{"product_id":"dark-forces-at-work-9781498588577","title":"Dark Forces at Work","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDark Forces at Work examines the role of race, class, gender, religion, and the economy as they are portrayed in, and help construct, horror narratives across a range of films and eras. These larger social forces not only create the context for our cinematic horrors, but serve as connective tissue between fantasy and lived reality, as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile several of the essays focus on name horror films such as IT, Get Out, Hellraiser, and Don't Breathe, the collection also features essays focused on horror films produced in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and on American classic thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Key social issues addressed include the war on terror, poverty, the housing crisis, and the Time's Up movement. The volume grounds its analysis in the films, rather than theory, in order to explore the ways in which institutions, identities, and ideologies work within the horror genre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMiller and Van Riper have edited a bookshelf’s worth of fascinating tomes, to which Dark Forces at Work is a valuable addition. Covering both canonical and more obscure horror films, it assembles a host of strong essays, surely of interest to any horror scholar. -- Murray Leeder, University of Calgary\u003cbr\u003eCynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, who have made a name for themselves as co-editors of high-quality scholarly anthologies in the horror field, continue their hot streak with this latest volume, an examination of how American social trends and forces consistently inform representations of the monstrous in horror cinema and dramatize the great moral struggles and social issues of their time. While we are all now living through a particularly toxic political era, the essays in this anthology, through discussion of specific horror films, make the collective case that American civic life of the past several decades has been characterized by extremes. As Miller and Van Riper vividly illustrate in the pages of this book, fear of others and ourselves breathes potent life into the cinematic monsters of our imagination. -- Philip Simpson, Eastern Florida State College\u003cbr\u003eFor editors Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, \"every era gets the monster it needs,\" and what with the age of Trump, nationalism, and sociopolitical unrest, there's no time like the present. For the last century, we've turned to celluloid to help project our monsters, but according to Miller and Van Riper, we too often ground our understanding of monsters in theory and criticism rather than the films and cultural moments that birth them. Dark Forces at Work assembles essays that broaden this conversation by engaging with the social and ideological forces that guide fear and the monstrous in horror cinema. For Miller and Van Riper, \"[t]he forces that move, and move through, our personal and social worlds have, indeed, become dark,\" and to be sure readers will revel in the myriad dark worlds explored here. -- John Edgar Browning, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart I. National Identity: Haunting the Homeland \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter One: Ringing Home, Missed Calls, and Unbroken Land-lines: Domestication of, and Miscommunication in, K- and J- Horror \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRea Amit\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Two: Redefining the Heimat: Austrian Horror Cinema and the “Home” in a Global Age \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMichael Fuchs\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Three: Korean National Trauma and the Myth of Hypermasculinity in The Wailing (2016)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLuisa Koo\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Four: The Witch, the Wolf, and the Monster: Monstrous Bodies and Empire in Penny Dreadful\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAllyson Marino\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart II. Market Forces and Their Monsters\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Five: Recession Horror: The Haunted Housing Crisis in Contemporary Fiction \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLindsey Michael Banco\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Six: Classism and Horror in the Seventies: The Rural Dweller as a Monster\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eErika Tiburcio Moreno\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Seven: All Against All: Dystopia, Dark Forces, and Hobbesian Anarchy in the Purge Films\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA. Bowdoin Van Riper\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Eight: Motor City Gothic: White Youth and Economic Anxiety in It Follows and Don’t Breathe\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRussell Meeuf and Benjamin James\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart III. Ideology: You Just Have to Believe\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Nine: Gothic Neoliberalism in 1980s British Horror Cinema\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Juan Juvé, and Emiliano Aguilar\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Ten: Infringing on Cycles of Oppression: Artisanal Bricolage and Synthesis in Mumblegore\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrandon Niezgoda\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Eleven: Faith as Confinement: Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2004)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaria Gil Poisa\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart IV. History Never Dies\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Twelve: The Pursuit of Certainty: Legends and Local Knowledge in Candyman\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCynthia J. Miller\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Thirteen: “Nothing Is What It Seems”: Montage and Misread Histories in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThomas Prasch\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Fourteen: “Tens of Thousands of Men Died Here”: Desire, Revenge, and Memories of War in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJames J. Ward\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Fifteen: Peril, Imprisonment, and the Power of Place in Jordan Peele’s Get Out\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMichael C. Reiff\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart V. The Horrors of Place\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Sixteen: The Hovel Condemned: The Environmental Psychology of Place in Horror\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJacqueline Morrill\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Seventeen: Coming Home to Horror: Stephen King’s Derry and Castle Rock\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlissa Burger\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Eighteen: It Follows and the Uncertainties of the Middle Class\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKatherine Lizza\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChapter Nineteen: “We’re all in our private traps”: Reconfiguring Suburbia’s Protective Borders in Psycho (1960)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKevin Thomas McKenna\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lexington Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51040852771159,"sku":"9781498588577","price":31.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781498588577.jpg?v=1750948063","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/dark-forces-at-work-9781498588577","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}