Tag / shameless self-promotion

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26 February 2022: Research Seminar

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. 

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A New Rose By Any Other Name

‘“A New Rose Hotel is a New Rose Hotel is a New Rose Hotel”: Non-Places in William Gibson’s Screen Adaptations’, William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture. Edited by Mitch R. Murray and Mathias Nilges. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Press, 2021, 97-109.

There is a moment in an interview with William Gibson when he says that “Being a screenwriter was never part of my game plan, and I never would have gone after it; it never occurred to me that it was something people did or that I would be asked to do it.” Inspired by watching teenagers play arcade video games, Gibson had been writing about the realm behind computer screens, of colors and space, claiming that he “Assembled [the] word cyberspace from small and readily available components of language […] Slick and hollow – awaiting received meaning.” Cyberspace has no fixed identity, relationships, or history and it lacks authentic height, width, depth, and mass and can be thought of as an addition to the catalog of “non-places” of supermodernity identified by the French anthropologist Marc Augé.

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Dublin Up

There are lots of great things going on at Worldcon in Dublin and there’s

‘Francis Bacon’s Alien’

Format: Paper
H. R. Giger, designer of the alien in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, has said in various places that he was inspired by a painting: ‘Bacon did a crucifixion in 1945, and there is a kind of beast in it that has a head that is only a mouth.’ The three-canvas painting is Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which probably dates from 1944 but was worked on for a number of years and depicts three grotesque figures on a luminous orange background. Normally the three figures would include St John, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene, but elsewhere the Irish-born Protestant Bacon identified them with the Eumenides or Furies, female figures of vengeance. The canvasses have caused debate among Bacon scholars, because they do not include the cross and therefore the potential for salvation. Does the painting represent despair and horror, or salvation through suffering? By looking at this painting and other crucifixions by Bacon, in relation to Alien, I raise the possibility of a backwards infection of reading Bacon’s work as science fiction, through his ongoing engagement with the grotesque, his ‘invisible rooms’ frames within his canvasses, and his use of surreal juxtapositions.

part of: Different visions of Ireland18 Aug 2019, Sunday 11:30 – 12:20, Odeon 6 (Academic) (Point Square Dublin)

1. Dr Andrew M. Butler – ‘“We are meat, we are potential carcasses”: Francis Bacon’s Alien’
2. Dr Richard Howard – ‘Comfort Plus Excitement: Bob Shaw and David Hardy’
3. Val Nolan – ‘Narration and Recurrence in Neil Jordan’s Shade’

Unknown and/or forgotten artists

Format: Panel
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 13:30 – 14:20, Odeon 2 (Point Square Dublin)

Some artists enjoy commercial success, while many others stay in the shadows. Why does this happen? Panellists discuss artists who have been forgotten or haven’t received the attention they deserve.

Phil Foglio (Studio Foglio, LLC), Pat Robinson , Sue Mason, Dr Andrew M Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) (M)

Get us out of the Twilight Zone: the work of Jordan Peele

Format: Panel
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 13:30 – 14:20, Stratocaster BC (Point Square Dublin)

With two extraordinary films and a reimagined Twilight Zone under his belt, Jordan Peele has made a huge impact as a weird/horror visionary over the last few years. This panel will discuss Peele’s work: what it says, how it works, and why it matters.

Catriona Ward, Dr Andrew M Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) , Chris M. Barkley (M), Dr Wanda Kurtçu (California State University, Hayward).