[Commlist] CfP: (Don’t) Look Back: Our Nostalgia for Horror and Slasher Films

Call for Papers:

(Don’t) Look Back: Our Nostalgia for Horror and Slasher Films

Editors: Karrȧ Shimabukuro and Wickham Clayton

On first consideration it may not seem like “nostalgia” and horror and 
slasher films have any clear connections. Usually nostalgia is applied 
to events and experiences that have a pleasant connotation, even if 
these pleasant feelings are a result of a rose-tinted view of the past. 
While nostalgia can refer to personal feelings as well as larger 
communal or cultural memory and pleasure, there is also an implied 
action to it- that someone is seeking to reclaim, or revisit a specific 
time period or place for an explicit reason. Applying this understanding 
to remakes, revisions, reimaginings helps us understand what the purpose 
of these reworked creations are, the work they’re doing, and how they 
build on and expand on an already understood and accepted set of 
narratives, tropes, characters, and beliefs.

Since the national and global trauma of 9/11 we have seen dozens of 
remakes, reboots, revisions, and reimaginings of horror and slasher 
films from the 1970s and 80s. Each work seeks to capture some element of 
the original- the simple understanding of good and evil, the audience 
reaction to scares, an aesthetic homage, the commercial popularity. If 
we shift our perspective to view these films through the lens of 
nostalgia, we can see that many of these narratives are grounded in 
trauma, the performance of it, the aftermath, how people survive and 
later work through it. Whether it is a movie, mini-series, television 
show, or video game, these remakes can be organized according to several 
subtopics that perform different work within the media and reflect 
different fears, anxieties, and desires of a specific historical and 
cultural moment, although the argument could be made that some texts 
belong in a variety of categories, and there is noticeable overlap.

Movies such as Carrie (2013) , Prom Night (2008), The Fog (2005), 
Piranha (2010), and Piranha 3DD (2012), My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009), 
Friday the 13th (2009), Predators (2010), The Predator (2018), and 
Fright Night (2011) as well as the television show Ash vs. Evil Dead 
(2015-2018) all seek to recapture the pleasant memories either of the 
creator upon their first exposure, or the often initial teenage 
experience of the audience. It’s also worth noting remakes that seek to 
capture this feeling and audience reception but fail as is the case with 
Pet Semetary (2019) and Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) or 
remakes of films that were considered cult classics, or lacked the 
recognition of many of these titles such as Sorority Row (2009). While 
many of these movies have trauma as their inciting incident, or 
backstory, films such as The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Texas Chainsaw 
Massacre (2003), Amityville Horror (2005), and The Thing (2011), 
explicitly deal with trauma in their narratives. A large number of 
remakes seek to correct or revise perceived errors, erasures, or 
missteps in the original source material. Certainly this is true in The 
Shining (1997 mini-series), The Stand (1994 and in production 2020), The 
Last House on the Left (2009), Straw Dogs (2011), Suspiria (2018), and 
Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). Some texts like The Haunting of Hill 
House (2018-present) begin as a revisionbut ultimately go deeper, 
seeking to uncover a narrative within the source material. With the 
explosion of streaming services, alternative storytelling, and 
multimedia narratives, we’re seeing more and more adaptations that use 
horror or slasher narratives as their foundation but create their own 
stories from them. Bates Motel (2013-2017), The Exorcist (2016-2018), 
Doctor Sleep (2019), Castle Rock (2018-present), The Conjuring (2013), 
and Hannibal (2013-2015) all fit this category.

This edited collection would seek contributions that view these and 
other texts through this lens of nostalgia, how these remakes, reboots, 
revisions, and reimagings are the vehicle for the anxieties and concerns 
of a particular moment, and what work they are doing. We’re particularly 
interested in contributions that analyze texts that interact with the 
source material in new and interesting ways, deconstruct tropes and 
styles innate to these genres, as well as the application of adaptation 
and fan studies to these works. The editors are accepting proposals for 
chapters focusing on nostalgia in horror after 9/11. Topics for 
contributions, focused through a lens of nostalgia, can address, but are 
not limited to:

Case studies that relate to nostalgia as:
 - Trauma
 - Revision/Rewriting
 - Recapturing past pleasure
 - Using past forms to fill new concerns
Theoretical approaches to understanding horror and trauma
Understanding socio-political and economic cultural contexts
Pleasures of horror nostalgia post- 9/11
Slashers, subtexts, and tonal intensification
Paranormal embodiments of contemporary fears


Proposals should be submitted by 31 March 2020 to Karrá Shimabukuro 
(khkshimabukuro /at/ gmail.com) and Wickham Clayton (wickscripts /at/ hotmail.com). 
First drafts due 31 December 2020. We welcome questions and expressions 
of interest at any stage.

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