Monsters, mashups, and popular culture
What can monsters and the monstrous tell us about earlier societies and civilisations? This week’s guest post comes from Tom de Bruin, who researches concepts of evil in early Christian literature, and is New Testament Lecturer at Newbold College of Higher Education. Read more about him and his work over on his blog. Monsters are hot. It … Read more
On on August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Seven months later, on March 13, 2015, American poet Kenneth Goldsmith sparked an internet controversy when he performed a remixed version of Michael Brown’s autopsy report at the ‘Interrupt 3’ event at Brown University. Recordings of the reading were never … Read more
Earlier this year I posted a selection of book trailers for monster mashup titles in honour of World Book Day (…in the UK and Ireland). This week I’ve been doing some research into several YouTube productions, and thought I’d take the opportunity to do a second instalment. This time, instead of trailers for actual books, I’ve … Read more
A massive ‘Thank You’ to everyone who attended Monday’s Fantasies of Contemporary Culture symposium at Cardiff University, either in person or on Twitter. I enjoyed the day (and all the papers) immensely, and feel very honoured to have been a part of it. I’ve compiled some of the images, tweets, and Facebook posts into a (very long) … Read more
Warning: this week’s post may have been produced under sleep-deprived conditions. It may or may not also have provoked me to revisit the series, and buy Stephanie Meyer’s gender-swapped anniversary edition of Twilight, entitled Life and Death. Part of my thesis deals with the overtly political aspect of monstrousness. When we make monsters, we often rely on … Read more
A little over a week ago I attended an conference on the ‘Promises of Monsters’, which explored various manifestations of monsters and the monstrous in contemporary culture. One of the plenary papers, delivered by Professor Margrit Shildrick, raised several key questions about the ethics of representing the monstrous visually. What, she asked, is at stake … Read more
This post is a teaser for my weekly review series on Penny Dreadful season 3, starting this Friday (6 May) and featured over at the Victorianist. [UPDATE: You can now find my first review in all its glory at this link.] When the first season of Penny Dreadful was announced in 2013, we were unsure what to expect. Initially, it … Read more
This post originally appeared on the Victorianist, the postgraduate blog of the British Association for Victorian Studies, on 22 April 2016. It is reposted here with the kind permission of the editors. I have long been a fan of photomanipulation. I like the way it disturbs our preconception of the photograph as a faithful representation of reality. It’s an … Read more
If you’re not too keen on theory, never fear! What I say below is basically a more academic rewriting of this blog post. Next week I’ll be presenting at a conference called ‘Promises of Monsters’. In my paper, I’ll be looking at the way the Showtime series Penny Dreadful (and other monster mashups) use and abuse certain ‘promises’ … Read more
Last week, the first teaser trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hit the internet. If you somehow managed to miss it, you can watch it below. ScreenRant also has a great breakdown of the trailer here, as does io9 here, if you aren’t in a place where you can watch YouTube videos. Scheduled for release in … Read more