bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Midrash in Habad Hasidism
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the continuum joining Midrash, ethos, and spirituality in the Habad school of hasidism, both in terms of the development of theoretical structures linking the midrashic process with personal spiritual quest, and the use of Midrash to impart traditionalist, hasidic, and sometimes eschatological ideas. This relates to the striking interplay of esoteric and exoteric elements in hasidic teaching. For though there are overtly esoteric themes, discussing sefirot (divine emanations), spiritual ‘worlds’, and other aspects of the corpus of Jewish mystical thought, a long tradition in Judaism reserves such teachings for a spiritual elite. Midrash, by contrast, is ostensibly accessible to all, whether as a written text for study or as an oral and popular exposition. Hence it is notable that hasidic teachers in general, and those of the Habad school in particular, use Midrash in order to communicate spiritual teachings in the society at large. Moreover, the particular mode of instruction that hasidism evolved, the hasidic derush (exposition), sometimes called torah (teaching) or ma'amar (discourse), can itself be seen as an extended form of latter-day Midrash.
Introduction
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the study of the Haskalah and the hasidic movement in the Kingdom of Poland, sometimes also known as “Congress Poland” because it was created by the Congress of Vienna in the nineteenth century. Hasidism was no doubt the largest and most important new movement to emerge within east European Jewry in those turbulent times. The chapter explains how Hasidism participated in abrupt social, economic, and cultural transformations in the Polish territories. It investigates the changes in social relations and perceptions that the transformations brought about or how the new social formations that arose in the Polish lands defined and redefined themselves in relation to each other. The chapter focuses on Haskalah and the traditional non-hasidic Jewish community by considering the political history of the Kingdom of Poland and its relationship with the hasidic movement.
Conclusion
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter emphasizes, that among the government, the hasidic activists, and the maskilic activists, the hasidim were clearly the most effective. Their astonishing success was due not only to the outstanding political talents of their leaders but also to their ability to identify and exploit the many significant weaknesses of the other players. It talks about the weaknesses of the government and the maskilic activists, which did not diminish the magnitude of the hasidic success but reminds of the nineteenth-century east European context in which it was achieved: a minority religious community of low social status and lacking civil rights facing a non-democratic state that determined the rules of the game. The state wielded a multitude of mechanisms of social control, ranging from what Pierre Bourdieu has called “symbolic violence” to legislative power to direct force, but always holding the trump card: political dominance. Hasidic politics had to adapt itself to the space created for it, consciously or not, by the state's own politics.
A Response to Deborah Meier
Authors: Elkin Joshua
Published: February 2021

This chapter responds to and elaborates on a few key points made both in the preceding chapter and in other writings. It argues that the Jewish heritage possesses material that dovetails very nicely with the qualities that the previous chapter has indicated as essential to the cultivation of democracy and to the building of a certain kind of community within Jewish schools and within the Jewish community as a whole. Bringing in more adults of different ages from within the academic domains, as well as adults who exhibit these essential habits of mind, can, as this chapter asserts, create over time a two-way relationship between school and community. One can bring people into the school from the outside, and one can also take the young people and their teachers from the school out into the community. By developing this two-way relationship one can build a school setting where children and adults of various ages spend much more time together.
Do Jewish Schools Make a Difference in the Former Soviet Union?
Authors: Gitelman Zvi
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Jewish education in the former Soviet Union (FSU). Intensive Jewish education is seen in many countries, including Israel, as the most promising antidote to the assimilation of Jews — meaning the loss of Jewish identity and commitment. Full-day schools especially have been seized upon by Jews in the FSU and their foreign supporters as the optimal solution to the lack of Jewish education, institutions, public life, and private religious practice among the 400,000 or so Jews left in the FSU. This conclusion is based on extrapolation from Western Jewry's experiences. Common sense would also lead one to believe that viable Jewish life — that which engages people in private and public Jewish behaviours and transmits commitment across generations — depends on education, and not of children alone. One crucial difference between the West and the FSU is that in the West, Jewish education is conveyed in a wider context of Jewish commitment and activity: the family, organized peer and interest groups, a communal structure, religious and cultural institutions, and family and group traditions. In the FSU, Jewish schools exist in a partial void.
Attitudes, Behaviours, Values, and School Choice
Authors: Cohen Erik H.
Published: February 2021

This chapter compares the background, attitudes, values, and practices of French Jewish families who send their children to Jewish day schools with those of other such families who send their children to public (state) schools or non-Jewish private schools. Choice of school plays a pivotal role in the formation and expression of French Jewish identity. The issue of school choice and the struggle of French Jews to preserve their identity must be understood in the context of the long and rich history of the Jews in France. Throughout their many centuries in the country, the Jewish community waxed and waned as its members were subjected to periodic legal restrictions, punitive taxation, violent attacks, attempts at forced conversion, ‘blood libel’ trials, and expulsion orders. Despite all this, the Jewish communities in the region persevered; indeed, some of the most famous Torah scholars of all time came from France.
