Interrogating Ideology With A Chainsaw

Many films and books have explored love. The iconic tribute of solidarity to the binary. The relationship that rubs against the spirit and brings forth something deeper and primal. From love we get this connection that seems to incorporate transcendence and destiny. There is a sense in which what love brings to the surface always-already should more than its trivial material reality. Love is already more then it’s base existence. But, there is a radical absurdity in staking a claim on a singular entity, why this one and not others? While this ring on this chick? Why is there this wife rather than another or none at all? Upon even the most basic inspection love is not able to hold its ground. Love thrives in this contradictory dialectic. The bond that love creates calls into question the very reality that it exists in. Once in love, the lover’s world is twitter-painted. A vibrant shroud covers the world. Meaning springs forth from the meaningless. A tree or a park bench passed on the …

Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time searching for love and lust in life. We break our hearts on the altar of this demand. This compulsion to connect and reproduce. We track down that special someone and get them ringed. Wrapping our whole existence in the other. Wrapping tax codes, self-esteem and sanity up in marriage. But what does this all amount to? Living the dream we are brainwashed to love? Of what use are all these emotional and economic rituals? Scenic Route is a film that explores the void between romance and bromance. Should we live our life chasing our dreams or settle for what the world grinds us out to be?

Long story short - this horror blogger been in the process of acclimating to a job in the big cold and windy city of Chicago. The pay checks are rolling in but I did not have access to horror films or my computer for most of the last month. Boring I know. Luckily over the last week I have been moving into a new horror crib and getting myself ready for adult life. This weekend I moved into my apartment. I'm just a futon on the floor and a large stack of blu rays filled with blood and guts.

I look forward to getting back into writing. When this will be exactly is to be determined. I don't have a desk and my next weekend is going to be another pair of days moving heavy boxes. Look out for a post next-next weekend.

I'm sure you punks will find this conundrum entertaining. I have a set of severed limbs that I picked up on clearance when I worked a Halloween at a Halloween store. I can't seem to find a place in my apartment to put them. Sadly I don't have any furniture …

I tell you what, commuting to Chicago is exhausting. I'm losing about 3 hours of my day to traffic. I don't see this calming down until I can move into the city. I haven't been watching much horror this week. I did finally burn through the first season of House of Cards. Great to see some Machiavellianism in action! Didn't catch any horror and was too exhausted to write. I expected to write something this weekend. But the best-laid plans got destroyed by poor planning. On to next week, and figuring out a strategy for writing now that I am working.

I'm going to shoot for a write up next weekend.

Are you watching anything scary?

Dear Zombies,
Yay! Halloween is  11 days 6 hours and 33 minutes away! What are you doing for Halloween? I’m too poor for plans this year. Although, everything is changing tomorrow. I am embarking on my first day of wage slavery. That’s right this punk found a job. After over 200 applications and 25 interviews I finally found someone to cut me a check. Tomorrow I start. I will be doing mental health social work in Chicago. Should be fun.  Next week is mostly training and paperwork. At some point over the next couple months I plan on moving to the city. As you might have guess this will impact the blog. I expect to post irregularly for the next month until I get I develop a good flow with working. We shall see.

Earlier on in the week, I interviewed author Mick Ridgewell about his horror novels The Nightcrawler and Evil Never Dies. Be sure to say hello on twitter!

Tell me about yourself and your writing?

I first started writing about 10 years ago. I got an idea for a story and proceeded to write 2 pages of utter crap. I decided then and there that writing should be left to those who know how to write. Some time after that I stumbled on Stephen King's On Writing-A Memoir of the Craft. While reading it the idea for The Nightcrawler, my first completed novel came to me. I decided to try again and 2 years later I had a completed draft of my first book. After 6 years of rejections, and many iterations The Nightcrawler released May 2012. Since then I have had Evil Never Dies release Apr. 2014 and the sequel, Evil Unleashed is scheduled for release Dec. 2014.

Earlier on in the week, I interviewed Lee Majdoub who started in recently released slasher flick See No Evil 2. Follow up to the WWE production of the same name.  
I wanted to start by thanking you for providing your time for this interview. Could you tell us why you got into the movie making business?

No problem! Thanks for having me. I was always artistic. Acting was something I had always been drawn to, but I don’t think I was conscious of it when I was younger. I was going through a rough patch, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and my sister pushed me to take some acting classes while I was studying engineering in college. I did that, and then got hooked.

I attended Rob Zombie’s The Great American Nightmare last night. The demented trio of haunted house each based off its respective film; Lords of Salem, The Haunted World of El Superbesto, and House of 1000 corpses. I (and my friend) opted for the 36$ ticket which included a tee-shirt and shorter lines. I am also submitting this post as my entry in the Horror Bloggers Guild's Halloween Blog Carnival. Happy Halloween! May you get more tricks then treats this year!

