FRAGMENTS OF THE MONSTER: RECOVERING FORTIES HORROR

FRAGMENTS OF THE MONSTER: RECOVERING FORTIES HORROR
Mondays, October 29-December 3, 7-10pm
Friperie Potetr
$42
Instructors: Various

This six-week course will attempt to revise and reframe persistent claims in scholarly discourse that 1940s horror is somehow inferior to a “classical” or “canonical” mode of horror in the 1930s, especially as represented by Universal Studios horror. Aside from their valorization of a handful of films, such as The Wolf Man (1941), The Uninvited (1944), and Val Lewton’s RKO films (1942-46), early scholarly views on the horror genre rendered the 1940s as a fragmented and lost decade. Within this framework, the creepers, chillers and thrillers of the 1940s become lost—the result of favoring monolithic binaries, or strict divisions within genre classifications, between high art and low art, auteurs and craftsman, and major studios and poverty row. Expect to see films you may not have ever heard of before in this class! Every session will be taught by a different instructor. A film screening will accompany each session.