I have another review on-line for the Journal of Folklore Research. This time it's Marina Warner's Monsters of our Own Making: The Peculiar Pleasures of Fear (formerly No Go the Boogeyman). A sumptuous little book with a lot of fun and thoughtfulness.
4 comments:
Wow...you nitpicked about the Banana Splits in a scholarly type review. That's freaking awesome.
Good article! Thanks for posting it.
Question: Do you think that old horrors can still be scary without the mask change?
Elena: If you're gonna nitpick, what better to pick nits from but the Banana Splits? La la la, la la la la, la la la, la la la la.
Cranky: Yes, I think they can. Sometimes an icon has to lay low to recharge culturally, then returns as vibrant as ever, but with a new resonance. Cycles repeat; think how the emergence of AIDS reinvigorated the vampire archetype. The zombie is still hanging on as a particularly potent image at the moment -- who can guess what will be next? It all wells up from our collective unconscious -- maybe the shapeshifter will be next. Who can say?
Sigh. The Dickies. So young.
Post a Comment