Is Jigsaw not the Jesus of Slashers? The vast majority of previous Slashers required either their own physical embodiment or someone else to don the mask. It always struck me as odd that Jason Vorhees only received his ski mask in the third film. The previous two films used a potato sack with a hole. Of course, we know that capitalism is responsible for what happens next. How could they have marketed a potato sack like a hockey mask? The visage of the Slasher is the motif that solidifies his character and market share. Freddy is an incredible example of how market can’t turn the representation of the most heinous repression of evil into a knickknack. Is there not something odd about the bobble head of a child molester occupying the dashboard of a soccer mom’s minivan? Even Scream, which shares similarities with Saw, used the Ghost face mask to instill a continued market presence, terrorize teens and maintain hegemony to the notion of Ghostface. All the while the Ghostface gave creden…

I was contacted by the burly dudes at Man Crates Gifts For Men who create the testosteroned version of gift baskets. Gone are the easy to open cardboard boxes, wrapping and girlie ribbons, Man Crates are a present you have to unwrap with a crowbar while grunting like a lumberjack. Ahhhhhhh! Luckily the Man Crates asked this dude, the only feminist horror blogger on the internet, what I might put in my crate to survive a horror movie.

Horror films have plenty of dangers, and each sub-genre presents its own unique problems. You wouldn’t pack the same stuff to survive a zombie holocaust as you would for an exorcism or alien abduction. A Bible and Holy Water will be no help to you when you are being anally probed. Always the Boy Scout, I think the best thing to do is plan for several scenarios; the 80’s Slasher, Zombie, and Post-9/11 horror movies

Uni-Trans-Gender 80’s Slasher Survival Kit
1. Artificial Hymen Repair Kit
2. Purple Eye Shadow
3. Red High Heals
4. Blue Wig
5. Green Lipstick
…

What would the work look like if we all played by Jigsaws rules? Would we all be cutthroat murders quick to stab our competition in order to survive or overcome our depression, addictions, and poor character? Or would we be like the Stoics, unaffected by travesty, unresponsive to life’s traumas? Let’s saw in to Jigsaw's rationale. Something is terribly wrong with our individual subject experience, due to the easy in which we live our life, when tragedy strikes we mentally shut down and become hopeless. Our wife cheats on us, or our children die, or we over eat and succumb to fatalism. Or as Paul Goodman we have been infected by the ‘nothing can be done disease.” Is our culture predisposed to learned helplessness? Are we all to trained as cogs for the status quo so that when the teeth on our cog break, we go on spinning as if nothing was wrong.

Jigsaw is wonderful adapt at cognitive dissonance. He hides his true motivations under a Tea Party like Bootstrap ethics, while ruthlessly seeking revenge. In Saw II, Jigsaw has a new partner in crime, Amanda. As we remember, she is the junkie who survived the reverse-bear-trap game in the first film. After winning the game, Amanda is recruited into Jigsaws torture terrorist cell. Following the first film, Amanda is tossed into the game as an observer. Waking up, she promptly contextualizes the rules and rational behind their kidnapping. They are to confront their fears, follow the rules, and potentially survive better for it.

Jigsaw, on first appearances, is clear about his goals. People have lost the will to survive, and this will to survive is a necessary component we need to overcome life's obstacles – from drug addiction to poor fatherhood. All of humanity's failures are reduced to a matter of will. Jake Huntley points out that the easy (and all to popular) comparison that suggest Jigsaws lifts his ideology from Nietzsche and Darwinism theoretical positions only holds if we ignore what Nietzsche and Darwin actually said. Is not the will to power, Nietzsche the very same Nietzsche that was manipulated by Nazi’s in order to promote racial purity? Is not the survival of the fittest Darwin not really Hubert Spencer’s Social Darwinism? In a similar fashion Jigsaw betrays his own moral foundations. By desperately clinging to willpower as the prime motivator, he fails to incorporate, that is only through the collective will power that true greatness is accomplished. Huntley describes jigsaws traps th…

One year before terrorists struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Final Destination hit theaters with transcendental terrorism. The film is about a High School trip to France thwarted by Alex’s (Devon Sawa)promotion that the plane would explode. Startled by his vision he makes a ruckus and is tossed off the plan with several of his cohort. The twist is the rules. The premonition caused a change in transcendental plan. Alex and his friends were designed to die in an exploding plane plummeting to the tarmac. The alternation in this plan creates a ripple in transcendental fatalism which forced death herself to take matters into her own plans. Stalking each survivor and eliminating them by manipulating physics and orchestrating elaborate Mouse Trap like murders. The teenagers become aware of the rules of the game early and seek to survive the diving bureaucracy that seeks to right wrongs in the eternal design by killing what should have died.