Building Community in a Pluralist High School
Authors: Shevitz Susan L. , Wasserfall Rahel
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates how an intentionally pluralistic Jewish high school in the United States called ‘Tikhon’ deals with questions regarding the individual and the community in its educational practice. It analyses what the practices reveal about its understanding of pluralism. The chapter argues that two dynamics are fundamental to Tikhon's efforts: first, the need to create an environment in which participants can risk the differentiation, debate, discussion, and openness to cooperation and change that are at the heart of Tikhon's understanding of community; and second, the need to create a psychological sense of community in which ‘difference’ is central to the conception of community. This chapter's enquiry is part of a larger project to study how pluralism is enacted and understood at Tikhon. It asserts that the approach and methods found at Tikhon can be applied to other settings where the tension between the individual and the group is central to the educational approach.
The Saga of Raphael Kassin: From Ḥakham Bashi in Baghdad to Reform Rabbi in Aleppo
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the upheaval created by Rabbi Raphael Kassin both in his community of origin, Aleppo, and in Baghdad. Kassin's arrival in Baghdad in 1846 marks the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Baghdad Jewry. Here he was appointed as the city's first ḥakham bashi, an appointment ratified by the Ottoman sultan. This brought to an end the rule of the Baghdad community by the nasi; in its stead came a series of chief rabbis endorsed by the imperial authorities. Underlying this great change was the gradual implementation of the Ottoman reforms laid down in the Hatt-i șerif of Gülhane in 1839, an order aimed at improving the status of all the empire's subjects, especially that of the non-Muslim minorities. The chapter then studies Kassin's involvement in the Baghdad community's internal conflicts, particularly the hostility that existed between the gevirim and the nasi. In 1862, after a decade of wandering following his ejection from Baghdad, Kassin returned to the city of his birth, Aleppo, where he sought to apply his new insights.
Epilogue
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This epilogue studies how the Young Turk Revolution further weakened both Jewish autonomy within the Ottoman Empire and, along with growing secularization, the official recognition and legal authority hitherto accorded to the law of the Torah and to the religious leadership. In the controversies that broke out after the Young Turk Revolution, the call to remove the chief rabbis in a number of Jewish communities drew on revolutionary, reformist, and Enlightenment arguments, including the idea of free expression. Struggles over power in the community began to assume the character of a confrontation between those who were defined as enlightened liberals and their opponents, who were seen as benighted conservatives. Ultimately, the ‘secularization of the rabbinate’ — that is, the involvement of the ḥakham bashi in political matters and his role as a government official fulfilling explicitly administrative functions — led to a ‘cheapening of the rabbinate’. Modernization, and especially the expansion of education, disseminated ideas of secularism and individualism, and facilitated the emergence of new kinds of leader. During the first decade of the twentieth century, patterns of leadership that had been accepted in the Ottoman Empire for generations, including the placing of a religious figure at the head of the community, were increasingly perceived as outdated.
Sa’adyah the Poet
Authors: Brody Robert
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on how Sa'adyah Gaon excelled in poetry, which he worked within the most highly structured frameworks that brought great originality to his praxis. It discusses Medieval Hebrew poetry that is typically classified in contemporary research as either liturgical or secular according to its formal function. It also cites poetry that is intended for use in religious ceremonies and classified as piyut or liturgical poetry, while poetry that is not intended is classified as secular. The chapter describes the composers of piyut who were referred to as paitanim during rabbinic times and their poetry that was called hazanut or hazana in the Middle Ages. It mentions a paitan named is Yosi ben Yosi, who is generally presumed to have been active during the fifth or sixth century.
A Biographical Sketch
Authors: Grossman Avraham
Published: February 2021

This chapter offers a biographical sketch of Rashi. There are numerous folk legends about Rashi's birth, especially the miracles wrought for his mother during her pregnancy, and about his father and his father's journeys outside France and meetings with various sages, including Maimonides. None of these legends is reliably documented, however, and nothing can be gleaned from them about the events of Rashi's life. Ultimately, they reflect the cultural world of Jewish society in the late Middle Ages—a time that saw the composition, in Jewish circles as in Christian, of numerous hagiographical works recounting the miracles performed for holy men. Rashi is renowned throughout the Jewish world not only for his wide-ranging literary productivity but also for his unique character. Five qualities stand out in his warm and radiant personality: humility and natural simplicity, pursuit of truth, concern for human dignity, great confidence in his own abilities, and a sense of mission as a community leader. These qualities are evident in his actions, his relations with other people, his ties to his students, his world-view, his scorn for arrogance, his love of peace, his literary output, and even in his writing style. The chapter then considers Rashi's status and fame.
