Jasmine Vega

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Honors Essay: Werewolves and The Shadow

The unconscious mind has been a big mystery as long as we have known about it. The unconscious goes deeper than any dark secrets a person thinks they have. Carl Jung is a Swiss psychologist that has studied the unconscious through his archetypes (Cherry, 2019). Jung thought that the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious made up the human psyche, the personal unconscious is where the suppressed feelings and memories are located (Cherry, 2019). The four major Jungian archetypes are the persona, the self, the anima or animus, and the shadow; the persona is the way that someone presents themselves to the world, the self is the unified conscious and unconscious of a person, the anima is the feminine image in the male psyche, and the animus is the male image in the female psyche (Cherry, 2019). All of the archetypes describe a different area of the human psyche.

The one archetype that is of main focus in this essay is the shadow. The shadow is the archetype that consists of life and sex instincts, the shadow self contains all of the things that are unacceptable to society and one’s own moral values this can include hate, aggression, greed, envy, and greed (Cherry, 2019). The shadow is the unknown part of the human brain the dark side of the mind and psyche, it represents chaos and wilderness (Cherry, 2019). The shadow can be seen as the areas within ourselves that we suppress in order to fit in the molds that society puts around us in our everyday life.

The supernatural creature that is the werewolf represents how the societal expectations build an overwhelming anxiety to fit in, that our shadow self is never thought about. All of the things that have been suppressed cause feelings of fear of keeping it hidden from the rest of the world and sometimes even ourselves. In the reading Monsters of the Gévaudan it starts to describe how the fears of the werewolf began to spread in the seventeen hundreds, “By the middle decades of the eighteenth century, uncertainties exposed and interrogated through scientific discourses, theological debates, and boisterous public squares had prepared the faithful, the religiously skeptical, and everyone in between to embrace with fascination all evidence of the monstrous. The first stories of the beast fell on ears well primed to receive them.” (Smith, 2011). This passage explains how the ideas of an inner beast coming out of a seemingly normal person creates such an anxiety that everyone will fear becoming this. This is the idea that Jung was using with the collective unconscious which he believed to be universal archetypes and models that were innate (Cherry, 2019). People were becoming skeptical of everything that they were being told that they couldn’t tell if the werewolf was so far out that it couldn’t possibly be true, or that it was something that could be possible with all of the advancements in society.

The werewolf started after the enlightenment period when science culture and literature began to grow. This is when religion and science began to clash through different ideas. With this anxieties of not being sophisticated and cultured rising as quickly as the world was developing. People were starting to use different technologies and what had worked for hundreds of years was now being seen as outdated and barbaric. From these ideas the fears of the animalistic and bestial self began to be represented in the werewolf. “Speculation about freakish or preposterous products of nature took place, moreover, not on the margins of scientific inquiry but at its very center. From the late seventeenth century through the 1730s, the French Academy of Sciences showed an almost obsessive interest in monsters, those creatures defined as “contrary to the order of nature.” (Smith, 2011) this is where the idea of a man transforming into a full wolf or a wolf man hybrid that had supernatural qualities. Not only did this confuse the ideas of nature but it also “challenged the venerable idea that God had created an orderly and harmonious universe” (Smith, 2011). Religion, until that time period, had been the end all be all, and the idea that god created a monster that anyone could turn into even if they followed the rules, which created further anxieties and fears based around morals.

The werewolf not only shows the fears and anxieties from the time period in which they began, but they can also be related to the culture in our time now. The fears of the bestial and animalistic self are represented through the werewolf. The anxieties are based around the Jungian archetype of the shadow self. The wolf inside the man represents the the shadow self and all of the things that are suppressed everyday to fit the mold of societal expectations. While the human part of the beast represents the persona and it is how we like to present ourselves to the rest of the world following societal standards. The werewolf transforms with the full moon, but it is always portrayed as an event that wasn’t planned for. This could be converted into the fear of not knowing when the shadow self or the bestial side will overflow into the human life. Our culture now is so separated from the animalistic and bestial side that is connected to nature. The fear of needing to devolve and not being able to protect ourselves is something that is deeply suppressed in the human psyche. 

