Creepy Reads Review: Textual demons and unnatural grotesqueness

Hello there!

I was not suppose to go a whole month without writing anything but unfortunately for the last month I've been extremely busy with my studies. So, I decided to feature two books I've been reading lately, that are related to my Master's Thesis. It's not as if I have any other life these days.

The other one of the books is the doctoral thesis of Ilkka Mäyrä named Demonic texts and textual demons: the demonic tradition, the self, and popular fiction (1999), and the other one is a collection of scientific papers, The grotesque and the unnatural (2011), edited by Markku Salmela and Jarkko Toikkanen.

As I've mentioned before, I am writing my thesis about grotesque in 21st century, in a French collection of short stories. In my thesis I construct a theory about what grotesque is nowadays and apply my hypothesis on the mentioned collection of short stories. Demonic texts and textual demons and The grotesque and the unnatural have been useful building blocks for me while I've pondered about the essence of contemporary grotesque.

The contributors of the collection of papers are researchers of literature and cultural studies who all find grotesque intriguing. Many of them emphasize how the way something is narrated or viewed creates the grotesque effect. This means that a human presence and participation is vital for something to be grotesque.

The papers of The grotesque and the unnatural are not purely about theory but instead many of them combine theories with analyses on novels or other products of culture and civilization. For instance, Mathilde Régent, who studied at Université Paris Diderot, contributed a paper about the grotesque in French medical discourse in the 16th century.

I of course have read this collection from the viewpoint of my own thesis but I believe for others too this could be an interesting read.

Ilkka Mäyrä's doctoral thesis is about demons in Western culture. It can be read online here, if my short introduction of it gets you interested.

In his thesis Mäyrä investigates what different roles demons have had and what things we consider demonic. He constructs theories and then applies them in case studies: among them The Exorcist and Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's baby. Mäyrä's work is both informative and entertaining. His writing flows easily and you do not have to be a literature student to understand it.

A great portion of Mäyrä's thesis is about how demonic features are linked to the self. He points out how in Ancient Greece people would explain the odd behavior of a human with daemons possessing him/her, and how in Freud's psychoanalysis the id (the unconscious part of the individual) has many demonic qualities. Needless to say that the way Mäyrä contemplates on the whole relation between "demon" and "human" has an essential role in my own thesis.

I can sincerely recommend both these books. I hope you too found this post of mine entertaining / interesting! :)

Short announcement: This spring will be very busy for me, I plan to finish my master's thesis in the beginning of May, so I shall be writing it 24/7 for the next two months. I do try to update my blog and read other people's blogs but I am not going to take any stress about it. Have a lovely March, and thank you for reading!

Creepy Reads Review: Addams Family - an Evilution

This volume has sat on my bookshelf for about two years and for some odd reason I have not featured it here on my blog. The Addams Family - an Evilution is a kind of an entertaining research on Chad Addams' creation, the Addams Family and how its characters evolved over time.

For me, the first Addams Family experience was the movies made in the 90's. After that, the old black and white TV-show. And finally I saw this book in an online shop and had the change to really read some of the original comics. This reversed order is quite understandable when regarding the fact that not the comics nor the old TV series were available at the period of time and the geographical place of my childhood. The point of this personal rambling is that the movies had shaped the way I saw the characters of Addams Family and I was surprised how different some of them are in the comics.

The Thing has changed completely from the comics and it is not even sure if the lurking little humanoid of the comics was the Thing. The old TV series made it to be a hand and I must say it is a delightful character. The Thing of the comics is seen on the photo of the front cover, it is spying the family from the window. In many of the comics there is this small creature lurking and watching, always outside of the family. In one single comic the Thing is something else than an observer: it is seen as a mere hand changing a vinyl on the family's gramophone. It is most likely this comic that inspired the character for the TV show.

The children too are relatively different and their way of interacting with each other has changed a lot in different media. In the comics Wednesday Addams is a sorrowful, quite timid child who is more like a sidekick for her brother in many pranks. This is the most astonishing difference for me and I must say I do think it is in a way improvement that Wednesday is much more livelier in the TV show and the character of the movies was a strong female role model for many a young girl.

"Well, don't come whining to me. Go tell him you'll poison him right back."

I believe though, that if Wednesday had been more livelier and stronger character in the comics, it would not have worked as well. The dynamics of the family members would have changed and it would have required alterations to the other characters too.

Morticia Addams of the movies is much more similar with the comics' Morticia. Her character in the TV series is much more warm and kooky. I do not think this is a bad thing, it is merely an observation. I love all the incarnations of Morticia.

What I really like about The Addams Family - an Evilution is that it has the comics in it but also a culture and literature analysis on the comics and it ties them to the social environment and the historical era they were created in. I can warmly recommend reading the old comics of Chad Addams and also reading this particular collection with cultural analysis on it too.

