Interrogating Ideology With A Chainsaw

What is Jason Vorhees without his mask? In Part I “he” is his mother. A lurking first-person presence. In Part II Jason plays his own lurking presence seeking revenge more over his mother’s death than being neglected by camp counselors. In Part III, Jason nonchalantly picks up a mask off a porch and carries this mask through 8 subsequent films. The remake even opts to skip the mother as the killer back story and jump straight into the hockey mask.

Tell me about yourself and your writing? I am an Australian author. I have always enjoyed reading action adventure books, and have had a long-time fascination with horror (especially movies). I write zombie/apocalyptic novels because I see it as the perfect way for me to be able to blend my two interests to create compelling action thrillers that have an emphasis on vivid descriptions and plenty of frights! Why do you write? I enjoy the challenge of creating. Writing for me is a way to stretch and develop my imagination.

+1 is a party film trapped in a time paradox. Glowing alien rocks have crashed landed in anywhere, American suburbia making powerlines glow and teenagers ratchet up their angst. In the middle of the chaotic pile sweaty-drunk teenagers, David is on a mission to save his relationship. In a misguided attempt to surprise his beloved, David made the mistake of kissing a girl who resembled his girlfriend. When Jill walked in on this scene, seeing her boyfriend suckface with her rival, something more was unlocked than betrayal. The shock of betrayal widened her view of the relationship as a whole. David was revealed as more than just a dirt bag, he was also dead weight holding her back from achieving her potential. What that potential is, we will never know.

Natural born Killers shows us to see the other side of the coin. Our humanness, and what is naturalized in killing, is more human than natural. To be human is to step apart and outside nature. We, humans, distinguish ourselves as more than nature. Somehow more conscious or self-aware in such a way that we can reject our basic foundations of our own absurdity. We are not God’s gift to earth – we are natural born killers. Our humanness is not unlike I Love Lucy radically fabricated. Every crevice of our day is oversaturated with social cues. From the instructions on a hand dryer in a bathroom to the stop lights in our daily commute. Signs order mandatory compliance, not unlike the applause sign that flashes in a live sitcom. Laughter, while potentially coming from an authentic place, is instigated for the sake of the sitcom-machine.

Dear Zombies, Truth be told - I have been watching a lot of TV shows over the last month and after deciding to abandon writing about every walking dead episode I revisited my scheming. I developed a new template to take notes on movies that has been amazingly helpful. The form gives me a bunch of kick off points to write in a more focused and fun way. I hope to have an article online today or tomorrow. Blogging is all about finding a rhythm that makes sense, which has been a struggle for me. I'll figure something out eventually. Anyway, I'm off to write. Stay Scary, izombiheartzoey

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 S3E11 I Ain't No Judas and Liberalism = Paternalism Rick and company (Carl and Michonne) pass a hitchhiker screaming for help early in this episode. Rather than stop, confront or help the stranger, Rick continues driving. Leaving the desperate dude to fend for himself. Why, when Rick has gone so far out of his way to help those in need, does he abandon the hitchhiker without flinching? Is it just paranoia on Rick’s part or is there something else going on? The mission of th

Rachel Dolezal got under conservative and liberal America’s skin by being outed by her parents for not being as black as she claimed. The NAACP president of Spokane, Washington, Dolezal was not exactly black we refer to when talking about a black person. At some point in Dolezal’s life, she decided to stop performing whiteness and began performing blackness. This begs the question, how authentic was Dolezal in “acting black?” On the right*, a conservative outburst of pseudo-intellectualism decrying the liberal agenda’s allegiance with transracialism. And not too deep under the service an argument that we live in a post-racial society. So even though we should recognize Rachel Dolezal’s performance of blackness as a sham the liberal agenda’s racial framing misses the point that focusing on racism creates racism by not talking specifically about Rachel Dolezal’s character. But even if we talked about Rachel Dolezal’s character we wouldn’t need to bring her into the spotlight because

Authority isn’t something you can force on a system without inspiring resistance. But this exactly what the father in the film The Woman attempts. Although, the father may get temporary compliance through shows of force and physical brutality he will also inspire a sense of injustice. An injustice that inspires it's counterforce. The film The Woman exposes the impotence autocratic authority and provides a path for rebellion. The father brushes the woman’s hair and cringes at the putridness released. Shaking off his disgust he inspects the woman’s teeth pressing his fingertips against her lips. Like a Venus fly trap the woman snaps, biting down and tearing off the father’s finger. She chews it, he pulls back screaming, then she spits out the man’s wedding ring as if it was a seed from a watermelon. The ring hits the floor with a metallic ting.

