bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The (Re)production of a Maskilah: The Mother–Daughter Bond between Menuhah and Hava Shapiro
Authors: Balin Carole B. , Zierler Wendy I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter concentrates on the virtue of the mother–daughter relationship and its potential to provoke cultural change that is emphasized through the relationship between the pioneering maskilah Hava Shapiro and her mother Menuhah. It considers the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Haskalah and the writings of Shapiro, who depicts her mother Menuhah as fulfilling a traditional maternal role in nurturing her love and commitment to Hebrew literature. It also recounts how Menuhah gave her daughter the agency and intellectual tools to revolt against traditional conceptions of women and break free from a well-entrenched patriarchy. The chapter examines the talmudic wherein the mother–daughter relationship of Menuhah and Shapiro is central to the replication of a cultural value that excludes women. It analyses the mother–daughter relationship, which contests a previous cultural model of traditional mothers passing on Hebrew literacy to their daughters and nonconforming daughters writing Hebrew literature.
The ‘Mothers’ Who Were Not: Motherhood Imagery and Childless Women Warriors in Early Jewish Literature
Authors: Tamber-Rosenau Caryn
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights the ways in which the biblical and apocryphal stories of three childless women warriors named Deborah, Jael, and Judith use the language and imagery of motherhood to cast these women as figurative mothers. It applies queer theory and the concepts of gender performance and reproductive futurism to argue that the extension of metaphorical motherhood applies to Deborah, Jael, and Judith. It also analyses the use of the vocabulary of motherhood that enables the biblical and apocryphal texts to portray the women warriors as women who assume the mantle of leadership while simultaneously destabilizing the patriarchal assumptions of a biblical society. The chapter refers to motherhood as a major focus of women's identities in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish literature. It reviews the stories of Deborah, Jael, and Judith, which invoke maternal language and imagery that casts them as figurative characters rather than literal mothers.
Motherhood as Motivation: American Jewish Women in Action, 1890–1940
Authors: Klapper Melissa R.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses maternalism as a collective belief in gender difference based on motherhood as the foundation for reform. It argues that maternalism was a crucial ingredient in the activism of Jewish women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also mentions Der Fraynd, the socialist Workmen's Circle monthly publication that linked the origins of the women's rights movement to prehistoric matriarchal societies in the fight for suffrage. The chapter analyses the peace movement that exhorted Jewish mothers to pass on the value of peace to their children and instruct them about the evils of war. It looks at how maternalism provided a framework and language for maintaining Jewish identity within a wider societal sphere as Jewish women moved into more public arenas and joined with women of different ethnic identities.
The Biblical Root ’mn: Retrieval of a Term and Its Household Context
Authors: Aranoff Deena
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the maternal figure's connection to the etymological development of a key religious term, the Hebrew root 'mn, which is commonly translated as 'faithfulness' or 'constancy'. It talks about the abstract meanings of faithfulness and constancy as outgrowths of concrete maternal associations and provision of an infant's physical needs. The chapter recovers cultural traces of the maternal activities involved in childrearing in biblical terminology and traces maternal disappearance through the ways in which the meanings 'to rear, nurse' become muted abstractions. The chapter emphasizes how culture is embedded within language and how the physical activities of childrearing had a linguistic impact on the elite literature of ancient Israel. It then examines the subjectivity of mothers over their bodies and their own physical experiences as mothers.
‘In a Place Where There Are No Men’
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the circumstances of Kraków Orthodoxy at the beginning of the twentieth century that constitute the background of the emergence of the Bais Yaakov movement. While Kraków is the birthplace of the Bais Yaakov movement, it was actually conceived, as it were, in Vienna, where Sarah Schenirer had fled with a flood of refugees after the outbreak of the First World War brought the Russian army into Galicia. The canonical story of the founding of the movement insists that the inspiration did not and could not have come to her in Kraków, where Orthodox rabbis did not address their female congregants from the pulpit and where Jewish girls' education was treated with utter neglect. Sarah Schenirer's founding of a girls' school system was thus a pioneering venture into unexplored territory, in which the initiative of a single woman solved a problem that no one else around her recognized, cared about, or could resolve. There is one detail in her memoir, however, that complicates this picture. Extrapolating from her brother's words, it was not the case that no one in Kraków had so far considered using religious education to combat the defection of Jewish girls. Rather, this strategy, however obvious and even laudable it might be, was impracticable given the political realities of Orthodox life.
Jewish Women’s Lives The Sacred Obligations of the Jewish Woman
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the sacred obligations of the Jewish woman. The mishnah of kinin deals with the problem of the bird sacrifices that a woman who has just given birth or other individuals who have experienced impurity are obligated to bring after they recover. This is connected with the issue of the beginning of a woman's ritually unclean period (menstruation). The chapter then considers the culture of modesty. The battle against immodest dress is at the very centre of the culture of modesty; the modesty of Jewish women saved the Jews from exile. Finally, the chapter focuses on the commandments of kashrut, explaining the necessity for Jewish women to learn the rules regarding kosher food.
Ten Letters to Jewish Children
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores ten letters which provide ethical instructions to Jewish children. The letters talk about the importance of the sabbath and the holidays for worshipping the holy Creator with sincere prayers and learning Torah. They warn Jewish children of the dangers of lying, swearing, speaking ill, and gossiping. They also urge Jewish children to act according to the commandments of the Torah. The letters then explain the importance of the commandments of honouring one's father and mother; of loving one's neighbour; of not seeking vengeance; and of avoiding arrogance. The chapter also reflects on the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the Bais Yaakov schools.
With Perseverance and Faith From Kraków to New York
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter traces the beginnings of Bais Yaakov on American soil. The Bais Yaakov seminary in New York began quietly, exactly as had happened in Kraków. But the words of instruction were like a revelation. Very quickly, the number of students grew and the seminary blossomed. Jewish New York was recognizing a new world, the new-old idea of giving their daughters a Jewish education. Today, it has become an enormous educational institution with more than 500 students, a staff of forty teachers, a five-semester full-time seminary of the most exemplary rigour, an evening seminary, and the high school, in which the students acquire not only a clear and rigorous Torah education along with a first-class programme of government-sanctioned secular studies, but also preparation for life, instruction for future mothers in how to run a Jewish household. Ultimately, the Bais Yaakov education is about living yiddishkeit, the whole package and entirety of Jewish life. This is something that leaves its mark on all who pass through it.
The Ba’al Shem Tov’s ‘Sacred Epistle’ and Contemporary Habad Outreach
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