Rulings, Responsa, Liturgical Poems, and Commentaries on Liturgical Poems
Authors: Grossman Avraham
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on rulings, responsa, liturgical poems, and commentaries on liturgical poems. Books of halakhic rulings were not an accepted literary genre in eleventh-century Germany and northern France. Like the French sages who preceded him, Rashi couched his halakhic decision-making primarily in the form of responsa. Rashi, however, can be seen as one who inspired and contributed to the development of another important branch of the tree of halakhic creativity: the writing of halakhic monographs. Meanwhile, he cannot be counted among the greatest of the liturgical poets active in Germany and France during the eleventh century, but his poems are important for what they say about his personality and about the feelings of his contemporaries. In them, Rashi describes the persecution and suffering of the Jews, their yearning for redemption, their degradation and humiliation, the economic decrees issued against them, and their devotion to the study of Torah.
Society
Authors: Grossman Avraham
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Rashi's views on the Jewish community. Rashi greatly honoured scholars, considering them to be the most exalted of men. They ensure the continued existence of the world, which is based on the study of Torah and observance of its commandments. Rashi recognized that the scholars bore much of the brunt of leadership in the Jewish communities of the time, and he believed it was their strength and steadfastness that ensured the continuation of Jewish life in the diaspora. In his commentary on the Torah, Rashi cited rabbinic midrashim that emphasize the duties of community leaders and the ingratitude they are shown. The chapter then looks at Rashi's position on the important issue of forced and voluntary converts from Judaism, as well as his position on the status of women and their place in society and family.
History of the Church
Authors: Ben-Shalom Ram
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on stories of saints and popes as presented by Jews. In the Middle Ages, the Church had a significant place in Jewish life. The fragile coexistence of Jews and Christians was based on the Augustinian idea of ‘tolerance’, which left room for Jews in the Christian world. Hence, Jewish comments and observations, based on a large and varied number of Christian sources, provide a lot of information about the Church's impact on the Jews' historical consciousness. A considerable portion of the historical information about the Church was acquired from Christian exempla and hagiography, and it is interesting that Jews often used this material in their own exempla.
The Zohar as an Imagined Book
Authors: Huss Boaz
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the initial reception of the zoharic literature, the nascence of the term Sefer hazohar (Book of the Zohar), and the idea that it refers to a unified, sacred, and authoritative literary corpus. The idea of the existence of a book written by R. Shimon bar Yohai and known as the Zohar only crystallized after a significant number of zoharic texts had been written and circulated. That is to say, the Zohar as a book is an imagined text, an idea of a unified literary work, the scope and nature of which were perceived and described in a variety of ways. Its emergence as such, influenced the formation of zoharic collections, which differed significantly from one another, yet came to be collectively referred to by that name. Ultimately, the concept of the Zohar as an ancient and authoritative book was used by its distributors to subvert the dominance of the most prominent kabbalistic school of the period, that headed by Nahmanides and his disciples.
The Formation of the Zoharic Canon
Authors: Huss Boaz
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the formation of the zoharic manuscript collections, from the early fourteenth century until the first print editions in the second half of the sixteenth century. Cultural goods such as pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, and the like are forms of ‘cultural capital’, that is, they are part of the knowledge and skills that give people cultural advantages which in turn enable them to attain or preserve a higher status in society. The chapter argues that the collectors and scribes of the zoharic manuscripts were accumulating cultural capital: possession of these texts, and the ability to quote from them, increased the power and influence of those who copied, collected, and edited them. As long as the scope of the zoharic canon remained undefined, that is, before the printing of the book, the collectors and editors strove to compile collections as comprehensive as they could, and thus enhance their cultural capital. This process shaped, to a great extent, the scope of the zoharic canon, which was ultimately defined by the first printers of zoharic literature in the second half of the sixteenth century.
On the History of Zohar Interpretation
Authors: Huss Boaz
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses how the value of the Zohar as a form of cultural capital was further reflected in the intensive engagement in its interpretation, which became a central practice of kabbalists in the second half of the sixteenth century. Following the rise of Zohar commentary, a struggle ensued in later generations to obtain primacy in this field. Before the formulation of the Zohar in its printed form, the possession of zoharic manuscripts, control over the collection and editing process, and the ability to quote zoharic texts were all a part of the cultural capital of the elite circles of the Iberian exiles. However, following its finalization, printing, and wide dissemination, the Zohar ceased to be a rare commodity; the value of manuscript collections diminished and one could no longer benefit from possessing or quoting the texts. The new way to derive cultural power from the work was to control its meaning. This was achieved through the commentator's ability to establish his interpretation as the authoritative one. Thus, when commentary became the principal genre of kabbalistic literature, the struggle for dominance shifted to the field of hermeneutics.
