Published in 2020
285 pages
Natalie Wilson is a professor, writer, and cultural critic whose work focuses on the politics of gender, particularly as played out in contemporary television, film, and fiction. She’s the author of Willful Monstrosity: Race and Gender in 21st Century Horror and Seduced by Twilight. Her most recent essay, “Rules for Surviving Rape Culture in The Walking Dead” appears in The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in The Walking Dead. Her work can be found online at Ms., Bitch, Horror Homeroom, The Establishment, Professor, What if? and Bitch Flicks. Her favorite food is chocolate. She names her pets after famous feminists and currently resides with Simone de Beauvoir (a Shi Tzu) and Jackson Katz (a Maine Coon) in San Diego, California. Follow her on twitter @DrNatalieWilson.
What is this book about?
Taking in a wide range of film, television, and literature, this volume explores 21st century horror and its monsters from an intersectional perspective with a marked emphasis on gender and race. The analysis, which covers over 70 narratives, is organized around four primary monstrous figures–zombies, vampires, witches and monstrous women. Arguing that the current horror renaissance is populated with willful monsters that subvert prevailing cultural norms and systems of power, the discussion reads horror in relation to topics of particular import in the contemporary moment–rampant sexual violence, unbridled capitalist greed, brutality against people of color, militarism, and the patriarchy’s refusal to die.
Examining ground-breaking films and television shows such as Get Out, Us, The Babadook, A Quiet Place, Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, and The Passage, as well as works by key authors like Justin Cronin, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, Margo Lanagan, and Jeanette Winterson, this monograph offers a thorough account of the horror landscape and what it says about the 21st century world.
