Speaking of Monsters

Employing a range of approaches to examine how "monster-talk" pervades not only popular culture but also public policy through film and other media, this book is a "one-stop shop" of sorts for students and instructors employing various approaches and media in the study of "teratologies," or discourses of the monstrous.

Employing a range of approaches to examine how "monster-talk" pervades not only popular culture but also public policy through film and other media, this book is a "one-stop shop" of sorts for students and instructors employing various approaches and media in the study of "teratologies," or discourses of the monstrous.

Introduction: On Monstrosity and Multiculturalism - Caroline Joan ('Kay') S. Picart and John Edgar Browning PART 1: GENERAL THEORIES OF MONSTROSITY Monster Culture (Seven Theses) - Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Dread, Taboo, and The Thing (1982): Toward a Social Theory of the Horror Film - Stephen Prince Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings - Noël Carroll Our Vampires, Our Neighbors - Ken Gelder 'Psychological Thriller': Dead of Night (1945), British Film Culture, and the 1940s Horror Cycle - Mark Jancovich PART 2: TERATOLOGIES OF NATIONALITY AND RACE Monsters in the Literary Traditions of Asia: A Critical Appraisal - Andrew Hock-Soon Ng Slayer as Monster in Blood+ (2005-2006) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) - Margaret L. Carter 'Shapeless Deformity': Monstrosity, Visibility, and Racial Masquerade in Thomas Grattan's Cagot's Hut (1823) - Daniel Novak PART 3: IN BETWEEN FEAR AND DESIRE Apt Pupil (1998): The Hollywood Nazi-As-Monster Flick - Caroline Joan ('Kay') S. Picart and David Frank Demons Driven: Religious Teratologies - Jason C. Bivins An Age of Mechanical Destruction: Power Tools and the Monstrous in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Films - Ian Conrich PART 4: QUEER THEORY AND BOUNDARY CROSSINGS 'Way Too Gay to Be Ignored?': The Production and Reception of Queer Horror Cinema in the Twenty-First Century - Harry Benshoff Seed of Chucky: Transbiology and the Horror Flick - Judith ('Jack') Halberstam PART 5: CRIMINOLOGY, LAW, AND TERATOLOGIES: BETWEEN THE REAL AND THE REEL Stage Four: Virulency - Lonnie H. Athens Profiling the Terrorist as a Mass Murderer - Caroline Joan ('Kay') S. Picart and Cecil E. Greek What Makes Stalking Monsters So Monstrous, and How to Survive Them? - Ôrît K?mîr Race and Serial Killing in the Media: The Case of Wayne Williams - Caroline Joan ('Kay') S. Picart PART 6: THE BIOLOGICAL MONSTROUS AND GENDER: THE HUMAN-ANIMAL-MACHINE DIVIDES ''Nature Abhors Normality': Theories of the Monstrous from Aristotleto The X-Files (1993-2002) - Kathleen Long Monster Spawn of Animal Experimentation in the Early Work of H. G. Wells: On the Containment of Psychopathic Violence as Preliminary to the Onset of the Capacity for Mourning - Laurence A. Rickels Why Is the Tension So High? The Monstrous Feminine in (Post)Modern Slasher Films - Dejan Ognjanovi? Blood and Bitches: Sexual Politics and the Female Lycanthrope in Young Adult Fiction - June Pulliam PART 7: TERATOLOGIES AND ETHICS The Queer Ethics of Monstrosity - Patricia MacCormack Reopening the Question of the Human and the Animal - Dominick LaCapra Where Reality and Fantasy Meet and Bifurcate: Holocaust Themes in Pan's Labyrinth (2006), X-Men (2000), and V (1983) - Caroline Joan ('Kay') S. Picart, John Edgar Browning, and Carla María Thomas