scholarly journals Facing the Monsters: Otherness in H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and Hellboy

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
David McConeghy
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Pacific Rim ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Rudolf Otto

What happens when we imagine the unimaginable? This article compares recent films inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos with that author’s original early 20th century pulp horror stories. In Guillermo del Toro’s films Pacific Rim and Hellboy, monsters that would have been obscured to protect Lovecraft’s readers are now fully revealed for Hollywood audiences. Using the period-appropriate theories of Rudolf Otto on the numinous and Sigmund Freud on the uncanny, that share Lovecraft’s troubled history with racist othering, I show how modern adaptations of Lovecraft’s work invert central features of the mythos in order to turn tragedies into triumphs. The genres of Science Fiction and Horror have deep commitments to the theme of otherness, but in Lovecraft’s works otherness is insurmountable. Today, Hollywood borrows the tropes of Lovecraftian horror but relies on bridging the gap between humanity and its monstrous others to reveal a higher humanity forged through difference and diversity. This suggests that otherness in modern science fiction is a means of reconciliation, a way for the monsters to be defeated rather than the source of terror as they were in Lovecraft’s stories.

scholarly journals THE UNCANNY: DEVELOPMENT AND PERSPECTIVES ON THE FUTURE

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Mrówczyńska
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Future Perspectives ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Future ◽  
Definition Of

In 1919 Sigmund Freud raised the interest in the uncanny by claiming in his essay "Das Unheimliche" that something can be familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Since the emergence of the concept in the 20th century, many scholars have presented their own definition of the uncanny. The concept originates from the German unheimlich but the meaning reaches far beyond its dictionary definition. As Masschelein suggests, the word itself "is untranslatable qua form and content" (Masschelein 2011, 7) and as long as the uncanny cannot be understood literally, the ambiguity of the term can lead to a multitude of interpretations. The aim of this paper is to explore how the perception of the uncanny has been changing through the years in connection with the Freudian definition. The paper offers an overview of various interpretations of the concept starting from 1906 until today. The juxtaposition of the most significant views on the uncanny shows how the concept has gradually formed a basis for various fields of study such as literature and art. The paper presents future perspectives of the uncanny where it no longer refers only to the motif of the double or supernatural elements but it also tackles the problems of body transformations and politics.

scholarly journals Repression and Realism in Postwar  American Literature 1945-1955

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Erin Mercer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
Cultural Conformity

<p>This thesis focuses on the uncanny in literature produced in America during the first decade following World War II. The period between 1945 and 1955 was marked by repressive socio-political forces such as McCarthyism and cultural conformity which complicated the representation of what Philip Roth refers to as "demonic reality." I explore the ways in which the avoidance and minimisation of the unpleasant created a highly circumscribed version of postwar American life while also generating a sense of objectless anxiety. According to the theories of Sigmund Freud, repression inevitably stages a return registered as the "uncanny." Animism, magic, the omnipotence of thoughts, the castration complex, death, the double, madness, involuntary repetition compulsion, live burial and haunting are all deemed capable of provoking a particular anxiety connected to what lies beneath the surface of accepted reality. Although it is common to argue that fantasy genres such as science fiction and gothic represent the return of what is repressed, this thesis explores several realist novels displaying uncanny characteristics. The realist novels included here are uncanny not only because they depict weird automaton-like characters, haunting, and castration anxieties, thus exhibiting a conscious use of Freudian theory, but because the texts themselves act as the return of the repressed. Norman Mailer referred to this unsettling phenomenon when he described writing as the "spooky" art; spooky because although a writer might sit down to consciously write a particular story, another unwilled story might very well appear.</p>

Ideology and Futurology in Early 20th-Century Britain: Wells, Haldane, Bernal, and Their Critics

2021 ◽  
pp. 38-56
Author(s):  
Peter J. Bowler
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Space Travel ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Collective Mentality

This chapter studies the response of rationalist writers to the claims of theologians arguing that their ideology lacked any sense of a wider purpose to human life. It is argued that to replace the spiritual dimension of religion, authors such as H. G. Wells, J. B. S. Haldane, and J. D. Bernal appealed to the possibility that the human race could in future develop a collective mentality and spread this awareness throughout the cosmos by space travel. Their ideas thus anticipated themes developed by later science-fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke in his 2001: A Space Odyssey.

scholarly journals Real and Semi-Real – an Architectural Backstory for Flusser’s Dual Scientific Fictions

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
William Hanff
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
The Fantastic

Vilém Flusser’s approaches to epistemology and science fiction are explored in connection with the fictionalism of Hans Vaihinger and other late 19th and early 20th century philosophies, as well as using an architectural metaphor of scaffolding and blueprints. From his 1980 essay “Science Fiction” Flusser’s two approaches to science fictions are labeled as 1) a ‘falsification strategy’ and 2) an ‘epistemology of improbability.’ These are further explored as metaphors for architecture and building based on ideas from his “Wittgenstein’s Architecture” in The Shape of Things: a Philosophy of Design and compared and contrasted with visual metaphors of the fantastic in the paper architecture called The Obscure Cities series by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. Further reinforcing the connection between Flusser’s and Vaihinger’s philosophies, semi-fictions and real fictions are envisioned as a type of new media architecture.

