bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘Bais Yaakov, Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord’
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the phenomenology of the Bais Yaakov movement during the Holocaust and after. The experiment that was Bais Yaakov was still expanding at a rapid rate and had hardly had a chance to come into its own when it fell victim to the destruction of European Jewry. Despite the disbanding of Bais Yaakov schools with the outbreak of the Second World War, numerous memoirs and histories of the movement attest to its continued clandestine activity during the war years. The networks forged in the interwar movement aided in the rapid re-emergence of Bais Yaakov schools and Bnos groups in the immediate aftermath of the war. Bais Yaakov established itself more permanently after the Holocaust in the centres of Orthodox life throughout the world, particularly in North America and Israel. Bais Yaakov schools had already been founded in both countries during the interwar period, and the Beth Jacob High School established in 1938 by Sarah Schenirer's student Vichna Kaplan operated under the authority of the Central Office in Europe.
Translator’s Note
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

IN 1933 the Central Secretariat of Bnos Agudath Israel in Poland issued Sarah Schenirer’s Collected Writings, after advertising the upcoming publication in the pages of the Bais Yaakov Journal. The book included many articles that had previously appeared in the journal or elsewhere in Bais Yaakov publications; among them were reflections on Jewish themes, reports on events important to the world of Bais Yaakov and Bnos, and ethical instructions to young pupils. But it also included previously unpublished writings, including a brief but fascinating memoir that shed light on Sarah Schenirer’s childhood and on the beginnings of the Bais Yaakov movement. As a frontispiece, the book included a drawing of Sarah Schenirer, one which circulated widely in the movement in the absence of a photograph (it was well known that she refused to have her photograph taken). Advertisements for the upcoming volume sometimes provided a table of contents, which promised that it would include excerpts from Schenirer’s diary. In fact, those excerpts did not appear in the published work, although a few entries—whether the ones originally intended for publication or others is not clear—did appear in the 1950s in Hebrew translation. For more on this diary, see Appendix A....
A Letter from the Hafets Hayim The Holy Sage, Rabbi of All Children of Exile, May His Saintly Memory Be for a Blessing
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

TO THE HONOURED LEADERS and those who cherish the Torah, those who tremble at the word of God who are in the town of Fristik, may God bless them and protect them.12

I have heard that God-fearing people, respectful of the word of God, have volunteered to found a Bais Yaakov school in this city for the study of Torah, the fear of God and the way of the land,...
The Jewish Year
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on the Jewish year. It begins by discussing the importance of proper sabbath observance for Jewish women. Sabbath contains within itself the great blessing that gives one spiritual and physical energies for the rest of the week. The chapter then considers the preparations for the Day of Judgement. It also looks at significant Jewish holidays, including the festival of Hanukah; Shabat Shekalim; the sabbath of Zakhor, which always falls on the last sabbath before Purim; Passover, which is the festival of freedom; and Shabat Nahamu, the sabbath of consolation. In addition, the chapter highlights two women who were especially noteworthy for having rescued the Jewish people: Judith and Esther. Judith, the great heroine of Hanukah, beheaded the terrible antisemite Holofernes with her sword, and Esther saved her people from the Jew-hater Haman.
Foreword to the 1933 Edition
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

AROUND FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, when our leader Mrs Sarah Schenirer first approached the Jewish world with the idea of Bais Yaakov, she had almost no supporters, and only very few Jewish parents understood what she wanted and what she was talking about.

The Orthodox world was in despair over the problem of religious education for Jewish girls, and in any case could not believe that some humble, unknown woman would be able to overcome the obstacles and smooth the path....
Introduction
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the theme of German Orthodoxy and eastern European Hasidism that is fragmented by modernity. It provides a study of Hasidism, particularly of Habad-Lubavitch Hasidism, from its beginnings to the present. It also focuses on the thought and activities of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe named Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and looks at a variety of contrasts, including premodern and postmodern, enclave and outreach, particularism and universalism, faith and reason, and rationality and mysticism. The chapter mentions Dr. Judith Grunfeld and her significance for the Bais Yaakov movement in the 1920s in Kraków. It concentrates the study of Habad thought and their historical and social context, using conventional methods of analysis to find an existential guide to life.
Hippy in the Mikveh: The Hasidic Ethos and the Schisms of Jewish Society
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

This chapter and the next consider the same phenomenon from different perspectives. The present chapter is a story of historical processes: the emergence of the enclave form of the haredi paradigm, contrasting with early hasidic inclusivism and the revival of the inclusivist ethos in twentieth-century Habad. Chapter 2, with the ‘Sacred Epistle’ of the Ba’al Shem Tov at its centre, considers the development of Habad outreach in terms of the idea, expressed in the Ba’al Shem Tov’s letter, that the ‘spreading forth of the wellsprings’ hastens the advent of the messiah.
Reason and ‘Beyond Reason’ in Habad Hasidism
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