Historical processes often revolve around ideas, and ideas are formulated in texts. This chapter investigates the way a somewhat mysterious phrase in a letter of the Ba’al Shem Tov became the key to the development of the outreach ethos in twentieth-century Habad.
Habad Messianism: A Combination of Opposites
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

The previous chapters about women in Habad hasidism brought together concepts such as the Lower Unity, in which the Divine is recognized in the here and now, and the empowerment of women to ‘spread the wellsprings’. For observers of contemporary Habad it is clear that a central goal of this empowerment is the quest to bring about the messianic redemption. In this chapter I explore some of the inherent combinations of opposites in that ideal.
The Magnate-Jewish Symbiosis
Authors: Lupovitch Howard
Published: February 2021

WRITING IN 1927, Hungarian Jewish author Lajos Hatvany described, in his autobiographical novel Gentlemen and People, the angst of Hermann Bondy over whether or not the Blaus, a noble couple who had been invited to his wedding, would show up:

Would Gusztáv Blau come? Would he bring his wife? Certainly the Blaus had accepted the invitation on paper and were present at the ceremony in the synagogue. . . . But these superior people had not deigned to mingle with the crowds who had rushed to greet the bridal pair. They had hurried away. . . . But Bondy’s thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door and the entrance of little Gusztáv Blau in person. In he stumbled, smiling and clean-shaven, with his side whiskers and his diplomat’s face. . . . All the guests were then presented in turn to the Blaus, who stood in the centre of the hall like royalty. The panting ladies from the provinces . . . were lost in admiration of Frau Blau’s gigantic ear-rings and her collar of pearls the size of hazelnuts. And that the wealthy banker’s wife should be so kind with it all—a real lady! . . . Indeed, you could see from her whole manner that she had been brought up in Pest. . . . Now the Bondys would be able to say they had been admitted to the leading circles in Pest....
Polish ‘Progressive’ Judaism and Hungarian Neolog Judaism
Authors: Matis Benjamin
Published: February 2021

FOR all their differences, particularly the failure of Polish Jewry to assimilate and the overwhelmingly successful assimilation of Hungarian Jewry, both Polish and Hungarian Jews found themselves in similar circumstances during the interwar period. Intense antisemitism, beginning in the 1880s, came to a full boil in the aftermath of the First World War. Acculturated or not, both groups had been reduced to pariah status by the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite the yawning chasm between the self-identities of Jews in Poland and those of Jews in Hungary, attempts at moderate religious reform, particularly in liturgy and synagogue practice, were successful in both countries, albeit on a much different scale....
Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666 - 1816
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