Zinātniskā fantastika kā ideoloģiskais ierocis

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Bārbala Simsone
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Safe Distance ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Present World ◽  
Insight Into

Since one of the main characteristics of the science fiction genre is the modelling of future societies, often from the safe distance perspective drawing quite visible parallels with those of the present world, the discussion about political and social topics has been an integral part of the genre since the beginnings. Moreover, since science fiction, especially regarding the subgenre of utopia, allegorically projects a particular ideology in an imaginary world, certain propaganda was also frequent compound in the genre works. These factors were largely responsible for the fact that some political regimes, especially those of the 20th century, made direct and indirect use of science fiction as a powerful tool of ideological propaganda that helped to turn the thinking of readers, especially young people, in the direction favoured by the regime. Still, it must also be remembered that the presence of political ideas in the science fiction works as well as interpretation of these works has always been quite a complicated matter, and science fiction authors frequently found ways to circumnavigate the limitations set by censorship and include messages unflattering to the regime in their works. The paper provides an insight into the aspects of relationship between science fiction and ideology in contemporary literary theory, turns a particular attention to the practical aspects of these relationships as they formed during the 20th century in the literary space of Soviet regime – discussing original works as well as translations and literary criticism; finally, the paper outlines some topical ideological directions visible in modern science fiction works.

Asians and Asian Americans in Early Science Fiction

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
Terrestrial Life ◽  
The Invisible

This essay considers the expressive and figurative dynamics of Asians in science fiction in the early 20th century. Racial sentiment and policy in the era saw and defined Asians as “ineligible aliens” to exclude from immigration and citizenship. Asian figures expressed these dynamics in science fiction, adapting Orientalist tropes and Yellow Peril themes to the imperatives of the emergent genre. The invisible menace of villainous masterminds like Fu Manchu from crime and detective fiction were refigured as visible science fiction foes whose defeat redeemed the power and potential of science from its degenerate and dehumanizing application. Asian racial tropes aligned particularly with science fiction’s concern about extra-terrestrial life forms. While the term “alien” was not used in the period for such creatures, its later prominence expressed valences and associations, particularly with “invasion,” that Asians originally represented in the genre.

Grassic Gibbon, Lewis (1901–1935)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian McAllister
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Socialist Politics ◽  
Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Lewis Grassic Gibbon, a pseudonym for James Leslie Mitchell, was a key writer of the early 20th-century Scottish Renaissance, most famous for his trilogy A Scots Quair—Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933), and Grey Granite (1934). While the majority of critical attention has focused on this trilogy, Mitchell published a wide body of work, ranging from historical fiction to archaeological adventure to science fiction. His work often reflects a leftist, anarcho-socialist politics and a diffusionist worldview, in which modern civilization progressively distances humanity from a primitive, utopian state of being. Mitchell published seventeen books, fifteen between 1931 and 1934, before dying at the age of thirty-four.

scholarly journals Repression and Realism in Postwar  American Literature 1945-1955

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Erin Mercer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
Cultural Conformity

<p>This thesis focuses on the uncanny in literature produced in America during the first decade following World War II. The period between 1945 and 1955 was marked by repressive socio-political forces such as McCarthyism and cultural conformity which complicated the representation of what Philip Roth refers to as "demonic reality." I explore the ways in which the avoidance and minimisation of the unpleasant created a highly circumscribed version of postwar American life while also generating a sense of objectless anxiety. According to the theories of Sigmund Freud, repression inevitably stages a return registered as the "uncanny." Animism, magic, the omnipotence of thoughts, the castration complex, death, the double, madness, involuntary repetition compulsion, live burial and haunting are all deemed capable of provoking a particular anxiety connected to what lies beneath the surface of accepted reality. Although it is common to argue that fantasy genres such as science fiction and gothic represent the return of what is repressed, this thesis explores several realist novels displaying uncanny characteristics. The realist novels included here are uncanny not only because they depict weird automaton-like characters, haunting, and castration anxieties, thus exhibiting a conscious use of Freudian theory, but because the texts themselves act as the return of the repressed. Norman Mailer referred to this unsettling phenomenon when he described writing as the "spooky" art; spooky because although a writer might sit down to consciously write a particular story, another unwilled story might very well appear.</p>

scholarly journals Real and Semi-Real – an Architectural Backstory for Flusser’s Dual Scientific Fictions

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
William Hanff
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
The Fantastic

Vilém Flusser’s approaches to epistemology and science fiction are explored in connection with the fictionalism of Hans Vaihinger and other late 19th and early 20th century philosophies, as well as using an architectural metaphor of scaffolding and blueprints. From his 1980 essay “Science Fiction” Flusser’s two approaches to science fictions are labeled as 1) a ‘falsification strategy’ and 2) an ‘epistemology of improbability.’ These are further explored as metaphors for architecture and building based on ideas from his “Wittgenstein’s Architecture” in The Shape of Things: a Philosophy of Design and compared and contrasted with visual metaphors of the fantastic in the paper architecture called The Obscure Cities series by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. Further reinforcing the connection between Flusser’s and Vaihinger’s philosophies, semi-fictions and real fictions are envisioned as a type of new media architecture.

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