Horror and Religion

Horror and Religion
Author: Eleanor Beal
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1786834413

Horror and Religion provides new readings of contemporary horror fiction in conjuncture with debates in religious studies and theology. It gives a broad analysis of a wide range of contemporary and historical horror texts in a new interdisciplinary way. This study establishes the importance of discussing theology and contemporary horror fiction in present scholarship.

Sacred Terror

Sacred Terror
Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-04
Genre: Horror films
ISBN: 9781481304900

Sacred Terror examines the religious elements lurking in horror films. It answers a simple but profound question: When there are so many other scary things around, why is religion so often used to tell a scary story? In this lucid, provocative book, Douglas Cowan argues that horror films are opportune vehicles for externalizing the fears that lie inside our religious selves: of evil; of the flesh; of sacred places; of a change in the sacred order; of the supernatural gone out of control; of death, dying badly, or not remaining dead; of fanaticism; and of the power--and the powerlessness--of religion.

Religion of Fear

Religion of Fear
Author: Jason C Bivins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2008-08-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199887691

Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics, disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes of communication. Within this world is a "Religion of Fear," a critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast "orthodox" behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind novels, church-sponsored Halloween "Hell Houses," sensational comic books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity. As the "Religion of Fear" has developed since the 1960s, Bivins sees its message moving from a place of relative marginality to one of prominence. What does it say about American public life that such ideas of fearful religion and violent politics have become normalized? Addressing this question, Bivins establishes links and resonances between the cultural politics of evangelical pop, the activism of the New Christian Right, and the political exhaustion facing American democracy. Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.

Holy Horror

Holy Horror
Author: Steve A. Wiggins
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476633711

What, exactly, makes us afraid? Is it monsters, gore, the unknown? Perhaps it's a biblical sense of malice, lurking unnoticed in the corners of horror films. Holy Writ attempts to ward off aliens, ghosts, witches, psychopaths and demons, yet it often becomes a source of evil itself. Looking first at Psycho (1960) and continuing through 2017, this book analyzes the starring and supporting roles of the Good Book in horror films, monster movies and thrillers to discover why it incites such fear. In a culture with high biblical awareness and low biblical literacy, horrific portrayals can greatly influence an audience's canonical beliefs.

Theology and Horror

Theology and Horror
Author: Brandon R. Grafius
Publisher: Fortress Academic
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-03-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781978708006

Scholars of religion have begun to explore horror and the monstrous, not only within the confines of the biblical text or the traditions of religion, but also as they proliferate into popular culture. This exploration emerges from what has long been present in horror: an engagement with the same questions that animate religious thought - questions about the nature of the divine, humanity's place in the universe, the distribution of justice, and what it means to live a good life, among many others. Such exploration often involves a theological conversation. Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination pursues questions regarding non-physical realities, spaces where both divinity and horror dwell. Through an exploration of theology and horror, the contributors explore how questions of spirituality, divinity, and religious structures are raised, complicated, and even sometimes answered (at least partially) by works of horror.

Terence Fisher

Terence Fisher
Author: Paul Leggett
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010-06-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780786481118

Some critics in England and France have long maintained that British director Terence Fisher, whose films dominated world markets in the 1950s and 60s, was one of the greatest directors of fantasy films in history. Since his death in 1980, Fisher's reputation has grown from relative obscurity and his influence on the development of the modern horror film has been widely recognized. However, Fisher's importance should not be limited to the context of the fantasy and horror film genres. His films should also be recognized as expressions of his generalizations about human spirituality. This critical study of Fisher's films begins with an introduction that provides biographical information on his film career, summaries of all of the films he directed and examples of his impact on contemporary cinema. All of Fisher's films are analyzed in terms of their Christian and religious themes as well as their mythical sources. Chapters are devoted to Fisher's work on the subjects of Frankenstein, Dracula, curses (The Devil Rides Out), the ancient goddess (The Gorgon), the divided self (The Man Who Could Cheat Death) and the redeemer hero (The Stranglers of Bombay). The concluding chapter analyzes the role and influence of Biblical narratives in Fisher's films. Also included is a filmography; the work is fully indexed.

Reading the Bible with Horror

Reading the Bible with Horror
Author: Brandon R. Grafius
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978701691

In Reading the Bible with Horror, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, he stops to place the monstrous Leviathan in conversation with contemporary monster theory, uses Derrida to help explore the ghosts that haunt the biblical landscape, and reads the House of David as a haunted house. Conversations arise between unexpected sources, such as the Pentateuch legal texts dealing with female sexuality and Carrie. Throughout the book, Grafius asks how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and he explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.

New Queer Horror Film and Television

New Queer Horror Film and Television
Author: Darren Elliott-Smith
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1786836270

This anthology comprises essays that study the form, aesthetics and representations of LGBTQ+ identities in an emerging sub-genre of film and television termed ‘New Queer Horror’. This sub-genre designates horror crafted by directors/producers who identify as gay, bi, queer or transgendered, or works like Jeepers Creepers (2001), Let the Right One In (2008), Hannibal (2013–15), or American Horror Story: Coven (2013–14), which feature homoerotic or explicitly homosexual narratives with ‘out’ LGBTQ+ characters. Unlike other studies, this anthology argues that New Queer Horror projects contemporary anxieties within LGBTQ+ subcultures onto its characters and into its narratives, building upon the previously figurative role of Queer monstrosity in the moving image. New Queer Horror thus highlights the limits of a metaphorical understanding of queerness in the horror film, in an age where its presence has become unambiguous. Ultimately, this anthology aims to show that in recent years New Queer Horror has turned the focus of fear on itself, on its own communities and subcultures.

Religion and Its Monsters

Religion and Its Monsters
Author: Timothy Beal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1135283486

Religion's great and powerful mystery fascinates us, but it also terrifies. So too the monsters that haunt the stories of the Judeo-Christian mythos and earlier traditions: Leviathan, Behemoth, dragons, and other beasts. In this unusual and provocative book, Timothy K. Beal writes about the monsters that lurk in our religious texts, and about how monsters and religion are deeply entwined. Horror and faith are inextricable. Ans as monsters are part of religious texts and traditions, so religion lurks in the modern horror genre, from its birth in Dante's Inferno to the contemporary spookiness of H.P. Lovecraft and the Hellraiser films. Religion and Its Monsters is essential reading for students of religion and popular culture, as well as any readers with an interest in horror.