The theme of rationalism, linked with the question of study of secular knowledge, has been a key issue in the relationship of the Jewish community with general society and in defining its own self-image from the Middle Ages to the present. In the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century, the Jews of central Europe found a variety of ways to synthesize Judaism and rationalism under the influence, to a greater or lesser extent, of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. For the hasidim of eastern Europe, however, who sought to maintain the intense spirituality of hasidism, rationalism and secular study presented a challenge to their identity. This chapter explores some aspects of the Habad responses to this issue, from the beginning of the movement to the period of leadership of the last Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (1902–94), in the second half of the twentieth century.
Finding and Transcending the Individual
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

The focus on rationalism in Habad leads us to consider another aspect of the nature of hasidism: what, if anything, is the role of the individual? The crucial relationship of the hasid with the tsadik immediately presents the contemporary mind with the question of personal freedom and individuality. An early twentieth-century Yiddish song, ‘And when the Rebbe sings, all the hasidim sing’, describes the hasidim as imitating their rebbe. In another stereotype, based on contemporary observable fact, the hasid would not take a job, move to a new home, or decide to get married without first asking the rebbe. These images obviously run counter to a central theme of modernity: the autonomy and independence of the individual. To what extent do hasidic followers see themselves as individuals? How might this question relate to the history of hasidism, and to its context in Western culture?
Habad Contemplation in Context
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

Habad teachings on prayer give a personal, individualistic dimension to the life of the hasid, as do Bratslav teachings on hitbodedut. Further, Habad teachings on contemplation, particularly in the twentieth century, constitute an interesting form of response to modernity: a reaching into the deep spiritual resources of hasidism in order to confront a changing world. However, would spiritually demanding systems of contemplation be relevant to the average member of the hasidic community? Does Habad contemplation lead away from the world or towards it? Such issues are discussed in this chapter together with consideration of examples of the contemplative individual, who, rather than being a lone mystic, fulfils a significant role in Habad society as a mashpia, spiritual guide, seeking to bond people together and maintain awareness of spiritual values.
Ethnic Triangles, Assimilation, and the Complexities of Acculturation in a Multi-ethnic Society
Authors: Gerner Kristian
Published: February 2021

The 'national' histories of 'Hungary', 'Poland', and 'the Jews' are entangled. In the course of the nineteenth century the territories of the national states of Europe acquired an ethnic character. Being Jewish had to relate to the national identity proclaimed by the state. One consequence of the ethnic 'nationalization' of states has been defined as follows:...
Jews and Poles, 1860-1914
Authors: Weeks Theodore R.
Published: February 2021

THE roughly half-century before the First World War was a period of striking change for the Jews resident in the Polish lands. While even in I9I4 the majority of Polish Jews remained Orthodox in religious observation, followed everyday lives quite different from those of their Christian neighbours, and spoke Yiddish as their primary tongue, even a cursory comparison of the situation in I9I4 with I860 reveals processes of thorough-going transformation that would become even more pronounced by I939. At the beginning of this period, Jewish emancipation and equal rights were being discussed but had not yet—even in the legal sphere—been realized for most Polish Jews. On the eve of the First World War, in contrast, most Jews in the Polish lands enjoyed some form of legal equality. The only exception was within the Pale of Settlement of the Russian empire where restrictive laws continued in force. In short, Jews were becoming integrated—at least on a legal level—with the rest of society. This process of integration—and challenges to it— characterizes the period discussed here....
Jewish Women in Poland and Hungary
Authors: Fenyves Katalin
Published: February 2021

DEPENDING on their religious allegiance and their place of residence (urban or rural), the everyday life of Jewish women in Hungary followed roughly one of two models: either the German or the eastern European one.1 To compare how Jewish women fared in Hungarian and Polish lands—since a gendered history of Hungarian Jews comparable to those which exist for Polish Jews is unavailable and an extensive history of Hungarian women also remains to be written—I will follow in Moshe Rosman’s and Gershon Bacon’s footsteps....
Polish Hasidism and Hungarian Orthodoxy in a Borderland
Authors: Cooper Levi
Published: February 2021

It is possible to

have been born in Austria-Hungary,

have been married in Czechoslovakia,

have given birth in Hungary,

have lived with your family in the Soviet Union,

reside currently in Ukraine,

. . . and have never left the city of Mukachevo.

