Montréal Monstrum Society/Société Monstrum de Montréal
Winter 2021 Classes
Pandemics, Possessions, and Other Monstrous Alterities:
Global Horror at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Class
I'll begin by providing some context about possession horror films in general, including how moral panics surrounding film and related media over the last half century have often presented parallels to the phenomenon of occult spirit possession, parallels that many of the most powerful films in this mode have incisively explored and exploited. I’ll then focus more specifically on how two recent Canadian horror films formally and narratively frame possession while discussing their relationship with earlier films whose influences they reflect. The first, Justin Dyck's Anything For Jackson (2020), taps into a “Satanic Panic” supernatural vein, albeit with a dose of irony. The second, Brandon Cronenberg's Possessor (2020), takes a grimly speculative approach to exploring possession in a cinematic narrative that marries revenge tragedy with techno-body horror in the vein of Videodrome (1983) or Tetsuo The Iron-Man (1989.)
22 March: “Pandemics, Politics, Horror” AALYA AHMAD
29 March: “The Romani Other in Horror Film” ALANA CONWAY and MURRAY LEEDER