Earlier on in the week, I interviewed J.Q. Davis from The Official Website of J.Q. Davis about her zombie novel Turning Grace. Be sure to check out her spooky blog! 
Tell me about yourself and your writing?
I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. I met a Marine about six years ago. We started dating and shortly after, he got orders to work in California. Having never lived anywhere else and thinking there was no way I was going to let this great guy get away, I decided to take a leap of faith and move. We got married and became the proud parents of three wonderful doggie daughters. We now reside in the desert, which isn't my favorite place in the world, but we make the best of it.

I managed to acquire a bachelor's degree in Healthcare Management, as well as a certificate in Medical Transcription. I am currently working as an administrative assistant at our local hospital.
I published “Turning Grace” on my birthday this year, June 10th. It's my very first novel, bu…

Dear Zombies,
What a wild month. As I probably did not mention in addition to writing all these wild posts, I am also in ruthless pursuit of employment. The masters in social work I fought tooth and nail for over the last year is not the golden ticket I thought it was going to be. I specialized in community organizing, or rather getting people angry and then getting them in the same room. Problem is most of the social work jobs in the Chicago land area are for boring therapists. Let me cut this long story short to say, I have refocused my time and priorities this week. And my bad for not letting my faithful zombies know what’s what.

Tell me about yourself and your writing?

I'm a crazed serial killer with an ax to grind, the boogie man who creeps down alleys and peeks into your windows, the thing that's pushing aside the dust bunnies under your bed--all of these and more. I'm the nightmare that you relive, when you awake, clammy and sweating, to reassure yourself that it's all a dream--that reality is sane and safe. I'm every rule that your mother gave you and you broke.

I'm your thrill ride and that strange noise an elevator makes when you wonder, just for a second, did a cable just break, are you about to go plunging to your death... Hold on tight, maybe if you grip that railing and brace yourself, you'll survive.

Turn the page--and see...

What kind of fiction do you write?

Romantic comedy--OK, horror..

Welcome to our journey into the guts of The Walking Dead. What kind of journey? A philosophical, psychoanalytical and political kind. What I would like to do over the next couple months is dig through the Walking Dead episode by episode to see what it can teach us. Thank you for following me on this journey. I look forward to reading your comments. Be forewarned: There are spoilers everywhere. Don’t forget to check out my previous post in the Philosophizing TWD series: Philosophizing The Walking Dead S3E7 When The Dead Come Knocking and Political Torture
Made to Suffer caps the first half of season three with a bang. Rick and company launch an assault on Woodbury. Michonne goes rogue out of anger and attempts to assassinate the Governor on her own. But what the hell is Michonne so pissed off about? The Governor, of course, is a seedy character, but what has he done that warrant’s Michonne's Rage? Let us turn to the comic to see what we can dismember.

Good luck surviving a horror movie if you are an atheist. Even if you make it to the end of the film the Christian agenda that give an atheist screen time only bring the character in the film to be converted. The use of the atheist here serving Christological function to show that underneath her grumpy and goat-ly exterior they really hide their belief in Jesus existence and divinity. But does not weaken belief in general, if belief is so easily influenced by peer pressure and special effects, then what are we to make of these conversions? The second atheist story arc ends with the atheist committing suicide, albeit, for some noble cause. Like the end of I Am Legend, where Will Smith grenades himself in order to save Anna and Ethan. Atheist suicide has its rooting in French existentialism, and Albert Camus specifically. Camus who famously stated There is but one truly philosophical problem and that is suicide. (Camus, 2014)

Tell me about yourself and your writing?
Every train journey to and from work would always see me with my latest' horror find' perched on my lap, trying to finish just that one more page before I had to relinquish my seat and reluctantly put my book away.Inevitably, the books that engrossed me for my meager train journeys, while those around me plugged themselves into the latest from the top ten or something notable from the Booker list... well mine, to be honest, had either Zombies, Vampires or Werewolves in them and if I was really lucky, all three... not very worthy or highbrow I know, but for me whenever I opened those pages and let reality fall away, it was like being a teenager again watching an old Saturday night horror flick... and I loved it.

Surprise, Surprise one more pair of boobs have arrived on the internet! In the zillions of images and videos of boobs that arrived on the web in the last week one set belonged to Jennifer Lawrence. The actress that rose from nothing to something in her neurotic portrayal of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. Why is media blanketing the news challenges with constant discussion, over saturated news articles, and false morality tales? Why is she more important than anyone else? Why is her anatomy a voice for sympathizing liberals and delusional conservatives? Let's get interrogating.