Women are conspicuously absent from the Jewish mystical tradition. The chance survival of scant evidence suggests that, at various times and places, individual Jewish women did pursue the path of mystical piety or prophetic spirituality, but it appears that they were generally censured, and efforts were made to suppress their activities. This contrasts sharply with the fully acknowledged prominence of women in the mystical traditions of both Christianity and Islam. It is against this background that the mystical messianic movement centred on the personality of Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) stands out as a unique and remarkable exception. Sabbatai Zevi addressed to women a highly original liberationist message, proclaiming that he had come to make them 'as happy as men' by releasing them from the pangs of childbirth and the subjugation to their husbands that were ordained for women as a consequence of the primordial sin. This redemptive vision became an integral part of Sabbatian eschatology, which the messianists believed to be unfolding and experienced in the present. Their New Law overturned the traditional halakhic norms that distinguished and regulated relations between the sexes. This book traces the diverse manifestations of this vision in every phase of Sabbatianism and its offshoots. These include the early promotion of women to centre-stage as messianic prophetesses; their independent affiliation with the movement in their own right; their initiation in the esoteric teachings of the kabbalah; and their full incorporation, on a par with men, into the ritual and devotional life of the messianic community.
Women in Sectarian Sabbatianism
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the evidence on the eruption of messianic prophecy during an early period, which suggests that women responded en masse to Sabbatai Zevi's tidings. It discusses women's particular receptivity to the Sabbatai Zevi's messianic call in light of the promises he made specifically to the female sex. It also mentions the adherence to the messianic faith that did not demand that the restraints of Jewish law be cast off or subverted, but instead called for repentance in entirely traditional terms. The chapter examines the first antinomian acts being ordered by Sabbatai Zevi that were not able to split the believers or generate any tension between their self-perception as pious Jews and the integrity of their Sabbatian faith. It discusses sectarian organizations in which Sabbatianism persisted throughout the eighteenth century in which the traditional barriers between men and women crumbled, both in theory and in practice.
Group Size, Social Class, Religion, and Politics
Authors: Waxman Chaim I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on determining the size of the Orthodox Jewish population in the United States and difficulties related to the problem of estimating the Jewish population as a whole. It analyses the acceptance of the notion of the 'core Jewish population' among social scientists and Jewish communal professionals. It also looks at major debates relating to significantly different estimates of population size among those specializing in Jewish demography. The chapter addresses questions as to whether belonging to an Orthodox synagogue makes one Orthodox, or whether being Orthodox entails matters of faith and behaviour. It cites the UJA-Federation of New York, which estimated the total Orthodox population in New York City at 493,000 in 2013.
American Orthodoxy Adopts Stringency
Authors: Waxman Chaim I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about observers of American Orthodoxy that were struck by what was labelled as a move to the right during the second half of the twentieth century. It discusses the insistence on the term ‘glatt kosher’ and stricter rules of kashrut in general, as well as the increasing insistence on separation of the sexes in the synagogue during services. It also explores basic sociological factors that explain why Orthodoxy in modern society is adopting a stance of greater isolation from the wider Jewish community and of ritualistic stringency. The chapter mentions Charles Liebman and his pioneering 1966 analysis of American Orthodox Judaism in the American Jewish Year Book. It distinguishes between ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Modern Orthodoxy in terms of attitudes towards the broader Jewish community, modernity, and Zionism.
Halakhic Change and Meta-Halakhah
Authors: Waxman Chaim I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about a prominent English theologian named Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs, who asserted that the Torah is the result of the divine–human encounter through the ages. It clarifies current attitudes to Jacobs's assertion based on a review of changes in American Orthodox Judaism from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first in the sphere of halakhah. It also analyses responses by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who was widely perceived as the foremost halakhic authority in the American Orthodox community during the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter considers the meta-halakhic and theological differences between American and British Orthodoxy. It cites Jacobs's notorious departure from the British Orthodox rabbinate.
Revival of the Bible
Authors: Waxman Chaim I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on changes within American Orthodoxy concerning interpretations of Orthodox Jewish beliefs. It discusses American Orthodoxy that was united in its allegiance to the credo of torah min hashamayim, in which both the Written Law and the Oral Law were given by God to Moses at Sinai. It also refers to Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Moshe Tendler, who axiomatically assert a literal version of both parts of the credo. The chapter analyses the absence of any publicly voiced alternative to the literal interpretation of the credo that is rooted in explicit talmudic assertions which were reiterated by Maimonides. It describes how Maimonides laid down the fundamental credo and implied that the Torah is from God.
Introduction
Authors: Bronner Simon J. , Battegay Caspar
Published: February 2021