Supernatural creatures can represent a multitude of things, werewolves can be connected to the Jungian archetypes because it represents the beast within the human, all of the desires that we can’t control and will come out at some point or the other. The werewolf is also the shadow of the supernatural creatures. The werewolf is seen very rarely in the media and that could be another version of humanity trying to suppress the idea of the shadow self that is within each person. The werewolf brings attention to the flaws within human nature and the untamed nature of the shadow self. Perhaps seeing what we are capable of is scarier than any monster we could have imagined.

References

Cherry, K. (2019, April 02). The 4 Major Jungian Archetypes. Retrieved from

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-jungs-4-major-archetypes-2795439

Smith, J. M. (2011). Monsters of the Gévaudan: The making of a beast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

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Blog Post 8

I have always been one of those people that loves horror and monsters and scary movies while i’m watching it, but I’ll be terrified for three months after watching stuff like that. I was concerned about this class because it was about to be 11 weeks of scary stuff so that means like two years until I get over it. Surprisingly that didn’t happen and I learned so much about the background of the things that created these supernatural beings and how they represent so much more than just being something scary to us.

One of the biggest ideas that stood out to me was the significance of religion in all of the things we learned, and how colonization created the anxieties around these monsters. In almost everything that we studied the western perspective created an anxiety about another thing and that in turn created the monsters and creatures that we fear. Also there was a big theme of women's bodies and their agency within that. There was never a monster that was a woman, but the victims were always women who did things out of the norm. Making it seem like if you do this you’re going to end up like this.

This course taught me to look at these monsters not as monsters or creatures, but instead think of the anxieties that they represent, and that is something that I will take when going into horror and monster movies in the future. Maybe now it will take me only one month to stop being scared by these movies and shows.

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Grant-Humphreys Mansion

When we first were discussing as a group what place to choose we wanted to go to the least creepy sounding place. We chose the Grant-Humphreys mansion after we googled it and did quick research on it. I had never heard about this mansion I didn’t know that there was a haunted site in Denver I always thought that haunted places were in the middle of the woods abandoned by all people.

We started doing research on the Grant-Humphreys mansion and it seemed only as a party venue that hosted weddings and other types of meetings, there was no information that any of us could find on it being a haunted place. I was wondering how this could be on Dr. Battista’s list of haunted places. There was no information regarding the history of the mansion at first, our group started to find more and more things about it but it still wasn’t talking about the house only about the owners of the house.

When we went on the tour I wasn’t expecting anything because I was primed to think, from all of the research that we did, that there was nothing haunted about this place only that they had sketchy owners in the past. Our tour guide gave us an extensive history lesson that we didn’t find anywhere else. It ranged from specific things within the house to history on the area and he even told us a little bit about Cheeseman Park and debunked the myth that those ghosts came over to haunt the mansion. When I walked into the house I was immediately uncomfortable, I was afraid to take the pictures because I didn’t want to accidentally find something. The house was a little disorienting because there was so many ways to get to the same room and there were different hallways everywhere it seemed like an easy place to get lost.

Once we went onto the third floor that was when I felt the most uncomfortable my chest felt heavy and I didn’t know why. I thought it was just because it was hot upstairs, but the energy was off. We went into the room where the man tried to kill himself and where the tour guide had had the most “ghostly” encounters. At the end of the tour we talked as a group and we all had a really weird feeling in the same spot so I was validating and creepy that we all felt the same thing in the same spot.

Our tour guide gave some really insightful things at the end of the tour that made me feel better about believing and being afraid of ghosts. He said that he didn’t believe in ghosts until he had his encounters, even after being shown a real life ghost he respects that they were there before us. He also said that he doesn’t have time to worry about ghosts when there are crazy real life people out there and that eased my fears. All in all it was a cool experience even though I wasn’t able to go full Ghost Adventures mode.