As Above, So Below is a post-modernist romp par excellence. The film uses the loose relationship between the signifier and the signified in order to create scenes where physics and reality based mechanics are left in shreds. This engagement with the past by dissociating the past from the past creates a parallel to the experience of trauma, specifically the experience of re-traumatization. Re-traumatization is the moment in therapy where the experience of telling his/her story compels the client to not only relive the narrative but the emotional experience of a horror. Re-traumatization like the post-modern shift works on a displacement of the past by the past. A painful memory recalled and relieved as if it was happening contemporaneously with the originating pain is a psychological mystification where our biology is firing off fight/flight/freeze responses in order to protect us from pain by relocating the divide between the past and the present.

Dear Zombies,

Booyah! I visited the theater for the first time for about a year and a half. Grad school suckered away a lot of my time, money, sanity and energy over the last year. On top of school, I had no interest in watching many of the movies that hit the big screen. There has simply been a gold mine of films that went direct to video or streaming.

What did I shamble out to see? As Above, So below. I wasn't  really sure what I was walking into. If a movie looks appealing I try to avoid any news about it. What I did have to work with were a couple reviews I skimmed at Bloodydisgusting. I, usually, agree with most of the films that they hype up.

Edge of Tomorrow is about conformity. Cage (Tom Cruise) is a worm. Who thought he could trick blackmail a general (who was in turn using Cage as pre-emptive scapegoat) into escaping combat duty. What happens next forces him to fully materialize, more than general wished, the generals desire to send another soldier into combat. Once in the combat zone Cage kills a super-alien that drips magic time traveling blood and convenient plot devices on his face, melting it. Boom! Cage is in a time loop. Forced to conform beyond expectation to the military’s code of conduct. The Edge of Tomorrow is about Cage’s journey from soulless lemming to soulful lemming. In the end, Cage shows us the trap of the individualistic hero who only serves the purpose of reconfirming what society already believes.

By the time you are reading this your hair may be drenched in freezing cold water. You are in luck! There is a new social-political hair care method. Empty your bucket of any remaining water and fill it with some Palestinian rock dust still warm from a bombing. Raise the buck over your shiny hair, and up turn it! Oh no! Now you are a hot mess. Do you have a spare ice bucket?

Welcome to our journey into the guts of The Walking Dead. What kind of journey? A philosophical, psychoanalytical and political kind. What I would like to do over the next couple months is dig thought the Walking Dead episode by episode to see what it can teach us. Thank you for following me on this journey. I look forward to reading your comments. Be forewarned: There are spoilers everywhere. Don’t forget to check out my previous post in the Philosophizing TWD series: Philosophizing The Walking Dead S3E5 Hounded, Zombie Ethics and How Many Walkers Have you Killed? 

In When The Dead Come Knocking, Glen and Maggie are tortured until they revealed the location of the base camp. Below I plan to interrogate is the methods and strategies used by Merle and The Governor to extract information. The process of interrogation is a strategy used by cops, intelligence operations and governments to extract information from a hostage, suspect or anyone who has information that may foil a potential …

Dear Zombies,

I wanted to let everyone know that editing my past posts has eaten into my blogging time. Hence, I’m writing less new stuff. Good news is that I am burning through editing. I have reworked and edited posts from January and February. I will begin editing March posts today.

Why all this editing? Unlike most of the internet blogs out I’m thinking about Interrogating Ideology With A Chainsaw like writing a dissertation. If you are unfamiliar with the process it involves a lot of editing and reworking ideas. I plan to rework blog posts on an ongoing basis. I hope this accomplishes two things. 1st stronger blog posts with more solid arguments. 2nd even more snazzy content for you to read.
In that spirit, I would love your help. If you have any feedback on a post, please comment and let me know what you think.
I’ve crossed the half-way point in zombie/Marxism month! I’m pretty happy with the way most of the posts turned out. Specifically 28 Days Later and my latest Walking Dead …

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Story of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman is an anthropological journey into the heart of the masked hacktivists. Rather than a straight forward historical narrative, Gabriella tells her story as she embeds herself in IRC chat rooms, interviews anonymous members and theorizes Anonymous’s organization structure.

