We’re doing this because you were home: an analysis of elements of the slasher formula in The Strangers (2008)

This article verifies how Bryan Bertino’s 2008 film The Strangers articulates the slasher formula (CLOVER, 2015; DIKA, 1985) in order to tell a horror story that is in tune with the cultural context from the first decade of the 2000s in the United States. Drawing from analyses of the cultural impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, we point out evolutions in the slasher convention, including the dissidence from slasher films made to be deeply self-referential and campy. We also demonstrate how the recognizable structure is subverted to play with viewer expectations, potentializing its bleak and nihilistic ending, a narrative feature described by Pinedo (1996) as a post-modernist trend that breaks away from the classical horror structure.

Legitimizing the Shrinking of Democratic Space in Western Liberal Democracies

This paper aims at making a synthesis of the main discursive schemes at work across Western liberal democracies that have sought to legitimize the introduction of liberty-restricting counter-terrorism policies since the September 11th attacks. Redefinition of the nature of threat, of the attackers’ key features and of endangered values has gone along with the conceptual reversal of the definition of democracy and freedom as political value. The normalization of the ensuing illiberal forms of governance arguably suggests that the shrinking of post-war democratic achievement uncovers above all liberal democracy’s inherent political vulnerability.

The role of interplate locking on the seismic reactivation of upper plate faults on the subduction margin of northern Chile

Quaternary deformation in the northern Chile forearc is controlled by trench parallel shortening along reactivated Mesozoic faults. Dextral strikes-slip is expressed in NW–SE striking faults of the Atacama Fault System, and reverse displacement dominates in E–W faults. This deformation results of the convergence in a concave-seaward continental margin. On September 11th, 2020, a Mw 6.3 earthquake and its subsequent aftershocks took place in the coastal region of northern Chile, revealing the reactivation of the deepest segment of a WNW–ESE striking upper plate fault. The reactivation of this fault occurred after the Mw 8.1 Iquique earthquake, and it seems to be connected to a N–S interplate locking segmentation of the plate margin, which is clearly shown by the locking pattern before the Iquique earthquake. This poses the question of how heterogeneous locking influences upper plate seismicity and how it relates to trench-parallel shortening.

Either unfreedom or death? A genealogy of the “freedom or survival” discourse

This paper aims at highlighting the genealogy of what we may arguably consider as the ongoing shrinking of post-war democratic achievement in Western liberal democracies. In focusing on the 21st century, it analyzes the way threat, freedom and democracy have been redefined in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in order to legitimize liberty-restricting rules, and seeks to show how this radical reframing of liberal democracy has been further enhanced during the management of the pandemic crisis as part of a constantly evolving political blackmail to citizens confronted with the dilemma “freedom or survival”.

The Letter

This chapter studies the most consequential recent mention of the houri, the purported letter of September 11th hijacker Mohamed Atta, and shows that media fascination with the houri is related to American reactions to the events of September 11th. Americans used the letter’s promise of the heavenly virgins of paradise to comment on Islam and Muslim societies. The chapter also accounts for how houris became prominent in news media by focusing on the white grape theory, which argues that Muslims do not have the scriptural freedom to interpret religious texts freely. Finally, the chapter surveys references to the houri on the Internet and in contemporary literature.

The Beauty of the Houri

The fascination with the houri, the pure female of Islamic paradise, began long before September 11, 2001. The Beauty of the Houri demonstrates how the ambiguous reward of the houri, mentioned in the Qurʾan and developed in Islamic theological writings, has gained a distinctive place in English and French literature from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century and in digital material in the twenty-first century. The houri had multiple functions in Islamic texts that ranged from caretaker to pure companion to entertainment. French, English, and American writers used the houri to critique Islam and Muslim societies while also adopting the houri as a model of feminine beauty. Unlike earlier texts that presented different forms of the houri or universalized the houri for all women, writings about the houri after September 11th offer contradictory messages about Islam. In the twenty-first century, the image of the houri symbolizes a reward for violence and the possibility of gender parity. As a cosmic figure that inspires enduring questions about the promise of paradise and the idealized feminine form, the houri has a singular past and potential for future interpretation.