Monstrous Nature
Environment and Horror on the Big Screen
- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Godzilla, a traditional natural monster and representation of cinema’s subgenre of natural attack, also provides a cautionary symbol of the dangerous consequences of mistreating the natural world—monstrous nature on the attack. Horror films such as Godzilla invite an exploration of the complexities of a monstrous nature that humanity both creates and embodies.
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann demonstrate how the horror film and its offshoots can often be understood in relation to a monstrous nature that has evolved either deliberately or by accident and that generates fear in humanity as both character and audience. This connection between fear and the natural world opens up possibilities for ecocritical readings often missing from research on monstrous nature, the environment, and the horror film.
Organized in relation to four recurring environmental themes in films that construct nature as a monster—anthropomorphism, human ecology, evolution, and gendered landscapes—the authors apply ecocritical perspectives to reveal the multiple ways nature is constructed as monstrous or in which the natural world itself constructs monsters. This interdisciplinary approach to film studies fuses cultural, theological, and scientific critiques to explore when and why nature becomes monstrous.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1
- 1. The Hellstrom Chronicle and Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
- 2. “As Beautiful as a Butterfly”?
- Part 2
- 3. The Earth Bites Back
- 4. Through an Eco-lens of Childhood
- Part 3
- 5. Zombie Evolution
- 6. Laughter and the Eco-horror Film
- 7. Parasite Evolution in the Eco-horror Film
- Part 4
- 8. Gendering the Cannibal
- 9. American Mary and Body Modification
- Conclusion
- Filmography
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
- About Robin L. Murray
- About Joseph K. Heumann