Full Description
This innovative collection explores the intersection of magic, reproduction, and horror in contemporary culture, examining how these elements reflect and critique societal anxieties during a time of unprecedented challenges to reproductive rights, scientific advances in reproduction, and rising magical thinking in our post-pandemic world.
Addressing horror in popular culture, this volume investigates how the female body becomes a site of cultural contradiction, where ancient myths meet modern technologies, and where social power structures manifest through narratives of purity, contamination, and transformation. This book brings together diverse perspectives from biology, film studies, literary history, ethnology, and queer studies. Key features include analysis of horror across global cultures, from Anglo-American film to Indian cinema and East Asian popular culture; exploration of reproductive themes in young adult literature and superhero narratives; and examination of how magical thinking intersects with modern reproductive technologies. This volume's creative structure, organised around temporal categories, allows readers to trace the importance of these themes from ancient stories through contemporary issues to future speculations, while highlighting the persistent role of magic in shaping cultural narratives about reproduction.
This collection will appeal to scholars and graduate students in gender studies, film studies, cultural studies, and reproductive rights, as well as researchers interested in the intersection of horror and society. It offers valuable insights for academics studying contemporary media, feminist theory, and the sociology of reproduction, while remaining accessible to informed readers interested in understanding how horror reflects and shapes cultural attitudes toward reproduction and female bodies. The interdisciplinary approach makes it particularly valuable for those seeking to understand the complex relationships between magical thinking, reproductive rights, and popular culture in our rapidly changing world.
Contents
Beginnings Foreword. Introduction: Intersections of Reproduction and Magic in Horror: A Matter of Time Imagined Futures 1. The Horror of Time: Reproductive Anxiety and Transgenerational Haunting in Clock (2023) 2. Body Politic Horror and the Death Drive in Kamen Rider Black Sun 3. Rebirthing the (Anglo-American) World: Reproductive Fantasies in Post-Pandemic Dystopian Cinema 4. My Blood is Magic: The Birth of the Posthuman Imagined Pasts 5. Transpositional Subjects and Postapocalyptic Monstrosities in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Last Man 6. Wrath of Kālī: The Terrible Mother and the Apocalyptic Beat Offsprings 7. Not Just the Pontianak: Maternal Death and Agency in the Malaysian Folk Horror Narrative 8. Changelings, Crones, Witches, and Werewolves: Reproductive Horror in Mike Mignola's Early Hellboy Stories The Present: Critical Visions 9. Creation as an Act of Rebellion: Magic, Biopower, and Reclamation in Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin 10. Motherhood, Magic and Horror in Delicate Condition and The Upstairs House 11. Ghostly Mothers and Unborn Babies: Reading Maternal Bodies as Contested Sites of Domination and Transgression in Contemporary Bollywood Horror Cinema 12. Monstrous Ambivalence and Sociospatial Subversion in Good Manners 13. Immortality and mass production in Chucky 14. Queer Pregnancies in Kirsty Logan's Fiction