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Blog Post 7: Don’t Go Downstairs

In the film The Cabin in the Woods, there are many cultural anxieties at play. Throughout the movie we watch a handful of horror tropes that have been played out before, like the sex crazed teenagers in the woods and no adult supervision (what could go wrong?). In this film we also see many of the monsters and creatures that we have learned about in class, werewolf, zombies, and ghosts.

The focus of my analysis lies within the way that humans process fear and how it is represented in the film. As we talked about in our class discussion, the place that they were afraid of, and that held the way that they were going to choose to die was the basement. We talked about how in many of these movies the scary place is the basement and that is where we subconsciously put our fears to keep it away from the conscious mind. Another interesting thing that I saw was that towards the end of the film they kept all of the monsters and creatures in boxes. This was another type of “basement” because the fears were still being contained within the boxes. The humans were also controlling this. In the end of the film all of the monsters and creatures break out of their boxes and kill. For me this shows the anxiety that try as we may the things that we don’t confront and push down to our subconscious will always find their way out.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” - Carl Jung

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Blog Post 6: What’s worse a feminist or her children?

In the analyzation of the film The Exorcist you can observe and unfold the many underlying anxieties that are being played out through the film. In the film we see that the mother is a successful single mother, who is financially independent and liberal in her views. In the reading Monsters in America: Chapter 6, the author describes women who are like the mother breeding more of those types of women, “The new monster was a female monster, supernaturally productive of a brood of monstrous offspring” (171). This is the framework in which I did my analyzation comes from. Throughout the movie the mother is continuously belittled by men in power. Her daughter in the end is the one who gets possessed and not her. I believe that this was intentional. With the framework from the reading the mother is the monster, because of her deviance from the norms and the patriarchy Her daughter is the monstrous offspring that came because of the mothers values, and because of these values she was taught she is also a monster.. It is interesting because you can see them portraying an anxiety that the audience didn’t even know was there. Of course there are these feminist women who want to challenge everything they believe in, and that is an anxiety right now, but what about their daughters? They are an even better monster to make because they never broke free from the patriarchy they were just a completely separate entity that was brought up by these women. Shouldn’t we stop these women from raising even more mentally ill and psychotic women who are obsessed with sex? I think the film did a great job at hiding the fears behind a mask which was the demons. Then portraying the anxieties that liberalism and the women's rights movements raised in the 1970’s in a more subconscious way that wouldn’t be thought about too much because the demons and exorcism are holding most of the attention.

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Essay II: Undead Anxiety

The history of zombies is embedded with problematic stigmas and racist stereotypes. The zombie was originated in Haiti within the Caribbean sugar plantations that were filled with slaves. During this century of slavery we saw the Haitian zombie brought to life because it was the dehumanizing and deadening effects of large scale factory labor where black people were nothing but mere slaves and they were all replaceable (Inglis, 2011). We see this idea being played out in the film White Zombie from 1932. The workers/zombies from the mill are only seen as slaves and even when one dies there is no stopping. This is a problematic association with the origins of the zombie because we saw a lot of dehumanizing happening throughout slavery, so the masters wouldn’t feel the guilt of owning and treating another person as an animal, and this is also portrayed in the film.

The zombie was brought back from the dead “By magical or other unknown means a person may die and be transformed into a creature of living death called a zombie. This living-dead entity is said to have no will of his own, but can made to perform slave labor” (Inglis, 2011). Already we see a negative connotation with Vodou and other spiritualities that do not mirror those of the western society. Death and related things are usually not discussed a lot within western religions so the idea the Vodou has the power to bring someone back from the dead can already cause some discomfort and immediate dismissal. Not only that but the people who were being brought back could only amount to being a slave like they were in their previous life.