Creepy Reads Review: Taxidermy Art by Robert Marbury

I bought a copy of Robert Marbury's Taxidermy Art - A Rogue's guide to the work, the culture, and how to do it yourself on my trip to New York last spring. I think I bought it from the museum shop on MoMA. Marbury is one of the founders and the director of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy and an acknowledged artist.

As the title suggest, this book is non-fiction and for a person like me, who has little knowledge about how to actually make taxidermy or about its history, this was a good and informative opus. I also like the way Marbury writes, he does not became too repetitive even though the book consists of artist presentations and there are only so many ways to express certain basic information.

After the introduction to the book at hand there is also a short and compact introduction to the history of taxidermy and also to those historical persons who contributed to the development of taxidermy practices. I like that part very much, that the contemporary artists are contextualized like that.

Taxidermy Art introduces artists from all over the world, which is fantastic. Well, most of them are from the US, a few from the UK, and a couple from Europe and New Zeeland and Australia. But as the opus states the artists introduced in it are the most popular and well-known ones at the moment. It seems that taxidermy art is more popular in the English-speaking world and hence most artists are from those countries. The book presents 21 artists/artist duos.

Here are two of my favorite works and I would love to have one of these (or another of her works, her website is like a candy store for me!) myself: Still Birth (Green) and Still Birth (Blue) by Polly Morgan.

Lisa Black from New Zeeland makes gorgeous works in which animal and machine merge. I had not known about her works if I had not bought Taxidermy Art.

I can happily recommend this book. The photos are fantastic and in the end there are even instructions on how to make a taxidermy oneself. Though it is not like I am going to try them anytime soon.

Creepy reads review: "Gothic: Dark Glamour" by Steele & Park

This is a new section for my blog! Because I like reading (since I am a literature student it would be alarming if I didn't), I am starting to introduce good reads that fit the aesthetics of goth subculture, or are other way gothic and darkly inclined. The first Creepy reads review is a non-fiction, a research of goth subculture by Valerie Steele and Jennifer Park.

Their book Gothic: Dark Glamour was published by the Yale University Press year 2008 and I actually got my copy from the Library of University of Helsinki, so one can trust the research has been done well in this book. I found Steele's and Park's work in the area of Research of Art, the music studies section but two thirds of Gothic: Dark Glamour is about history of aesthetics and fashion. I guess in a polytechnic's library Gothic: Dark Glamour could easily be in the section of fashion and design.

In this book there are two section, the first is about the origins of goth subculture and how the aesthetics and different sub-genres have emerged. The first section then continues to view how the dark glamour of goths and of history have influenced 20th century fashion.

For me, new information was how much dandy has influenced goth culture. Of coarse I knew Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil and how decadent and romantic characters like Baudelaire are appreciated in some sub-genres of goth but I did not know that darkly inclined dandies of 19th century had ripped their clothes on purpose like later punks and 80's goths!

I had a bit mixed feelings of the part in which the different sub-genres of goth and their typical dressing were described. Of coarse one has to make some sort of classifications and be slightly stereotypical to highlight the differences. I must admit I kind of got the feeling that they described the uniform of all sub-genres and if you mixed them up everyone would reject you. Of coarse it probably was not like that, especially in the real world. All in all, the classifications were clear and I'm sure they would help a person who is not a goth or who is not sure of their gothness to understand and recognize differences inside goth subculture.

I must admire how much the authors of Gothic: Dark Glamour have put effort in research, there are numerous interviews and they have found many designers who I did not know who were associated to goth or whose designs tend to be dark and sinister.

The second section of the book is written by Jennifer Park and it is titled "Melancholy and the Macabre: Gothic Rock and Fashion". I was glad to find that the music section begins with the pre-history of gothic rock, reflecting and analyzing The Velvet Underground, Dawid Bowie and Iggy Pop, and their influence on the sounds of gothic rock and the fashion of goths.

Park does not simply focus on the music but keeps in mind that a band is much more; how their album covers are designed, how they dress on gigs, what inspired them and so on. This book also reveals why many bands denied the attribute "goth". In publicity, "goth" was not a positive term for most people, it had negative connotations like fake, poser and naive. Many proto-goth bands felt like "goth" was more appearance, less substance, and they considered they had substance in their music.

I was really pleased to read about how certain bands got into publicity and how members of different bands interacted with each other. That is something I have never thought about, I don't know why. I also like how the book was printed on quality paper and all photos looked amazingly good. In summary, I recommend Gothic: Dark Glamour, especially to those who are interested of fashion and dark aesthetics. I could spend an hour just to look at one photo of Alexander McQueen's design or this Untitled, Stern 2005, which was in the book!

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