Characterisation
Authors: Jones Tanya
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Ofelia's role as the central protagonist in Pan's Labyrinth. It explains how Ofelia is the heroine of the film and how she does not narrate the story to the viewer via a voice-over, but through her eyes she leads the audience into the film. It also analyses Guillermo del Toro's reasons for picking a female child for the central character within his film and mentions the great tradition of stories about the quests of children, such as Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The chapter examines the weight of the oppressive ideology that surrounds Ofelia and the extremity of her loss. It highlights what sets Ofelia apart from those cinematic or literary children who have a future.
Institutions
Authors: Jones Tanya
Published: February 2021

This chapter mentions Pan's Labyrinth budget that was worth EUR 13.5 million and was produced by Guillermo del Toro's production company, Tequila Gang. It recounts del Toro's brave decisions during the crucial casting process and emphasizes the casting of Doug Jones as the 'continuity factor' in Pan's Labyrinth, who both portrayed the Faun and the Pale Man. It also describes Pan's Labyrinth's teaser and main trailers, which attempt to sell the film to audiences in a variety of ways. The chapter explores the genre identity of Pan's Labyrinth and how it is presented through the narrative fragments and mise-en-scène. It describes the fantastical creatures and setting of the labyrinth and fairy kingdom that identify Pan's Labyrinth as a fantasy piece.
Hammer Horror as Genre Film
Authors: Walden Victoria Grace
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates Hammer horror as genre films. Hammer is renowned for its horror films, despite its breadth of productions including comedies, war films, action-adventures, and thrillers. Its specific brand of horror has often been considered to be a particularly English Gothic, Gothicism with its interest in the liminal, transcending traditional genre categories. It is poignant, then, that Hammer's Gothic style can be seen in some of its non-horror productions. One might question the usefulness of genre for understanding a range of the studio's films, despite the label 'Hammer horror'. Hammer brought something incredibly new to the 1950s cinema screen and it was the studio's juxtaposition of traditional fairy-tale storytelling and a return to a primitive cinema of attraction interested in spectacle and experience which has arguably earned the studio such a prominent place in the history of British film.
Classic Hammer Beyond Frankenstein
Authors: Walden Victoria Grace
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses how the success of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) encouraged a succession of Hammer horror productions, the most profitable of which were produced between 1957 and 1966. There is much dispute about what constitutes Hammer's 'classical period'. Some argue that it starts with The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955 and ends with the flop The Phantom of the Opera in 1962. Others believe it ends with the move from Bray in 1966. This latter definition is more inclusive and recognises the diversity of Hammer's film-making during the Bray Studios years, when the majority of the team were regulars and came to define a particular Hammer style, which began to disintegrate as productions moved to Elstree and sex and nudity became more prominent themes. The chapter then presents case-study readings which focus on particular traits of the classic films, including the Gothic doppelgänger, the representation of women, and Hammer's vampire mythology.
Antichrist: An Analysis
Authors: Simmons Amy
Published: February 2021

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009). In some respects, Antichrist is a deceptive title, implying a simple reversal of the Christian opposition between good and evil, yet the film should, in part, be understood in a context more complicated than that of Christianity, or even New Age pseudo-paganism. It occupies a unique territory, somewhere between horror film and psychodrama, where themes such as misogyny, maternal ambivalence, madness, and lust permeate a ruptured dreamscape with a sustained and unique oddness. Hence, the world of the film is, in a sense, gothic and fantastic; a mode particularly suited for expressing a heady mix of ‘unconscious desire, repressed energies and antisocial fantasies’. The gothic space is also a sight of seduction, sexual transgression, cruelty, humiliation, and death; themes that are all reworked and recombined in Antichrist's dramatic atmosphere. Ultimately, what makes Antichrist stick with audiences is the potent undertow, the sense of loss, guilt, and despair that pervades the locations and plasters itself across the mother's grieving face.