Another problematic association that came from the connection of Haiti and the Zombies was that nothing good could ever come out of such a savage country. From the western perspective not only did they refuse to be colonized by the French (which means that they are savages), but now they are practicing Voodoo (obviously the religion of superstitions and black magic), AND they are bringing back people from the dead we have to stop this from getting to the pure people (aka only the whites who followed god’s religion).

“In this case, the forward-looking, progressive, modernity-embracing and -creating social order of white, as opposed to that of blacks, which is supposedly stuck within a mire of savage, backward-looking custom and superstition. In this sense, the zombie can operate as a potent coding of racial and cultural divided, standing as an uncanny emblem of a wider barbarity. Yet ironically, the cultural roots of the zombie in Haiti itself are very much connected to ex-slaves’ fears of a return to an enslaved condition. Weras the white constructed the zombie as all that was vile about Haiti” (Inglis, 2011).  

This passage does a great job on summing up how the views on Vodou and  Haitian culture were seen and not understood for what they truly were, and that was an escape from the thing (in this case slave masters) that kept them from being free in their lifetime. By condemning Vodou as “the religion of the slaves” there will always be a negative stereotype on anything that comes out of it. It also includes a negative connotation toward Haiti and black people because it is forming them as the complete opposite of the white person, creating this false narrative about a culture and people.

Zombies have represented an array of cultural anxieties since they have come to be. The origin from which they came from has been transformed by different anxieties that have developed throughout the time. Some of the historical anxieties that were shown through zombies was a revolution of the slaves and the guilt from slavery. “The fear instead of becoming a zombie, deprived of all free will and enslaved to a powerful, predatory master.” (Inglis, 2011). As mentioned before these fear emerged because they understood and saw what they were doing to other people that the chance of that happening to them caused a massive anxiety. The zombie also embraces the idea of rebellion against the master because zombies even back then were seen as hoards and they are the bigger population so they could overthrow the master if they all teamed up together as we see zombies do with consuming without remorse. The historical fear of the zombie could also translate to the anxieties of the white people seeing Haiti refusing to be colonized by them. It adds uncertainty to their power, and if they can continue as the “superior” race over someone that they classify as slaves.

Some of the more contemporary fears and anxieties that the modern zombie represents is the vulnerability of the human race. It has let go of the Vodou origins and transformed into a entity that is contagious and is able to turn anyone into a zombie. We saw this turn start to happen in 1978 with the film Dawn of the Dead it focused their zombie around mindless consumerism and capitalism, we also see here a lot of films being set in shopping malls to heighten this symbol (Rushton, 2011). “A consciousness being that is a swarm organism, and the only imaginable specter that could really be post human” (Rushton, 2011). The modern human is often classified as a hoard of mindless consumers, even though we are all individuals within our individualistic society we all act from what we are told is popular and lose our agency and closer to the zombie mentality than we think.

“In the absence of consciousness, that appetite is both undefined (in the sense that the zombie wants to only ingest the humanity it once shared) and all encompassing (to eat or turn all human life is to destroy all value, as civilization collapses with the disappearance of its human inventos and inhabitants).” (Rushton, 2011). This quote portrays the idea of the modern zombie as finding the humanity it has lost and through that it is only destroying that of what it wants further. Showing the anxiety of losing one’s humanity through capitalist consumption.

We have seen many interpretations of the zombie throughout its history, not only are they scary monsters but they always seems to represent a lack of agency. “The zombie comes to represent what we fear most of others” (Rushton, 2011). It will be interesting to see what the next interpretation of the zombie entails and how it will represent those fears. 

References

Inglis, D. (2011). “Putting the Undead to Work: Wade Davis Haitian Vodou, and the Social Uses of the Zombie”.

Rushton, C., & Moreman, C. (2011). "Introduction: Race, Colonialism, and the evolution of the "Zombie".

