What Ought to Scare You

What Ought to Scare You
Author: H. Marshall Leicester
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2024-06-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476651957

Using the Hollywood studio system (1931-1960) as a historical center, this book performs close readings of classic horror films (such as Frankenstein and Cat People) while asking the following three questions: What about this movie is weird? What does this movie think ought to scare you? If there weren't monsters in this movie, what would be wrong with these people's lives? These questions guide readers toward the uniqueness of horror films in relation to the way they are classified and the feeling of "horror" that they offer. The horror genre is a collection of culturally-shared elements--words, images, or themes used to signify or evoke horror, because they have been used that way before. Instead of treating movies as examples of the horror genre through how they evoke feelings from viewers, this book locates the meaning of horror within individual films and shows how movies make their own genealogies and complicate their own scares in an evolution of the genre. It argues that classic horror movies are forms of reception of--and resistance to--the ideas of horror that were current in their historical period. Working historically, the author traces movies' interactions with their precursors and co-conspirators to show how they are the agents of historical changes in the genre and in what we take to be horror.

What Ought to Scare You

What Ought to Scare You
Author: H. Marshall Leicester
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2024-07-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476689792

Using the Hollywood studio system (1931-1960) as a historical center, this book performs close readings of classic horror films (such as Frankenstein and Cat People) while asking the following three questions: What about this movie is weird? What does this movie think ought to scare you? If there weren't monsters in this movie, what would be wrong with these people's lives? These questions guide readers toward the uniqueness of horror films in relation to the way they are classified and the feeling of "horror" that they offer. The horror genre is a collection of culturally-shared elements--words, images, or themes used to signify or evoke horror, because they have been used that way before. Instead of treating movies as examples of the horror genre through how they evoke feelings from viewers, this book locates the meaning of horror within individual films and shows how movies make their own genealogies and complicate their own scares in an evolution of the genre. It argues that classic horror movies are forms of reception of--and resistance to--the ideas of horror that were current in their historical period. Working historically, the author traces movies' interactions with their precursors and co-conspirators to show how they are the agents of historical changes in the genre and in what we take to be horror.

The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring W. Lardner, 1914-1919

The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring W. Lardner, 1914-1919
Author: Ring Lardner
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 654
Release: 1995
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780804729635

An annotated and copiously illustrated edition of the 24 short stories published between 1914 and 1919 by Ring Lardner, which include the stories collected later and known as "You know me, Al."

Scare Tactics

Scare Tactics
Author: Douglas Walton
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2013-06-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401729409

Scare Tactics, the first book on the subject, provides a theory of the structure of reasoning used in fear and threat appeal argumentation. Such arguments come under the heading of the argumentum ad baculum, the `argument to the stick/club', traditionally treated as a fallacy in the logic textbooks. The new dialectical theory is based on case studies of many interesting examples of the use of these arguments in advertising, public relations, politics, international negotiations, and everyday argumentation on all kinds of subjects. Many of these arguments are amusing, once you see the clever tactic used; others are scary. Some of the arguments appear to be quite reasonable, while others are highly suspicious, or even outrageously fraudulent. In addition to the examples taken from logic textbooks, other cases treated come from a variety of sources, including political debates, legal arguments, and arguments from media sources, like magazine articles and television ads. The purpose of this book is to explain how such arguments work as devices of persuasion, and to develop a method for analyzing and evaluating their reasonable and fallacious uses in particular cases. The book shows how such arguments share a common structure, revealing several distinctive forms of argument nested within each other. Based on its account of this cognitive structure, the new dialectical theory presents methods for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating these arguments, as they are used in specific cases. The book is a scholarly contribution to argumentation theory. It is written in an accessible style, and uses many colorful and provocative examples of fear and threat appeal arguments that are suitable for classroom discussions. The matters treated will be of interest to professionals and students in law, critical thinking, advertising, speech communication, informal logic, cognitive science, rhetoric, and media studies.

Get the Picture?

Get the Picture?
Author: Jim Piper
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2012-01-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 158115948X

Classic favorites, current pop films, hidden gems--they’re all part of this new edition of the popular guide to watching and enjoying movies. Newly expanded and updated to include independent films, documentaries, and special effects, Get the Picture? clearly explains techniques used to tell stories throughout cinematic history, then discusses how modern filmmakers are adapting those traditions today. In his witty and engaging text, author Jim Piper explains key concepts of film and uses fascinating side-by-side comparisons to explore relationships between movies as disparate as The Great Train Robbery and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, High Noon and Blood Diamond, Raise the Red Lantern and The Pursuit of Happyness--and all movies discussed are easily available on DVD for further study. Entertaining, readable, and full of insight, Get the Picture? will inspire readers to watch movies with a new sense of discovery and excitement.

Spirits and Wine

Spirits and Wine
Author: Susan Jayne Newhof
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2011-08-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0472028030

"A graceful, elegantly told ghost story that is at times frightening, at times heartwarming, often quite funny, and always an engrossing and fascinating read." ---Rodney Vaccaro, Emmy Award–winning Hollywood screenwriter and producer "I started Friday night and got up Saturday morning with a desire to get back to it to finish. In my experience, if I wake up and the first thing on my mind is getting back to a book, it's a good book." ---Bryan Uecker, co-owner of The Book Nook & Java Shop, Montague, Michigan "A spellbinding mystery of timeless love, loss, and a house that held all the answers. I couldn't put it down." ---Judith Evans Thomas, coauthor of the Born to Shop travel books "Living in a 100-year old Michigan farmhouse myself, I was totally pulled into the real possibilities Newhof's characters found themselves in. Ghosts and real life haunts made for a compelling read." ---Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen, author of the series Hazel Ridge Farm Stories "Spirits and Wine is a can't-put-down novel that feels less like fiction and more like sharing a glass of wine with your best friends who go on to disclose the deeply disturbing, deadly things occurring in the lovely old house they planned to restore. Susan Newhof writes truthfully and with beautiful care, evoking the icy appeal of a small lakeshore town in Michigan while revealing the wretched secrets that cling to one dwelling. After reading this harrowing tale in one sitting, I am dying to ask the author---did these menacing events really happen . . . to you?" ---Jerrilyn Farmer, author of the best-selling Madeline Bean Mysteries "If only the walls could talk---and they do in Susan Newhof's thrilling Spirits and Wine. Readers, be prepared for an absorbing adventure into John and Anna's journey to solve a century-old mystery wrapped within the walls of their newly purchased 'dream home.' Told creatively in tandem, the couple's story of life in pursuit of truth will leave you wondering just where the fact ends and the fiction begins. Keep the lights on and enjoy!" ---Beckey Burgoyne, author of Perfectly Amanda: Gunsmoke's "Miss Kitty"---To Dodge and Beyond It's a mystery and a ghost story, all wrapped up in one. A newly married couple buys an old house in a small lakeshore town in West Michigan and finds it haunted by the dramatic secrets of its past inhabitants. As the couple settles in, disturbing events prompt them to investigate who those residents were, what happened to them, and why one spirit remains active. Could the Spanish influenza epidemic in the region, which resulted in the deaths of an unprecedented number of young, healthy adults in Michigan and elsewhere in 1918---19, and the resulting slew of orphans, have something to do with the spirit now haunting their house? They are determined to discover the truth about their house, even if it jeopardizes their own safety.