This sign describing the twentieth-century vicissitudes of one town in Zakar-pats'ka—as the area in Ukraine is known today—used to hang on the wall of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation....
Integration and its Discontents
Authors: Gluck Mary
Published: February 2021

IN 1910 the Jews of Budapest constituted approximately 23 per cent of the 882,000 inhabitants of the town, making it the second largest Jewish city in Europe. Only Warsaw surpassed it, where in 1914 38 per cent of the town’s population of 883,000 were Jews. Jews felt extremely comfortable in the Hungarian capital. Their collective identification with the city found ironic depiction in a caricature of 1883 published in the Jewish humorous magazine ...
On the Margin of a Historic Friendship
Authors: kovács Tamás
Published: February 2021

IN THE AUTUMN of 1939 in the wake of the Polish defeat at the hands of Nazi Germany and the USSR, the Hungarian political leadership decided to admit Polish military and civilian refugees, including a number of Jews, into the Kingdom of Hungary. Over the past seventy years a large number of studies and memoirs have been published on this subject in both Hungary and Poland. While they do not deny that many problems emerged as a result of this flight, a somewhat idealized picture has developed of Hungary during the Second World War as a ‘paradise for refugees’. According to this, not only Polish but also German, Austrian, French, British, and Italian Jews lived together peacefully side by side with the Hungarian people. In turn, the Hungarian public administration ‘took good care’ of them. This image needs to be significantly modified in the light of archival documents....
Jews in Museums
Authors: Manchin Anna
Published: February 2021

SINCE THE 1989 collapse of communism in eastern Europe, newly democratic societies in the region have been struggling to come to terms with their twentieth-century past. These efforts, taking place in official politics, public spaces, historical scholarship, film, literature, and art, have become the subject of a vast scholarly literature, ranging from history to sociology and political theory to literary studies....
Fred Schwartz
Authors: Kuncewicz Tomasz
Published: February 2021

FRED SCHWARTZ, founder of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, was an inspiring entrepreneur and philanthropist who dedicated his life to preserving the memory of Holocaust victims and preventing future genocides. He died in New York at the age of 85.

