Screening the Undead Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television

by Hunt, Leon; Lockyer, Sharon; Williamson, Milly

• ISBN13: 9781848859241
• ISBN10: 1848859244
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-02-20
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

The vampire and the zombie, the two most popular incarnations of the undead, are brought together for a forensic critical investigation in Screening the Undead. Both have a long history in popular fiction, film, television, comics and games; the vampire also remains central to popular culture today, from literary 'paranormal romance' to cult TV and movie franchises - by turns romantic, tortured, grotesque, countercultural, a goth icon or lonely outsider. The zombie can shamble or, nowadays, sprint with alarming velocity, and even dance. It frequently lends itself to metaphor and can stand in for fascism or ecological disaster, but is perhaps most frequently a harbinger and instrument of the apocalypse.

Leading writers on Horror and cult media consider the sexy vampire and the grotesque zombie, as well as hybrid figures who do not fit neatly into either category. These are examined across a range of contexts, from the Swedish vampire to the Afro-American Blacula, from the lesbian vampire to the gay zombie, from the Spanish Knights Templar riding skeletal horses to dancing Japanese zombies. Screening the Undead sheds new light on these two icons of terror - and desire - whose popular longevity has taken them 'Beyond Life'.

Author Biography

Leon Hunt is a Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Studies at Brunel University, UK. His books include Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger (2003) and Cult British TV Comedy (2013). He is co-editor of East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (I.B.Tauris, 2008).

Sharon Lockyer is a Lecturer in Sociology and Communications at Brunel University, UK. She is editor of Reading Little Britain: Comedy Matters on Contemporary Television (I.B.Tauris 2010) and co-editor (with Michael Pickering) of Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour (2005, 2009).

Milly Williamson is a Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Studies at Brunel University, UK. She is the author of The Lure of the Vampire (2005) and Celebrity: The Making of Fame (forthcoming).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
PART I: THE MARK OF THE VAMPIRE - RACE, PLACE, GENDER, IDENTITY AND THE MODERN UNDEAD
2. Manson, Drugs and Black Power: The Counter-Cultural Vampire
3. Taking Back the Night: The Female Vampire in New York
4. Northern Darkness: The Curious Case of the Swedish Vampire
5. Let Them All In: The Evolution of the Sympathetic Vampire
PART II: RE-WRITING THE LIVING DEAD - THE ZOMBIE IN POPULAR CULTURE
6. Dead Metaphors/Undead Allegories
7. Nightmare Cities: Italian Zombie Cinema and Environmental Discourses
8. Diary of a Plague Year: Perspectives of Destruction in Contemporary Zombie Film
9. 'Death is the New Pornography!': Gay Zombies, Homonormativity and Consuming Masculinity in Queer Horror
PART III: HYBRID BLOODLINES
10. From Mexico to Hollywood: Guillermo Del Toro's Treatment of the Undead and the Making of a New Cult Icon
11. 'Nollywood, Our Nollywood': Resisting the Vampires
12. The Ultimate Super-Happy-Zombie-Murder-Mystery-Family-Comedy-Karaoke-Disaster-Movie-Part-Animated-Remake-All-Dancing-Musical-Spectacular-Extravaganza: Miike Takashi's The Happiness of the Katakuris as 'Cult' Hybrid'
13. Amando de Ossario's 'Blind Dead' Quartet and the Cultural Politics of Spanish Horror