This chapter disputes the common assumption that media-driven popular culture has weakened ethnic-religious ties of community with each advance in communication technology and has been detrimental to tradition-centred groups such as Orthodox Jews. It mentions popular-culture theorists who have long asserted the notion of popular works against the survival of ethnic-religious groups. It also talks about Russel Nye, who claimed that the idea of popular culture, associated with urbanization and industrialization, depends on artists and agents who exploit media and create cultural standards. This chapter discusses how the process of popularization depends on a mass audience that consumes secularized cultural expressions that became accessible in Western societies through communication media. It analyses the advent of popular culture purportedly that diminishes the need for public space and peer pressure.
Propagating Modern Jewish Identity in Madagascar: A Contextual Analysis of One Community’s Discursive Strategies
Authors: Devir Nathan P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces a group of 121 women, men, and children on the island of Madagascar that formally converted to Judaism in mid-May 2016. It discusses the Westerners before the conversions that had only vague and second-hand notions about the proselytes' difficulties in maintaining a religiously observant lifestyle in a country that has been plagued with endemic corruption and barely functioning infrastructure for decades. It analyses how the 121 Malagasies relied upon faith in the efficacy of the culture of digital communications, which they had harnessed since 2013 in order to prepare for the conversions. The chapter focuses on kelal yisra'el, the worldwide Jewish community that was facilitated by the globalized matrix of mass communication and enabled the learning of post-exilic Judaism. It identifies the groups of contemporary 'internet Jews' from the developing world, such as the Igbo of Nigeria and the Beth Yeshourun community of Cameroon.
Introduction
Authors: Bowen A. J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a background on Aeschylus' play called the Suppliant Women. It explains the chief elements of the myth of the Danaids. It also discusses the four elements that are 'common' to all the versions of the Suppliant Women: first, there are two brothers that are descendants of Io named Aegyptus and Danaus; second, the characters quarrel; third, the fifty sons marry the fifty daughters; and fourth, all the girls obey their father's instruction to kill their husbands on the wedding night, except Hypermestra. This chapter analyses the source of the myth of the Danaids. It explains that the most important cyclic poem was Danaides, which was thought to be composed in the sixth century.
Doing Text
Authors: Bennett Pete , McDougall Julian
Published: February 2021

This volume re-imagines the study of English and media in a way that decentralises the text (e.g. romantic poetry or film noir) or media formats/platforms (e.g. broadcast media/new media). Instead, the authors work across boundaries in meaningful thematic contexts that reflect the ways in which people engage with reading, watching, making, and listening in their textual lives. In so doing, the volume recasts both subjects as combined in a more reflexive, critical space for the study of our everyday social and cultural interactions. Across the chapters, the authors present applicable learning and teaching strategies that weave together art works, films, social practices, creativity, 'viral' media, theater, TV, social media, videogames, and literature. The culmination of this range of strategies is a reclaimed 'blue skies' approach to progressive textual education, free from constraining shackles of outdated ideas about textual categories and value that have hitherto alienated generations of students and both English and media from themselves.
Doing Text
Authors: McDougall Julian
Published: February 2021