After a moving visit to Oświęcim in 1991, Schwartz established the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation in 1995. In 1998, after years of dialogue with the Polish government and the Polish Jewish community, the Hevrah Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue was the first Jewish communal property returned to the Jewish community under a law passed by the Polish Parliament. The Jewish community of Bielsko-Biala, which reclaimed the synagogue, in turn donated it to the foundation which renovated and opened it and the adjacent Kornreich family house as the Auschwitz Jewish Center in 2000. A pioneer of Polish-Jewish reconciliation and the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland, Schwartz created several related non-profit organizations. Of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, he once said: 'The most important thing is it’s an expression of life, it is vitality, the fact that ashes can rise up and really be re-formed as life again.'...
Female Prophets in Sabbatianism
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the active participation of numerous women in the phenomenon of Sabbatian prophecy. It reviews a variety of sources that complement and corroborate each other in order to describe women as having visions and prophesying about the messianic mission of Sabbatai Zevi. It also talks about the women's status as prophets and the nature of their prophecies that are distinguished from those of the great exponents of Sabbatian kabbalah, such as Nathan of Gaza or Abraham Miguel Cardozo. The chapter focuses on accounts of prophesying by women that appear in the context of mass outbursts of prophetic frenzy, in which unlettered men and children also took part. It analyses the prophecies of women that were not perceived as ordered speculative teachings and did not amount to any coherent, personal verbal expression.
Sabbatian Women as Religious Activists
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter cites the dawning messianic age, which was characterized by the biblical prophet Joel, who had brought the spirit to rest upon women, which was common to Sabbatianism and a diversity of early modern Christian religious enthusiasm' movements. It analyses the breakdown of barriers by which rabbinic tradition had always marked the inherent difference between the sexes and assigned the discrete spheres of activity. It also talks about messianic believers who displayed an unprecedented willingness to recognize as fully legitimate the phenomenon of 'spinster', 'maiden', or 'virgin' prophetesses. The chapter mentions prophetic women described as 'possessed' in Hayim Vital's Book of Visions or in later exorcism accounts which proliferated in east European hasidism. It explains the instinctive rabbinic response to the 'aberration' of prophetic chastity in women that were aimed to suppress the phenomenon in diverse times and places.
In the Egalitarian ‘Family’ of Jacob Frank
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the egalitarian impulse that disposed Sabbatianism to promote women to the status of men either on an equal but separate basis or by breaking down traditional gender barriers. It examines the kabbalistic conceptualization of bisexuality as a cosmic principle, which stirred Jacob Frank to a fresh mode of mythical thinking and turned his messianic project into a series of remarkable applications and manipulations of the principle. It also talks about the resultant shifts in the balance of power and scheme of relations between the sexes that applied simultaneously to the divine sphere. The chapter analyses the kabbalistic tradition that had equipped Frank with the basic structure of his mythical universe. It cites the union of the supernal brothers and sisters with their earthly male and female counterparts.
The Redemptive ‘Maiden’
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights the most radical expression of Jacob Frank's predilection for inverting conventional gender norms as the reversal of sexual identity in the figure of the messianic redeemer. It analyses Abraham Cardozo's tentative stipulation of a female herald of good tidings to Zion during the early stages of the Sabbatian movement. It also mentions the Noble Lady of Salonica, who maintained diplomatic relations with Jonathan Eybeschuetz and his sons even after Berukhyah's death. The chapter focuses on Sarah, Sabbatai Zevi's spouse, who believed herself to be the predestined spouse of the messiah. It explains how Sarah assimilated into her own person the mythical figure of the superior messianic bride.
Conclusion: From Sabbatianism to Hasidism
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the Sabbatianism's viable existence, both within Judaism and in its apostate form that is still in close association with liberation of women. It mentions the egalitarian, which holds women's status to be wholly analogous to men's and beckons women to partake equally in every aspect of the ritual and spiritual life of the messianic community. It also highlights the formal separation of the women from the men that was conducive to the enhancement of their spiritual stature and released them from the bounds of materiality, physicality, and sexuality. The chapter recounts Sabbatai Zevi's coronation ceremonies in December 1665, which emphasized how women could engage on an equal footing in the same range of messianically charged religious activities as the men. It describes Zohar's depiction of righteous women in Paradise, where they occupy themselves with intellectual and spiritual pursuits of study and prayer.
Settings of Silver: The Feminization of the Jewish Sabbath, 1920–1945
Authors: Milligan Amy K.
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the emergence of Jewish homemaking guidebooks, with particular attention to their description of sabbath preparation, that culminated the feminization of the American Jewish sabbath. It argues that the feminization of the sabbath was seen as necessary to ensure the survival of Judaism in America through a contextualized understanding of the changes in sabbath observance. It also mentions the agency of Jewish Sisterhoods that promoted a female-driven synagogue life, as demonstrated through their self-published guidebooks. The chapter recounts how east European Jews negotiated with German American Jews on facing the diasporic problem of maintaining cultural continuity within a dominant society that held conflicting values and norms. It describes Jewish spirituality saw a drastic shift between 1920 and 1945 due to assimilation pressures.
Social Tensions and Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Israeli Midrash
Authors: Sebba - Elran Tsafi
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the new Jewish–Israeli discourse that has evolved on multiple fronts since the last decades of the twentieth century. It discusses the establishment of pluralistic batei midrash or houses of study in Israel, which were dedicated to the study of Jewish literature, the practice of Jewish rituals, and the formation of local communities. It also discloses the renewal of the Jewish bookshelf as a modern term that refers to traditional Jewish writings and modern works that echo earlier publications. The chapter analyses the modern rereading that involves Rabbi Hiya bar Ashi and his struggle with the yetser hara, which has recently sprung to new life as part of an emerging discussion on the relationship between femininity, sexuality, Jewishness, and Zionism. It covers contemporary readings of Rabbi Hiya bar Ashi's story, which is infused with new substance that mainly involves feminist interpretations and set within modern genres.
The Jewish Atlantic: Diaspora and Pop Music
Authors: Battegay Caspar
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the emergence of pop music as a distinctive musical genre intended for very wide audiences and often controlled by the giants of the music business. It describes how pop is characterized by the specific conditions of religious and cultural minorities that are closely linked to African American history, such as jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, reggae, disco music, soul, and hip hop. It also mentions the British scholar of cultural studies named Paul Gilroy, who defined the production conditions of hip hop as transnational structures of circulation and intercultural exchange. The chapter examines the relationship between the hip hop world and the real world that changed since Gilroy's observations in the 1990s. It talks about the insistence on the diasporic context of the 'Black Atlantic' and its kinship with Jewish modernity that remains pivotal to any pursuit of the diaspora in popular culture.
The Hidden Legacies of Jewish Traditions and the Global Allure of Psychotherapy: A Case Study of the Israeli TV series Betipul
Authors: Popescu Diana I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers the Jewish origins of psychoanalysis, which points out Jewish as the preferred ethnicity of the psychoanalyst character for many filmmakers. It focuses on Israeli TV series Betipul as a prime example of an outstanding attempt to enter the reality of the psychotherapy practice. It also explores the symbolic significance of Betipul as an atypical mediation of a Jewish Israeli identity in crisis, including the function and responses to this mediation among Israeli audiences. The chapter describes the many remakes of Betipul in Europe and in the United States that reveal significant cultural differences in the approach to psychotherapy and variation on the representation of the therapist on global consensus. It explains what Betipul adds to the representation of the Jewish psychotherapist in popular culture and how the Jewish aspects of this representation function when they leave Jewish contexts.
Introduction
Authors: Diamond James A. , Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Maimonides as the quintessential Jewish sage in all rabbinic disciplines. It explains how Maimonides perfectly fits the rabbinic model of the talmid hakham who is proficient in Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, halakhot, and agadot. It also assesses the Mishneh torah, a book of law, a work of sequitur, and discursive reasoning that is also a work of art. The chapter points out how Maimonides' philosophical magnum opus called the Guide of the Perplexed remains the most important and influential synthesis of science and the Jewish tradition. It analyses the interpretation of the Torah that must coincide with demonstrated scientific truths since the gates of figurative interpretation are always available for that purpose.
Rabbi Naftali Tsevi Yehudah Berlin: The Love of Israel versus the Love of the Mind
Authors: Diamond James A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Netsiv's engagement with Maimonides in his commentary on the Song of Songs as the quintessential biblical book of love. It talks about Netsiv's theological positions and offers a convenient compendium of his thought. It also analyses how the Song of Songs presents an exegetical opportunity to present God and Israel as the protagonists in a romantic ode to love. The chapter mentions Netsiv's explicit approval of Abraham Ibn Ezra's disparagement of that trend among the critical scholars of his era, who treated the Song of Songs as an allegory of attachment between the supernal soul and the body. It examines tenor of Netsiv's commentary that mirrors the empathetic character of his life.
Maimonides and Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira: Abandoning Reason in the Warsaw Ghetto
Authors: Diamond James A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on theological implications of the Holocaust, which was a time when suffering and loss were of such catastrophic proportions for Jewish history and theology. It talks about the Maimonidean view of evil as a ‘privation’ or an absence of good that is no longer acceptable in the face of a million children systematically gassed and burned. It also points out the acceptance of a theory of divine providence that conditions God's watchful eye on the development of one's intellect that is considered morally problematic and theologically offensive. The chapter concentrates on Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe who heroically persevered as a hasidic master that ministered to his followers during the Holocaust. It recounts how Rabbi Shapira delivered sermons and published posthumously as Holy Fire in the Warsaw ghetto between autumn 1939 and summer 1942.
What, Not Who, Is a Jew: Halevi–Maimonides in Those Days, Rabbi Aviner and Rabbi Kafih in Our Day
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the view that Jews and non-Jews are distinguished by some inborn, metaphysical quality that is widespread in contemporary Judaism in Orthodox circles. It illustrates the debate that is expressed by two prominent Israeli Orthodox rabbis and examines the roots of the debate in the medieval controversy over the nature of Jews and Judaism as found in the writings of Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides. It also cites the voice of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner in the world of contemporary Orthodox Zionism in Israel. The chapter discusses the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that received the Torah and became the chosen people. It mentions Rabbi Aviner's insistence that the Torah is appropriate to the inner nature of the Jewish people.
Playing Text
Authors: Oram Barney
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the act of playing text. It considers what play is before looking at how it can be used in an educational and textual context. Play is a participatory form, one in which an individual is active and has the ability to make decisions which can alter events and change outcomes. Individuals engaged with playing (text) have the ability to continually modify it and will often have different experiences each time they participate. This contrasts with the engagement one may have with presentational forms such as a film, TV drama, novel, or play where one may be seen as an 'active' participant through the reading of the text but the experiences are not fully interactive as the individual will not be able to modify the text. Indeed, play and play-based activities can provide an alternative way of accessing, engaging with, and thinking about material that a more traditional reading would not.
Eating Text
Authors: Burbridge Gill
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the act of eating text. The approach to learning and enquiry explored here is, in part, an act of resistance and re-appropriation, genuinely committed to challenging and contesting imposed assumptions about the relationship between curriculum content, academic rigour, and the development of critical thinking and deep learning. Such a challenge to accepted orthodoxies invites a dialogue between those who see 'more facts' as the route to 'good conceptual understanding' and those who question the very distinction between factual knowledge as a schema for understanding the world and the process of interpretation. The chapter then considers how educators might negotiate with their students the realms of 'action and feelings' and encourage them to see the organic power that language has not just to depict but also to create. In doing so, they are inviting them to engage with food as an act of communication, 'a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviour'.
Close Encounters: Analysis
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The long take is a Spielberg staple: examples exist in each of his films, but it is an aspect of his work rarely commented upon, possibly because his plan séquences are characterised by their very invisibility. The effect of the long take on the viewer is to draw them into the scene, increasing emotional involvement; and this reflects Spielberg's essentially intuitive approach to filmmaking. Arguably, the plan séquence shots in Close Encounters are some of the most effective of Spielberg's career for this reason. The chapter then looks at Spielberg's collaboration with Hungarian-born cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond on Close Encounters, which links Spielberg interestingly to the New Hollywood of the 1970s. It also explores the characters and themes of the film, as well as John Williams' contribution to Close Encounters.
Conclusion: What Does it Mean to be Human?
Authors: Redmond Sean
Published: February 2021