Almodóvar as an Auteur
Authors: Hughes Emily
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Pedro Almodóvar as an auteur. Paul Julian Smith refers to Almodóvar as 'the one true auteur to emerge from the eighties' and Martin D'Lugo refers to him as 'an undisputable international auteur'. 'Auteur' was a word first used in France in the 1960s to describe a growing number of directors who have a signature style across several of their films. This signature could be in the form of a visual style through reoccurring motifs and techniques within the cinematography, mise-en-scène, or editing, or through sound, themes, representations, genre, narrative, or the inclusion of similar characters. There seems to be overwhelming evidence to suggest that, across the nineteen feature films made up until 2013, Almodóvar has defining and reoccurring tropes in all of these categories. Throughout the book, there is constant reference to the qualities and characteristics of Talk to Her (2002) that adhere to Almodóvar's auteur style, however, it is important to understand where some of the qualities and characteristics of his work emerge from.
Mise-en-scène and Cinematography
Authors: Hughes Emily
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Pedro Almodóvar's mise-en-scène and cinematography. Almodóvar's mise-en-scène is rich with intertextual references, whether it be from high culture, through the pastiche of other films, or through the mise-en-scène and the symbolism of props and costume. Heavily used visual motifs, such as 'the Matador', occur frequently in Talk to Her (2002), perhaps in homage and parody of the traditional Spanish iconography encouraged under the Franco regime. Similarly, Almodóvar is renowned for drawing upon and being influenced by Hollywood directors of the 1950s, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk, and one can see influences from both of these directors in the film through the performances, bright colour palettes, and themes. Like the melodrama films of the 1950s and like the cinema of Hitchcock, Almodóvar's unique and distinctive style is classified by a somewhat obsessive attention to mise-en-scène. This is most noticeable in the domestic settings. Almodóvar pays close attention to objects, colour, painting, and production design, much of which has deeper symbolism and meaning.
The Other Swedish Vampire Movie
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter compares Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In with Anders Banke's Frostbiten (2006), the only other non-porn Swedish vampire movie to date. It examines how Frostbiten takes a larkier, more scattershot approach to the horror genre. It also reviews how Frostbiten begins with snow falling and is followed with a prologue set in Ukraine in 1944, where five soldiers are attacked in the dark by a mysterious creature. The chapter describes Frostbiten as a sloppy but mostly lively horror comedy with its plotting, camerawork and framing that seems arbitrary, and numerous scenes serving no particular function other than half-hearted attempts to convey a bond between mother and daughter. It points out how the plot of Frostbiten turns on repeated instances of people willingly swallowing a drug without knowing what it is.
The Vampire as Metaphor
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains how horror stories have dabbled in parts of the human condition that more respectable mainstream culture dares not touch. It considers vampire movies and books that provide an indirect way of dealing with the sort of subjects that are still regarded in certain quarters as taboo or upsetting to discuss outside the psychiatrist's office, such as sex, death, and intimacy. It also points out how the subtext of the vampire has changed over the years according to the social and sexual mores, political situations, religious beliefs, and fashions of the day. The chapter talks about how crucifixes, holy water and wafers lost potency of their symbolism, though crucifixes are still displayed for superstitious reasons or as fashion accessories. It discusses Eli in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, whose name is loaded with religious significance as the name of an Old Testament prophet.
The Vampire’s Nemesis
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about vampire movies of the 1960s that did not follow the Hammer template of the Van Helsing-esque agent defeating evil. It describes Mario Bava's Black Sunday from 1960 as a more oneiric version of the vampire myth in which the sage doctor character turned himself into a vampiric demon after resuscitating the vampire-like witch. It also mentions Jean Rollin, who directed a series of erotic vampire films in which there was an opposition to his predominantly female and lesbian vampires, but without old sages to threaten them with a good staking. The chapter highlights the irreverent approach and ironic dénouement of the Anglo-American horror comedy Dance of the Vampires, which is more in tune with revisionist 1970s film-making than with the typical Hammer tale of dark desires being defeated. It refers to the character Lacke, who fills the vampire-slayer's role in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In.
Context, Production and Reception
Authors: Cooper Ian
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the context and production of Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968). It first traces the history of British horror cinema, British gothics, and the American International Pictures (AIP). Unlike the Hammer product of the 1960s, Witchfinder General reflects the political upheaval of this turbulent decade. Much of the power of the film arises from the tension between genre conventions and wider, social concerns, with Reeves obliquely addressing topical issues such as the war in Vietnam and the growing ‘generation gap’. In this context, the subtle anachronisms in the film can be seen as part of a deliberate strategy, a way to make a film which is as much about the 1960s as it is the 1640s. In that sense, Witchfinder General is in a tradition of British period films that aim to capture the contemporary zeitgeist. The chapter then looks at the reception of the film. When assessing the critical reaction to Witchfinder General, it is instructive to consider the prevailing attitudes to horror cinema at that time.
