Monstrous Beings of Media Cultures examines the monsters and sinister creatures that spawn from folk horror, Gothic fiction, and from various sectors of media cultures. The collection illuminates how folk monsters form across different art and media traditions, and interrogates the 21C revitalization of “folk” as both a cultural formation and aesthetic mode. The essays explore how combinations of vernacular and institutional creative processes shape the folkloric and/or folkoresque attributes of monstrous beings, their popularity, and the contexts in which they are received.
While it focuses on 21C permutations of folk monstrosity, the collection is transhistorical in approach, featuring chapters that focus on contemporary folk monsters, historical antecedents, and the pre-C21st art and media traditions that shaped enduring monstrous beings. The collection also illuminates how folk monsters and folk “horror” travel across cultures, media, and time periods, and how iconic monsters are tethered to yet repeatedly become unanchored from material and regional contexts.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Folk Monsters and Monstrous Media
- The Im/materialties, Modalities, and Regionalities of Being(s) Monstrous
- Allison Craven and Jessica Balanzategui
- 1 The Momo Challenge as Urban Legend
- Child and Adult Digital Cultures and the Global Mediated Unconscious
- 2 “Every Imaginable Invention of the Devil”
- Summoning the Monstrous in Eurocentric Conceptions of Voodoo
- 3 The Forest and the Trees
- The “Woods” as Intersection between Documentary, Fairy Tale, and Internet Legend in Beware the Slenderman
- 4 Mark Duplass as Mumblegore Serial Killer
- Fictional Vernacular Filmmaking in the Creep Series
- 5 Monsters in the Forest
- “Little Red Riding Hood” Crimes and Ecologies of the Real and Fantastic
- Cristina Bacchilega and Pauline Greenhill
- 6 A Mother’s Milk
- Motherhood, Trauma, and Monstrous Children in Folk Horror
- 7 Documenting the Unheard
- The Poetics of Listening and Empathy in The Family
- 8 Reimagining the Pontianak Myth in Malaysian Folk Horror
- Flexible Tradition, Cinema, and Cultural Memory
- 9 An Uncommon Ancestor
- Monstrous Emanations and Australian Tales of the Bunyip
- 10 The Folk Horror “Feeling”
- Monstrous Modalities and the Critical Occult
- Jessica Balanzategui and Allison Craven
- Works Cited
- Mediagraphy
- Index
- List of Figures
- 1. The image of “Momo” that went viral 2018–19.
- 2. Duszejko in her “Big Bad Wolf” suit and her neighbour Matoga in “Red” drag in Pokot. Still from SPOOR/POKOT directed by Agnieszka Holland. © Studio Filmowe Tor/Robert Palka.
- 3. Promotional poster/DVD cover for Pokot. Next-Film.
- 4. Photograph of the sect children seen in the film and used as the theatrical poster. Public Domain.
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