Jews, Blood, and Post-Zionist TV: The Mizrahi as Vampire in Juda

The success of the Israeli vampire–crime–comedy series Juda is not at all trivial, to say the least. It dared to adopt a controversial subgenre that is associated with antisemitism and blood libels. Moreover, it deals with social traumas and the ethnic conflict between the Zionist Ashkenazi hegemony and the Mizrahi sector, which accuses the hegemony of oppression and discrimination. Juda expresses a critical agenda: a dissolution of Zionist values as the only solution and chance for redemption, both for the hero and for society. Thus, despite emerging at a time when the horror genre had experienced a late blooming on Israeli screens, its appearance is connected to two other central processes in contemporary Israeli film and television: the incorporation of religion and the ascendancy of the Mizrahi hero. Juda overcomes the inherent problem in the image of the Jewish vampire—first by creating a distinction between a Jewish vampire and a gentile vampire, and second by having a protagonist who is a Mizrahi Jew.

„Powiastki cmentarne” Bolesława Prusa — literatura grozy na miarę drugiej połowy XIX wieku?

The article addresses the problem of identifying and defining the functions of selected horror genre traits in Bolesław Prus’ story Powiastki cmentarne. In this short narrative form, referring subtly to Gothic style, not only the basic intention of raising the dread in the recipient, but also the need to address metaphysical issues are noticeable, which are usually excluded from reflection on the positivistic literature. Particular attention in this work is given to the literary genre used by the writer, which is a hybrid of a philosophical fiction with a Gothic one, and the influence this form has on the final tone of the work.

SPECIFICITY OF TRANSLATION OF LINGUOSTYLISTIC MEANS OF CREATING NARRATIVE SUSPENSE IN ENGLISH HORROR LITERATURE

The scientific paper is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the specifics of the translation of linguo-stylistic features of creating narrative tension in the English-language horror literature. Features of creating narrative tension in the horror literature is one of the relevant topics for linguistic research, as horror literature is becoming increasingly popular. The aim of the article is to identify and analyze the specifics of the translation of linguo-stylistic features of creation of narrative tension in the English-language horror literature. Using the novel “It” by American writer of the genre “horror” Stephen King and its Ukrainian translation as the example, the specifics of translation of linguo-stylistic features of creating narrative tension at various levels of language in translating English horror literature into modern Ukrainian literary language were also analyzed and characterized. The study revealed a wide range of linguo-stylistic features at different language levels that help create narrative tension in the text of the horror genre, which contributes to the emergence of readers' interest in the narrative and the emergence of a range of emotions. The research considers examples of the use of linguo-stylistic features of creating narrative tension in the work of the horror genre and analyzes the specifics of their translation into Ukrainian. Keywords: narrative tension; specific of translation of the literature of horror; linguistic-stylistic features of creation of the tension; specificity of translation of linguistic-stylistic features; literature of horror; linguistic-stylistic features.

Horror and the Holocaust: ‘Prestige Horror’ and Frank Pierson’s Conspiracy (2001)

In an article published in 2004, Picart and Frank examined the use of stylistic and thematic elements Holocaust cinema can borrow from the horror film. Their argument at the time was constrained by the availability and their choice of primary texts, but the recent emergence of what has been called ‘prestige horror’ invites viewers to revisit their critical arguments and positions. Since ‘prestige horror’s’ aesthetic strategies tend to challenge conventional definitions of the horror genre, revisiting Picart and Frank’s argument proves most productive in the context of a Holocaust film, Frank Pierson’s Conspiracy (2001), which, in turn, operates in creative dissonance with some of the conventions of Holocaust cinema.

Los sueños del castillo: Peuma mestizo y sonoridades rebeldes para una infancia recluida

This work analyzes the documentary Los sueños del castillo (2018) by Chilean filmmaker René Ballesteros, which depicts the daily life of a group of children confined in a state institution for having committed crimes. The documentary focuses on the stories about their dreams that the youths tell each other and the filming crew. It is important that this detention center is located in a Mapuche territory, given the relevance this culture gives to dreams (peuma). Taking Kathryn Bond Stockton’s notion of queer childhood as any defiance to normativity, we articulate a crucial relationship between institutional confinement as punishment for transgression, the interest in dream activity, the horror genre as the aesthetic chosen by the director, and the relevance given to sound throughout the film. --- El presente trabajo analiza el documental Los sueños del castillo (2018) del realizador chileno René Ballesteros, que retrata la vida de un grupo de niños en reclusión en una institución estatal por haber cometido delitos. El documental se centra en los relatos de los sueños que los jóvenes reclusos se narran unos a otros y al equipo realizador. Es importante para la película que el centro de detención esté situado en territorio mapuche, dada la relevancia que esa cultura da a los sueños (peuma). A partir de la noción de infancia queer como desafío de la normatividad, propuesta por Kathryn Bond Stockton, articulamos una relación entre la detención institucional como disciplinamiento de esa transgresión y la perspectiva del documental que trastoca esa coerción a partir del interés por la vida onírica, la elección del género del terror como opción estética en el documental y la relevancia dada en la película a la dimensión sonora.