Analysis
Authors: Cooper Ian
Published: February 2021

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968). Landscape and history are two of the key elements of Witchfinder General and they are used in such a way as to consciously evoke the Western genre. With the possible exception of film noir, there is no other genre that presents the landscape as a character, rather than simply a setting. Ronald Bassett's source novel also evokes the Western: both in terms of action and thematically. One of the reasons for the striking use of landscape is the way Reeves and Tom Baker wrote the script around the locations. Rather than hand the completed script to a location manager, they sought out suitable scenery as they wrote. If Witchfinder General looks back to the B-movie Westerns of Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann, it also anticipates the violent revenge Westerns of the 1970s and the sexual violence in a number of them.
The Influence of the Film
Authors: Cooper Ian
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights the influence of Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968). The element of Witchfinder General that attracted the most comment upon its initial release was the violence, specifically the graphic scenes of torture. Indeed, the film was one of the first of the violent films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The nihilism of Witchfinder General not only appears prescient today, anticipating the death of the 1960s counterculture dream and the savagery of the 1970s, but has also proven remarkably influential; British horror would get much nastier in the following decade. However, although the thematic and stylistic concerns of Witchfinder General would continue to resonate through the genre for decades to come, the ‘witch-craze’ cycle it inspired proved less durable. Ultimately, what is striking is the unusual way Witchfinder General melds two divergent traditions: the ‘respectable, highbrow’ heritage film and the ‘disreputable, lowbrow’ horror film.
Fight Club’s Production and Promotion
Authors: Ramey Mark
Published: February 2021

This chapter identifies the key elements of Fight Club's transition from novel to film. Fight Club is in some ways a paradoxical film: both a product and a critique of big business. Fox and Regency, two big players in Hollywood film production, put 67 million dollars into Fight Club because the talent package was strong. They believed the film would do well — and despite a less-than-hoped-for initial box office run, they have been proved right. Emerging from the world of advertising and music videos, Fight Club's director David Fincher has now established himself as a modern-day auteur. The chapter then considers the performances of the film's cast, including Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It also comments on the marketing of the film. Fox did not know how to sell Fight Club and so seriously misjudged its marketing and release. Fincher's original and seditious concepts for the marketing were rejected for more conventional action-orientated fare, aimed at a male youth market. This backfired in the post-Columbine climate and failed to connect with the broader youth market, which has now found significance in the film and elevated it to cult status.
Production
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter traces the production history of SAW (2004). The film was initially conceived and filmed as a short by its creators, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, in order to create a 'calling card' for potential backers. However, backers were suitably impressed, and the two received enough capital to expand SAW into a full-length cinema release. It is interesting to consider how such an apparently humble text as SAW, one that propagates such abject, extreme imagery, has caught the public imagination. Like other game-changing horror successes, SAW's budget was, by Hollywood standards, very low. However, low-budget successes are familiar to horror, with fans expectant of, and even encouraged by, a film's lowly roots. The distributors of SAW were quick to capitalise on the film's genre appeal. Lionsgate released the film, and every subsequent sequel, on the weekend before Halloween. This savvy marketing strategy imbued each film with the aura of an 'event' release. The impact of SAW on the genre industry is discernible in the extreme horror films that followed on from its success, films that emphasised their gory content and focused on themes of pain and suffering.
Representation
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates gender representation in SAW (2004). In the confined male landscape of SAW's world, it is significant that 'the only one who made it' is female; and also perhaps important that she had to conquer another male victim to survive. Significantly, no female character dies in SAW, compared to the confirmed five, possibly seven, male deaths: a ratio that is in sharp contrast to typical horror body counts. Meanwhile, the theme of paternity is further investigated in SAW's other male representations, but mainly through Lawrence Gordon. The representation of men in SAW acts as a counterpoint to the representation of Amanda, providing deliberate balance to the film's ideas regarding gender. There is the abiding sense that Gordon is imprisoned for his failure to adequately fulfil the basic responsibilities of the expressly male archetype — the husband and father.
Critical Reception
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the critical reception of SAW (2004). Critical acclaim for the SAW films is rare. The New York Times regarded the series as 'distasteful', while the LA Times went as far as to say the films were 'vile filth'. Although there are notable critics who support the horror genre, horror is usually dealt short shrift by critical institutions. Certainly, reviews of horror films within the mainstream press would seem inclined to evaluate the film's morality, rather than any artistic or dramatic achievement. An interesting aspect of horror reception, however, is that the genre would seem to be critic proof. Horror audiences are mistrusting of, and even actively contradict, mainstream disparagement of their beloved genre. Despite initial maulings from mainstream reviewers, SAW went on to considerable success.