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Blog Post 5: Werewolves

In the film The Wolf Man (1941) we become aware of some of the cultural anxieties through the analyses of the film. The main anxiety that I want to focus on is the stigmas and portrayal of gypsies. Maleva portrays an elder gypsy woman whose son, Bela, was a werewolf and was killed by Larry Talbot.

There was a clear portrayal on how alternative spiritualities are viewed during this time period. The first and most obvious one was that the characters kept repeating that if you were a werewolf you were bad and if you weren't you were good. This can be an anxiety that comes of from the church because in the eyes of the church you were either good or bad. The way that this connects to the church was that they related werewolves to the pentagram, and that symbol has been feared within the church ever since there has been such thing as alternative spirituality.

Another example of anxiety towards alternative spiritualities still has to do with the symbol of the pentagram. They blamed the gypsies for bringing the werewolf, or said that they created the creature. This is problematic because one it stigmatizes a whole population that might use the symbol for completely different reasons. An example of this in the movie is when the fortune teller says that you would be the next victim if the pentagram shows up on the palm of your hand. Two, it can other the way that they choose to be spiritual and make it seem crazy because it is not understood. An example of this in the movie is when Maleva says “For a thousand years we Gypsies have buried our dead like that. I couldn’t break the custom even if I wanted to.” and Reverend Norman replies “Fighting against superstition is as hard as fighting Satan himself.” (The Wolf Man, 2019). This is very forwardly attacking their traditions because they aren’t the norm. Not only is it calling the alternate spirituality as having superstitions instead of traditions as they have in their religion, but also connecting it to Satan… in the same sentence.

References:

The Wolf Man. (2019, April). Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034398/characters/nm0653642?ref_=tt_cl_t7

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Blog Post 4: Zombies

The contemporary version of the zombie in popular culture represents dependency. This collective fear comes from many different areas within our culture. It comes from the fear of being vulnerable.

Many of the contemporary zombie movies and tv shows bring light to that dependency on the things we have, like medicine, technology, and survival skills. Like what was said in our class discussion we are use to being protected by all these things that are given to us. We don’t have to deal with certain diseases because we have medicine to protect us. We don’t have to deal with figuring out how to do things without power and technology because we have those things at our disposal. We don’t have to learn survival skills because we are at the top of the food chain and we are protected by that. Another collective fear and anxiety that is shown in apocalyptic is that everyone is vulnerable, nobody is protected. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, your gender, or your skin color, everyone is at risk.

In the tv show The Walking Dead we see a great representation of these anxieties and fears being put into play. We see the characters having to learn skills that they have never had to use before the virus infected everyone. They are not at the top of the food chain anymore so they have to learn ways of defending themselves. The anxiety of being lesser than “human” is enough to scare anyone who doesn't have these skills (a.k.a pretty much everyone). Being all of a sudden immersed in a world where you are forced to learn how to protect yourself is something that we can all fear because we haven’t had to learn how to protect ourselves. We have been protected by all of our dependencies. 

Moral of the story: Learn how to use a Katana.

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Blog Post: Numerology Presentation

Numerology practices have been overshadowed by the Pythagorean numerology practice. Through research for the presentation we discovered that there are three total types of numerology practices.

The first practice is called Chaldean Numerology. This practice is also known as Chaldean Gematria and it is a system within numerology that gives the value of numbers to letters. This version of numerology is very connected to spiritual connections and astral aspects. Each letter can only have a value from 1-8. The Chaldean culture does not exist anymore but their numerology system is still in use by numerologists.

The second practice is called Kabbalah Numerology. This type of numerology practice came from the hebrew culture and has gained popularity throughout the years. This practice mostly consists of the Hebrew alphabet. Each letter symbolizes a numeral value from 1-9. This practice only uses the name of a person and not the birth date which makes it different from other practices. The meanings of their numbers are: 1 – Progress, 2 – Expansion, 3 – Love, 4 – Lack of fortune, 5 – Creation, 6 – Result, 7 – Spirit, 8 – Impulse, 9 – Fortune.

