Cozette’s Corner, LMST 345 Fall 2020

 So I'd heard tons of good things about this movie before watching, and I'm glad to say that it lived up to the hype, despite me not going in blind. Sigourney Weaver making an appearance at the last minute is a really sweet cherry on top too, especially since it seemed like they had every monstrous nightmare under the sun except the xenomorph, likely due to copyright issues. But Cabin in the Woods  is an amazing love letter to the horror genre.  I was actually really pleased that we start the movie with the people running the ritual instead of the group they sacrifice, as it at first gives us a mystery of 'oh who are these people and how are they going to be involved with the college kids?' that morphs into genuine interest in both groups, as we see both of them as people in high stakes situations in conflict, rather than clear-cut villains and victims despite that being exactly their respective, technical roles. Honestly, I was also reminded a lot of the SCP Foundation

 Not sure what to make of the information that film makers in the porn industry were employed to keep audience attention during the Godzilla  movie, but this franchise is so old, its bound to have a colored history. Also interesting is that Godzilla  went form an open wound of post-war trauma to a symbol of 'good' change. He's like a manifestation of Japan's current mood, a sort of barometer of cultural opinions for a culture that is very reserved and recalcitrant in public. There was one story in Kwaiden  actually that kind of captures the catharsis-by-proxy aspect of Godzilla , the story with the bell and the mirror. You put all your thoughts, feelings, and intent onto a scapegoat for the actual thing and come away feeling better for it. As far as emotional outlets go, Godzilla  is pretty world-famous one.

 This reminded me a lot of the European Colored Fairy Books , or basically the Brothers Grimm  fairy tale compendium. Which is fitting, since this is basically the same analogous process. Its really fascinating from an anthropological perspective how cultures from entirely opposite sides of the planet tell stories with similar moral tales, with supernatural forces that don't bother explaining themselves. And the majority of these are moral tales - Yuki-Onna and O-Sanna 's stories are basically about keeping your promises, though they give different reasons for needing to do so. Which makes sense, since people need to modify behavior for given context. Different stories providing a nuanced look into a part of the culture is really cool. What's interesting is that these stories don't all necessarily inspire fear. They don't incite recipients into moral behavior through terror like modern ghost stories do, but they do all contain some kernel of a lesson. But then agai

 I was expecting this to be more of a social intrigue, Sherlock-Holmes-and-Watson type book than the near bodice ripper it actually was, but Soulless  was still such a fun read, and Alexia a great leading character. Alexia utilizing her hat/hair pins as weapons is a great nod to the actual Hat-Pin-Panic that ended up getting the fashion banned, because women  did  use them for self defense. Don't think people took it so far as to modify a parasol with buckshot for extra safety, however. Carriger definitely captured the atmosphere of Victorian England - a time of both great conservatism and great progress. I feel like the idea of steampunk comes from that sort of dichotomy in Victorian culture, actually, and I wish Carriger had given us more world building and less (or at least, less prominent) romance.  Alexia is in a great place to explore all aspects of this alternate version of Victorian London society, and I wonder if the next book in the series will follow through on that. Lik

 This movie is basically a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula , just under a different name. That, is more than I can say for the 1931  Frankenstein  movie. The acting is at times melodramatic and silly, and the film lacks a good set-up and pay-off system that takes Orlok for 'unnerving and weird ' to 'horrifying and evil,' but the last scene, where he's trying to hypnotize Ellen and the camera cuts between her fighting his control and him staring out the window are genuinely scary. And then the sun rises and he just, dies without the characters being actually responsible. Otherwise, my problem with Nosferatu  are the same that I had with Dracula ; it drags on through the plot at a glacial pace as all the information neatly falls into place. In Dracula  though, Mina's investigative compiling of information that is the novel itself makes that interesting. On the topic of Mina, Nosferatu  completely ruined all that Mina does for the story of Dracula

This book is almost like the antithesis of gothic literature while still containing many of the beats there of. It's kind of strange - the time period is ambiguous but obviously antiquated, there is a great social change happening behind the scenes of the otherwise placid Lud-in-the-Mist, the supernatural is for all intents and purposes kicking in the door of the Ludites' 'pious' culture, and there is an extreme emphasis on the splendor of the natural world. However, while these are typical beats indicative of gothic literature, they are played in the exact opposite way. Nature is glorious and golden and even the suspicious darkness of night is portrayed as mischievous and playful; the people of Lud learn to understand and then embrace the supernatural fairy fruit rather than spurn it; and the past is the benefit of the present and future, and not a deadweight preventing progress. And that's just the framing for allegorical tale within Lud-in-the-Mist . The characte

 Literally from the opening credits we get a hint of the gothic interest - a still image of eyes in the dark, rotating around the screen, like a visual representation of our instinctive fear of what lurks in the dark. Also aligned with gothic interests is the inclusion of several women attending what is supposed to be a high level medical course, and how Elizabeth now adopts something of an active role in the beginning of the film in order to, understandably, abridge the narrative. This movie's depiction of the monster's situation is vastly  different to the point of it probably being worse. The relationship between Victor an the Creation in the book is that of God and humans, in as much that God abandons his creations to figure things out on their own. The movie just literally has the Creation being punished just for being created, despite Victor being proud of creating it just moments before, until he finds out he used a criminal brain instead of the average-man brain. Withou

 His opening is correct: 'Gothic' is definitely a difficult topic to pin down. But that, to me, is part of what makes it so enticing a genre. It's nebulous, flexible, and something adaptable to the modern sense. The idea of the double or doppelgänger being prominent in Gothic literature sort of tickles me, because the genre itself is  the 'evil twin' of our senses. To me, that's because Gothic is sort of the 'original'  Black Mirror . It's a reflection of us at our most exposed and natural, reacting to things unknown with no immediate explanation. In the Romantic, Gothic literature, we are the trespasser, the victim, and the witness all at once, because we have all at one point been one of those things, and the blatant handling of such mundane things as feelings juxtaposed with the extraordinary supernatural events allows us the ability better perceive both. To be simultaneously repulsed and entranced seems to be the staple of Gothic literature, with

Oh I really liked this one. Also, I read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms  back to back with Sirens of Titan , so the intersection of religion and culture and all it’s tragic glories were fresh in my mind. I personally feel like either of these two books could comfortably fit onto the ‘Narrative of Spiritual Eduction’ list, in all fairness. Questioning and challenging religious teachings and religious authorities isn’t anything new, either in fiction or in reality, as exemplified nicely by the roughly fifty years between when Sirens of Titan  and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms ’ publications. But what I especially appreciate about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms  is that it’s religion is something more flexible than we find in our Judeo-Christian tomes, and is, uniquely, still a story being told. Take Norse mythology, for example - the Nordic gods know, as they are living and creating the world, how the world will end, and what will happen afterwards. Their story is completed before it is fi

 Before Sirens of Titan , the only other Vonnegut book I’d read was the story of Billy Pilgrim, Slaughter House Five . The fact that Sirens of Titan  has a central coherent narrative, comparatively, actually threw me for a loop at first. But Vonnegut’s unapologetically batshit creativity and meticulous dissection of social constructs and the human condition is a unifying element throughout his work, and if anything his total disdain for war is more hilariously satirical in Sirens of Titan , though that might have to do with the focus of the book being more on organized religion and it’s Gordian Knot of recursive implications than the bleak horrors of glorified conflict. For the longest time, I was sure that Malachi Constant was our main character, but by the end it became clear that it was actually Rumfoord. This is because it isn’t like Malachi doesn’t have an arc we can sympathize with throughout the story, but that he’s not particularly someone who fights for his freedom of choice t