Bad Omens
Authors: Rose James
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the first scenes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). The Texas Chain Saw Massacre begins with a title crawl and a narration which tells the audience exactly what is going to happen and to whom. The first minute of the film projects not only a strong sense of doom but of reality, of a sense of authenticity. The implication of the narration is to establish a trusting relationship with the audience in that what they are about to witness is in fact real, a cinematic retelling of an actual event. Consequentially, even before the actual film itself has started, a strong sense of horrific anticipation is intimated. But, in sharp contrast to this implied documentary mode, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre begins proper as the date fades down to black and a truly mad and macabre montage of sound and image follow.
Erotic Spectacle
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the courtesan film in Indian cinema. The courtesan film has been popular with audiences for a long time but today it is rare to see a mainstream Indian film choosing to use the figure of the courtesan to address the concerns of women in society. An extension of the Muslim Social, the courtesan film reached its creative epoch in the 1970s, exhausting genre possibilities with the erotic spectacle Pakeezah (Pure of Heart, 1972). A complicated production, film-maker Kamal Amrohi took fourteen years to complete Pakeezah. Unfortunately for Indian cinema's tragedy queen, Meena Kumari, who starred in the film, alcoholism cut short her life, and she never got to see what many consider to be her most accomplished work. The chapter analyses Pakeezah from a range of critical perspectives, including the conventions, origins, and history of the courtesan film; the production history and struggle to finish the film; representations of the courtesan related to sexuality and eroticism; an analysis of the song and dance sequences and their relationship to ideology; and the demise of the courtesan film in the contemporary era.
Representing Terrorism
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Mani Ratnam's 1998 film Dil Se (From the Heart) to engage critically with changing representations of terrorism in contemporary Indian cinema. Mani Ratnam is recognised by many critics and the Indian film industry as one of its finest and most commercially successful film-makers. Dil Se was Ratnam's first Hindi film and the third part in a loose trilogy of films dealing with the relationship between nationalism, terrorism, and urban violence. The chapter then looks at regional film-making in India, particularly Tamil cinema. It also considers Mani Ratnam's concerns as an auteur, the music of Dil Se and composer A.R. Rahman, and perhaps most importantly, the impact the film had at the UK box office with the Non-Resident Indian (NRI) audience.
The Mature Silent Cinema
Authors: Withall Keith
Published: February 2021

This chapter details how, from the end of the World War I until the end of the silent era in 1927 (and beyond), Hollywood dominated the international film industry. The Hollywood studios reached their peak, both in their organisation and efficiency, and in the sheer quality of their product. But this quality was fed from both within and without. Part of the response to Hollywood dominance was for other film industries to develop and exploit their own distinctive features, ranging from English idiosyncrasy, through art films in Germany and France, to complete contradiction in the Soviet Union. The chapter discusses those cinemas which were part of an international industry dominated by commerce. Of the other European industries, the country with most material available on DVD is Germany, in particular the expressionist cinema. This has the advantage that the influence of its conventions can still be seen clearly in modern horror, one reason being the long shelf life of Nosferatu (1922), directed by F. W. Murnau.
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses Sarah's mental health and finds it distinctly lacking, leading to a discussion of why mad women are different from mad men in the movies. Much of Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005) have a profoundly hallucinatory quality. Sarah's journey follows a trajectory more commonly seen in LSD experiments than run-of-the-mill caving expeditions, while the use of differently coloured lights to distinguish one character from another when they are split up in the cave bathes the film's events in an unrealistic, numinous glow. The film's themes also tend towards a sense that this is some kind of interior phantasy, particularly the idea of guilt, which characterises Sarah's actions almost from the beginning of the film. Related to this sense of guilt are indications within the film that Sarah should be identified with the crawlers. This sense that attacker and attacked represent the same person is one familiar to us through nightmares.
The Post-Millennial Gangster Film
Authors: Elliott Paul
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the post-millennial gangster film. It begins by differentiating between Gangster Heavy and Gangster Light. The chapter then describes how the protagonist of the post-millennial gangster film (with a few notable exceptions) comes not from the ranks of the Mafioso or the well-organised criminal fraternity but from the door of the nightclub or the big city back street. They are small-time operators or part of a close-knit street crew and unlike their more ethical forebears, their main source of income is drugs. Moreover, their on-screen violence is often more graphic and detailed. The post-millennial gangster film has in more recent years begun to examine street and knife crime, and the gangsters themselves have become ever younger, as the surrounding society seeks to come to terms with widely disseminated images of youth gangs and rioting. Thus, the chapter looks at the sons, daughters, and even grandchildren of gangsters and asks how they fit in with the story of British cinema. What emerges is a depiction of gang culture that is tinged with issues of class, race, and gender as British cinema seeks to represent a society shaped by changes in Government, socio-economics, and, as the first decade of the new millennium progressed, increasing anxieties over issues such as knife crime, immigration, and youth violence.