This chapter points out that the real story of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is about what it means to be human in a world increasingly touched by technological invention and media intervention. It discusses technology in Blade Runner relating to human simulacra, the love of technology by humans, and the spread of media technology into all areas of social life that can make machines out of them. It also discusses how Blade Runner questions the nature of what it is to be human in even more complex ways. The chapter deals with the question on what does it mean to be human, which is bound up with suffering, loss, alienation, existential confusion, and with the unstoppable march of death. It examines how Blade Runner mediates on the postmodern nature of the human condition.
‘Sumer-Is-Icumen-In’: Modern Folk Horror
Authors: Scovell Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the recent resurgence of Folk Horror in a variety of media. It highlights Robert Eggers' horror film The Witch (2015), not simply because the film has managed to put folklorically psychological material back into the cinematic mainstream, but because it can actually be seen as the high point of a period of new films, television, and music re-exploring Folk Horror as a form that started at the beginning of the new millennium. This resurgence in all things Folk Horror, from delving into familiar thematic territory, remaking older examples, or even just generally rediscovering long-lost relics from its more dominant period, has a number of contributing factors. Arguably, it has two chief specific outcomes: work that reflects nostalgia, whether effectively subverting it (hauntologically) or succumbing to the past visions of Folk Horror's primary era, to produce referential work; and using certain thematic traces within the inner workings of Folk Horror to assess current political issues and even reflect on the parallels of the political climate from the period of 1970s Britain in particular. With the ubiquity of technology and the internet, Folk Horror has entered a new realm but it is one that at first seems contrary to its potential causational factors.
Genre Mutations
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop (1987) as a Western. Though the film's hybridity has been mentioned especially in regards to science fiction's interrelatedness with horror, and in the intertextual nods to Shane (1953), it has not been explored at length to sufficiently argue for iconographic slippages that account for the salience of the Western. The chapter's purpose is to widen the possibilities of looking intimately at the way iconographic details can create genre dissonance, what is known as ‘vraisemblance’. Reframing genre readings means retracing the intersections with the horror and science fiction. This includes accommodating for developments such as the science-fiction Western, a sub-genre that has veered from innovation to derision yet continues to elicit new rejoinders. The chapter then offers a consideration of Western themes, notably the savage, the massacre, and revenge, which intersects with the horror genre.
Afterword: Be Kind, Don’t Rewind
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