Dear Zombies, Today I burnt out the Bluray player on my Play Station 3. From what the internet says the drive was going to die eventually. They can only take so many hours of spinning discs before they go kaput. My life has been frantic in a good way. I have been busy at work. Kicking ass and taking names. We just got over the hump of our project and will be starting a new one next month. Things aren't going to slow down but they should be less intense. Not that I have any excuses for not posting more often. I started a post on The Woman. I plan on finishing it sometime this week. I miss winter in Chicago. Even the rattling radiators.

Yasmine is given a key character trait that allows her to fend off a family of cannibal nazis. She is not gifted with strength, a father who was a Navy Seal or the crafty bomb making skills of Macgyver. All Yasmine has is a case of the preggos. A squirmy little parasite growing in her gut conspiring to be born. Pregnancy isn’t much of a superpower. Sure, you might get some time off your menstrual cycle, but what you get in return is cramps, bloating and compulsive cravings for fish flavored ice cream. Yasmine has the odds stacked against her. In the opening scene Yasmine and the crew, she belongs to are fleeing from a heist job during a riot in Paris. During the heist, Yasmine’s brother is critically wounded and taken to the hospital. Just before the police close in on Yasmine her brother whispers Keep it. Keep the baby.

Tell me about yourself and your writing? I'm a practicing pathologist of twenty years' standing. I've published over a dozen crime novels, the latest being MEMENTO MORI, which is something of a departure for me. Most of the rest have involved a lot of forensic pathology (the Eisenmenger series) but this one is about love and madness, and the relationship between the two. Why do you write? Being a doctor tends these days to be fairly soulless, since we're under so much pressure, and since medicine is increasingly protocol-driven. I did quite a lot of medical research when I was younger and found that creative, but there's very little that's creative in modern medicine. Writing is the perfect antidote to that and the other frustrations of modern life. What’s the process like? What inspired you to write Memento Mori?

One more late night trying to get through a horror movie without googling something on my phone. Tonight, I popped in The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Remake). Maybe I was a different person half a decade ago, but I remember liking this film when it came out in theaters. What I remembered was a troop of National Guards folks VS the savage mutants in the hills. But the film plays out like any other slasher where the foreign policy allegory is made abundantly clear as the minorities are stabbed one by one until the last remain whites stumble out into the sunset. I've started a new thing where I am taking more elaborate notes after each movie. Even breaking things down into five paragraph essay format in order to shoot for clarity when writing. I was left, like the actors in this film, uninspired to dig any deeper into the film. Although, the sets stood out to me. The damp caves didn't have that gritty glow that the sets in the Texas Chainsaw remakes, but nonetheless they had that post

My life has been frantic in a good way. I've been busy with work and am forgetting to make time for myself and you. My bad. Eat my face. I have been watching horror stuff on TV lately. Rewatching True Blood and trying to catch up on Hannibal. It has been crappy for horror this year. I can't really think of anything scary that happened this year. Seems like horror is getting outsourced to TV. Personally, I think horror requires a block of time absent of capitalism injections.... errr commercials. Last week I invested in a surround sound system. I'm hearing a whole new spectrum of screams and things that go bump in films now. I'm looking forward to rewatching some of my favor flicks now with real sound. I've been thinking on and off about reconceptualizing my blogging plan. I have developed a new system for note taking on movies that I am finding helpful. I created a table on google docs where I'm inputting notes on themes, characters. plot points, and

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 S3E10 Home and the Homeless Zombie

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 S3E9 The Suicide King and An Open Letter to Rick Grimes

Over the last couple weeks, Baltimore was set on fire. Another black male has been mysteriously killed in police custody. Angry, the community responded. Leading the charge is a temporary alliance between The Bloods and The Crips. Like most, I was initially surprised by the alliance between the long-term rivals, but after reflecting it makes sense. Both gangs have a common enemy. Remember this is the same city that the HBO’s The Wire was based. The gangs in the show, like the gang in most American communities are persistent yet unpredictable powder kegs. Let's not be too surprised when they explode.

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 S3E8 Made To Suffer The Politically Corrected Angry Black Women

Does Scream really break the rules? Does the film strike the structural kernel of the horror genre? Is self-awareness of the meta-intertextuality of horror really subversive, or does Scream cling dogmatically to the banalest aspects of the films it seeks to critique? Scream 4 begins with a complex introduction. A film inside of a film inside of a film where each film, in its respective layers, is self-aware of the film inside the film. The first opening begins with two women teasing each other about a potential stalker which devolves into a comparison between a pure/idealized horror of 80’s antiquity and contemporary horror.

