The School of Creative Arts and Industries at Canterbury Christ Church University warmly invites you to attend this research seminar led by Dr Andrew Butler.
The session will be delivered in Ng07 on Wednesday 23 February at 12.30pm, and can also be joined online by clicking on the following link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/c4fe72a2aef042ff82d790212a1d741a
‘Why Don’t You Go Home?’: The Folk Horror Revival in Contemporary Cornish Gothic Films
The Folk Horror subgenre, focused on tensions between incomers and residents and modernity and tradition, has been revived in recent years, especially with Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England. This paper will discuss Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019) and Make Up (Claire Oakley, 2020), both set in Cornwall – the former focusing on the tensions around Down From Londoners and the fishing community, the latter on a young woman visiting a holiday camp to be with her boyfriend. Like much Folk Horror, they push at the boundaries of genre, with differing attitudes to the incomers and the horror is more implicit than explicit, but Oakley seems to be drawing on the Rebecca paradigm of Daphne Du Maurier. Jenkin is moving into clearer Folk Horror territory with the forthcoming Enys Men.
It may be, of course, that I read Rebecca years and years ago — I know I started it and I studied the opening paragraph, the dream of the Manderley mansion from years later, but I’m not sure I got much further. And when I bought two Du Maurier boxsets, I don’t think Rebecca was part of them. It took me a while to track down a copy — although naturally I found several since, as a battered paperback 1992 reprint got more battered as it got carried around.
Subject to Change 