This afterword looks at Michel Gondry's homage to RoboCop in Be Kind Rewind (2008), a film that is ‘sweded’ — a term referring to popular films innovatively re-enacted using a camcorder with the most perfunctory of budgets. The film reiterated the continuing fondness with which RoboCop has become part of popular culture. Gondry's inclusion of RoboCop as part of nostalgia for VHS, old media, as something retro is part of a cultural flow in which cinematic memories were forged in a discordant pattern of adolescent subterfuge and waiting impatiently at the video store for the tape to arrive with the hope it has not been chewed up by someone else's VCR. Perhaps the epitome of RoboCop's cultural popularity was the release of a crowd-funded project, ‘Our RoboCop Remake’, in 2014. Fifty filmmakers worked together to re-tell the story of RoboCop in a celebratory pastiche. Most recently, a comprehensive documentary on the making of RoboCop, ‘RoboDoc: The creation of RoboCop’ (2017), once again reiterates the many ways in which the film continues to capture the imagination. The chapter then highlights how RoboCop was re-made in 2014.
New Curses Are Born – Legacy
Authors: Hayes Marisa C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the legacy of Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on: The Grudge (2002). The film's theatrical distribution in January of 2003 brought unexpected success in Japan and sparked a fury of activity that garnered momentum around the globe. Some Western critics were lukewarm about the nonlinear timeline of Ju-on: The Grudge, or even downright hostile. Despite its detractors, the film's domestic popularity resulted in Ju-on: The Grudge 2, released on the heels of its predecessor later the same year, while an American remake produced by Sam Raimi hit screens in 2004. This quick succession of titles in the franchise raised the profile of Ju-on's mythology and created recognisable icons of horror in Kayako and Toshio Saeki, ghosts who quickly joined the ranks of celebrated villains like Sadako, Michael Meyers, Freddy Krueger and company. Together with Ringu's Sadako, Kayako provided a veritable cinematic template for the contemporary Japanese ghost. The international success of the Ju-on franchise resulted not only in wider recognition of J-horror, but raised the profiles of other Asian films in the horror genre, including popular titles from South Korea (K-horror), Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.
The Company of Wolves
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