The third and last practice is called the Pythagorean Numerology System. This practice is the western numerology practice and is the most popular version of numerology. This type of practice shows your personality, motives, and impulses that will follow you throughout your life. This method uses the first name and middle name. Using the modern latin alphabet there is a numerical value from 1-9, except for K (11) and V (22) because they are master numbers.

 What are some numbers that are important to you? Why?

Works Cited:

“Numerology.Center.” Types of Numerology,http://numerology.center/numerology_types.php.

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Blog Post 3: The American Gothic

In the film Queen of the Damned we see more revision of what a vampire is. It is portrayed as the modern versions that we know now. One aspect that remained traditional was that the vampire is seuxually obsessive, and we see that in many different scenes. This is something that has carried on to the vampire that we see now in many tv shows vampires are very attractive looking and that falls away from the plague ridden vampire such as Nosferatu. This is reflected in the movie as well. He uses his attractiveness to lure women to be his next source of pleasure through blood.

The American gothic is a way for the darkest side of our psyche to come out and play. Like much of the themes we have already covered about the horror and paranormal genre, seeing our anxieties and fears played out stimulates the part of our psyche that stays hidden through most of our lives. Within the American gothic we see many classic tropes that are well known through horror movies. The architecture of the buildings or scenes are usually dark in their nature. Which is a repeating theme in Queen of the Damned.

In the American gothic we see architecture play a big role in setting up the uncanny. Ann Kordas also described Dracula’s castle as being gothic and having gothic elements that resemble a church in her chapter The Blood is the Life. A way that I think that the American gothic uses architecture, specifically building that resemble cathedrals, to be a form of haunting back. We always see the vampires in movies living in these huge castles with marble statues and this portrayed in the movie. Many of these castles are just gothic versions of churches which is interesting. Lestat lives in a castle that has the uncanny feel with it being so dark with the checkered floor and the marble statues on either side of the fireplace. Through this architecture the vampire is able to articulate their own suffering through living in the same way as that of which hates them which is the church. 

References:

Kordas, A. (n.d.). "The Blood is the Life" Roman Catholic Imagery in American Vampire Films of the 1930s.

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Essay 1: Option 3 America Needs Therapy

In 1945 America started what would be the beginning of the atomic age. America is one of the largest military powers in the world, and growing. During World War II we learned that the Germans had discovered a way to make nuclear weapons (Atomic Bomb History, 2017). In a fit of anxiety and fear we get our best people trying to figure out how we can get the upper hand again. July 16, 1945 (Atomic Bomb History, 2017) we have just discovered that we can make successful nuclear weapons capable of annihilating hundreds of thousands of people. Less than a month later we dropped two atomic bombs killing at least 100,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Cold War History, 2009). On the other hand we just ended WWII and the genocide happening in Germany is over. It doesn’t matter that we just killed 100,000 people because we won and that is the story we are sticking too. However we know that is exactly how internalizing anxiety works.

So now we are in the 1950s, we are the biggest superpower in the world, we have nuclear weapons and can destroy who ever we need too. We didn’t account for the fact that once we used this weapon of mass destruction other countries would try and build their own. Here is where we see the horror in the 1950s evolve into something different.

House on Haunted Hill was an American horror movie that was released in the 1950s. This film is an accurate microcosm of the anxieties in America during this time period. In the reading The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993) David Skal states “Most Americans found it easier not to face invasion/annihilation anxieties directly;”. We saw this directly happening in the 1950s. The fears of the enemy having the upper hand brought great anxiety to the United States. House on Haunted Hill is a great representation of these anxieties.

In the film we have a variety of different characters but the focus is on the main character Frederick Loren, a charismatic millionaire who is able to play with people’s lives just because he has the money too. Then we have his wife Annabelle Loren who is portrayed as a gold digging woman whose motives are unknown or even secretive. The film has a focus on the ghostly entities. As we have learned ghosts and hauntings are representations of things or people who have been harmed in some way and are unwilling to move on from the wronging. In this film the ghosts are from people who have been murdered in the home and will hurt or kill people who enter the house.

