Description
Finalist, 2021 Bram Stoker Awards (Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction)
The first collection of essays to address Satan's ubiquitous and popular appearances in film
Lucifer and cinema have been intertwined since the origins of the medium. As humankind's greatest antagonist and the incarnation of pure evil, the cinematic devil embodies our own culturally specific anxieties and desires, reflecting moviegoers' collective conceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and salvation. Giving the Devil His Due is the first book of its kind to examine the history and significance of Satan onscreen.
This collection explores how the devil is not just one monster among many, nor is he the "prince of darkness" merely because he has repeatedly flickered across cinema screens in darkened rooms since the origins of the medium. Satan is instead a force active in our lives. Films featuring the devil, therefore, are not just flights of fancy but narratives, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes calling into question, a familiar belief system.
From the inception of motion pictures in the 1890s and continuing into the twenty-first century, these essays examine what cinematic representations tell us about the art of filmmaking, the desires of the film-going public, what the cultural moments of the films reflect, and the reciprocal influence they exert. Loosely organized chronologically by film, though some chapters address more than one film, this collection studies such classic movies as Faust, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, Angel Heart, The Witch, and The Last Temptation of Christ, as well as the appearance of the Devil in Disney animation.
Guiding the contributions to this volume is the overarching idea that cinematic representations of Satan reflect not only the hypnotic powers of cinema to explore and depict the fantastic but also shifting social anxieties and desires that concern human morality and our place in the universe.
Contributors: Simon Bacon, Katherine A. Fowkes, Regina Hansen, David Hauka, Russ Hunter, Barry C. Knowlton, Eloise R. Knowlton, Murray Leeder, Catherine O'Brien, R. Barton Palmer, Carl H. Sederholm, David Sterritt, J. P. Telotte, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
About the Author
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Edited By)
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is professor of English at Central Michigan University and an associate editor of the Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts. He has authored or edited twenty-four books, the most recent of which are The Monster Theory Reader (2019), Critical Approaches to Welcome to Night Vale: Podcasting Between Weather and the Void (2018), The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic (2018), and The Age of Lovecraft (2016). Visit him at JeffreyAndrewWeinstock.com.
Regina M. Hansen (Edited By)
Regina M. Hansen teaches at Boston University. She publishes and presents on horror, religion in film, neo-Victorianism, and the fantastic. Her works include the edited volumes Supernatural, Humanity and the Soul (with Susan George; 2014) and Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film, and a special Stephen King issue of Science Fiction Film and Television (with Simon Brown; 2017), along with the novel The Coming Storm (Atheneum 2021). Her writing on film, folklore, and the supernatural has appeared in the Wall Street Journal Review and the children's magazine Dig Into History.
Awards
Short-listed for Bram Stoker Awards 2021.
Book Information
ISBN 9780823297894
Author Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Fordham University Press
Publisher Fordham University Press