Bent Coppers
Authors: Elliott Paul
Published: February 2021

This chapter details how the British police film after the 1960s became one of anxiety and fear both of and for the place of the constabulary in British culture. The perception of escalating police corruption was reinforced in the late 1960s and early 1970s through media images of uniformed British bobbies holding back armies of desperate striking miners and colliery workers at places like Saltley near Birmingham. One could also add to this countless news images of British soldiers firing on civilians in the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry and the increasing use of the police as battering rams by a series of governments that were struggling to maintain control of social unrest. To this state of affairs one can also add the influence of two distinct media cultures: British TV and Hollywood. The chapter considers three of the most socially reflective police films of the 1970s: All Coppers are... (1972), The Offence (1972), and Sweeney 2 (1978). None were major box office successes or have been extensively covered by British cinema criticism; however, all constitute an interesting snapshot of how Britain in the 1970s saw itself and its relationship to the police and authority.
Serial Killers
Authors: Elliott Paul
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the British serial killer cinema. British cinema has been noticeably reticent about depicting its serial killers. Aside from Jack the Ripper, who has appeared in many films since the 1920s, British killers are not nearly as ubiquitous as their Hollywood counterparts and where they are depicted they are often allied more to realism than horror. Like all areas of the crime film, British serial-killer cinema is inextricably linked to Hollywood; however, it also strives to distance itself, drawing on quintessentially British histories, images, and texts. The chapter looks at three films where serial killing is the main thrust of the narrative: Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1927), Richard Fleischer's 10 Rillington Place (1971), and John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986).
‘Why don’t we just…wait here for a little while…see what happens…’
Authors: Conolly Jez
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the ending of The Thing. It discusses the historical patterns of Hollywood endings and how they reflect the general mood of the decade. The chapter describes the ending of The Thing as being firmly planted in this tradition. It discusses how in the context of the post-Vietnam War and 1970's Hollywood, the most heroic deeds had to exist in the context of almost inevitable mass destruction. The chapter talks about how this can be observed in the film's ending with the desire of the last two surviving characters to deny the Thing access to living tissue and the prospect of reaching the rest of humanity. It also discusses the alternate endings that John Carpenter had prepared for the film and the reason why they ultimately made their choice. The chapter includes a series of questions that the film left unanswered and states that part of what makes the film work so well is the missing explanation.
Black Sunday
Authors: Conterio Martyn
Published: February 2021

Despite its reputation as one of the greatest and most influential of all horror films, there is surprisingly little literature dedicated to Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960), and this work is the first single book dedicated to it. This book places the film in the historical context of being one of the first sound Italian horror films and how its success kick-started the Italian horror boom. It considers the particularly Italian perspective on the gothic that the film pioneered and its fresh and pioneering approach to horror tropes such as the vampire and the witch and considers how the casting of British 'Scream Queen' Barbara Steele was crucial to the film's effectiveness and success.
Production and Reception
Authors: Conterio Martyn
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses how Mario Bava's Black Sunday began production on 28 March at Scalera Film studios, which was considered an intense shoot that lasted six weeks and wrapped on 7 May. It describes 1960 as the 'annus mirabilis' for the industry, where the share of domestic box-office for Italian film reached 50 percent for the first time since the war. It also discusses Barbara Steele's foray into American cinema, which was a disaster and curtailed by her allegedly walking off set after a row with director Don Siegel, a few days into the making of the Elvis Presley vehicle, Flaming Star in 1960. The chapter describes marketing campaigns for Black Sunday that ramped up the promise of sex and violence. It demonstrates the American International Pictures' (AIP) liberal attitude to the cutting and shot removal of Black Sunday, which certainly nullified some of Bava's more graceful beats that faded to black during gory moments.
Analysis
Authors: Conterio Martyn
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Mario Bava's debut feature film, Black Sunday, which is considered to be among the most stylish horror films ever made and won praise for its delicious look and cinematography. It illustrates Black Sunday's ravishing mise-en-scène that marries fairy tale to surrealist irrationality, as well as ingenious special-effects design. It also mentions Tom Milne, who summed up Bava's film as a chillingly beautiful and brutal horror film that is superb and a chiaroscuro symphony of dank crypts and swirling fog-grounds. The chapter recounts how Bava filmed on monochrome stock and delivered what is touted as the last great black-and-white Gothic horror picture. It talks about the clever effects and use of miniatures, matte paintings, grotesque character transformations and the painted backdrops in black-and-white that is fused together to create a magical air.