an elementary aspect of the collective human consciousness. It talks about the common perception of the werewolf that derives from its myriad representations in folklore, literature, and cinema. It also mentions The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould and Werwolves by Elliott O'Donnell in reference to the occurrence of lycanthropy that is invoked as the result of a curse, or through the practice of diabolical occult rituals. This chapter mentions the most widespread ideas of lycanthropy that and originate from Hollywood cinema. It mentions historical anthropologist and witchcraft scholar Willem de Blécourt from Werewolf Histories, who references antiquated tales from Estonia and Russia concerning women who unwittingly marry werewolves.
Happily Ever After…
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves as a pivotal film that secured much wider distribution than a lot of other British films at the time. It recounts how The Company of Wolves is dubbed into different languages, such as Spanish, German, and Italian. It also mentions Palace Pictures that produced several of Jordan's later films, including Mona Lisa and The Crying Game, explored themes of identity, gender, infatuation, and desire. The chapter talks about Dream Demon from 1987; another film concerning female sexual anxiety that unfolds within the Freudian dreamscape of its protagonist. It describes The Company of Wolves as a ground-breaking British genre film that is often overlooked and affirms its place in horror-fantasy cinema.
The Apprentice
Authors: Dixon Wheeler Winston
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a background on Terence Fisher's career that is regarded by most as that of a journeyman director and by French critics that argued that Fisher was a master filmmaker since the 1950s. It looks at the efforts of David Pirie and others who brought about the first serious critical appraisal of Fisher's work beginning in the late 1960s. It also describes Fisher as the greatest Gothic filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century and British equivalent in terms of style and seriousness of the great American myth-master, John Ford. The chapter mentions The Curse of Frankenstein, in which Fisher creates a real, believable world, and does superb work with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and the other members of the cast. It talks about Fisher's admission toward the end of his life about he had very little affection for science fiction.
Entrée
Authors: Cooper Ian
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the making of Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). Hitchcock called the writer Anthony Shaffer on New Year's Eve of 1970 to ask him to write the screenplay for Frenzy. Shaffer seems to have got on well with Hitchcock; so well in fact that they planned future collaborations, although the director's failing health would prevent this. The director's first choice for the role of Bob Rusk was Michael Caine, who had a strong resemblance to Neville Heath. However, Caine found the script ‘disgusting’, so Hitchcock settled on Barry Foster. The other actors cast in the film include Jon Finch, Vivian Merchant, and Billie Whitelaw. Meanwhile, the plot recycles a number of Hitchcock themes and motifs, but the events follow Arthur La Bern's novel closely. Some of the digressions in the novel are either left out or cut-down and the bitter misanthropy has been replaced by a slightly less bitter kind of black comedy.
Introduction: ‘Maybe He’s Too Sophisticated For You?’
Authors: Blyth Michael
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. When the film opened in 1995, it received a response sadly all too familiar for Carpenter: one of general indifference. Flagrantly disregarding the film's conceptual scope and narrative complexities, Roger Ebert's review was representative of a frustratingly predictable critical refusal to engage with the film on an intellectual level — much like Pauline Kael, he seemed closed off to the idea that a horror movie could offer something smart, something other than ‘dumb’ scares. While In the Mouth of Madness has collected its fair share of admirers along the way, it has not received anywhere near the critical and academic reassessment afforded to other Carpenter classics. As such, the reason for this book is to reappraise and reclaim a film still undervalued by horror fans and critics alike, and rightly position it as one of John Carpenter's most accomplished and compelling pieces of work.
‘This One Will Drive You Absolutely Mad’
Authors: Blyth Michael
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the ontological concerns in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995) by focusing on its radical aesthetic and philosophical disorientations: the non-linear presentation of time, cyclical narratives and visual repetition, and the fundamental distrust of perception. Parallels between the existential preoccupations of In the Mouth of Madness and The Matrix (1999) have already been drawn. Both The Matrix and In the Mouth of Madness work with the exciting dramatic potential of the idea that reality is not an absolute that can be reliably perceived, it is something we agree upon collectively, adding in a dash of malevolence to Cartesian scepticism — what if some external, evil force were constructing the veil of reality upon which duped masses then agreed upon? Crucially, though, Carpenter does not create a crusading action film that re-installs a sense of stable, authentic reality once this veil has been lifted, as the Wachowskis did. Instead, he crafts a more obtuse, surreal cinematic vision of what might be called Cartesian paranoia — crucially, a horror film.
‘I’ve come here to say one magic word to you: cheeseburger.’ The Fly scene-by-scene: Act One
Authors: Westwood Emma
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the scenes of Act One of David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986). The film opens with a mid-shot of Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) talking to the camera; the next shot determines Brundle is actually talking to Geena Davis' character of Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Quaife. Within seconds, the two-hander format of the narrative is established, and another important aspect of the film: Veronica as the audience. The chapter then considers Cronenberg's oscillation between human seduction and scientific explanation in the interactions between Seth and Veronica. It also looks at the introduction of the third character of the love triangle, Stathis Borans. It is at this point that the singularity of Cronenberg's storytelling becomes strikingly apparent. With the introduction of Borans, Cronenberg has established the ‘trunk’ of his story structure, the interplay — conversational or otherwise — between Seth and Veronica, with all other scenes and incidences acting as ‘branches’ from this ‘trunk’. It is this singular simplicity of vision and structure that makes The Fly such a smart screenplay.