The movie portrays the anxieties on the United States being in a vulnerable state and not being able to accept the position that it is in. Through analyzing the film there has been many connections that were made by seeing the film through the lens of the anxieties and less of a horror movie.

To begin, the ghosts are only a small part of the film which was a surprising twist because it seemed that it would be the largest. The ghosts in the film represent the past murders that have happened in the house, the past for the United States would be the lives that they just took in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mr. Loren has clear suspicions that his wife is in it to kill him and take his money. This can be a mirror of the United States at the time, America was afraid that the Soviet Union would take over or take power over the country. Mrs. Loren willingly recruited others into turning against Mr. Loren. The Soviet Union did not recruit anyone, but more that the rest of the world powers were trying to figure out how to make their own nuclear weapons. The most important connection with the fears of Americans was at the end of the movie. Mr. Loren ends up killing his wife and that is the key moment. The charismatic millionaire ends up winning over the gold digging woman. This tells the America “Don’t worry the rich powerful guys (A.K.A us) win in the end.” Settling the anxieties of the cold war on the county.

In the 1950s we saw a new era for the horror genre. As Skal (1993) talked about in the chapter the films produced all revolved around not facing the anxieties directly but watching them unfold in the films instead. Movies with all the giant monsters were the cause of radioactivity from the nuclear weapons and the alien invasion films were from the fears that there could be more out there than just humans when we were successful with the moon landing. Though these fears never came true, they are a great retelling of the history that happened during this era of time.

Works Cited

Editors, History.com. “Atomic Bomb History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 6 Sept. 2017, www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/atomic-bomb-history.

Editors, History.com. “Cold War History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 27 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history.

The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, by David J. Skal. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.

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Unheimlich

In the reading “The Unhomely” from Ghostland, they describe the uncanny as not being sure whether an object or figure is inanimate or alive, not being able to process these feelings leads to the uncanny sensation. Sigmund Freud described a German word unheimlich as not feeling homely, unfamiliar, ghostly, and eerie. This is where the idea of the uncanny comes out from, as a direct English translation. In the movie The Amityville Horror Freud’s uncanny applies to the film in many different parts in a subtle way. It starts at the very beginning of the movie when they are purchasing the home. She makes a point to paint a picture in every room of what their family would look like in this area. Now this could just be a realtor trying to convince a family to buy the house, but since it is a horror movie, and a whole family died in it. I think that she is trying to cover the fact that the house does not feel like a home. She has to convince the family that this feels like a home. Another example of the uncanny in the film is when the multiple people start getting sick. Not only her husband but both religious figures get really sick and leave the house immediately. The wife then starts feeling more and more put off by the house. Once this starts happening she gets more and more paranoid and for a good reason, things that she might have not noticed before she is seeing now because she is not ignoring the unhomely feeling that is in the house. There are many more examples of the uncanny in the film but these are the ones that stood out the most to me, because they were subtle and strange.

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Blog Post 1: “Why We Crave Horror”

Stephen King’s essay does a great job of describing the reasons that people want to see disturbing things in horror movies. One line that really got to me was “seeing things in pure black and whites.” Reading this was so weird to me because that is exactly what happens you don’t really question things after a movie or even during, you just accept what is happening. When we watched the documentary about the haunting in Connecticut I remember feeling uneasy afterwards, but as the class discussed it more and more the feelings went away. Another quote that I felt explained the need for horror was “The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do.”. Like he said in the essay most of these feeling are repressed because you can’t really do the things in horror movies, legally at least, so watching them be played out lets them be lived through and you no longer have that repressed feeling.