Welcome to our journey into the guts of The Walking Dead. What kind of journey? A philosophical, psychoanalytical and political kind. What I would like to do over the next couple months is dig thought the Walking Dead episode by episode to see what it can teach us. Thank you for following me on this journey. I look forward to reading your comments. Be forewarned: There are spoilers everywhere. Don’t for get to check out my previous post in the Philosophizing TWD series: Philosophizing The Walking Dead S2E5 Say The Word, The Media Apparatus and Alienation
In Hounded, Rick is still reeling from Lori's death. In the final moments of LAST EPISODE, Rick receives a phone call from an apparent group of survivors. Rick attempts to negotiation with several voices. But they are resistant to Rick’s attempts to convince them about his moral integrity. The voices ask Rick a set of questions to assess his moral equilibrium.
How many walkers have you killed?
How many people have you killed?
Why…

Tell me about yourself. What is your writing philosophy?

Writing philosophy? I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that question before. I tried googling what a writing philosophy was, but all I came up with was a bunch of notes on how to write papers on Kant.

Um…I guess if I have a philosophy it’s to always be pushing boundaries. Be transgressive. There’s no point to art if it’s not transgressive. And have something to say. There’s enough pablum out there. For the love of God, please don’t write if you don’t have a message. Of course, there’s a thin line between having something to say and evangelizing, so bear that in mind.

Acknowledgements: Special Thanks to Kristi Ray, Joe Stauffer, and David Long for autographing and sending me a copy of this film for interrogation. Don't be a booger! Go check out the flick: Pieces of Talent.
Pieces of Talent is about a phase in a dude’s life that many never exit. Before a dude learns to buy a chick flowers, he shoots spitballs at her face or deposits gum in her hair. A guy does this because emotions fire of in his befores there is a romantic schemata to guide his actions.

When I caught 28 Days when in theaters, back in the day, I was not disturbed by the pace in which the zombies moved. If zombies ran or walked didn’t matter because the structure and the tension of a zombie narrative was still in the film. Survivors in a post-apocalyptic universe struggling to survive as their friends and family tried to eat their brains.

30 Day’s of Night is about the breaking point that snaps Neo-Conservatism opening a flood of terror. The film articulates this snapping point in order to show us that well-meaning conservatives have the capacity to become terrorists when an oppressive force swoops in kills your kill you, and your children. Evolutionary theory tells us that there are two primacy responses to violence. Fight or Flight. Some Palestinian communities freeze in terror immobilized when Israeli bombs explode their schools and children.

I did it. In a burst of inspiration and internet clicking I created a Horror Bloggers Guild Website and Facebook group. I am pretty excited to see what the connections that internet might bring to the group. In the mean time I am sending out recruitment emails to horror bloggers that I have been following. The best and the brightest. The Guild site received a handful of applications last night and I added the blogs to the site. Booyah!

I have still am having difficulties with time management. I started using a kitchen timer app to keep rack of the time I spend blogging. The post I wrote this week took way more time than it should have. I hadn't seen Dead Alive in years. It was good to get my thoughts out on the movie. The timer has helped to keep me focused on what ever task I am working on. I have been able to accomplish more in a shorter time span.

I watched I Am Legend this week. I know there was a lot of whining about the CGI but I don't mind it. Will Smith's performan…

Dead Alive (aka Braindead) is about Lionel’s relationship with his mother. The relationship is peppered in Oedipal themes that beg the question; What is Lionel's relationship with his mother? A question mired in rampant anti-therapy mentalities that have found their way into the public consciousness. After demystifying this, I will argue that the mother-son relationship allegorized by zombies, monsters and lawn mowers is materializing Lionel’s struggle to emancipate himself from the Oedipal complex.

Welcome to our journey into the guts of The Walking Dead. What kind of journey? A philosophical, psychoanalytical and political kind. What I would like to do over the next couple months is dig thought the Walking Dead episode by episode to see what it can teach us. Thank you for following me on this journey. I look forward to reading your comments. Be forewarned: There are spoilers everywhere. Don’t forget to check out my previous post in the Philosophizing TWD series: Philosophizing The Walking Dead S3E4 Killer With In, Metaphoric Babies, And Lori's Irrational Political Agenda

As per the blogging strategy I created last month I have focusing on writing about and watching zombie movies and reading Marxism this month. Last month romp through horror movies with women's issues (or errrr horror movies focusing on women's issues) was a success. I may slip in an American Mary and The Woman Post during Augusts because I didn't get to it. I'm excited to dig up and dig into some zombies!

My Zombies for August List includes:
Rammbock
Open Grave
The Night, Dawn, Day, Land, Diary and Survival of the Dead(s)
Dead Girl
28 days and weeks later
Dead Inside (zombie music. It rocks. So sad...)
Dead Alive
Contracted
The Resident Evils
(If you know any other zombie movies that desperately need to be interrogated drop me a comment)

Michael is obsessed. His girlfriend (Gabi) has asked for a “break” in their relationship. But there is a problem. Michel has learned to depend on his projected idea of Gabi to such an extent that a break challenges his sense of self. And zombies are trying to eat both of them.

