The Undead Child In Popular Culture

Download or read book The Undead Child in Popular Culture written by Craig Martin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-07 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of representations of children and childhood, a global team of authors explores the theme of undeadness as it applies to cultural constructions of the child. Moving beyond conventional depictions of the undead in popular culture as living dead monsters of horror and mad science that transgress the borders between life and death, rejuvenation, and decay, the authors present undeadness as a broader concept that explores how people, objects, customs, and ideas deemed lost or consigned to the past might endure in the present. The chapters examine nostalgic texts that explore past incarnations of childhood, mementos of childhood, zombie children, spectral children, images and artefacts of deceased children, as well as states of arrested development and the inability or refusal to embrace adulthood. Expanding undeadness beyond the realm of horror and extending its meaning conceptually, while acknowledging its roots in the genre, the book explores attempts at countering the transitory nature of childhoods. This unique and insightful volume will interest scholars and students working on popular culture and cultural studies, media studies, film and television studies, childhood studies, gender studies, and philosophy.

Download or read book How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture written by Kyle William Bishop and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early 2000s, popular culture has experienced a "Zombie Renaissance," beginning in film and expanding into books, television, video games, theatre productions, phone apps, collectibles and toys. Zombies have become allegorical figures embodying cultural anxieties, but they also serve as models for concepts in economics, political theory, neuroscience, psychology, computer science and astronomy. They are powerful, multifarious metaphors representing fears of contagion and doom but also isolation and abandonment, as well as troubling aspects of human cruelty, public spectacle and abusive relationships. This critical examination of the 21st-century zombie phenomenon explores how and why the public imagination has been overrun by the undead horde.

Download or read book Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King written by Debbie Olson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and timely collection examines childhood and the child character throughout Stephen King’s works, from his early novels and short stories, through film adaptations, to his most recent publications. King’s use of child characters within the framework of horror (or of horrific childhood) raises questions about adult expectations of children, childhood, the American family, child agency, and the nature of fear and terror for (or by) children. The ways in which King presents, complicates, challenges, or terrorizes children and notions of childhood provide a unique lens through which to examine American culture, including both adult and social anxieties about children and childhood across the decades of King’s works.

Download or read book The 'Evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture written by Karen J. Renner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'evil child' has infiltrated the cultural imagination, taking on prominent roles in popular films, television shows and literature. This collection of essays from a global range of scholars examines a fascinating array of evil children and the cultural work that they perform, drawing upon sociohistorical, cinematic, and psychological approaches. The chapters explore a wide range of characters including Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter series, the possessed Regan in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, the monstrous Ben in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, the hostile fetuses of Rosemary’s Baby and Alien, and even the tiny terrors featured in the reality television series Supernanny. Contributors also analyse various themes and issues within film, literature and popular culture including ethics, representations of evil and critiques of society. This book was originally published as two special issues of Literature Interpretation Theory.

Download or read book The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children written by Simon Bacon and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children raises important questions at the heart of society and culture, and through an interdisciplinary, trans-cultural analysis presents important findings on socio-cultural representations and embodiments of the child and childhood. At the start of the 21st, new anxieties constellate around the child and childhood, while older concerns have re-emerged, mutated, and grown stronger. But as historical analysis shows, they have been ever-present concerns. This innovative and interdisciplinary collection of essays considers examples of monstrous children since the 16th century to the present, spanning real-life and popular culture, to exhibit the manifestation of the Western cultural anxiety around the problematic, anomalous child as naughty, dangerous, or just plain evil. The book takes an inter- and multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, film, and literature, to study the role of the child and childhood within contemporary Western culture and to see the historic ways in which each discipline intersects and influences the other.

Download or read book Vampire Films Around the World written by James Aubrey and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vampires are arguably the most popular and most paradoxical of gothic monsters: life draining yet passionate, feared yet fascinating, dead yet immortal. Vampire content produces exquisitely suspenseful stories that, combined with motion picture filmmaking, reveal much about the cultures that enable vampire film production and the audiences they attract. This collection of essays is generously illustrated and ranges across sixteen cultures on five continents, including the films Let the Right One In, What We Do in the Shadows, Cronos, and We Are the Night, among many others. Distinctly different kinds of European vampires have originated in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Serbia. North American vampires are represented by films from Mexico, Canada, and the USA. Middle Eastern locations include Tangier, Morocco, and a fictional city in Iran. South Asia has produced Bollywood vampire films, and east Asian vampires are represented by films from Korea, China, and Japan. Some of the most recent vampire movies have come from Australia and New Zealand. These essays also look at vampire films through lenses of gender, post-colonialism, camp, and otherness as well as the evolution of the vampiric character in cinema worldwide, together constituting a mosaic of the cinematic undead.

Download or read book Growing Up with Vampires written by Simon Bacon and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vampire narratives are generally thought of as adult or young adult fare, yet there is a long history of their appearance in books, film and other media meant for children. They emerge as expressions of anxiety about change and growing up but sometimes turn out to be new best friends who highlight the beauty of difference and individuality. This collection of new essays examines the history of vampires in 20th and 21st century Western popular media marketed to preteens and explores their significance and symbolism.