A Matter of Taste: 029: Horror Canon

SPOILERS FOR... HANNIBAL S1, GASLIGHT, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, JAWS, HELLRAISER, ALIEN, ALIENS, & THE EXORCIST

In this episode:

We're talking about canon. What is it? Where can I buy one? Why is canon actually a useful tool when it comes to academic discussion?
Is your interest piqued? Good, because we're going to spend a crapload of your time attempting to convince you of the films we believe to be worthy of inclusion in Horror Movie Canon (see the capitalization there? That's how you know it's important.)
Some of the heavier discussion herein:

Movies by decade, in which we touch on movies that may or may not have been informed by the limitations of film making at the time they were produced or movies that represented a certain zeitgeist or anxiety of an era.
Movies by genre, which horror movies deserve inclusion in the canon by virtue of being the forerunners of some of the most popular genres that have emerged over the years in horror storytelling, or which films seem to present the purest or most intriguing take on the tropes of that genre.
Death of the Author and why neither of us identify as New Critics. Namely whether these separate readings of a film are mutually exclusive, how they can inform one another, and whether or not any one reading can really be called a true reading.
Ian gets really pumped over a discussion of how the nature of the horror genre affects the agency of its protagonists. He made special mention of it in the timestamps (d'awwww).

The possibility of liveblogging a horror movie marathon with our followers. Anyone interested?
They made an opera out of The Fly, you guise. There are no words for how amazing that is.
We briefly fanboy over Alien: Isolation, which just looks... just... so wonderful.
Exorcism/possession movies? Are they exploitative?
The Blair Witch Project and the Found Footage genre and... man, I can't even get myself excited about this writing a blog post. You've all seen V/H/S by now, right?
Our dear friend Cleolinda made some awesome Storify gathering-ing-things of various season finales and Lifetime movies (we're just going with it). We already linked to it on our Tumblr, but if you're one of the 2.25 listeners who don't follow through our Tumblr, we've got a lovely little link for you right here.

Speaking of Cleo, she should be joining us for the episode just before Hannibal returns to us from a long and frightening hiatus... of... the night. So, that should be fun.

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

"I think what makes American Werewolf in London work is that it does take the werewolf elements seriously and goes all-out with them, while addressing the absurdity of the werewolf as a concept. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only way the "criticism," if we want to call it that, works is because it takes the werewolf mythology so seriously."

Here's a link to that scene in Cursed where a werewolf flips off a bunch of teens/twentysomethings. I'm sorry about the quality, it was the best I could find, everything else was off screen. Here's a link to a video I found while searching for that clip titled "Sexy Big Bad Wolf" which I think we can all agree is the better video.
Ian wanted to include a link to the egregiously misinformed Halloween bracket put together by the website Fio used to write for, however it seems to have fallen away somewhere amongst a number of website redesigns. And nothing important was lost that day.
When discussing the movie Poltergeist, we talk about it originating the trope of a place being built on a native american burial ground. This is because we are fools. In the timestamps, Ian pointed out that the Overlook from The Shining was built on such a burial ground, and that predates the release of Poltergeist by two years. There's certain to be other stories that used this trope before either, we just weren't thinking when we were speaking, clearly.
Highlights from Ian's timemarks:

8:30 - STOP SAYING LIKE DAMMIT
53:15 - Brochure of the Dead. It'll make millions.
1:01:43 - "When people think of our podcast, they think nuance and authority." I think we have a new quote for the intro music.
1:58:46 - We should hold a contest to see who can transcribe the noise you make here.

Music/Sounds:

Image:

One of the most iconic images in Nosferatu, pulled directly from its wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NosferatuShadow.jpg

A Matter of Taste