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Articles by Tammy Oler
A New Wave of Body-Horror Films Focuses on Women
Illustration by Kelsey Wroten Body-horror films derive their scares from showing the graphic destruction of human bodies. This week’s Longform Friday explores the ways in which these films are using the subgenre to explore the harrowing relationships between women and their bodies and confronting us with the grim reality of body image—just in time for Halloween. Happy reading! —Evette Dionne, editor in chief This article was originally published in the 2015 Fall issue, Blood & Guts. Body rot.
A Masterful Vampire Movie That Never Uses the Word Vampire
Culturebox Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark is just as revealing 30 years later. Photo illustration via Slate. Images via F/M; Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival. Thirty years ago this week, Kathryn Bigelow’s film Near Darkprowled its way into theaters. Bigelow’s first solo directorial outing was a poetically violent horror film about a young cowboy lured into the vampire underworld by a mysterious woman. It was not, however, the only boy-meets-vampire-girl movie of 1987.
Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom and the work of H.P. Lovecraft.
Books A thrilling novella digs into the racism embedded in the horror master’s work. Nick Hayes In Victor LaValle’s riveting horror tale The Ballad of Black Tom, a man is beckoned to the threshold of apocalypse with the promise of seeing beyond the fabric of reality. It’s an impulse that underpins many of LaValle’s novels and stories: a pursuit of what lurks beyond the surface, a desire to see clearly the monsters that we create.
57 Champions of Queer Feminism, All Name-Dropped in One Impossibly Catchy Song
Wide Angle In honor of Le Tigre’s 20th anniversary, your guide to the 57 champions of queer feminism name-dropped in the group’s most joyous song. To hear “Hot Topic” and see our annotated lyrics, click above. “Hot Topic” is a song of joy that comes from a place of frustration. “It was 1999 and the Riot Grrrl movement was kind of over, or it had imploded,” Kathleen Hanna says.
N.K. Jemisin Is Reimagining Other Worlds, and Ours
N.K. Jemisin. Laura Hanifin You Know William Goldman for His Movie Career. But He Also Wrote the Best Book Ever Published About Theater.
“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” Reveals a Double Standard About Asian Rom-coms
More than three weeks after its release, there’s still a lot of online buzz about To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. There are talks of a potential sequel, Twitter and Reddit users are renaming the movie based on their own high-school experiences, Yakult—the yogurt shown in the film—is flying off the shelves, and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) is now, officially, the internet’s boyfriend.
Kathryn Bigelow’s
Bigelow’s film, meanwhile, was set in Oklahoma, starred three actors from the movie Aliens (plus the creepy kid from River’s Edge), and had a score by German electronic band Tangerine Dream. It’s not hard to guess which film was a box office success and which one became a cult classic.
Director’s Cut: A New Wave of Body-Horror Films Focuses on Women
Illustration by Kelsey Wroten This article appears in our 2015 Fall issue, Blood & Guts. Subscribe today! Body rot. Self-cannibalism. Extreme body modification. Even by the debatable standards of horror films—which have always traded in the murder and mutilation of women’s bodies—these kinds of spectacles are too shocking and distasteful to put onscreen. Yet a wave of body-horror films produced in the past five years subject women to a bevy of stomach-turning torments, and not just for shock value.
Jane Austen would have loved Bumble, and more famous authors' favorite apps
Writers have always adapted to new technologies—from the invention of the typewriter to the rise of radio, TV, and the internet. Today, Margaret Atwood dabbles in digital publishing platforms; Paulo Coehlo is an active presence on Instagram; and Neil Gaiman posts regularly on Tumblr. Even Joyce Carol Oates has a (famously bizarre) Twitter presence. Writers’ digital taste tends to correspond with their literary aesthetics.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer can help us predict the outcome of the 2016 US election
For fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the 2016 US election has felt eerily familiar. We’ve spent most of the campaign living on top of a Hellmouth that’s constantly spewing up all manner of hatred and aggression, whether it takes the form of fictional woman-hating villain Caleb (a reasonable stand-in for the real-life Donald Trump), the diabolical family-values-touting Mayor (Mike Pence), or patriarchal vampire The Master (Ted Cruz).
The Ballad of Black Tom
In Victor LaValle’s riveting horror tale The Ballad of Black Tom, a man is beckoned to the threshold of apocalypse with the promise of seeing beyond the fabric of reality. It’s an impulse that underpins many of LaValle’s novels and stories: a pursuit of what lurks beyond the surface, a desire to see clearly the monsters that we create.
The final novel in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch science fiction trilogy.
So what happens when a people who believe themselves to be an “agent of order and civilization” no longer have anyone to civilize? What happens when resources become scarce? And how can the Radchaai reconcile their values of “Justice, Propriety, and Benefit” with their legacy of slavery and exploitation? When confronted by Breq, Anaander Mianaai admits the outcome: The Radchaai will inevitably fragment.
Directioners and Directionators.
It’s no surprise, then, that social media is now where Directioners are trying to draw the line between themselves and the new fans they despise. Between the intense sentiment of Directioners and the velocity of social media, the result is a fan base that excoriates would-be fans for the merest of slights or for not knowing the most trivial of facts—all in a frantic attempt to keep One Direction for themselves as they become an arena-sized pop juggernaut.
She-Hulk, Attorney at Law
She's Mean, She's Green, and She Believes in Due Process Avenger. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Member of the Fantastic Four. In her many superhero roles over the past 35 years, She-Hulk has proven to be one of the strongest characters in the Marvel universe. But it’s her role as an attorney that’s been truly groundbreaking for women in comics.
The Babadook, Lyle, and other films by women.
Would a good mother ever have the urge to kill her child? Even by the ghastly standards of horror films, which will gladly traffic in serial killers, monsters, and demons, a mother murdering her child is typically beyond the pale.
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