So, these are for online classes to teach you the deeper meaning to horror...mainly the films, which sounds like fun for many of you readers and cinephiles out there.
Miskatonic Los Angeles offers monthly classes and a discounted full semester pass. For our Spring 2021 Online semester, admission to individual classes is US$10, and a full semester pass including all five classes curated by Miskatonic Los Angeles, is US$40. Please note students from anywhere in the world can register for these online classes.
Thursday January 28th 7:30pm PST
SEEING AND FEELING JAPANESE HORROR: SCOPOPHILIA AND CLAUSTROPHILIA IN EDOGAWA RAMPO
Instructor: Seth Jacobowitz
Edogawa Rampo burst onto the literary scene in 1920s Japan with a rapid
succession of short stories and novels that helped to articulate the
cultural logic of “erotic, grotesque, nonsense” in the interwar period.
He earned instant notoriety for his startling explorations of Japanese
modernity: the lure of illicit or prohibited desires; a fascination with
cinema and visual spectacles; the psychology of leisure, and
thrill-seeking; and a seemingly inexhaustible wanderlust for the
imperial metropolis Tokyo. This presentation will discuss scopophilia
and claustrophilia as two predominant horror themes in Rampo’s fiction
writing and their adaptation in the Japanese film and art worlds. We
will explore his “Stalker in the Attic” (1926) and the film The Watcher in the Attic (1976) directed by Noboru Tanaka, the omnibus film Rampo Noir (2005), and Suehiro Maruo’s graphic novel The Strange Tale of Panorama Island (2010), among other works.
for more info
more dates below
Thursday February 25th 7:30 PST
RICK BAKER: AN INTIMATE SELF-PORTRAIT
Instructors: Amy Voorhees Searles & Graham Skipper
Rick Baker is a world-renowned titan of the film industry whose
curriculum vitae glitters with Oscar® gold. As a taciturn “monster kid”
who whiled away youthful hours gleefully poring over love-worn copies of
Famous Monsters of Filmland, reverently drawing images of his
favorite horror stars, and customizing Aurora model kits, Baker found
that his idiosyncratic affinities made him something of a misfit. Upon
initial experimentation on himself. , the transformative qualities of
makeup emboldened Baker to dabble in the performative and the
outrageous. Though seemingly contradictory, donning these eerie
exoskeletons of his own design are precisely what enabled Baker to come
out of his metaphorical shell. Utilizing Baker’s self-portraits in the
medium of monsters as our guide, we will track his personal and
professional metamorphoses: from a boy to a man, and from a novice to a
master.
Thursday March 25th 7:30pm PDT
AN ORGY OF TERROR: ITALIAN HORROR COMICS OF THE 1970S AND 80S
Instructor: Adam Twycross
At its height, Italian publishing house Edifumetto produced hundreds of
individual titles and selling millions of copies every month, with their
comics appearing across Europe, Central and South America, North Africa
and French-speaking Canada. Typically appearing as small-format pocket
digests, these comics were notable for their lushly painted cover art
which featured work by some of Italy’s finest illustrators. Significant
also were the explicitness of their themes and imagery, with storylines
that blended nudity and sex with violence so gratuitous that it
occasionally bordered on parody. This talk will discuss these
extraordinary comics from a cultural and historical standpoint,
examining both the transnational context within which they evolved, and
the uniquely Italian environment that shaped their development.
Thursday April 29th 7:30 PDT
WALPURGISNACHT: FOLKLORE AND POPULAR CULTURE
Instructor: Mikel Koven
Walpurgisnacht, the evening of the 30th of April, is said to be one of
the holiest days of witch’s calendar; the night before the feast of
Saint Walpurga, who drove the witches out of Germany. Anton LaVey, the
founder of the Church of Satan, declared Walpurgisnacht one of the
holiest days of the Satanic year. It was said that on this evening,
covens of witches would gather on Brocken mountain in Northern Germany,
to weave their nefarious evil. This class explores the folklore
surrounding Walpurgisnacht and its representation in popular culture,
including the poetry of Goethe, the music of Mendelssohn, the folk
rock/folk metal sounds of Faun, and of course the films of Paul Naschy.
How does all this fit together? Only the witches know and will reveal
all on Walpurgisnacht 2021.
Thursday May 27th 7:30 PDT
PROJECTING HORRORS REAL, IMAGINARY AND METAPHORICAL: TRANS AND OTHER GENDER-NON-CONFORMING BODIES IN HORROR CINEMA
Instructor: Cerise Howard
Gender non-conformity has long been a marker in cinema for murderous
villainy and psychosis or has been presented as reason enough for anyone
thus marked to be dispatched from their narrative universes with
excessive (and often casually misogynistic) force. For transgender and
gender-diverse people, everyday life can be the stuff of horror, felt
especially by trans people of color. Much of screen media production,
has only served, through stereotyping and ignorance, to perpetuate the
real traumas and horrors experienced routinely by trans people. This
lecture will debunk no small number of harmful myths about transgender
people, propagated by the screen media-industrial complex and in the
horror movies historically produced within it. We’ll explore the
ubiquity of trans narratives and imagery within horror cinema – even if
they’ve most often been deployed at a metaphorical remove from being
transgender narratives and imagery.