This chapter argues that media education after the-media would be formed out of a flattened cultural hierarchy combined with a relativist pedagogy. This would arise out of the death of Media Studies as we know it but also the death of English, Art, Drama and all other 'subjects of text'. These will be replaced with a more reflexive pedagogy of the texture of mediated life. Doing Text means one removes 'the-media' from their field of reference and work instead on the-mediated storytelling of the self and their students' performative textual interactions across spaces and places. This volume provides teachers of Media, English, and other textual curricular with a set of interdisciplinary learning and teaching strategies for what might be called 'new pedagogies'.
Reading Text
Authors: Hendry Steph
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the act of reading text. In a valid and logical response to the cultural and institutional changes taking place, Media Studies started to look at the rise of e-media and its impact on the construction and consumption of media products. Always looking to be a contemporary subject, this refocus allowed teachers and students an opportunity to engage with the new institutional structures and audience behaviours. The subject changed its terminology and no longer focused on 'texts' but on 'media products'. This shift in the discourse identified that the act of 'reading' the-media had become a secondary consideration. This move away from what was seen as an 'old fashioned' textual focus has meant that students are often having to deal with complex ideas about how the-media works without first developing a confident analytical skills-base. The chapter then looks at the act of reading television, literary texts, 'high art' on TV, and games and beyond. Providing different reading experiences for students is the first step to helping them develop an appreciation for the complex art of reading.
Writing Text
Authors: Sembi Pritpal Singh
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates the act of writing text. It considers how gamers create culture before, during, and after gameplay via engagement with wider written discourses. Media literacy needs to be refocused towards an 'ongoing engagement with contemporary culture' and gaming is an expression of popular culture that would benefit from pedagogic engagement. It has now become impossible to ignore the impact of gaming on everyday culture, wherein time spent on gaming can outweigh time spent in formal education or employment for some. However, since many people use games to escape from real-life, how can it be that gaming might actually enhance real-life? The chapter suggests that writing has moved beyond traditional boundaries in terms of what is written, where one writes, and how one writes. Much of the experience of gaming is expressed within discourses that exist outside of the actual gameplay itself which, harnessed appropriately, can have important educational value.
Connecting Text
Authors: Waugh Christopher
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the act of connecting text. The benefit of a connected text is not as simple as merely 'having an audience'. The act of choice in sending something out into the world, under one's own name, and of one's own creation is a singularly autonomous act. This assertion of self is not uncommon for students in a school classroom, in fact it is an important part of what makes the school such a real and authentic place for students and teachers alike, but the formalisation of this in text is unique. The affordances of this self-assertion are often immediately clear. The text, which frequently represents the most tangible product of the classroom experience for students, extends their voice. The value they place on it is reinforced by the fact that they have the power to publish the text to the world.
Introduction
Authors: Waddell Calum
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust, who is best described as a journeyman filmmaker. It describes Deodato as a director who would go from genre to genre, project to project and turn his abilities to each venture with notable professionalism and distinct style. It also mentions Cannibal Holocaust's graphic sexual and violent content, which was successfully prosecuted as obscene in the UK during the notorious video nasty era. This chapter talks about Cannibal Holocaust's belated arrival in American cinemas in June 1985, which only slipped in and out of the country's theatres almost unnoticed. It argues how Cannibal Holocaust is considered to be a product of the Vietnam War.
Studying Waltz with Bashir
Authors: Miller Giulia
Published: February 2021

On its release in 2008, Ari Folman's animated documentary Waltz with Bashir was heralded as a brilliant and original exploration of trauma, and trauma's impact on memory and the recording of history. But it is surprising that although the film is seen through the eyes of one particular soldier, a viewpoint portrayed using highly experimental forms of animation, this has not prevented Waltz with Bashir from being regarded as both an “autobiographical” and “honest” account of the director's own experiences in the 1982 Lebanon War. In fact, the film won several documentary awards, and even those critics focusing on the representation of trauma suggest that this trauma must be authentic. In this sense, it is the documentary form rather than the animation that has had the most influence upon critics. As this book shows, it is the tension between the two forms that makes the film so complex and interesting, allowing for multiple themes and discourses to coexist, including Israel's role during the Lebanon War and the impact of trauma upon narrative, but also the representation of Holocaust memory and its role in the formation of Israeli identity. In addition to these themes that coexist by virtue of the film's unusual animated documentary format, Waltz with Bashir can also be discussed in relation to a broad range of contexts; for example, the representation of war in film, the history of Israeli Holocaust cinema, and recent trends in experimental animation, such as Richard Linklater's Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), as well as Folman's most recent live action/animation work The Congress (2013).
Waltz with Bashir’s Reception in Israel and Abroad
Authors: Miller Giulia
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at primary sources, such as newspapers and magazines, to discuss the reception of Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir. It considers some of the issues associated with world cinema and compares Folman's first three films: Saint Clara, Made in Israel and Waltz with Bashir. It also examines what stood out in Waltz with Bashir that made it so successful. The chapter discusses the media reception of Waltz with Bashir that was fairly emotional and highlights how the film ruffled many feathers and pushed several buttons. It mentions critics that either gushed about Folman's bravery or were indignant about his hypocrisy.
Horror, Happy Meals and Hybridisation: Scream and The 1990s
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Wes Craven's New Nightmare and John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness that blurred existing horror cinema and horror literature with reality and pseudo-realities. It analyses how the acknowledgment of both creators and audience within intricate, self-reflexive narratives equally strive to operate as serious, frightening genre films in an age of pastiche and repetition. It also talks about Last Action Hero from 1993 as a higher-profile failure that was conceived by two neophyte writers as a parody of 1980s action films. The chapter examines the icons of horror that formerly dominate the covers of genre bible Fangoria that were fading from public popularity as the 'McDonaldisation of horror'. It describes the fervour to capitalise on the popularity of anti-heroes like Freddy Krueger that led to increasingly campy and gimmicky sequels.
Dread and the Trauma of Complicity
Authors: Gildersleeve Jessica
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Don't Look Now's (1973) suspense, its sense of threat or danger, in the context of the horror of parental anxiety. Drawing on Sigmund Freud's conceptualisation of anxiety as ‘dreading forward’, it argues that rather than being a narrative of traumatic repetition and compulsion, Don't Look Now is driven by John Baxter's desire to paradoxically prevent his daughter's death after it has occurred, and thereby to overcome his sense of complicity in her drowning. Unlike in Daphne Du Maurier's story, in which Christine dies of meningitis, John and Laura are unable to prepare, even briefly, for their child's death. John's ‘psychic’ abilities, therefore, are best understood as ‘dreading forward’, or what can be called ‘traumatic clairvoyance’—they depict his confused experience of trauma (the horror of his own death) prior to its occurrence, and as a result of the past trauma (the horror of Christine's death). In this way, although John hopes that he will fulfil his patriarchal responsibilities in time, this time, his authority is undermined by his failure to recognise knowledge of a different kind.
Destinerrance and the Trauma of Misreading
Authors: Gildersleeve Jessica
Published: February 2021

