Archive for 2021

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[Commlist] New book: Desire After Dark

Sat Mar 27 19:55:41 GMT 2021




Alfred Martin is excited to announce the release of Desire After Dark: Contemporary Queer Cultures and Occultly Marvelous Media by his friend and colleague Andrew J. Owens.

In Desire After Dark, Owens explores media where figures such as vampires and witches make use of their supernatural knowledge in order to queer what otherwise appears to be a normative world. Beginning with the global sexual revolutions of the '60s and moving decade by decade through "Euro-sleaze" cinema and theatrical hardcore pornography, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the popularity of New Age religions and witchcraft, and finally the increasingly explicit sexualization of American cable television, Owens contends that occult media has risen to prominence during the past 60 years as a way of exposing and working through cultural crises about queerness. Through the use of historiography and textual analyses of media from Bewitched to The Hunger, Owens reveals that the various players in occult media have always been well aware that non-normative sexuality constitutes the heart of horror's enduring appeal.

By investigating vampirism, witchcraft, and other manifestations of the supernatural in media, Desire After Dark confirms how the queer has been integral to the evolution of the horror genre and its persistent popularity as both a subcultural and mainstream media form.

"Over the last several decades, the production of queer-themed horror has boomed, as has queer horror scholarship. This new study begins in the psychedelic (and sometimes Satanic) sixties and ends with an examination of queer horror in 21st-century niche TV. Author Andrew J. Owens deftly weaves contexts of culture, history, and industry in his analyses of texts both canonical (Dark Shadows, The Vampire Lovers) and lesser known (The Craft, Dante's Cove, and the films of Jean Rollin). Highly recommended."

~Harry M. Benshoff, author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film

University of Indiana Press is offering a 30% discount until June 30, 2021 by using the discount code “SCMS21.” https://iupress.org/9780253053824/desire-after-dark/



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