Monstrous Forms

Moving Image Horror Across Media

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by Adam Charles Hart

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Horror

Keywords

horror, monsters

Publishing date

2020

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 272 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-091624-4

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Book Presentation:
• Features a broad range of moving-image media from films to video games
• Brings new and old media into conversation
• Offers a new theory of horror across media

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? 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.

About the Author:
Adam Charles Hart, Lecturer in English, North Carolina State University Adam Charles Hart grew up in Washington State and worked as a film programmer and arts administrator in Seattle before entering academia. His recent research encompasses the horror genre, the American avant-garde, documentary media, and global new waves. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Imaginations, Studies in the Fantastic, and Discourse, as well as the book collections A Companion to the Horror Film and Gothic Cinema. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, where he teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.

Press Reviews:
"The breadth and depth of the book as it is recommend it to scholars in the field looking to delve deeper into internet culture and to engage with what Hart terms the "sensational address" of horror, and to college instructors to assign as an accessible introduction to the horror genre in media studies." - Geneveive Newman, Supernatural Studies

"In clear, accessible prose, and cutting across a broad swath of media to find their common appeals, Hart provides an answer-at once summative and new-to the discipline's most asked question: Why horror?" - Robert Spadoni, Case Western Reserve University

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press