This chapter draws on Jacques Derrida's concept of destinerrance, the sense in which meaning is ‘destined to err and to wander’, as a way of understanding the unstable and ultimately horrific process of misreading sign and symbol in Don't Look Now (1973). John Baxter's misreading of the murderous woman as his lost daughter, but also his misreading of colour and image, of his wife, of the strange psychic women they meet, of himself and his place in the world, of the dangerous spaces he inhabits, and even of time itself, all contribute to the film's uncanny sense of his environment as simultaneously loaded with and empty of meaning. John might ‘feel’ that he is ‘a detective’, but ultimately, he is a failed one, since his misreading of the ‘clues’ he perceives lead to the perpetuation rather than the prevention of crime and trauma. It is in the space of these misreadings, of failing to see in time, that the film's horror, its capacity to scare, resides, since it insists on the suspension rather than the resolution of trauma. The film's misreadings, then, are ultimately instructive or didactic, but in moving away from the conservative restoration of order which is typical of the Gothic narrative, Don't Look Now's iteration of horror remains open.
Don’t Look Now and the Cinema of Trauma
Authors: Gildersleeve Jessica
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter suggests that the trauma in Don't Look Now (1973) is precisely to do with the horror of simultaneously seeing and failing to see, of looking now and looking too late. The horror of Don't Look Now resides in the trauma of failing to know and thus to respond in time, of failing to be responsible. At the film's conclusion, then, both character and audience align in this awful knowledge, the horror of their own failure to read the experience or the narrative correctly. All of this is to say that Don't Look Now has as much to say about trauma cinema as it does horror cinema. Indeed, Nicolas Roeg's film brings the two precisely into relation with one another; in doing so, the film makes a commentary on the cultural traumas of the late twentieth century, as well as the ways in which these function more particularly as anxiety—an anticipation of the return of trauma, rather than solely as its repetition.
The Damned
Authors: Riddle Nick
Published: February 2021

