Technology, Monstrosity, and Reproduction in Twenty-first Century Horror

by Jackson, Kimberly

• ISBN13: 9781137361035
• ISBN10: 1137361034
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-11-19
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Dealing with a variety of twenty-first century horror films, Jackson examines how the technologically produced and reproduced image functions as a site of monstrous birth. These monsters, threatening and ominous as they may be, represent the possibility for a renewed belief in the reality of the world and humanity's place within it. Through a wide spectrum of horror sub-genres, this book examines how the current state of horror - its sense of being at an end, its increasing self-awareness, and its concern with the relationship between media and message - reflects these anxieties in Western culture. Horror films bring them to a mass audience and offer ever new figures for the nameless faceless 'antagonist' that plagues us. At the same time, horror provides material with which to build a different understanding of ourselves, its monsters representing ends but also beginnings.

Author Biography

Kimberly Jackson is Associate Professor of English at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA. She has published articles on contemporary horror films, reality television, popular music, and nineteenth century gothic literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Imagining the Ends of Horror and of Humanity
1. Meta-horror and Simulation in the Scream series and The Cabin in the Woods
2. The Image Goes Viral: Virtual Hauntings in The Ring and Feardotcom
3. The Image as Voracious Eye in The Blair Witch Project, the Paranormal Activity series, and Cloverfield
4. Memory, Pregnancy, and Technological Archive in Dark Water and The Forgotten
5. The End of Patriarchy: Defining the Postmodern Prometheus in Splice and Prometheus
6. Conclusion: A New Mythology for Techno-Humanity