Monstrous Forms

Monstrous Forms PDF

Author: Adam Charles Hart

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0190916257

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It makes us jump. It makes us scream. It haunts our nightmares. So why do we watch horror? Why do we play it? What could possibly appealing about a genre that tries to terrify us? Why would we subject ourselves to shriek-inducing shocks, or spend dozens of hours watching a television show about grotesque flesh-eating monsters? Monstrous Forms offers a theory of horror that works through the genre across a broad range of contemporary moving-image media: film, television, video games, YouTube, gifs, streaming, virtual reality. This book analyzes our experience of and engagement with horror by focusing on its form, paying special attention to the common ground, the styles and forms that move between mediums. It looks at the ways that moving-image horror addresses its audiences, the ways that it elicits, or demands, responses from its viewers, players, browsers. Camera movement (or "camera" movement), jump scares, offscreen monsters-horror innovates and perfects styles that directly provoke and stimulate the bodies in front of the screen. Analyzing films including Paranormal Activity, It Follows, and Get Out, video games including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Layers of Fear, and Until Dawn, and TV shows including The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, Monstrous Forms argues for understanding horror through its sensational address, and dissects the forms that make that address so effective.

Monstrous Forms

Monstrous Forms PDF

Author: Adam Hart

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0190916230

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"It makes us jump. It makes us scream. It haunts our nightmares. So why do we watch horror? Why do we play it? What could possibly be appealing about a genre that tries to terrify us? Why would we subject ourselves to shriek-inducing shocks, or spend dozens of hours watching a television show about grotesque flesh-eating monsters? Horror offers us a connection to fears that are otherwise unspeakable, even inconceivable, so why do we seek it out? Monstrous Forms offers a theory of horror that works through the genre across a broad range of contemporary moving-image media: film, television, videogames, YouTube, gifs, streaming, virtual reality. This book analyzes our experience of and engagement with horror by focusing on its form, paying special attention to the common ground, the styles and forms that move between mediums. It looks at the ways that moving-image horror addresses its audiences, the ways that it elicits, or demands, responses from its viewers, players, browsers. Camera movement (or "camera" movement), jump scares, offscreen monsters--horror innovates and perfects styles that directly provoke and stimulate the bodies in front of the screen. Analyzing films including Paranormal Activity, It Follows, and Get Out, videogames including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Layers of Fear, and Until Dawn, and TV shows including The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, Monstrous Forms argues for understanding horror through its sensational address and dissects the forms that make that address so effective. Horror, Film Studies, New Media, Digital Media, Game Studies, Television Studies, Monsters and Monstrosity, Gifs, YouTube, Netflix, Spectatorship"--

Monstrous Forms

Monstrous Forms PDF

Author: Adam Charles Hart

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0190916265

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

It makes us jump. It makes us scream. It haunts our nightmares. So why do we watch horror? Why do we play it? What could possibly appealing about a genre that tries to terrify us? Why would we subject ourselves to shriek-inducing shocks, or spend dozens of hours watching a television show about grotesque flesh-eating monsters? Monstrous Forms offers a theory of horror that works through the genre across a broad range of contemporary moving-image media: film, television, video games, YouTube, gifs, streaming, virtual reality. This book analyzes our experience of and engagement with horror by focusing on its form, paying special attention to the common ground, the styles and forms that move between mediums. It looks at the ways that moving-image horror addresses its audiences, the ways that it elicits, or demands, responses from its viewers, players, browsers. Camera movement (or "camera" movement), jump scares, offscreen monsters-horror innovates and perfects styles that directly provoke and stimulate the bodies in front of the screen. Analyzing films including Paranormal Activity, It Follows, and Get Out, video games including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Layers of Fear, and Until Dawn, and TV shows including The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, Monstrous Forms argues for understanding horror through its sensational address, and dissects the forms that make that address so effective.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous PDF

Author: Asa Simon Mittman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-24

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 1351894315

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The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.

Monstrous Possibilities

Monstrous Possibilities PDF

Author: Amanda Howell

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-04

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 3031128443

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This book focuses on how the abject spectacle of the ‘monstrous feminine’ has been reimagined by recent and contemporary screen horrors focused on the desires and subjectivities of female monsters who, as anti-heroic protagonists of revisionist and reflexive texts, exemplify gendered possibility in altered cultures of 21st century screen production and reception. As Barbara Creed notes in a recent interview, the patriarchal stereotype of horror that she named ‘the monstrous-feminine’ has, decades later, ‘embarked on a life of her own’. Focused on this altered and renewed form of female monstrosity, this study engages with an international array of recent and contemporary screen entertainments, from arthouse and indie horror films by emergent female auteurs, to the franchised products of multimedia conglomerates, to 'quality' television horror, to the social media-based creations of horror fans working as ‘pro-sumers’. In this way, the monograph in its organisation and scope maps the converged and rapidly changing environment of 21st century screen cultures in order to situate the monstrous female anti-hero as one of its distinctive products.

The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-century Europe

The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-century Europe PDF

Author: Kirk Ambrose

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1843838311

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Richly-illustrated consideration of the meaning of the carvings of non-human beings, from centaurs to eagles, found in ecclesiastical settings. Representations of monsters and the monstrous are common in medieval art and architecture, from the grotesques in the borders of illuminated manuscripts to the symbol of the "green man", widespread in churches and cathedrals. These mysterious depictions are frequently interpreted as embodying or mitigating the fears symptomatic of a "dark age". This book, however, considers an alternative scenario: in what ways did monsters in twelfth-century sculpture help audiences envision, perhaps even achieve, various ambitions? Using examples of Romanesque sculpture from across Europe, with a focus on France and northern Portugal, the author suggests that medieval representations of monsterscould service ideals, whether intellectual, political, religious, and social, even as they could simultaneously articulate fears; he argues that their material presence energizes works of art in paradoxical, even contradictory ways. In this way, Romanesque monsters resist containment within modern interpretive categories and offer testimony to the density and nuance of the medieval imagination. KIRK AMBROSE is Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Boulder.

Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters

Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters PDF

Author: Markus P.J. Bohlmann

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-03-06

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1476619867

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Perhaps because of the wisdom received from our Romantic forbears about the purity of the child, depictions of children as monsters have held a tremendous fascination for film audiences for decades. Numerous social factors have influenced the popularity and longevity of the monster-child trope but its appeal is also rooted in the dual concepts of the child-like (innocent, angelic) and the childish (selfish, mischievous). This collection of fresh essays discusses the representation of monstrous children in popular cinema since the 1950s, with a focus on the relationship between monstrosity and "childness," a term whose implications the contributors explore.