Dark Forces at Work

Essays on Social Dynamics and Cinematic Horrors

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Edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper

Type: Essays
Subject: Genre > Horror
Keywords: horror
Publishing date: 2023
Publisher: Lexington Books
Collection: Lexington Books Horror Studies
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 348 pages
6 x 8 ¾ inches (15.5 x 22.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4985-8857-7

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Book Presentation:
Dark Forces at Work examines the role of race, class, gender, religion, and the economy as they are portrayed in, and help construct, horror narratives across a range of films and eras. These larger social forces not only create the context for our cinematic horrors, but serve as connective tissue between fantasy and lived reality, as well.

While several of the essays focus on “name” horror films such as IT, Get Out, Hellraiser, and Don’t Breathe, the collection also features essays focused on horror films produced in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and on American classic thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Key social issues addressed include the war on terror, poverty, the housing crisis, and the Time’s Up movement. The volume grounds its analysis in the films, rather than theory, in order to explore the ways in which institutions, identities, and ideologies work within the horror genre.

About the authors:
Cynthia J. Miller is senior faculty at the Emerson College Institute for the Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies.A. Bowdoin Van Riper is a historian who specializes in depictions of science and technology in popular culture.

Press Reviews:
Miller and Van Riper have edited a bookshelf’s worth of fascinating tomes, to which Dark Forces at Work is a valuable addition. Covering both canonical and more obscure horror films, it assembles a host of strong essays, surely of interest to any horror scholar. -- Murray Leeder, University of Calgary

Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, who have made a name for themselves as co-editors of high-quality scholarly anthologies in the horror field, continue their hot streak with this latest volume, an examination of how American social trends and forces consistently inform representations of the monstrous in horror cinema and dramatize the great moral struggles and social issues of their time. While we are all now living through a particularly toxic political era, the essays in this anthology, through discussion of specific horror films, make the collective case that American civic life of the past several decades has been characterized by extremes. As Miller and Van Riper vividly illustrate in the pages of this book, fear of others and ourselves breathes potent life into the cinematic monsters of our imagination. -- Philip Simpson, Eastern Florida State College

For editors Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, "every era gets the monster it needs," and what with the age of Trump, nationalism, and sociopolitical unrest, there's no time like the present. For the last century, we've turned to celluloid to help project our monsters, but according to Miller and Van Riper, we too often ground our understanding of monsters in theory and criticism rather than the films and cultural moments that birth them. Dark Forces at Work assembles essays that broaden this conversation by engaging with the social and ideological forces that guide fear and the monstrous in horror cinema. For Miller and Van Riper, "[t]he forces that move, and move through, our personal and social worlds have, indeed, become dark," and to be sure readers will revel in the myriad dark worlds explored here. -- John Edgar Browning, Georgia Institute of Technology

See the publisher website: Lexington Books

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