The Ghost in the Image

The Ghost in the Image offers a new take on the place that supernatural phenomena occupy in everyday life by examining the horror genre in fiction, documentary, and participative modes. The book covers a variety of media: spirit photography, ghost-hunting reality shows, documentary and fiction films based on the Amityville and Enfield hauntings, found-footage horror movies, experiential cinema, survival games, and creepypasta. These works transform our interest in ghosts into an interactive form of entertainment. Through a transmedial approach to horror, this book investigates our expectations regarding the ability of photography and video to work as evidence. A historical examination of technology’s role in at once showing and forging truths invites questions about our investment in its powers, which is pertinent to the so-called post-fact scenario. Behind our obsession with documenting everyday life lies the hope that our cameras will reveal something extraordinary. The obsessive search for ghosts in the image, however, shows that the desire to find them is matched by the pleasure of calling out a hoax.

Types and Functions of Repetition in the Works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Introduction. Issues of the author’s writing style, means and methods of constructing an individual author’s artistic picture of the world have always been in the focus of attention of researchers. The object of this paper is H. P. Lovecraft’s stories, which are part of horror literature. The subject of the paper is repetition, which plays a special role in a literary text as a means of artistic expression. Conducting research is relevant for several reasons, like interest in the consideration of the functional aspects of the literary text as a whole, or to H. P. Lovecraft’s works in particular, as the horror genre of literature is one of the most popular in modern society. The purpose of this study is to identify the most productive types of repetitions and their pragmatic functions in the H. P. Lovecraft’s stories.Methodology and sources. General methods of this research are functional analysis of repetitions, supplemented by the quantitative method. Repetitions used in the stories are separated and analyzed based on their following functions: pragmatic focus, emotivity and rhythmization. The material of the study was the following works of the author: “Dagon”, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep’”, “The Music of Erich Zann”, “The Other Gods”, “The Hound”, “The Rats in the Walls”, “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Descendant”, “The Dunwich Horror”.Results and discussion. Repetition is a significant element of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing style. In the analyzed works, repetitions are presented in various types: simple verbatim repetitions (contact and remote), anadiplosis, epanalepsis, synonymous, syntactic (lexical and syntactic parallelism). Lexico-semantic analysis of repetitions showed that the most frequent units in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are such lexemes as “old” (125), “night” (95), “great” (85), “strange” (62), “gods” (48), “horror” (48). Their use can be attributed to the author’s desire to create a sense of "cosmic fear", to highlight the themes of ancient and hidden evil with “divine” forces. Functional analysis has shown that repetitions are most often used to highlight the most important elements of the text (pragmatic focus), convey the emotional states of the characters, create an appropriate emotional atmosphere (horror, fear), as well as rhythmic organization and stylistic imitation of religious discourse.Conclusion. Repetition as a stylistic figure is an important technique of pragmatic focusing and a significant element of the H.P. Lovecraft’s writing style, emerging in various structural variations and performing many functions.

Spanish Civil War Horror and Regional Trauma

This article unpacks the cultural work that Juan Carlos Medina’s Insensibles, released in English as Painless, carries out in relation to Spain’s modern history and argues that the film’s painless children are an allegory of the country’s postdictatorship generations. The rendering of fascism as monstrous is less interesting than the connection of insensitivity to the Pacto del Olvido (Pact of Forgetting) and its suppression of painful memory. The fact that the children speak Catalan is a significant overlooked aspect, because Catalonia was the last region to succumb to Nationalist military forces during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and is known for its independentist fervor. A regionalist reading of the film does not simply connect the present and the past; it proposes that the children of the war mediate Spain’s current troubled relationship with historical trauma and act as an artistic response to centralist ideas of a unified and stable nation-state. Such a rethinking demonstrates that the horror genre continues to offer a language of anxiety capable of negotiating and contributing to debates around the importance of national accountability, war reparations, and the condemnation of genocide.​

“I’m Nervous That Watching Horror Makes Me Look Stupid”

The horror genre has traditionally struggled with an image problem, with horror films being seen as unintelligent, aesthetically uninteresting, and perhaps even morally problematic. This genre stigma has historically been extended to horror fans, who may worry about a lack of cultural capital. Horror movies rarely receive prestigious critical accolades, and the academic study of horror only emerged toward the end of the twentieth century. In recent years, an emergence of ambitious and genre convention-challenging horror movies has prompted some critics to talk about a horror renaissance or even the birth of “post-horror” or “elevated horror.” However, horror films have always had the capacity for engaging with serious themes in an artistic way, and there is often a discrepancy between critics’ evaluations of horror films and audiences’ evaluations. The genre stigma seems to be abating, but some horror fans may still worry about looking stupid—especially if they startle easily.