Dear Zombies, I am having a blast at my new job. Driving all over Chicago and meeting tons of great people. Several weeks ago I made a plan to write a post a week and two weeks ago I scheduled time to write. I found a seat to camp out at the local coffee shop and began working on a post. Boom! The screen goes blank on my tablet and won't turn back on. I thought that the battery died but after fiddling with the device I realized that my tablet had committed suicide. After squabbling with Amazon I received a partial reimbursement and was able to buy a new laptop. It arrived today! I am testing it out to write this post! Before my laptop died I was revising a post I wrote on Scream 4. I should have it published by the end of the week. I am planning to focus my posts during May primarily on war movies, PTSD and of course politics. I have been trying to catch myself up on the news of the revolt (not riot) in Baltimore. I hope to publish an All Things Interrogated post in the follow

There are three ways to make your way out of Trauma. The first is to become oblivious to your own pain by becoming numb. The second is by failing to integrate the trauma you come under the sway of madness.   Lastly   you can find a way to live with yourself. Enjoy your symptoms. Find a way to make sense out of what happened in such a way where you can rekindle your sense of self in the world. The film Julia is about a woman’s journey to return to herself after becoming the victimized by four men. Rather than tell the worn out tale of rage let loose, the film plays with the idea that in order to free yourself from victimization one must   depersonalize   the crime. Think beyond the cruelty that happened to you and strike at the core of the power structures in which reinforced and allow   the continuance of   male supremacy.

I have climbed out of the gutter of unemployment. Luckily in time before I ran out of funds to pay my rent. The job market is cruel bastard, and I’ve found the job for me. And it pays more than my previous place of employment. Woot! I have two weeks of freedom before my official start date and I took some time out today to catch up on some writing and reading. What happens next is a good question. I'll be working of course! I plan to get back to a regular posting schedule as so as feasible. What I have learned is that I need to escape my apartment to write and confront these blank pages in a new space. Today, I ventured out to a coffee shop to get my blogging on. Here I am! I’ll be working on an analysis, today, of a great film I saw a week ago called Julia. I know its terrible title. I think the film succeeded in a way that American Mary failed. Specifically in terms of its politics and temperament. Look out for the post later this week!

Being a grown up is hard. As I mentioned in my last couple posts, I have been on hiatus first due to trying to find the time to write with my previous job, then getting fired from said job because a couple of my fellow coworkers took their personal frustrations out of me via a character assassination. Now I am on my last legs. I have one more month's worth of rent saved and am starting a temp job tomorrow. You'd think a masters degree and over 60 grand worth of education would make adult life all puppy dogs and rainbows. Oh, but no. Luckily, I am a crafty dude and feel that I will be able to secure my rent in time for me to become another body for capitalism's meat grinder. I await word from a couple job interviews that were promising and should ideally get this guy back out into Chicago to kick ass and take names. Nonetheless, every day is full of worry and dread. I can wait with the best of them. I can sit at the DMV all day as long as I have something to read. But

See what had happened was... Over the last couple weeks, I was trying to find a way to schedule some blogging into my week and not feel too drained due to the amount of writing I was doing at work. Somewhere in the middle of this scheming I got fired. And fired on fabricated gibberish because a couple people had personal problems they wanted to project on me. The madness was a bit of a hit to the ego that left me pretty furious. I'm on my way to something better. Finally settled into my apartment in the city and terrified that I'd go homeless blogging took a back seat to me finding a backup plan. Combing the internet for work and endlessly out online applications for jobs I don't particularly want. After a couple days of scouring the internet for jobs I have a couple interviews lined up. After I secure a paycheck, again. I promise I will return to the internet and let out some philosophical rants. Altho I took a break from horror to catch up on some TV shows, I will get

It was the bloodiest of times, it was the most exhausting of times. Racial strife hit the fan in Fergeson. Israel Genociding Palatine, again. Obama and Putin couldn’t find the time, as hard as they tried, to set their differences aside and relieve their international sexual tension. Along the way horror flicks splattered the screen or, sadly, discarded to direct to video releases. Looking over the list of horror releases for 2014 I am hard pressed to find a theme, outside a renewed interested in the occult and a renewed need put the fear of Jesus in the hearts of the masses. Between found footage and pseudo-religious morality tales 2014 brought us a few special flicks that I know will be lining my blu ray shelf. We also saw the widespread proliferation of horror TV shows. But most importantly 2014 brought you this guy. izombiheartzoey – the only horror philosopher on the internet!