Tell me about yourself and your writing? I’m from the state of Maine. As you have probably heard, Maine is riddled with superstition, ghost stories, haunted houses, and tales of those who practiced witchcraft. I grew up hearing all of those stories. I remember my Grandpa Murphy, who was a fisherman that lived in the small village of Sebasco Estates, as he would sit in his chair in his very tiny living room late at night and tell stories of witches and demon-filled people that he knew from the time he was a young lad. He didn’t have a TV and at times the silence was deafening, until he started telling those stories, then my heart was pounding so loud in my ears it nearly drowned out what he was saying. He truly believed it all, and that made it even scarier. I think it was then that I first thought of writing stories like those he told, but I was very young then and I had a lot of living to do.

Philosophers have a notoriously horrendous reputation for  tackling the subject of femininity sexuality.  Nietzsche would argue that Philsophers have been terrible seducers and suitors. Lost in their own abstract thought, trying to figure out which chicken came before the ego – the object or the subject – they never pursuit courtship with the same rigor as ontology. Obsessed with the nature of morality, instance and god they lost skills the skills need to seduce the topic of femininity. It was only when the Simone De Beauvoir slapped Second Sex into print that the space was open for the female experience to enter as an object of study for the (male) philosopher. The moment here plays like one of the suspenseful turning point in Rear Window. It was only when Grace Kelly entered into the neighbors home, thereby entering into the fantasy frame, that James Stewart recognized his fiancé as an object worth his interest (Zizek, 1989). Of course, the glaring problem with this is that is base…

In the wake of Hunger Games, it’s impossible to avoid the comparison between Hunger Games and Diverge. So, I'm gonna get my chainsaw primed and read for a double interrogation. Hunger Games and Divergent present two very different strains of how revolutionary leadership should organize and respond to violence. Hunger Games proposes a meek and neurotic take that draws on the tension of flip flopping between binary opportunities; to rebel or not to rebel, this boy or that boy. Divergent on the other hand presents the binary but waist little time with tension; this is the right revolution, this is the right boy. time to act! The difference here corresponds to two existential psychoanalysts: Dr. Viktor Frankl and Frantz Fanon’s. Each theorist proposed a mode of responding to violence. For Frankl, writing about his experience imprisoned in the concentration camp, the response to violence is about meaning. He argues we should we find meaning even in the deepest horror we experience, an…

This is the first post in a series designed to act as an Introduction to Horror-Philosophy. Horror-Philosophy is the analysis, interrogation and exorcising of Horror and The Scary through the multiple lenses of philosophy. Horror-Philosophy is in the first stages of development and I hope to flesh it out through this series. Feed back is appreciated. Please comment below. In addition to this series acting as an introduction Horror-Philosophy I will be experimenting with and creating new terminology. I will define as I go. I will continue the series next month. The follow up post will cover: Why Horror?, The Scary and Ideology.

Cabin in the Woods is a character study on the bureaucratization of film narratives. The bureaucratization of horror film (and most genres) take the form of the wholesale manufacturing and re-manufacturing of cliques. The moments, characters, plot themes and expectations that have been categorized and focus grouped by film makers and advertisers in order to bank on the common motifs that have over saturated the market. The repetition of motifs acts as nodal points in a market system that thrives on re-occurrence. A masked man hunts down some chick and kills everyone in the way until the climatic moment comes where she disables the antagonism and sets up for the sequel. Or, some cabin in the woods where a cast of archetypes populates a forest-y vacation spot in order to let loose some middle-class angst. Only to be interrupted by some monster, demon, zombie, or creature X appears to clear the slate. Sound familiar? Cabin in The Wood's unearths this the well-trodden path of the rec…

Tell me about yourself and your writing? 

I started writing a few years ago after I lost my ability to draw. Drawing had always been a creative outlet for me. I wasn't the best at it but I always enjoyed doing it, it was my escape. After suffering an illness I lost that ability and lost my escape from the world. I was looking around on the internet and I came across a website. The site was Permuted Press author J.L. Bourn (Hotel23.com). I began reading stories that people had written and posted. I had always liked zombie movies but never thought about trying to write a zombie novel.

I think that day, I didn't find writing, it found me. It was just by chance that I found that website and started reading. I walked away from the compute with a new outlook and a new adventure. I felt like writing was something that I not only wanted to try but it was burning a whole in my brain to give it a shot.