The Damned (1963) is the most intriguing of director Joseph Losey's British “journeyman” films. A sci-fi film by a director who hated sci-fi; a Hammer production that sat on the shelf for over two years before being released with almost no publicity as the second half of a double bill. Losey was a director vocal in his dislike of depictions of physical violence, but he often made films that radiate an energy produced by a violent clash of elements. The Damned catches a series of collisions — some of them inadvertent — and traps them as if in amber. Its volatile elements include Losey, the blacklisted director; Hammer, the erratic British studio, Oliver Reed, the 'dangerous' young actor, and radioactive children. This book concentrates on historical and cultural context, place, genre, and other themes in order to try to make sense of a fascinating, underappreciated film.
We Live Inside a Dream: Fire Walk With Me as a David Lynch Film
Authors: Hallam Lindsay
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines how the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me fits within David Lynch's wider filmography. It analyses connections and commonalities between Fire Walk With Me and Lynch's other films, highlighting recurring themes and stylistic elements. It also mentions Lynch's film Wild At Heart from 1990, which was made during Twin Peak's second season that had won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. The chapter recounts Lynch's initial flirtation with the mainstream, such as a big budget adaption of Frank Herbert's science-fiction novel titled Dune in 1984 that had been a commercial, critical and artistic disaster. It talks about how Fire Walk With Me had been a product of Lynch's own making that expresses his own particular vision and continued to believe in, despite the critical drubbing.
Historical Context
Authors: Arnold Darren
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the historical context of Ken Russell's The Devils (1973), as the timing of the first appearance of the film is of great importance in a way which spreads out way beyond the confines of the cinema screen. Despite its firm seventeenth-century setting—and its ongoing relevance—The Devils is very much a film for 1971, and its ideas about spirituality said much about the time in which the film was released. Uncomfortable parallels could also be made with the Troubles in Northern Ireland; this conflict, for which both politics and religion provided much of the fuel, had been underway for some time when The Devils was released. And with the world only starting to recover from the Manson murders, which were deemed to have been committed in order to ignite a race war, the film also served up a scarcely needed reminder of the case's chief bogeyman in the form of Father Barré. Audiences in 1971 certainly had plenty to think about, and The Devils did not provide an easy evening of escapism. The film had much to say to the audience of its time, and the vexatious nature of its message endures to the present day.
Themes
Authors: Arnold Darren
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates the themes prevalent in Ken Russell's The Devils (1973). A key message in The Devils, which creeps up on the audience rather subtly, given Russell's rather unjust reputation as a sledgehammer of a director, concerns the misery and destruction which can result when politics and religion jump into bed together. As the film's final, spectacular shot reveals the ruins of the magnificent city walls shown near the start of the film, the scale of the horror of what has occurred really resonates; these bookends chillingly convey the film's main point. It was Cardinal Richelieu's desire to build a new, centralised (and Protestant-free) France in which, as he puts it to Louis XIII in the opening scene, ‘Church and State are one’, which has led to the destroyed walls of Loudun at the end, and it is clear to see who has blood on their hands. Russell said The Devils was his only political film, and one can just about taste his revulsion at the unholy marriage that has occurred between Church and State; the film presents a compelling argument for the separation of the two entities, which eventually came to pass in France in 1905.
Gender and Sexuality
Authors: Arnold Darren
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the representation of gender and sexuality in Ken Russell's The Devils (1973). In terms of gender and sexuality, The Devils possess, at its core, a very traditional outlook that is quite a good fit with the philosophies of many of those responsible for the film's critical opprobrium. The protagonist, Grandier, is a red-blooded male and apparently a heartthrob for the majority of Loudun's female population. As he is being tortured in the film's latter stages, Grandier confesses, ‘I have been a man. I have loved women’, clearly seeing the two things as being concordant. This statement also serves to further emasculate Louis XIII. More problematically, there are numerous female characters in The Devils, and the bulk of them are defined through their relationships to/with the louche Grandier—most are in love/lust with the priest and/or driven hysterical by him. Regardless of where they stand on the Grandier spectrum, one thing all these women have in common is that they are infantilised through their relationships with/to the priest. Whether fantasising about Grandier-as-Christ or giving in to her onanistic urges in clear view of one of her equally sex-starved charges, Jeanne is a hysteric whose happiness completely depends on the feelings of a man she's never even met.
A Murderer Among Us
Authors: Deighan Samm
Published: February 2021

This chapter establishes the context for the climate in which Fritz Lang's M was produced, including its historical context within early 1930s Germany during the rise of Nazism. It explores M's connection to Lang's early work, during a period when he radically experimented with genres of romance, science fiction, fantasy and crime thrillers. It also discusses how M marks a turning point in Lang's career, when he began to fixate overwhelmingly on characters in the grip of social paranoia. The chapter talks about how Lang exclusively made crime films and thrillers with similar themes after M. It examines M's relationship to the German expressionist cinema of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly films that fit within the horror genre.
Studying Feminist Film Theory
Authors: Murray Terri
Published: February 2021

