From an unexpectedly meaty piece published by — of all sources — NBC, on the current upsurge of apocalyptic cinema and its real-world meanings and implications: Ready for the end of the world as we know it? The popular culture certainly is. When “Defiance” arrives Monday night on the SyFy channel and “Oblivion” hits theaters…
Tag: movies
Recommended Reading 38
Mexican Cartels Dispatch Trusted Agents to Live Deep Inside United States The Washington Post (Associated Press), April 1, 2013 Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe…
Zombie horror and global revolution
During the present lead-up to the release of the widely anticipated World War Z movie in June 2013, and amidst the ongoing waves of political and socioeconomic unrest convulsing the real world, there’s much to think about, meditate on, and be thoroughly shaken by in this blog post from anthropologist GastĂłn Gordillo of the University…
Alfred Hitchcock and the domination of screen culture
Is it possible that the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock presides universally over our current and future image-based culture of screen obsession? The late and legendary director is currently getting a lot of attention. HBO recently aired the original movie The Girl, about Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren. The biographical movie Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins heavily…
The Teeming Brain Podcast #1: “Cosmic Horror vs. Sacred Terror”
PLAY IT: Listen now (92 min.): https://www.teemingbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Teeming_Brain_podcast_001_Cosmic_Horror_vs_Sacred_Terror-1.mp3 Download mp3: Cosmic Horror vs. Sacred Terror DESCRIPTION: Do nihilism and cosmic meaningfulness stand in fundamental tension with each other at the heart of the horror genre? Were Lovecraft and Machen getting at fundamentally different moral, aesthetic, and metaphysical points with their respective horror stories? Does the (possible)…
To Suffer This World or Illuminate Another? On the Meanings and Uses of Horror
In his interesting book-length meditation, Danse Macabre (1981), Stephen King posited the following theory regarding the intrinsic and perennial appeal of Horror: Why do you want to make up horrible things when there is so much real horror in the world? The answer seems to be that we make up horrors to help us cope…
Recommended Reading 31
This week’s recommended reading includes: a warning about and meditation upon the possible dire consequences of the human species’ spectacular success in dominating the planetary petri dish; a profile of a literary journal devoted to injecting ancient wisdom into the wasteland of the modern cyber-soul; a beautiful explanation and defense of literature’s inherent resistance to…
Captain America: Living Symbol, Heroic Symbiosis (Men in Tights, Part 4)
NOTE: This article is the final part of a series. Captain America is the member of the Avengers who is most obviously wearing a costume. It’s not a battlesuit or a uniform. It’s not the cultural garb of a mystical race. It’s a costume. This is significant, because his costume indicates his deepest identity as…
Cosmic Horror, Sacred Terror, and the Nightside Transformation of Consciousness
What’s this? A discussion of current horror cinema that contrasts H. P. Lovecraft’s worldview of cosmic horror, pessimism, and despair with Arthur Machen’s worldview of redemptive sacred terror? And it’s published by — wait for it — Christianity Today magazine? The stars, it seems, are aligning. One is rife with despair, the other clings to…
Horror and Apocalypse: The Dark Mirror Film Festival – October 20, 2012
Apologies to all Teeming Brain readers for the lack of a new Recommended Reading post today. All of my spare time this week has been taken up by various other commitments, including writing and turning in the first installment of “Numinosities,” my new column about horror, religion, and philosophy for [Nameless] Magazine. Then there’s the…