I had tried in the past to sit down and write a short story but never felt connected …

Teeth, in the simplest terms, is a film about a vagina that eats penises. Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a post-pubescent teenage girl who was born with a gnawing problem. Her no-no parts are the living embodiment of the mythic Vagina Dentata. The myth was popularized by Freud and his musing about feminine mystery and human sexuality. In order to suppress her personal inclinations about her condition Dawn developed a religious a countering method of religious repression. She is a public speaker for the abstinence only program in her school. Dawn's biggest problem is not her dangerous genitalia but the boys and men in her life. The film depicts a cautionary tale rooted in an all too frequent feminine experience; rape and sexual harassment.

Tell me about yourself and your writing?

I live in North London with my husband who is a composer so our house is a creative hub! I am originally from the north of England where the dramatic scenery has influenced the rugged landscapes and adventures in my books.

I didn’t intend to write a Gothic fantasy, the book just wrote itself. Once I had decided on the setting and some of the characters the story just tumbled out, it was a very odd experience looking back.

I watched a Stephen King “YouTube” interview recently and he said virtually the same. That is what is odd about this process – do writers all have this inexplicable experience where they leave their present world and enter another one? The only way I can describe it is that there is a real joy in engaging in this creative process – I sit down at my desk, read over the last chapter and bingo more of the story pours out… the characters takeover - it is a bit like magic.

As a writer I rarely plot storylines, I let them evolve thro…

Welcome to our journey into the guts of The Walking Dead. What kind of journey? A philosophical, psychoanalytical and political kind. What I would like to do over the next couple months is dig thought the Walking Dead episode by episode to see what it can teach us. Thank you for following me on this journey. I look forward to reading your comments. Be forewarned: There are spoilers everywhere. Don’t forget to check out my previous article in the Philosophizing TWD series: Philosophizing The Walking Dead S3E3 Walk With Me And Idealized Post-Racial Sentiments Only Serve To Colorblind Reality
Lori is a tougher sell in the TV series than the comic book. For me, this comes down to an addition to the TV show that was not in the comic. In Secrets S3E6 Lori sends Glenn out to town in order to gather morning after pills. Lori is pregnant with what is in all likelihood Shane’s offspring. So, what is the purpose of this scene? Up to this point Lori was portrayed as intelligent yet morality irrat…

Tell me about yourself and your writing?

I’m writer, educator, artist, and all around fangirl of everything and anything creative. I love film, literature, comics, performance art, I could go on and on all day, but the bottom line is if it’s based in the arts then it has my attention. On a personal note I’m a wife, as well as a mother.

I’ve been a storyteller from the start, as soon as I could write storytelling became my obsession, whether it be a journal entry, short story, poem., etc. I was also an avid reader from an early age, my writing is pretty much a product of what I read, I absorb and then I create.

All Cheerleaders Die exploits and guts the mythical war between the sexes by destabilizing heteronormative discourse. After Maddy's childhood friend dies she begins her revenge. Under the surface of what appears to be a superficial motivation for revenge turns out to be a serious desire to ruin Terry for raping her. The heart of this weaving narrative spins around the brutal binary that separates the football plays and cheerleaders along their sex. They self-articulate their inter and intra-group identities as Bitches and Dogs. The derogatory identification guts to the bad boy and bad girl persona as the two sides rise to greater levels of violence in order to seek some idealized imbalance where bitches or dogs are rendered a superior status. By playing on the borders of heteronormative dynamic, All Cheerleaders Die, open's up a space to articulate a disruption inherent in the kernel of the binary. In what follows I plan to explore the disruption in order to identify if All C…

Could you tell me about yourself and Father Dragon: A Theatrical Experience Inspired By HP Lovecraft?

My name is Victoria Snaith and I am the artistic director for Dread Falls Theatre.

My drama career started when I was 11 and I joined an after school drama club, I enjoyed it and continued my drama education through school and college. When I was 18 I left home for university and studied drama at Kingston University in South West London.

After university, I didn’t think it was viable for me to have a career in drama or theatre. It had never occurred to me that I could become a successful performer. So instead I went into teaching, but I never lost sight of my love of theatre and visited the theatre regularly.