This book is aimed at helping media and film studies teachers introduce the basics of feminist film theory. No prior knowledge of feminist theory is required, the intended readers being university undergraduate teachers and students of film and media studies. Areas of emphasis include spectatorship, narrative, and ideology. Many illustrative case studies from popular cinema are used to offer students an opportunity to consider the connotations of visual and aural elements of film, narrative conflicts and oppositions, the implications of spectator 'positioning' and viewer identification, and an ideological critical approach to film. Explanations of key terminology are included, along with classroom exercises and practice questions. Each chapter begins with key definitions and explanations of the concepts to be studied, including some historical background where relevant. Case studies include film noir, Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days and the work of directors Spike Lee, Claire Denis, and Paul Verhoeven.
Exploring the ‘Male Gaze’
Authors: Murray Terri
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the three kinds of cinematic ‘look’ that Laura Mulvey associated with the ‘male gaze’. Mulvey's psychoanalytic examination of the pleasures generated by cinema included scopophilic, voyeuristic, and narcissistic pleasures. She argued that fetishistic scopophilia, unlike voyeurism, emphasises the physical beauty of the object. The object is transformed into something satisfying in itself, set apart from story and character involvement. This is illustrated with reference to Helen Faraday (Marlene Dietrich) in Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932). Despite the story being about a woman and her predicament in patriarchal society, viewer identification is exclusively with male characters, and Helen is always an object for male spectators within the film and within the cinema. The chapter then contrasts von Sternberg with Mulvey's other key example, Alfred Hitchcock. Instead of merely presupposing male scopophilia/voyeurism, Hitchcock knowingly comments on these phenomena, making them the subject of his films. Though not mentioned by Mulvey, Psycho (1960) is offered as a case study in how the horror/slasher genre developed conventions that generated scopophilic and narcissistic pleasures for male viewers, perhaps catering to violent male fantasies.
Introduction
Authors: Turnock Bryan
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of horror cinema. Since its inception, horror has been one of the most universally derided and dismissed of film genres. Yet at the same time it has consistently been one of the most enduring and commercially popular. While there have been periods where it seemed to have reached a dead end, it has always managed to re-invent itself and rise again. Today, horror cinema is experiencing something of a renaissance, enjoying box-office success and even critical acclaim. The chapter discusses the concept of film genre and traces the history of horror. As with other genres, over time horror developed codes and conventions that became typically associated with what one would now term a traditional horror film. Since the arrival of the 'modern' horror film in the early 1960s, the genre has displayed a degree of freedom from many of its more traditional conventions.
American Gothic
Authors: Turnock Bryan
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines another convention of the horror genre: the 'Terrible Place', identified by Carol Clover as somewhere which at first appears to be a safe haven but which in fact acts to trap the victim with the monster. Horror was rapidly established as a standard Hollywood genre, and the early 1930s saw investment in horror films by all of the major studios, but none more so than Universal Pictures. The chapter looks at the origins of Universal's original horror cycle, and how the Hollywood 'star system' ensured that it continued. It considers the issue of film censorship and its effect on the evolution of the horror genre. The chapter also discusses James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), which relies on the characteristics of the house itself and the unpredictable nature of its human inhabitants to generate suspense and fear.
The Birth of Modern Horror
Authors: Turnock Bryan
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the birth of modern horror. The horror genre is ultimately concerned with the battle between good and evil. At times this can be very clearly delineated, but in real life this is not always the case. At the time of its release, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was truly ground-breaking in its approach to horror in everyday life. Shocking and controversial, it was initially denounced by critics yet became a worldwide box-office sensation and set the direction of the genre for the next fifty years. One of the most analysed and discussed films in cinema history, and arguably the single most influential film in the evolution of the horror genre, entire books have been written about every aspect of Psycho's production, reception and lasting influence. By contextualising the film in the environment of a Hollywood that found itself under mounting pressures, the chapter examines how Hitchock's low-budget film changed the face of horror forever.
Asian Horror
Authors: Turnock Bryan
Published: February 2021

This chapter details how the mid-1990s saw a substantial increase in the number of horror films being produced in Asian countries, and in particular Japan and Korea. At the same time, globalisation and the introduction of worldwide distribution channels meant that such films became much more accessible to western audiences, with the surprise success of Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) bringing Japanese horror into the mainstream of western cinema. Often used to describe genre films from across Asia, so-called 'J-Horror' is now a recognised sub-genre in the west, with a number of scholarly books dedicated to its analysis. Although many of the more recent films feature modern trappings and a preoccupation with technology, they draw heavily from Japan's long tradition of folklore and ghost stories, while stylistically referencing the aesthetics of traditional Japanese theatre. The chapter considers Masaki Kobayashi's Kaidan (Kwaidan, 1964). It traces the evolution of Japan's unique national film industry and examines how cultural differences can affect genre production and consumption.
American Independent Horror
Authors: Turnock Bryan
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the emergence of American independent horror, looking at George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). By the mid-1960s, the traditional Hollywood studio system was responsible for only around 20 per cent of America's film production. The remainder came from independent film-makers and from films made outside of the United States, where labour and locations were cheaper. The 'New Wave' movements in countries such as Japan, France, Britain, and Czechoslovakia introduced new styles of film-making to American cinemagoers, who found them an attractive alternative to the classical Hollywood feature film. As such, the late 1960s saw enormous changes in American cinema, including within the horror genre. Influenced by social, political and cultural upheavals occurring in the country at the time, 1968 is often cited as the dawn of the 'modern American horror film'. The chapter considers how political and social turmoil in America led to a growing number of independent film-makers actively working against the industry establishment, taking advantage of the heavily diminished influence of the major studios, and producing films which rejected Hollywood conservatism and deliberately pushed the boundaries of acceptability.