Co-written by Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan and British novelist Angela Carter, and based on several short stories from Carter's collection The Bloody Chamber, The Company of Wolves (1984) is a provocative reinvention of the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Unraveling a feverish metaphor for the blossoming of a young girl's sexuality and her subsequent loss of innocence, the film entwines symbolism and metaphor with striking visuals and grisly effects. Released in the early 1980s, a time which produced several classic werewolf films (including An American Werewolf in London and The Howling), The Company of Wolves sets itself apart from the pack with its overtly literary roots, feminist stance, and art-house leanings. The film's narrative takes the form of a puzzle box, unfolding as dreams within dreams, and stories within stories, which lead further into the dark woods of the protagonist's psyche, as she finds herself on the cusp of womanhood. The book explores all these aspects, as well as placing the film in the context of the careers of its creators and its position as an example of the “Female Gothic.”
Seeing Red
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks into the heart of Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves as a story of sexual awakening, literal and figurative formation, and the empowerment of women. It discusses how The Company of Wolves carries a strong feminist message that is more than a singular concept, like the short stories from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. It also explains Carter's brand of feminism that represents one strand that was often at odds with those of other feminists at the time and even considered highly controversial. The chapter analyses how Carter sought to expose how women's sexuality is perceived as a myth instigated and perpetuated by moral and social conditioning. It discloses Carter's frequent visit to the world of fairy tales to critique culturally constructed notions relating to women, gender roles and femininity.
Amuse-Bouche
Authors: Cooper Ian
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a background of Alfred Hitchcock, whose remarkable achievements as a film-maker may be unmatched. As well as the numerous accolades, a number of Hitchcock films have proved unusually influential. Consider the chase thrillers such as The 39 Steps (1935) and North by Northwest (1959), the claustrophobic chamber pieces Rope (1948) and Rear Window (1954), the hallucinogenic romance of Vertigo (1958), the American Gothic of Psycho (1960), and the apocalyptic science fiction of The Birds (1963). While Hitchcock's status as one of the great film artists is unassailable and his reputation increases, there have always been dissenters. Traditionally, the case against Hitchcock is that he is little more than a popular entertainer, an observation he did little to counter, what with his use of genre and big stars as well as his eager adoption of the role of clownish showman. This book focuses on Hitchcock's penultimate film Frenzy (1972).
‘You Can Forget About Stephen King’
Authors: Blyth Michael
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates how the figure of Sutter Cane, the protagonist in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995), and his elevated celebrity persona, are very much a knowing homage to that other giant of horror fiction, Stephen King. To best understand how Sutter Cane is as much a product of King as he is of H.P. Lovecraft, it is worth noting that King himself is a graduate from the school of Lovecraft. Similar to the ways in which it makes reference to Lovecraft both on a surface and on a deeper textual level, In the Mouth of Madness also positions King as far more than a nominal surrogate for Cane. In addition to allusions to King's celebrity and popularity, perhaps more significantly it incorporates many themes central to King's fiction into its own narrative. Placing an author as a central character is one of King's signature tropes, and like many of King's writer-protagonists, Cane acts as a conduit for the ensuing horror.
The Fly
Authors: Westwood Emma
Published: February 2021

It's not often that a remake outshines its original but David Cronenberg's “reimagining” of The Fly (1986) is one of those rare exceptions. Equal parts horror, science fiction, and romance, The Fly takes the premise of its 1958 original — a man unintentionally fusing with a housefly during an experiment in teleportation — and reinterprets the plot as a gradual cellular metamorphosis between these two organisms. This book teases out the intricate DNA of The Fly and how it represents the personalities of many authors, including a distinguished history of Man-as-God tales stretching back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Drawing from interviews with cast, crew, film commentators, and other filmmakers, the book interlaces the “making of” travails of The Fly with why it is one of the most important examples of master storytelling ever committed to screen.
Introduction
Authors: Westwood Emma
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986). The Fly is a film that may appear uncomplicated in its execution but possesses such innate complexity — including the DNA of its many horror, sci-fi, and romance film forebears — that it reveals something more with every screening. It is a film that so intimately reflects the personality and hypotheses of its filmmaker; it begs to be considered within the wider scope of his philosophies, interests, and the trajectory of his career leading up to it. To know The Fly is to gain an exceptional insight into David Cronenberg, who is one of the great existentialists of our generation, in film or otherwise. Nevertheless, given filmmaking is a collective art form, the stories of others involved in the production of The Fly are as important as the input of Cronenberg himself.
Release, Reception and Cultural Legacy
Authors: Mee Laura
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the release, reception, and cultural legacy of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). When The Shining was released, it did not immediately receive the acclaim that many expected, and which it has since garnered. It was met with lukewarm reviews, disappointing many fans of the filmmaker's earlier work. As with much of Kubrick's work, however, the film has been critically reappraised over the decades since its release. The Shining is now celebrated, not only as one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but a contemporary classic in its own right. Its place in pop culture has been enshrined by endless homage and parody, and the film's influence on contemporary horror is ubiquitous. Revisiting The Shining's release and promotion strategies, and examining the reception, reappraisal, and ultimate canonisation of the film, illustrate a number of critical reservations about the horror genre and the film's place within it—even as it continues to inspire genre audiences and filmmakers almost forty years later.
Don't Look Now
Authors: Gildersleeve Jessica
Published: February 2021

Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973) has been called “a ghost story for adults.” Certainly, in contrast to the more explicitly violent and bloodthirsty horror films of the 1970s, Don't Look Now seems of an entirely different order. Yet this supernaturally inflected tale of a child's accidental drowning, and her parents' desperate simultaneous recoil from her death and pursuit of her ghost, Don't Look Now is horrific at every turn. This book argues for it as a particular kind of horror film, one which depends utterly on the narrative of trauma—on the horror of unknowing, of seeing too late, and of the failures of paternal authority and responsibility. The book positions Don't Look Now within a discourse of midcentury anxiety narratives primarily existing in literary texts. In this context, it represents a crossover or a hinge between literature and film of the 1970s, and the ways in which the women's ghost story or uncanny story turns the horror film into a cultural commentary on the failures of the modern family.
The Journeyman
Authors: Riddle Nick
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses whether The Damned (1963) is first a Hammer film or a Joseph Losey film. It argues that, although the auteur theory is so riddled with problems and contradictions that it cannot really be called a theory at all, certain directors, by dint of personality, distinctive traits, and sheer involvement in the countless elements of the process of film-making, can be considered the guiding creative force behind a film, and therefore an auteur. Losey, by all accounts, fits the bill. Whether The Damned is indeed a Losey film first is debatable; but it is as a Losey film that the chapter considers it first. And since Losey's status as an auteur is of relevance to how The Damned has been seen, the chapter also briefly looks at the auteur question.
‘Sweets to the Sweet’: from ‘The Forbidden’ to Candyman
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the intersection between Clive Barker's work and that of Bernard Rose; surprisingly, the two are closely connected, even symbiotic. Rose's UK debut film Paperhouse (1988) concerned the fantasy world of a young girl, and his subsequent work has shown a tendency towards transgression and transcendence, and repeated returns to social horror. Indeed, Rose was attracted to Barker's ‘The Forbidden’ because he wanted to ‘deal with the social stuff’. Relocating the action from a Liverpool housing estate to Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, Rose extended the story, adding the innocent-person-on-the-run plot twist, and took Barker's conclusion further. But the class subtext, the urban legend and the idea of the myth biting back after attempts are made to debunk it, are all there in Barker's source material. The heroine, Helen Lyle, discovers that her normal life is more banal and morally dead than the eternal life-in-myth that the Candyman offers her.
Urban Legends, Urban Myths: Adapting Candyman
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at ways in which Candyman (1992) offers a discourse on urban myth, and how it utilises actual urban legends such as ‘Bloody Mary’. Social scientists and folklorists have theorised that such urban legends construct and reinforce the worldview of the group within which they are told, sometimes through an acting out of the legends themselves: a form of ‘ostension’. In Candyman, that worldview speaks of minority oppression and the outward projection of the dispossessed as Other. Despite Clive Barker's then-unawareness of the term ‘urban legend’, a number of classic urban myths already appear in ‘The Forbidden’, including the tale of the hook, razorblades in sweets, and the public toilet castration. Bernard Rose would develop the self-reflexive aspects of the story in his adaptation, the sense that the story is very much about itself, about the experience of horror and the nature of campfire storytelling.
Candyman: Production and Reception
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a background of the production and reception of Candyman (1992). It begins by looking at the casting of Tony Todd for the Candyman role, as well as the casting of Virginia Madsen for the role of Helen Lyle. The chapter then details the filming of Candyman in the real Cabrini-Green housing project. The producers worked closely with the residents' association and employed Cabrini-Green youths to act in the film, which also served to help the production's credibility with the residents. Finally, the chapter details how the theatrical release of Candyman came at a time of great racial tension in Los Angeles. According to Bernard Rose, Candyman had a test screening scheduled on the day that the Rodney King riots broke out; this would mark the screening as taking place in April of 1992, several months before Candyman's US theatrical release in October. As Clive Barker has remarked, there was genuine fear amongst the movie executives that, in the aftermath of the riots, the film would be seen as racist.