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The Secret Staircase 

[jasmineevegaa]

Blog Post 5: Introduction Paragraph

Throughout history we have seen that the able body is what is seen as “the ideal” and that is how society is molded. Normal is defined as without disability and mental illness. So where does this leave people that don’t fit this mold? Stigmatized, forgotten, and treated less than a human being? Perhaps that is a bold statement but the fact is that people with a disability or mental illness will, in their lifetime, face discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice for something that they did not choose to live with. It all starts at younger age when these kids are told that they are a burden to society for having different needs than the rest of the population. They grow up thinking that they won’t amount to anything because of their disability or mental illness, because that is what they are told for years. Not all, but a lot of these kids will end up in jail or prison for a variety of reasons. When in the correctional system they will still face the same, if not more, discrimination and segregation for their disability or mental illness and they will have even less resources to help them get through their daily life. Is there a commonality between the way that we treat people with a disability or mental illness in school as there is in the correctional system? If so, what can we do at an earlier age to prevent so many people with disabilities and mental illness to end up in the correctional system? How can we do things differently to change the way that they are treated in both of those settings?

[jasmineevegaa]

Blog Post 4: The Puzzle is Solved

I finished reading my articles from last week. The first one was about disability experiences on trial. This article didn’t give me as much as I wanted it kind of just expanded more on how disability is socially constructed. It did talk about how even some of the state buildings aren’t wheelchair accessible so people can’t even get to the courtroom. Even in one of the stories the judge watched a man (he was in a wheelchair) crawl up the stairs of the building and laughed with some people as he did. Another man refused to crawl up the stairs and he didn’t go to the court and got jail time over a parking ticket all because the building wasn’t wheelchair accessible. The next article was just a narrative by a girl who was discriminated against by many of her teachers in saying that “shes not going to college anyways”. After that she gathered up a bunch of lawyers and sued the school for not making school accessible for her just because she is different.

As my research continues I think I have finally put together the puzzle of my two topics together. The way that I am connecting disability/mental illness in schools and disability/mental illness and crime is by seeing the differences and similarities between the treatment of disabilities/mental health in schools and the treatment in prisons. This has helped me in the search for the rest of my sources, because it has given me a clear direction with what I need to look for. I have found a couple new articles on what it is like to have a disability in prison and any treatment that they have tried. I haven’t really started looking for the disability and mental health in schools side because I think that will be an easier subject to find information on.

I’m really happy about finally getting my topic put together because I can start organizing my notes and thoughts in a more lined up way. This helps me a lot especially because we are getting ready to start our outlines. I think before I look up more sources I want to brainstorm some topics I want to get into my paper and find sources based on those topics.

I just found a couple more sources in these specific topics that I have chosen I still have not read them since I just found them before writing this so I don’t have much to write for this blog post.

I still wish I would have been able to write about psychopathy so I might look for a way to add some of that into the paper somewhere.

[jasmineevegaa]

Blog Post 3

My current search process is a little stressful because I’m trying struggling to find the connection between my two topics. They're closer together than they were in the beginning which is good but the aha moment hasn’t hit me yet. I have yet to start reading the Foucault “Madness and Civilization” book so maybe that can give me a different angle on my topics.

I think another part of research that I want to do is finding another article or piece about the correlation between mental illness/disability and crime or incarceration. Also finding the treatments for these disabilities and how they work and compare it to what is being given to patients with these disabilities and mental disorders.

I think that this research is important because it could change the way that we treat children with disabilities at an early age, and changing the way that we view mental illness/health at an earlier age so we can change the way that we treat it. I have said this before but I think that the earlier we can get to people with mental illnesses and are able to help them with treatment we can reduce the numbers of offenders with mental illnesses. I do know that the treatment won’t prevent ALL people with a mental illness (also not saying every person with a mental illness/disability commits a crime at some point) from committing a crime, but it can reduce the amount of offenders. Even if we can find a way to treat people when they do commit a crime we can help the incarcerated population instead of making their conditions worse. It is a really big change, especially because I don’t think that the federal government really cares about the mental health of inmates, and spending all that money on people they’re just sending away.