Welcome to our journey into the guts of The Walking Dead. What kind of journey? A philosophical, psychoanalytical and political kind. What I would like to do over the next couple months is dig thought the Walking Dead episode by episode to see what it can teach us. Thank you for following me on this journey. I look forward to reading your comments. Be forewarned: There are spoilers everywhere. Don’t forget to check out my previous article in the Philosophizing TWD series: Philosophizing The Walking Dead S3E2 Sick, Totalitarianism, and Deserving Survivors

Walk with me begins with Andrea and Michonne stumbling through the world with their two pet zombies. Along the way, Andrea developed a hardcore cold and Michonne has been taking care of her. Until suddenly, their chickmance is rudely interrupted by a crashing helicopter. Curious, they go to check out the crash and run across the Governor and company. Andrea and Michonne are quickly discovered, blindfolded and taken hostage. When the b…

The history of philosophy is plagued with oppositional binaries; particular and universal, subjective and objective, good and bad. To be fair, most of these binaries were what the stuff of thought was before they started writing. They didn't create the binaries, they used the binaries and language of the argument to push the truth of their claims. Descartes was born into a universe which always-already had a set of notions about the body and the soul, and systems and structures of meaning that that gave the terms intelligibility. The body and soul binary is of clear religious import, and had become naturalized due to its widespread adoption into culture. When Descartes sat down at his table to think out existence he connected a set of dots by thematically inducing radical ignorance. From doubt, he began his meditations on being. 
Descartes error here is that he did not doubt the substance of his doubt. Descartes’s broke existence into two realms; the subjective sensory perception…

Most slasher films are missing one key factor; emotion. The masked dudes that stalks, slashes and bashes their way through slasher films are hollow characters. The masks they wear hide and subvert reciprocity with the viewer. There are a couple reasons for this. A masked slasher is easier to market because the mask brand and commodity the slasher. Hockey masks have been identified to such an extent with Friday the 13th and Jason Vorhees that I have a hard time watching Mighty Ducks or seeing a Hockey mask in the sporting goods section of K-Mart without thinking about a machete. The political analogy to branding is hegemony. Brand hegemony when a commodity like a ski mask or mouse ears become over-identified with a specific planted idea that separating the brand from the product (even if it isn't explicit produced by the brander) becomes near impossible. One way to think about this to say that Disney has a cultural and symbolic monopoly over talking mice. So even when you are conf…

There was a time when most slashers wouldn't dare to disrupt the status quo. They would pump out sequels like teenagers who didn't understand how birth control worked. Then Scream came along and deconstructed the 80's slasher for viewers. Horror folks might have already been in the know, but the general public had no clue. When the rules entered explicit public filmic discourse, the equilibrium of the slasher status quo became disrupted. For better and worse. I'd argue that this trend sawed to chunks the repetition of the slasher formula, and opened the door for difference for difference sake. Scream 4 made a good point when one of the characters made the point that in the post-modernist horror film all the rules are off. Implying that the key post-modernist horror moment is that moment in a film where the film makes it clear that it is playing by no rules other than its own. But is this truly the case?

During the 80's a slew of masculine women were thrown into the plots of action, horror, science fiction movies. Many conformed to the trend set in place by Ripley in Alien and it sequels. But what attributes force Ripley to stand out? Is she really presenting a version of femininity that provides a more authentic vision of what how a woman would be in similar situations?

Psychoanalytically, associating a cave with the female reproductive system makes sense. Both have structures that have an opening that faces the world, and on the inside there is a wider cavernous space. Descent is haphazardly due to lack of lighting, tight spaces, and winding pathways. There's symbolic mystery attached to both spaces. Cultural horror stories of men getting lost or eaten alive. Both are followed by decades of scientist trying to find the true nature of her depths and failing miserably. Why are these seemingly enticing spaces so alluring? Why do they simultaneously capture our wonder and dread? Lets saw into The Descent, and see what we can find.

Idon'tknowaboutyou,butIhavefoundcontemporarydatingexponentiallymoredifficultinthetechnologicalage.Idon'tthinkthisisthe technology'sfault.Inacertainrespectandinsomesituations,ithelpsusconnectmoreefficientlyanddeeperthan otherwise possible.However,wearefloodedwithinformationaboutsuitors.Facebookprofilesreadlikethesidesofcerealboxes.Crypticingredientsthathinttowardswhatisontheinsideofanotherperson. 

Caroline is a girl who is unhappy with her parents. They aren't paying attention to her. Looking out from her beady eyes, Caroline sees a world populated by adults lost in the projects who push off play time into the future. Impatient Caroline wishes for more caring parents that give into her narcissistic only child dreams. Caroline wants to be the center of everyone's universe, and cannot feel normal without the constant self-affirming gaze that verifies her importance. Coraline finds a door which opens to a brick wall. Her mother reason's that the wall was build when the building was split into three apartments. But as Caroline notices this does not sufficiently explain the wall. “Why is the door small then?” Or, why would they build a wall to separate apartments when the apartments were separated vertically rather than horizontally. What's with the door and what is the its purpose? Is a justified question due to illogical architecture.